Blinking Christmas Tree - Modified Battery Base

thingiverse

The Blinking Christmas tree is a great design that turned out awesome! While I was preparing to print the model, I found a nice set of pre-wired, battery-powered (3 x AA) Christmas led lights for US$4 which allowed me to sidestep the electrical work entirely--outside of some very minor soldering (had to remove 5 of the bulbs from their holders so that they would fit in the shallower holes of the tree where some were near a structural edge which meant the bulb base was too broad to fit snugly). *Obviously*, since I decided to use battery-powered lights, I needed to modify the base to make the battery pack fit. Overall, I feel my adjustments worked very well, though adding the battery pack did add a substantial amount of mass to the base versus what [Alzibiff had with their base](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:36774) (which was very well-done in its own right), but it isn't a show stopper by any means. *Things to consider:* * The battery slot in the base is 90mm x 54mm x 21mm and fits my 3 x AA battery pack with switch well, though as a warning the tolerances are on the tighter side, so if your machine cuts close, you may want to go right of the line and scale up a percent or two (or more). * I also considered adding a shallow channel in the battery slot to accommodate the battery wires feeding into the tree, if this is something someone would like, just let me know and I can add it, otherwise opening it in a any CAD program and adding in a negative space channel shouldn't take more than a few minutes. * Also, since the slot is effectively a rectangular prism less one side, there is the potential for failure on the top of the battery pack slot; I was able to print without supports, but I cannot say how well this will work for other machines. **Pro tip: we also used some superglue to hold the lights in place in the tree - no sense waiting for one to pop into the tree during transit to Grandma's house!**