You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, I’m telling you why, because Santa Claus is coming to your 3D printer! OK, so it’s not up to the standards of the original 1930s J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie version of ‘Santa Claus is Comin to Town’, but what better time to have a 3D printer than at the festive holidays? And to get things started here’s a little Santa (a.k.a. Father Christmas) figurine to print and, as an extra Christmas present, it doesn’t need any support material for fused-filament printing. So what better way to get into the festive mood than to print one, or even lots of them, to brighten up your home in mid-Winter?
Quick summary of this 3D creation
Overview: A miniature hollow Santa Claus (Father Christmas) figurine.
Software used: Nomad Sculpt, Meshmixer, Blender.
Intended use: 3D printing with fused-filament (no supports needed) or resin printers.
Download: Thingiverse page.
I created the Santa figure in Nomad Sculpt on an iPad and, if you’re familiar with my previous Santa head sculpt, you’ll see I used a version of that to top it off. Then I used Meshmixer to hollow the 3D model so that, after importing it back into Nomad, I could separate it into an inside and outside mesh. The outside was already designed not to need supports so I just sculpted problematic areas from the inside mesh. Then in Blender I did some fiddling to create a final STL file for 3D printing.
The model is therefore hollow, to reduce filament use, and is very easy to print with fused-filament machines: it should need no supports, and is around 100mm high when printed for 1.5mm thick walls. You can scale it larger or smaller of course, and I’ve gone up to 150mm tall in my Flashforge Adventurer 3C. Here’s what it looks like while 3D printing using some red PLA filament.
I hope you enjoy printing your own mini Santa figure and equally enjoy a lovely Christmas holiday with it brightening up your festive events 🙂
