Jan 12, 2015 | By Alec
The Christmas season has come and gone again, but as winter is still here to stay for a while, it won’t hurt to check out some more 3D printed Christmas magic! And in that respect, the engineering team from vacuum cleaner giant Dyson certainly don’t disappoint with their 12 feet tall helix Christmas tree.
As Dyson explained on its website, its engineers ‘decided that a normal tree just wasn't exciting enough for the company's UK headquarters. So they put their heads together and came up with this double helix Christmas tree constructed entirely from Dyson parts.’
It’s not quite clear what inspired their design; we all carry Christmas in our hearts, and at heart we are all just DNA? Whatever their reasoning, it’s an absolutely impressive Christmas tree that almost makes you wish it was early December again. And what’s more, it has been built by combining Dyson’s signature product (the vacuum cleaner) with 3D printing.
For the tree’s branches are, as you will see if you look closely, all cordless vacuum cleaners that have been individually cut down to size. These have all been assembled into one 12 foot tall helix structure using 3D printed connectors: ‘the engineers had to make sure it was structurally sound in order to survive wind, rain, snow and lightning – and because of the complex geometry and heavy loads, they had to be 3D printed from glass filled nylon.’
All in all, it took a team of six engineers five hours to assemble the tree (and doubtlessly much longer than that to print all the connectors). Fortunately, here’s a much shorter version of the assembly process:
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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