Crystal Cluster Pen Holder

I designed this blue crystal cluster pen holder specifically for the Printables contest: the idea was to get inspired by some natural form that resembles a pencil, then find a way to fit actual pencils inside. The object, even when printed with very high layer height (I tried up to 0.3 mm) makes a nice lights effect, and the weight is enough to comfortably hold the pens. Holes are of different sizes to accomodate different kinds of pens. There is space for just seven pens, so the object is not for people having tons of pens, but for people that want a fashionable object on the desk that also is capable of holding a few pens.

Printing: 15% infill is more than enough, but the object also prints without infill. To brutally speedup printing with Prusa Mini (but the same can be done with other printers of course) I set a layer height of 0.3 and a line width of 0.6 for everything but top layers, that I left to 0.4. This way is a ~ 3 hours print at the default size. The one in the cover picture is printed like that.

Size: as it is, it takes a reasonable amount of time and holds pens comfortably: smaller than that is not a good idea, larger can definitely be tried with good results to hold more pens or to have a larger object to show, or just to add weight.

Trivia: it was designed from scratch using a real crystal as (far) inspiration. Most of the design time was to find a good enough hole size / height and the right object balancing and first layer area size in order for it to be stable.