Santa's Sleigh Moving Automata

Every year since I got my first 3D printer, I've designed a custom printed gift for my family, trying to one-up myself every year. They are usually really personalized so I don't upload them, but this one is more universal and I got very ambitious with it, so I thought I'd share it! Plus, it spins!

In this Instructable, I'm going to very very briefly go over some of the steps I took to design this in Autodesk Fusion and my thought process, but I'll also provide all of my completed files. The CAD part is aimed at people who are familiar with Fusion and would consider themselves an intermediate skill level.

I've also posted this on Printables if you'd prefer to download files & such there: https://www.printables.com/model/1526743-santas-sleigh-moving-automata

Filament:

I used 5 colors: Red, Gold, Brown, White, and Black. Feel free to choose your own!

Other Materials:

1. String (I used some red embroidery floss)
2. 1/4in Wooden Dowel (one is about an inch, one is about 13.25 inches.
3. Screws - I found a 100 pack of #4 x 1/2 in Phillips head wood screws at Home Depot here in the US. (A similar metric screw will work perfectly fine, there's no threads in the model, the screws just dig into the material a little bit). You should only need to use 6.
4. A small bag for candy or other presents :)

Tools:

1. Screwdriver
2. Saw or other method of cutting dowel
3. Super glue

The first step to any project is to settle on the concept! I knew I wanted to enter my annual Christmas decoration into the Make It Spin competition, so my constraints were, well, Christmas and Make It Spin. In my sketches above, I got several concepts onto paper, then narrowed it down to 3 ideas, then consulted a few people to get favorites and landed on this reindeer automata idea.

Something I've learned lately is that it's super important to sit down and draw out your plan for your design before you start CAD, rather than figuring out stuff on the fly in CAD. I thought about how I would print each part, the big thing being how to print the sleigh without supports-- more on that in a sec-- and how everything works and goes together.

In this step, I'm just going to point out a couple of details I did in CAD that might inspire you for any future projects you design. I used Autodesk Fusion, with vectors for the logo on the sleigh and the reindeer shapes made in Adobe Illustrator.

The idea behind how this project works is that there's a shaft going through the whole model with pusher pieces that push bars up along their guides, with gravity pulling them back down. It's very simple! I definitely could make it work better by adding more parts, but simple is usually best.

1. Photos 1 & 2: To print the sleigh all in one piece with the gold trim and text would take an insane amount of supports, so I designed the two sides separate from the core, and then borrowed a woodworking technique called dominoes to join them together with a friction fit.
2. Picture 3: To visualize the mechanism, I positioned the parts at their extremes and made sure that everything provided enough space for everything to move like I wanted. The shape of the pusher part took some testing to get right, I'd recommend tweaking it a few times and seeing how different shapes affect the "animation".
3. Picture 4: If you're not familiar with components, definitely learn how to use them! They were super helpful for me in my testing, as there were a few times where I wanted to kind of back up my previous work or get a fresh start, so I would either make a new component or Copy / Paste New the previous test component. Very helpful for staying a bit more organized.
4. Picture 5: To make my gears, I used Ross Korsky's Helical Gear Generator plugin for Fusion. Don't try and CAD your own gears, this is so much easier haha

There's a whole bunch of parts to this and I tried to make it pretty straightforward. Luckily, most of the parts are pretty small so total print time is relatively not too terrible! The naming system I'm using for my files here is COMPONENTGROUP_componentName_Quantity. Keep in mind the quantities to make sure you print all the parts!

1. For the deer and the sleigh sides, it's a simple color change at the first layer of the non-solid parts. This can be done without AMS!
2. Print the SLEIGH_Core part on its side.
3. The only part that you might want to use supports on is the DEER_Base_Print2 part, which prints as pictured above and you may want to use supports for the overhangs near the bottom, depending on the capabilities of your printer. Everything else prints on the flat side with zero overhangs.

I printed everything on my BBL P1S using the default draft preset. since the parts are all fairly flat and simple, it turned out very good with reasonable print times considering the scale of this thing-- about 7.5 hours total, split among several 1-2 hour prints.

Grab your SLEIGH parts, we're going to put this together first. I borrowed a woodworking technique called dominoes to join the two sides to the core. The tiny dominoes friction fit very well for me, depending on your printer, you may want to use glue or sand them down a bit for too small or too big, respectively.

Basically, just jam all the dominoes into all the holes on both of the flat sides of the core (pressing in with the butt of a screwdriver or something like that)... and snap on the side plates!

Connect BASEBAR_A and BASEBAR_B together! They should just slot together at the dovetail joint. Make sure the sides match.

Locate your LEVER pieces, pictured above. The two gears slot into the holes in the base piece pictured on the left, and then the two base pieces are glued together. I put glue in the cavities pictured and then clamp them together. Make sure not to get any glue on the gears!

Use a drop of glue to insert your 1-inch dowel into the small gear:

Slide the lever onto the exposed dowel end and screw in the screw into the hole. Be sure to stop when the screw head is roughly flush with the plastic. If you screw it in too tight, it can start splitting things, which isn't the end of the world on this part, but isn't great on some of the other screw-in parts. Make sure that the lever spins both gears.

Slot the BASEBAR part into the bottom of the lever assembly. It should be on the end of the longer of the two base bar pieces. Additionally, insert and screw in one end of the 13.25 in dowel, again until the screw is flush with the plastic.

Slide the sleigh onto the dowel. There is a bump on the bottom of the sleigh that should slot into the divot on the base bar to hold it in place.

Slide the first DEER_Base part onto the bottom bar. It should be positioned directly over the seam between the two base bar parts. Then, slide on two of the DEER_Pusher parts with one of the spacers in between them down the dowel and into the base part as pictured. You'll need to pull the dowel out of the base part to do this. Once the pushers and spacer are lined up with the base part, you can push the dowel down into its spot.

Be very careful doing this, as the two supports in the middle of the base part are fragile. This has been mostly fixed in the files I've attached, but it is still not perfect.

Next, rotate the two pushers so they are perpendicular with each other. This makes it so the reindeer next to each other bounce opposite of each other. If you want the bounces to be spaced differently, you can adjust the angle. Once you're happy with the position, screw them in, once again until the screw head is flush with the plastic. Be very careful not to screw too far or the piece will split.

Repeat with at the end of the base piece. be mindful of how the angle of the pusher parts relates to the other set behind it, based on the animation you want (i.e. do you want both reindeer on one side to be high at the same time or one high / one low, etc.)

Gather the reindeer and the DEER_Bar pieces. Slot in the bars in opposite directions as pictured, and attach the reindeer!

Repeat with the other two deer and give it a spin! If you're happy with the "animation", move on to the next step!

Use your string to simulate the reins! This isn't really an exact science and I kind of messed around until I got something that worked. Be careful not to make the string too tight, especially where it connects to the sleigh.

At this point, your deer have probably fallen off at least once during your testing. If you'd like, you can glue the deer to the bars, just make sure you're happy with the way everything looks because everything is locked in once you've done so. (and make sure to glue it up while the bar is in its slot, otherwise you won't be able to put it back together ;) )

Load up the back of your sleigh with some goodies and go deliver some presents! Enjoy!

(Also, if anyone finds a good Santa model to drive the sleigh, please share it in the comments!)

Merry Christmas! Thanks for reading! I hope this gives you some ideas for other interesting, interactive models you can make with 3D printing!