Replacement Petals for Garden Poppy

This all-metal poppy rusted the paint off its leaves in a few years, although the stem is still retrievable. Sadly they made the petals in one three-layer piece, so I couldn't take it apart to sand and repaint it effectively, so I had to sketch new petals.

There's some DIY to do though. After printing the petals, they need to be heated up with a heat gun or in the oven to soften them so you can give them a bit of “character” instead of leaving them flat. Drill a suitable hole in the centre of each one to receive the central black dome which is just a capped bolt that screws into the top of the stem and holds the stamen ring in place. 

I only have PLA+ so I expect I'll probably have to reprint them every year as they'll probably fade and possibly even droop if the Sun gets too hot. It was a fun project anyway, I didn't want to just bin the stake as all it needed was a wire brushing and a coat of Hammerite to renew it.

I know yellow is a bit “oooooer”, but there are yellow poppies (Cambrian, or Welsh) and there are vivid blue ones as well (Himalayan). We already have a red poppy sculpture so I changed it up a bit :o)

The print will be completely solid with standard print settings. My printer has a 0.4mm nozzle and defaults to 0.2mm layers. It's only 0.85mm thick so that's 3 solid layers which is plenty. No adhesion, no support.

I hot-air-gunned mine while the petals were sitting in a shallow dish so I got a central hollow and then poked the edges a bit with a stick to encourage them to droop. Would be interesting to see other people's makes, I bet they're more artistic than mine!

Please Like this model if you find it useful.

If you REALLY like it, https://www.buymeacoffee.com/gigabeast :o)