Tiny Treehouse

Inspired by the wooden version at https://www.instructables.com/Tiny-Tree-House/ as I made one of those when I saw that article, I wanted to see if I could create the same sort of thing for a 3D printer. 

And here it is. Sadly I don't have any wood coloured printing materials yet, so I ended up printing it in white PLA+ and then painting it with acrylics and then varnishing it to protect it! Actually ended up spending more time designing and painting it than I spent building the wooden original, although with wood coloured filaments and the attached STLs to hand it would be a much quicker job to make one.

I'm looking forward to seeing other people's makes using different coloured resins :o)

It's a tiny print, so it needs some tiny settings. I used the following, all with a 0.4mm nozzle…

Platform - 0.2mm layers, 3 walls, 3 tops/bottoms, 15% infill grid, no adhesion or support.

House - 0.12mm layers, 3 walls, 10 tops/bottoms, 10% infill grid, support 70% grid touching buildplate BUT suppress support on the side walls as the windows don't really need support if you can do decent bridging. The doorway has the round logs over it and without dense support those log-bottoms are going to be printing in thin air hence the extreme support which does break away very nicely leaving a clean finish. If you happen to have an Elegoo Neptune3 Pro then the 3MF contains all the settings as well as the window support suppression. The 3MF files are all for the Elegoo N3Pro so unless you have that printer, don't use the print settings in the 3MFs! Shouldn't need adhesion for the house.

Roof - 0.12mm layers, Initial Layer Line Width 100% instead of the usual 125% because otherwise the “ridge tile” sections may not line up properly and will end up looking offset like a cheap hinge, hehehehe. If they still don't line up nicely, a quick flick with a knife will remove any interfering bits. 2 walls, 10 tops/bottoms, infill 10% grid, no adhesion, no support.

Rope Ladder - 0.12mm layers, Initial Layer Line Width back up to 125% for adhesion, 2 walls, 10 tops/bottoms (really just make sure it's all walls, no infill), print speed 30mm/s with first layer at 20mm/s - there are a LOT of fiddly bits in this print and I didn't think my entry-level printer would handle it without ripping bits up all over the place but it came out perfectly on these settings! If you want a shorter ladder just suppress some of it, or print it out and snip off the bit you don't need, it only takes minutes to print anyway. Again for EN3PRO owners I've included the 3MF with all my settings. The rope ladder actually comes from here… https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/openforge-rope-ladder-28mm and it's free - there are various different lengths available on that page, I made mine by grafting an XXL and an M and an S and then scaling uniformly to 59.17% to get the dimensions I wanted. That % is entirely arbitrary, I just squished it until the size was right and it came out fine so I simply recorded the %.

Once you have all the bits, push the roof halves together with the stripes uppermost, and angle them so they match the slope of the house top. I made them snug so they should hold position together, add a smear of glue on the house top edge and pop the roof on.

To attach the house to the platform, add a smear of glue to the bottom edge of the house and place it on the platform with the two tiny protruding lugs on the platform located inside the front door wall, these lugs are just there to help get the house in the right spot on the platform.

Glue some cooking string or anything you have handy that's about the right thickness for the “elf & safety ropes” around the house, hehehe, leaving a lethal gap in the middle at the front for tiny people to fall to their deaths from (or use the ladder, when fitted) :o)

Glue the ladder on, and you're done. Either attach to your plant with a blob of blutack or make a platform out of a small square of PLA or wood etc and three wooden skewers glued together like the original designer suggests, and then blutack the house platform to that (for easy replacement when the skewers rot in the the wet soil) 

I designed this in sections specifically for 3D printing, and also with single-colour printer in mind. In theory you could print the whole thing at once with a multicolour printer although the roof edges would need supporting too so it could be a bit messy. If I had wood colours I'd print the platform with a single colour change in the gcode so that the base is darker and the rope poles are lighter, everything else would be printed in one colour. 

I've included a photo of my wooden treehouse mounted in one of my Bonsai trees, and one of the 3D printed and painted one ready to place on a Bonsai and also in its final position on the Bonsai with the blue dish. 

If you enjoy this model please Like it and show us your print. 

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