Gothic Star Ball (Patreon)

Howdy, wonderful people!
Ever feel like your life is lacking both gothic splendour and solid geometry?  I know I do!  This stylish stellated dodecahedron is just the thing for addressing this, especially this time of year where star-oriented festive decor is in fashion.  
So, silliness aside, what are the interesting design points on this one?  Well, the real trick is how it all joins together.  I wanted to avoid internal brackets on this one, since I'd already taken that approach with the bolted polyhedra, and instead I wanted some kind of external fastener.  But, the problem is that we need every side of the vertex piece to be able to join up with any other side.  That's a bit of a problem for the idea of just splitting a threaded element in half, since the halves of a thread will be different.  

You can already see how it ended up of course - there are two sets of half threads on each side.  Why is this important?  Because those two threaded parts are not identical, they're the two different halves of the same thread, which means when we take an identical piece and rotate it 180 degrees it'll slot in and form a full thread.  That lets us keep every side the same, and thus have only one vertex piece instead of some convoluted combination of custom parts!

By comparison, there's nothing terribly technical about the coloured inserts and the retaining rings that hold them in.  The vertex has inset thread grooves that accept the rings, which keep the loose-fitting inserts nice and securely in place.  Of course, the inserts are entirely optional - you can just stick to the vertex pieces and the nut pieces if you prefer :)
Oh, and there's an alternative "lobed nut" model in the folder too - I decided I liked the circular ones better, but I've included both.

Printing Tips
This one should be pretty easy!  In fact, I test printed this on an Ender 3 with the fastest, roughest default slicing settings and it still printed and assembled just fine.  No supports needed, of course.  Print orientations are like so:

How Many Pieces Do I Print?

12 vertex pieces and 60 nuts.  If you're doing the inserts you'll need 12 inserts and 12 retaining rings.

File Locations
You'll find these on dropbox under: 790 Gothic Star Ball
(Post with dropbox link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31697592 )

 
A quick aside!
By popular demand, there's now a version of the middle piece of the Hex Dice Tower that has a threaded top, as per the bottom piece, so that the bolt can be threaded in while it's in use!  This does not, of course, hold the tower together, that's the same as before - it just holds the top piece on, and gives the bolt somewhere to live :)
You'll find the model in the same directory as all the other parts for the Hex Dice Tower!


Happy printing (and rolling)!
xoxo
Sven.