Christmas Light Feeder - hang lights on trees with ease

This is a Christmas Light Feeder that helps string Christmas lights around trees using a standard extension pole (3/4" ACME threaded). Personally I use the DocaPole which allows me to reach the top of my huge pine trees.

The theory is shown well in this video: https://youtu.be/_5jR9pXPrSY?t=54

Now you may be thinking that I ripped that product off. Well, you're sort of right. I had this idea years ago (which is how i found the product), but I'm not going to pay $50 for something I can print myself!

I tried it this year and it worked perfectly.

The print is fairly difficult because of all the cylindrical shapes. I recommend printing on its side as in the model, with supports where they touch the bed. You should not do internal supports, because they would be near impossible to get out. Instead, I've reinforced the "top" and "bottom" (sides when on the pole), so that the printer makes a good bridge before it starts printing in mid-air. This adds a little weight (and costs material) but makes the quality a lot better.

This print will undergo major stresses, so print it as strong as you can. I did PETG with no part fan, at a 0.2mm layer height. My pathetic prototype survived the two trees I did this year, so I think it's strong enough.

Print Settings

Supports:

Yes

Notes:

Print as oriented in the model, on its side. This allows the max strength (X-Y plane) to follow the shape of the feeder.

This was designed in openscad, and was my first venture into torus shapes (rotate_extrude). It wasn't too bad once I figured out the basics, and the code is fairly readable. The one failing is that the pole support is hacked into place, not using any of the parameters, which makes the "rot"ation paramter pretty useless. Other than that, I'm satisfied with it.