Death Star Inspired Greeble Pattern Vase / Lamp / Pencil Cup / Pen Cup / Toothbrush Holder / whatever

“That's no flower pot.”

GreebleVase is a fully open source, fully parametric OpenSCAD container maker, inspired by the iconic panel details of the Death Star's interior. This model is fully parametric, so you can configure its height, outer diameter, wall thickness, height of the greeble pattern, which greeble pattern you want (in trying to find references, I found two kinds of pattern – more on that later) and use case (container or lamp.) 

You can print this out as a vase, pen cup, pencil cup, toothbrush holder, planter, or (if you toggle the option) a lamp, or whatever your rebel alliance needs to hold in a cylindrical container. Lamp mode adds a 4mm notch for the power cable for the Maker Supply LED Kit 0001. 

To address the elephant in the room: If you make the greeble pattern take up most of the vase, then the vase is obviously kind of useless for holding things that need a solid container. 

Two greeble pattern modes are included: Authentic, which replicates the staggered offset rhythm of the actual Death Star corridor wall panels, and Random, which generates unique panel layouts on every render. I found them both when I was looking and assumed they were random, which I built first, then realized that it wasn't at all right so I looped back around and added the ‘authentic’ mode. They both print about the same. 

Matte black filament is the obvious choice — it sells the aesthetic immediately. PLA or PLA Matte both work beautifully. That said, if you want something with a little Vader-esque menace and sheen, PETG in gloss black isn't wrong at all. You do you. Light colors work could work too, but I haven't tried any. 

Printing Instructions

I've included print profiles with some examples. There's a Pen/Pencil/Toothbrush Cup example, and a Vase example. You can use those if that's all you want and those are in sizes you like… but what I was trying to include with them was a decent list of viable print settings. What seems to me a likely way to use this model is to customize your container with the parametric customizer, using OpenSCAD with or without the included liner, and then import the generated STLs into the print profile I've included. 

If you do that though, there are some slight complications: 

• If you include a liner, the parametric customizer will generate 1 STL file, which might contain the container and the liner. If that is the case, you'll want to right click the parts after you import them and ‘Split’ → ‘To Objects’. This will allow you to move them to separate plates

• Easiest course of action then is to move the container to one of the container plates and the liner to one of the liner plates, but if you don't want to do that (or you don't want to use my print profile) then it shouldn't be much problem either: 

  • The liner wants to print in spiral vase mode so toggle that, and then opt into the recommended settings for vase mode

  • If you want the liner to have a bottom, then change ‘bottom shell’ to 2

  • Use your stickiest plate, because a tall, single-extrusion-wide vase is going to need the grip

  • The container shouldn't need anything special, but set your infill percentages and patterns as you like

Open Source

If you want to fork or contribute to the open source project, contributions are welcome. The project is on Github (if Github is up) and is MIT Licensed.