Spiral Vase Pitcher Plant

It's a pitcher plant that prints in vase mode! This is my Valentine's design for 2025—something a bit less traditional, and of course appropriate year-round.

Sarracenia, not nepenthes; this specifically was based off Sarracenia purpurea, the purple pitcher plant, which is native to my area (and a good chunk of North America overall.) According to Wikipedia:

Its range includes the Eastern seaboard, the Great Lakes region, all of Canada (except Nunavut and Yukon), Washington state, and Alaska. That makes it the most common and broadly distributed pitcher plant, as well as the only member of the genus that inhabits cold temperate climates.

I used photos found on inaturalist.org for reference. inaturalist.org is cool for a lot of different reasons, but in particular I've been finding it a great place for artistic reference lately when the internet is filled with slop.

Size: It's 15 cm tall, or just under 6 inches.

While you can balance these to stand up on a flat surface if you're careful, it's tricky and not very stable. You can use the open version or the version with a little hole to add or secure with a wire or stick, or you can print a small base to stand it on, which I've also included. The stand prints normally.

(Please note that this design is not meant to hold water, and will not do so unaltered.)

How to Print

• Vase mode 

• The main files were designed for 0.4mm nozzles, and are not easily resized. There are versions with and without a solid bottom (0.8mm thick, so 4 bottom layers at 0.2mm layer height), but I recommend the solid bottom unless you have specific plans because:

• You probably want a brim! Outer brim only, but without the added bottom, the slicer thinks everything is outer. I played it safe with 15mm of brim.

• I used a trick in this one that can do wonky things to the slicing if the vase mode 'seam' falls in the wrong place. Check your slice, and if it's doing something funky, rotate it a little bit and slice again.

  • If you're altering scale or trying to make it work with a different size nozzle, and still having trouble getting a clean slice no matter which way you turn it, you can also try changing the model size by about 1% in either direction.

• I have included two additional sets of models for printing with larger nozzles and resizing: one that's about 1.6mm thick, and one that's about 2mm thick. You can do about half size using one of these.

• Pay attention to how fast you're printing—slow and steady is best—and to your line width. The main model is about 1mm thick, so it should work with both 0.4mm and 0.45mm perimeters, but the results may be slightly different. 

• tl;dr: vase mode, brim, check your slice.

New to vase mode or still learning?

• Spiral vase mode takes the outside wall of a solid, continuous model and calculates a continuous single spiraling path to print to the top. Usually this is after a few standard solid layers at the bottom.

• In PrusaSlicer, this is the “Spiral vase” option you can check off in Print Settings > Layers and Perimeters > Vertical shells. It will automatically change several of your settings to be compatible with the mode.

• In Cura slicer: Special Modes > Spiralize Outer Contour

• To get a good vase mode print, you'll want to refine a couple more settings. You want to print slow and steady, and toward the higher end of your filament's temperature range. IMO you should test settings for each filament, as well as for different layer heights, to determine a temperature, extrusion %, and speed (if the speed hasn't been slowed down automatically) to get a nice, clean vase mode print with that filament.