Designing and 3D printing feeders & accessories

[Patiocoturnix]

Awesome! I’m not really that good at making my own things but I love to 3D print I have a thread Here for all things 3D printed I know the owner of BYC @Nifty-Chicken has a printer forum Here I haven’t gotten around to making an account over there.

 

[NorthwoodsChick]

I'm using a roughly 12"x12" bed and I think the max height is a bit over 15". It's a Kobra 2 Plus.


If it won't contact something the chicken eats and won't potentially have a chicken beak nibbling at it, then food safety will be a lot less important. But even something like a roost I'd want to be safe for a chicken to taste.


For holding oyster shell I'd still want something food safe because of chickens potentially nibbling the material and the risk of water getting in somehow - the water issue is actually even more of an issue with oyster shell than granite grit. Calcium carbonate can kind of act like a sponge, so if something gets wet, leaches chemicals, and then that water touches the CaCO3, anything that leached out would very likely go straight into the rock/shell and then get consumed by the chicken.


I'm not sure about heat tolerance. I do know you can't stick it in a dishwasher with something like heated drying or it will warp. You can use a heat gun to shape PLA, so I'm not sure how well it would hold up in a really hot area, particullarly if it was in direct sunlight in the heat for a long time.


Like most plastics it will get degraded over time and become more fragile. As for how fast, I'm not sure and will just have to find that out as I go.

I've read PETG can be better for outdoor usage and UV resilience, and is also a food safe material. I'm just not sure about the VOCs during the melting/reforming process and also not sure about how much trickier it is to use vs PLA. It might be one of those things where you really need a fume case over the printer and an extractor fan out to a window (vs just an open window and uncovered printer I'm doing). I will probably give PETG a try at some point down the line but will definitely be doing it with a VOC meter in the room.

Thanks for all the info.

My son has a 3D printer- Monoprice ultimate pro He’s got a lot of PLA, but one is made with wood particles added (pic). He hasn’t used it yet but I may ask him about it when he’s home on school break. Sure is a pretty cool tech!!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Aaaaand I'm back to hating cyanoacrylate (CA) / superglue. It definitely works for PLA-to-PLA with patience but unfortunately the container I got is apparently polyethylene (PE). I know, I know...I should have checked before going all in with it, but I didn't. PE of course is frequently on the "no" list for CA-based glues due to lack of good adhesion. I've got problems beyond that though - the CA glue is just straight up not curing in some places and it's waaaay past the cure time stated on the packet at this point. I don't want to use accelerant if I can avoid it since that stuff isn't food safe. Assuming it cures eventually, this mess I've made will work for an initial test but definitely will not hold up long term and won't be a viable way to connect ports to buckets on new feeders I make. The chickens will pull the feeder ports out eventually as the glue cracks and fails. This means I basically have to adapt to the screws and gaskets method to attach these the ports properly. If I do that, I may as well try to get some kind of snap-fit to work for PLA-to-PLA and avoid glue altogether.

I feel the need for learning an actual CAD program may be coming...ugh. So far I've been doing everything in Blender because I'm coming into this from a background of modeling little tabletop gaming figures for resin printers where all that matters is shape/appearance not so much exact dimensions. Good software for printing tiny chickens, perhaps not so much printing things to be used by actual chickens.

This is the test feeder pre-glue, just push fit. Needed glue under the flange to stay, so I did...

And this is what I've got this morning. Might be hard to make out, but the bad things are: glue seeming to move out sideways and cracking horizontally and even falling off and lots of chalky bits left all over not even close to where I glued and climbing up the PLA.

The glue definitely migrated out laterally overnight and formed an uncured ridge AWAY from the PLA??? What??? Ok maybe I just used too much and it somehow oozed out with gravity but this is still a first for me working with even large quantities of CA gel.

Well, time to learn how to make and print plastic screws. A gasket can come from cutting up a cheap silicone mat.

 

[Themellowyellows]

Intresting!

 

[SourRoses]

I really like your design for the grit feeder!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Double bin grit holder is now in with my main flock that is mostly hens. This double holder is wider than the single one (7" vs 5") with a divider for two grit types. The divider that was supposed to be in the middle but I apparently was 1/8th inch off to one side somehow...doesn't matter for my purposes - works just fine but will have to correct that in the 3D model for future prints. The bins here are: (left) the original grit and oyster shell holder that is a big ol' mess because they can climb in it, (middle) the open-top feed situation I'm hoping to improve eventually, and (right) the new double grit holder. I will remove the old one on the left soon. You can see this area is somehwat protected due to that transleucent panel behind the HWC but things can still get wet when the wind gets going in a storm if there isn't a top cover like on the 3D printed one.

The feeder ports are needing a redraft because the CA glue failed completely on the PE part of my prototype before I could even test it with feed. Basically one little stay in the sun and the CA glue that was connected to PE shattered (PLA and glue on PLA parts are aboth still fine). Going to be trying this soon or a variation of it:

Unfortunately the move to double flanges and screws meant I can't keep the same shape back of the port and still have it print support free (unless I want to print the back half in two pieces and glue together...which I could, but glue is clearly an inferior thing to rely on).

 

[Patiocoturnix]

This is the glue I use for my prints works with pretty much anything as well and it’s pretty strong.
https://www.amazon.com/Kraken-Bond-Spray-Adhesive-Activator/dp/B09JNX84ML/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=354BYJM4A9XDO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.4R_pyxD9M6TUS5HDuybFoLO348nxQeuY7RqhvOxSwRvrMbT7ltTI-jomrTL5tltvfLYj8UkSFZAUStZBWeYyFREkXtg0bqw77ItGFJLtq8c6pv04eIdnpDlhVBVqYXApIRa400pBOihNFa7hYc7ItHFHZUoSh1ygKMpiDH_Mr3uOAmCVslDlCmYbMQrIM1Id.qNNYjGjkoSTwLWgXFFKLiAh3LJ7t3h2Socau4hkkkjc&dib_tag=se&keywords=kraken+wow&qid=1725463710&sprefix=kraken+wow,aps,247&sr=8-2

 

[DonyaQuick]

This is the glue I use for my prints works with pretty much anything as well and it’s pretty strong.
https://www.amazon.com/Kraken-Bond-Spray-Adhesive-Activator/dp/B09JNX84ML/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=354BYJM4A9XDO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.4R_pyxD9M6TUS5HDuybFoLO348nxQeuY7RqhvOxSwRvrMbT7ltTI-jomrTL5tltvfLYj8UkSFZAUStZBWeYyFREkXtg0bqw77ItGFJLtq8c6pv04eIdnpDlhVBVqYXApIRa400pBOihNFa7hYc7ItHFHZUoSh1ygKMpiDH_Mr3uOAmCVslDlCmYbMQrIM1Id.qNNYjGjkoSTwLWgXFFKLiAh3LJ7t3h2Socau4hkkkjc&dib_tag=se&keywords=kraken+wow&qid=1725463710&sprefix=kraken+wow,aps,247&sr=8-2

Being CA-based means it's basically the same as what I used and therefore will do PLA-to-PLA just fine (which held up with my glue once I stopped being impatient) but won't work on PLA-to-PE, which was the point of failure for my feeder. Even stuff like JB Weld is supposedly not very good on PE.

It seems that most containers I can get locally are PE or variants of PE (like HDPE), including home depot & lowes buckets. The more I read about PE the more notoriously ungluable it seems to be. I guess to find a container made out of more gluable stuff I'd have to order something kind of obscure online or just print it myself (which would eat so much filament...not wanting to do that just yet). I'm guessing the difficulty with glues on large containers is probably why all the DIY feeder ports for hens that I've seen use a screw and gasket method.

 

[aart]

Being CA-based means it's basically the same as what I used and therefore will do PLA-to-PLA just fine (which held up with my glue once I stopped being impatient) but won't work on PLA-to-PE, which was the point of failure for my feeder. Even stuff like JB Weld is supposedly not very good on PE.

It seems that most containers I can get locally are PE or variants of PE (like HDPE), including home depot & lowes buckets. The more I read about PE the more notoriously ungluable it seems to be. I guess to find a container made out of more gluable stuff I'd have to order something kind of obscure online or just print it myself (which would eat so much filament...not wanting to do that just yet). I'm guessing the difficulty with glues on large containers is probably why all the DIY feeder ports for hens that I've seen use a screw and gasket method.

'Gluing' plastics is tricky.
You basically need to chemically melt or solve the plastic parts together.
Thus different plastics can't be joined well.
Might want to start thinking about mechanical attachments,
like thru bolts and nuts either modeling the holes in or drilling after printing.

 

[DonyaQuick]

'Gluing' plastics is tricky.
You basically need to chemically melt or solve the plastic parts together.
Thus different plastics can't be joined well.
Might want to start thinking about mechanical attachments,
like thru bolts and nuts either modeling the holes in or drilling after printing.

Already have some holes in the flanges on the revised port design a couple posts up and some plastic bolts on order (since I'm not sure I trust the resolution of the printer for doing anything on the smaller side and dont want a massive bolt). Just have to get my printer to stop coughing up plastic hairballs now...filament printers are such moody devices comared to resin printers.