Designing and 3D printing feeders & accessories

[CraziChknLady]

These are wonderful! For the designs you've created so far.
I have found trying to keep food from getting wet, but being large enough to feed 20+ chickens as well as keeping rodents out and having them be easy to clean with no lips, seams or anything to be a real challenge. Haven't found anything 100% yet.
Great ideas though! Keep up the awesome work!

 

[DonyaQuick]

Been revisiting PETG today. The K2 Plus may be so heavy that my mild injuries from its initial setup are still not fully healed, but it sure does better with PETG. Really quite well so far in fact. This little feeder is PETG. The lines are just subtle refractive differences from the layering which is to be expected; it's a solid print (100% infill) but even with that it's always very hard to get clear filament to be fully clear on vertical walls. Very little texture otherwise and very smooth top edge. The only post-processing I did was brim removal on the bottom.

Also did a PLA dishwasher test with some older prints from the Kobra Plus just to see what would happen. PLA is one of those materials where everyone says not to do this because of the low melting point, but I wanted to see just how bad it would be. Left model went through the dishwasher on the top rack, right was hand-washed. I'm sure the small warpage on the left model would get worse with successive trips through the dishwasher, so not something I will be repeating.

 

[DonyaQuick]

So my 1/2in HWC clip design survived the smarty-pants flock that likes to noodle with things. They have actively tried to dismantle it a few times and the grit holder remains unphased. I do need to clean the top of it though now that it's more easily removable...blegh. At least the inside is clean.

However, I do have one rooster that demonstrated to me he knows how to pop the clips off when nothing is hanging on them to hold them in place. He's quite experienced with undoing a variety of latches and taking apart things that should be fairly chicken-proof though, so I kind of expected as much from him.

Also, here's a weird printer quality comparison. Two parts from my thru-HWC adapter thingy for extension cords.
Left part is from the Creality K2 Plus (bed-dropper / core-xy)
Right part is from the Anycubic Kobra 2 Plus (bed-slinger)

The reason I'm comparing two complimentary parts that fit together is that the right part fits, as it should, right over the raised middle part of the left one. The fit is great and there is no distortion of the large openining in the middle. But, the right part has weird distortions in the smaller holes making them all oval instead of round - but every other part of the model is fine and to spec. I was never able to sort that out on the Kobra printer and it would crop up periodically on designs - but when it cropped up it was always there even on reprints. I wondered if it's an artifact of being a bed-slinger, but the distortion was only ever on small round features, so that explanation doesn't really make sense, since if it was a too-much-momentum issue it would surely affect the corners too. Then I wondered if it was a calibration issue - but that should also affect more than just really small features. Slicer used and params within slicer made no difference. Adjusting belt tension made no difference. Somewhat of a mystery.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Finally got around to learning a proper CAD tool to some degree (Fusion 360). I will also hopefully be setting up some eggs soon for an April hatch. That's lead me to two new designs for my chick waterers. These are both multi-part designs that use firm push-fit connections to snap everything together, which is a feature that is much easier to do with CAD than in Blender. Admittedly these projects were more to do with learning CAD than solving a significant problem. These are just waterer stands to get the waterer up out of the shavings at two heights. In the past I've done that task using stacked metal weights and/or pieces of wood. Of cousre, metal rusts and wood can mold from condensation caused by the cold water, so I've been looking for a satistfactory plastic option for a while. Still, the main benefit here will probably be that it has ridges to stop the waterer from sliding sideways off the platform. As for why there are stairs on the higher design, that's for two cases: a broody hatch or if the chicks develop a disparity in size. I've had to build similar things in the past but this one will hopefully be easier to clean. And hopefully I will get to test these out in a few weeks...

 

[DonyaQuick]

Back some pages in this thread, someone had suggested a perch based on the dovetail-joined feed stand. Although I didn't end up using dovetail joints to do that, I did find a way to still do it push-fit and support-free. The weird shape of the joints is related to the orientation the bar has to be in on the print bed to have a smooth finish.

At this scale (a little over 8" end-to-end) it's only suitable for chicks or perhaps a single adult bird with feet on the smaller side, but the design could easily be made bigger as well. However, if larger and also significantly longer then I would want a middle brace of some sort rather than just two at the ends.

Meanwhile, 12 days to hatching...

 

[The Good Grumble]

I’m late on this sorry! He just used standard PLA for the (white) cone and black base. They snap together. But yes both printed. He also just made some snap on risers for my feed and water in my brooder that the chicks cannot dump or scratched out. I’m super happy with that as well.

I loved the assembly through the chicken wire for the water heater outlet. The cool thing about 3D printing, when there’s a need you can figure it out easily.

 

[The Good Grumble]

Finally got around to learning a proper CAD tool to some degree (Fusion 360). I will also hopefully be setting up some eggs soon for an April hatch. That's lead me to two new designs for my chick waterers. These are both multi-part designs that use firm push-fit connections to snap everything together, which is a feature that is much easier to do with CAD than in Blender. Admittedly these projects were more to do with learning CAD than solving a significant problem. These are just waterer stands to get the waterer up out of the shavings at two heights. In the past I've done that task using stacked metal weights and/or pieces of wood. Of cousre, metal rusts and wood can mold from condensation caused by the cold water, so I've been looking for a satistfactory plastic option for a while. Still, the main benefit here will probably be that it has ridges to stop the waterer from sliding sideways off the platform. As for why there are stairs on the higher design, that's for two cases: a broody hatch or if the chicks develop a disparity in size. I've had to build similar things in the past but this one will hopefully be easier to clean. And hopefully I will get to test these out in a few weeks...

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Haha, hubs just made me some too! They snap on before I flip them over so they don’t slide or move. It’s great since I have some messy silkies in the brooder, and 26 eggs incubating!

 

[BackyardDinos]

One more silly thing I'm more pleased with than I should be given how tiny/simple it is: clips that will hopefully replace my use of zipties for holding my hanging printed feeders (like the grit holder). The way this works is you rotate it forward to snap the back nib over a HWC wire, then rotate back upright and slide down. The lower prong will overlap the next wire down on 1/2in HWC. Combined with the width of the design being nearly 1/2in, that keeps the clip in an upright position instead of letting it rock forward. Once the feeder is hanging on them, the extra weight stops them lifting so they can't come un-clipped. The back snap-on bit may be thin but it's not what's holding the weight; the thicker portion is where that force is distributed.

Now to see how these fare against my smarter chickens that like to disassemble stuff and undo latches...since the part that actually holds the feeder is gravity-only so they could potentially be devious and completely unseat the item hanging from these clips. If I come out and find grit holders on the ground with my smartypants flock then a redesign will be in order lol.

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This is amazing! I'm printing the grit holder now (planning to use it for oyster shells). Would you be willing to share the STL for the clips? They look like an awesome design. Thank you!

 

[DonyaQuick]

This is amazing! I'm printing the grit holder now (planning to use it for oyster shells). Would you be willing to share the STL for the clips? They look like an awesome design. Thank you!

This zip has two clip stl versions: the original design that I'm still using in many places on 1/2in HWC and also a modified version of it that I'm using to hold smaller feeders on larger spaced cage bars (like on a pet carrier or small kennel).

 

[BackyardDinos]

This zip has two clip stl versions: the original design that I'm still using in many places on 1/2in HWC and also a modified version of it that I'm using to hold smaller feeders on larger spaced cage bars (like on a pet carrier or small kennel).

Thanks so much!!