Designing and 3D printing feeders & accessories

[texsuze]

Love your 3D port feeder--very anatomically considerate for those combs and wattles. I'm a 20th century non-geek still-use-a-flip phone driving a 17 y.o. truck kinda person but am very impressed with what you are doing.

Without knowing anything about 3D printing except that it is mystery magic, I've always wondered about creating (?printing) prosthetics for special-needs critters that might benefit from such aids, and that could be designed for specific critters, sizes, ages and life styles, i.e. prosthetic leg for a chick then another leg when it becomes an adult, or, piece of missing shell for an injured turtle. Perhaps it is already being done but imagine the possibilities.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Ok I'm quite pleased with this design too: thru-HWC panel to hold a power cord for my heated water bases in winter. There are 4 pieces in this design: a big square plate with screw hole, another square back plate to protect from pointy HWC bits, and a screw insert in two halves. The way this works is: (1) feed the power cord through the big hole shown in the first pic, (2) put the two halves of the screw insert around the power cord, and (3) screw the insert into the holder. When no power cord is needed, the gap left is no bigger than the regular 1/2in HWC squares. The tolerance is such that the halves cannot come apart or get out of alignment once screwed in.

As far as security/chewability, my previous solutions to this have been either plastic outlets or wood and never got chewed, so another type of plastic is no different for me really. I always put my cords through up high enough that they are not likely to get rodent attention.

However, I will absolutely need to reprint these in PETG at some point for better UV resistance. This version is PLA and is in a place that receives more direct sun than is a good idea for PLA long-term. I have a reel of PETG ordered and on the way...

 

[DonyaQuick]

Better diagram of what I was trying to describe in my last post:

One thing I might improve about this design is increasing the outer flange size on the plate pieces from 3" to 4" or perhaps making it hex-shaped. The reason for either of those changes would be to get the bolt holes further away from the core and therefore make it less critical to keep those 4 uncut corners of HWC where the bolts are meant to grab.

Also that little diamond hole in the screw piece is for a ziptie "lock" to ensure that it can't come unscrewed due to critters, curious chickens, or just freeze/thaw activity. As for why it's a diamond hole instead of a round or oval one, that's because of the orientation in which that part has to be printed; in this case, a diamond hole stands a much better chance of not collapsing or getting blocked with stringing during print.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Ah yes very good...my printer decided to make a modern art installation for me today after a fine performance of flinging fillament around at high speed in roughly a 3ft radius. I think I will call this one "Wet Filament #2."

 

[DonyaQuick]

Well I thought I had ordered PETG. Apparently what I actually ordered was a fine reel of PITB - Pain In The Behind! What is this snaggly garbage? Those blobs are not at seams. There is warpage in bizarre ways that isn't simply peeling up from the build plate. The edges are falling off. The settings are for PETG...but the only thing it prints well is that silly chicken model. Functional things look like a mess so far. I have two more enclosures that are going to need those thru-HWC inserts this winter...they might be getting PLA instead.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I don't think PETG is for me, not right now anyway. I have a large stack of failed prints with it so far, many abandoned after I see the first few layers are messed up. I've tried many different settings with the same results.

Things I have learned:

• The only positive point: PETG is fine for VOCs (with an open window anyway, which is the only way I tested). Bad stuff is basically undetectable unless I shove my meter right up by the hot nozzle, and even then the values are very, very low.
• It is much harder to clean up PETG prints to make edges smooth. More globs, more sharps, and the material doesn't cut as smoothly.
• When cleaning up prints, one of those curved, sphere-tipped deburring tools is actually NOT really all that much safer than a regular hobby knife. You can still drive one right into your thumb by accident in a fraction of a second because the model slipped.
• I believe my PETG reel actually started taking on too much moisture to behave well literally right after that first chicken figurine print I said worked fine. Within <48h I am seeing visible bubbles in extruded filament. So, I just do not have the environment for this material with a printer sitting on the floor in a room that has an open window looking out upon a temperate swamp forest. By contrast, PLA lasts me a solid week before that happens and I can largely fix it by sticking it in a bag with some dessicant.
• PLA seemingly has better outdoor resilience than it's often given credit for. There are many "PLA outside for X years" videos and the primary complaint is loss of color. There is some increased brittleness, but often shown with objects that have been dropped, which is a very rough test even for fresh PLA. PET and its variants do also gets more brittle when left outside in the sun year after year, although perhaps slower. The main complaint people make about PLA is "it will melt" - which it will NOT even in very hot natural weather outdoors. How can it melt? If you put it in a hot car in the sun where you could cook an egg on your dashboard. Melting point for PLA is way over 100C. Nobody's chicken coops should reach those temperatures...so it's really a moot point for PLA used as I've done so far.
• My Kobra 2 print bed has started to have corner warping issues at the higher temperatures required for PETG. I'm talking about the BED ITSELF warping, not things printed on it (although those warp too with PETG!). So far I haven't been able to find anything about this specific problem, which is really frustrating. Everything I've found is about print warpage, not warpage of the actual bed. The forces from the bed-to-ambient temperature differential (which will want to curl things that are heated from below and cooled from above) overcomes the magnetic pull holding the bed down, and so the bed curls up in places. For the moment, I've fixed the lifting corner with a long twist tie holding the edge down outside the range that the nozzle reaches. I guess I will have to contact the manufacturer about that situation.

So, what now? I popped for a cheap, single-reel filament dryer that can rehabilitate wet failament and also supposedly dry the reel while the print is going (although it seems a bit sticky letting the reel roll...so not sure about that feature). If that piece of kit magically solves my PETG issues and easily gives me a good print of that thru-HWC panel, then super - but I'm not holding my breath. More likely I will just be sticking to PLA and possibly its variations (like PLA+) and running my own long-term tests on their outdoor resilience.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Here's a good comparison here for what I'm getting with PLA vs PETG - which was run through the drying box and extruded bubble-free afterwords, so there's no wet filament excuse for its problems anymore. Aside from that one chicken figurine test print I mentioned (which is a fundamentally a lot easier print than the screw model), this PETG piece is about the best quality I have been able to get, and it's pretty bad.

Left is PLA. Right is PETG. Same model.

PLA model (left) was usable right off the plate. No cleanup.

The PETG model (right) is actually unusable for its intended purpose without very invasive and frankly risky cleanup given my unfortunate experience with the deburring tool on PETG. There are a lot of defects:

• Lots of blobs and irregular edges.
• Slow warping and drooping of overhangs long after the print head has left the area
• The top sagged in/down after the print had finished

For a screw shape where there are specific tolerances, those are deal-breakers to utility.

One of the root issues with these defects is the cooling fan. Turning the cooling fan on reduces the blobbing and irregularity. For me at least, it also causes serious layer adhesion issues at completely random points in the print job. The fan really has to be off on the lower layers for them to adhere properly - but then they blob! Tried it hotter, tried it colder, tried the fan at different percentages...nope. Pretty much all the suggestions I find for PETG issues online solve one probem and then make a new, totally different issue. Some people suggest adding custom gcode commands into the exported slicer file to fix this by choosing when to turn the fan on/off at tricky points. That's a step of fiddly stuff beyond what I'm willing to do to get a working model when it works with no customization in PLA.

Permit me a small rant related to this...

There are two kinds of people in the 3D printing world: those that want to use the printer as a tool where the goal is the thing it prints, and those for which the printer and fussing with it is the goal in itself regardless of what it actually prints. I mean no disrespect to people in the second category (I have even been one in other domains), but they often spend a lot of time fiddling/tweaking their machines while not producing useful items. Meanwhile, the printer-focused folks also dominate what you find if you go looking for guides and tutorials. So there is a lot of media espousing the use of different amazing materials and printing methods to produce...that stupid boat that everyone does. I have started paying closer attention to the boats people show for that - a lot of them actually have certain defects in PETG that might seem minor on the boat (and so the print is deemed a success) but are exactly what I'm seeing on my screw insert that makes it unusable. If your benchy boat's little smoke stack and windows aren't absolute perfection, you won't be able to print this thru-HWC design properly.

I am in the first category of people: my printer is primarily a tool to me. That's the crowd I wanted to design these chicken feeder-related things for as well. Perhaps I'm being too big of a grump about this, but I'm starting to wonder how many people are actually able to really, properly and realiably make useful items with non-PLA on entry level printers. I have 4 "ok" PETG prints, 1 good, 2 kinda ok, and 1 that at least didn't fall apart but isn't useful. Meanwhile I have over 20 mangled print failures from trying to get those 4 that worked to some degree. This tells me it must be a whole 'nother level of bad working with something like TPU (the stretchy filament) after seeing how bad mere PETG is to work with. Maybe I bought the wrong printer to work with PETG. Maybe I need to upgrade some part of the printer like the nozzle or hotbed. Maybe my ambient environment is too humid or unstable and the printer needs to be in a protected box. Maybe I even bought the wrong PETG (although I'm doubtul of that one because all the problems I'm seeing have been seen by many, many other people on the web). I guess I really I have no idea what needs to change to make PETG work with my device for the items I want to make. At any rate, the rest of that PETG reel is going to get sealed back up and go live in a dark corner of a closet for the forseeable future. If I feel like my printing is going too smoothly at some point down the line I can give it another go lol.

Back to PLA for now and back to designing...

 

[DonyaQuick]

Since the feeder ports are working well, I'm trying something a bit dingy...goal of a two piece, snap-fit-lid single smaller feeder for space constrained situations where a big container isn't really an option (or in my case to be tested on my couple of little bachlor roos who are making a huge mess eating out of open-top bowls but who also don't eat enough per unit time to use a big container like I used for my other flock).

The dingy part of this is how I'm designing the gravity feed portion or the interior divider. If this fails and doesn't let enough feed through then I might have to fall back on a thicker rim and the same clip-on strategy I had for the existing feeder ports. Currently printing a 50% scale prototype.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Cautionary post time regarding why even "safe" PLA needs ventillation...I realize some of my posts here are getting a bit off my original topic of making feeders but I feel like this one is important for anyone considering getting a 3D printer after seeing this thread.

I'm doing a full-size print of that weird single-feeder design following a successful 50% scale one. That print will take 8h if successful (it's about 1/3 done right now). I was having some bed adhesion issues earlier so I thought I might test two things: (1) will closing the window for the first bit of the print fix the bed adhesion issue and (2) just how bad are these devices for air quality if not properly ventillated? I'm very slightly spooked by these results since I've seen a lot of videos of people using these devices in less well-ventillated spaces than mine, and also seen ads marketing FDM printers for use by children in their rooms, and I haven't seen any mention with those of ventillating the area.

Chemical	Window Open / Baseline	Window Closed after 1h of printing
CO2	450 PPM	1200+ PPM
TVOC (total VOCs)	<0.025 mg/m3	0.500+ mg/m3
HCHO (formaldehyde)	<0.010	0.070+ mg/m3

"Window open" CO2 levels are the same as outdoors, and the other window open values basically mean undetectable for my particular meter. I also get the "window open" readings if the room if the window is closed but everything has been off for a while. The door to the room closes tightly enough that it did not affect the rest of my house for this test; with the meter outside the room it read basically the same as the "window open" values.

The CO2 value is particularly concerning since that's one of those things you can't smell - you just start to feel tired and want to take a nap if it gets too high. I've not seen any discussion at all of CO2 from these devices when talking about possible health issues.

Oh, and the window being closed for a bit did fix my print-to-bed adhesion issue...but I think I will keep the window open and find another fix for that particular issue given the numbers I got here.

 

[DonyaQuick]

That new weird, single-bird feeder design works well. The vertical space is definitely minimal for my big-comb roos compared to the other feeder ports, but it'll do the job for what I need. I just have to have the feeder elevated, which is taking some planning since it's tall and can tip, so it can't stay where it is in the photo unsupervised. It's also too heavy when full of feed to hang on the HWC directly. Working on a stand for it currently to address those issues.

Meanwhile, the build plate warp isse is a magnetism problem on the hotbed. It has a magnetic layer glued to the top of the actual hot plate, and there is a 2" wide area on the side that has barely any magnetic force compared to the rest of the plate. So, that's why heat lets the plate curl up there. So at least I know what's wrong and it should be fixable...but...Anycubic lists the magnetic attachment as "unavailable." No options to be notified when back in stock, so doesn't seem like it will be back on stock ever - and I can't get it in the right size on other sites, which also suggests it's now an un-orderable part for some reason. I've not run into this parts issue before with Anycubic's resin printers; when I needed parts they were always in stock somewhere, whether Anycubic's site or another one, so I could get whatever I needed in a week or less. It's one of the reasons I went with that brand. I've contacted support and they are sending a replacement part, but it's going to take a long time. In the mean time, I can still print, I just have to avoid the far left side of the build plate, which limits total print size - won't affect anything I've designed so far but still annoying.