Tag Archives: 3D Printing

Extruding our way to a better world.

Ants Be Gone!

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Our hummingbird feeder was inundated with ants. While there are plenty of commercial options available for solving this problem, I wanted to try my hand at designing my own solution. In thinking about how a water trap should be designed, I came up with the following critical elements.

  1. A leak-free cup for the water (duh)
  2. An upper attachment point that prevents tipping of the cup
  3. A lower attachment point that is integrated into the monolithic design.

Here’s the result.

I’m not fast enough with the camera to take a picture of a hummingbird.

 

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Prusa MK2S finally finished

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I’ve had my MK2S printer sitting in a box for quite some time (I did have an X-carve to put together and a few assignments to grade – oh and I published a paper, but more on that later).  This is my second 3D printer, the first being a Makerfarm i3v.  I love my first printer, and it taught me a lot about the design and maintenance of these machines.  That said, I’ve always had a hard time with calibration and getting the prints just right.  My first successful 3D print with the i3v was a cube in ABS, and I was so proud.  Here’s my first successful print with the MK2S (brought to you from one of my students, Anusha Ventress, who is moonlighting as a videographer while she works in my lab):

OK, technically, this was the 3rd successful print on my MK2S, but all I can say is: wow.