3D print production

My eldest son, Brendan, had a brilliant idea the other day. On our allotment we have a series of loops over lines of planting, intended to be covered with netting and keep off those pesky pigeons.

But the plots still need weeding. And so you have to lift the netting, which is very awkward.

So what he conceived was a set of horizontal bars, with hoops fitted and the netting attached, which would slide up over the loops to easily open up for weeding or harvesting.

Which brings us round to how to make the hoops? 3D printing of course. In comes my youngest son, Charlie, who is a redoubtable expert in CAD design using Solidworks. He came up with initial designs, we printed them, we them improved them both for use and for printing. And here they are:

The printer in action, making four loops:



And a close up of one of the latest design loops:



Now all we have to do it make 20-40 of them! Each takes 15 minutes printing time so that's … let me see now… a long time.