Cat Ball with Bell

thingiverse

My cats loved to play soccer with little plastic balls with bells inside that I had bought too expensively. These bouncing and jingling balls were their favorite toy. Unfortunately, one ball after another broke until there was none left. But that's what I have my 3D printer for. So I designed my own version of a cat ball, bought a bag of 200 little bells instead of a bag of only 5 balls, and printed my cats new toys. I just had to make sure I didn't forget to insert the bells when half the ball was completed. How to print A layer height of 0.2 mm is good enough for these cat toys. No fine surfaces, but functional. With a sturdy material like PETG the cats will have longer fun with their toys. I print PETG with low velocity, 30mm/s in the max. Also with this speed one cat ball needs less than 50 minutes until completion. If your 3D printer supports pauses then use this feature to give you sufficient time to insert the bells. Otherwise take your tweezers and try to insert the bells while the printer works and the print is approximately at 50% - or after half an hour (use a timer to not forget it). I recommend to use a brim of about 12 lines to stick the ball to the print bed. Because the bells are a little quiet, I always put two of them in one ball. BOM I bought a pack of 200 8mm bells from Amazon Germany: https://www.amazon.de/SonneSky-Gl%C3%B6ckchen-Schellen-Glocken-Metallgl%C3%B6ckchen/dp/B09MH9494Q (approx. 8 Euro)