Garden Cane Connector Ball - Universal

thingiverse

Simple plastic balls which have 6 conical-section holes, arranged through the centre and at right-angles to each other, allowing garden canes or sticks to be connected to make frames for peas or other climbing plants. The holes are a convex cone-shape in section, tapering from 14mm down to about 6mm at the centre, meaning any cane from 14mm to 6mm will be able to find a point where it lodged/jams securely inside the hole. This is based on some commercially available designs, and is a modification/simplification/upgrade on 'Garden Cane Corner' and 'Garden Cane Corner Middle' since this one part can be a corner OR a middle. I couldn't find any existing patents for this kind of thing so I think I'm probably OK sharing this design, but by all means if I'm infringing someone's IPR please let me know Designed quick'n'dirty style in TinkerCAD. It's in the TinkerCAD Gallery Here's the share link The STL file is a TinkerCAD export The X3G file prints one ball, and takes about an hour on our Makerbot Replicator 2 I will (soon) upload a ready-made '6-up' or '8-up' print X3G (as soon as Makerware on Linux gets fixed) and in .gcode as well. LICENSE CC-BY-SA-NC-3.0 Print Settings Printer Brand: MakerBot Printer: MakerBot Replicator 2 Rafts: Yes Supports: No Resolution: 0.2 Infill: 20% Notes: I found that these work pretty well even with low amounts of infill and a low resolution. They are, after all only going to be used in the garden. I was planning to make a series of ready-prepared X3G files, but Makerware on Linux is broken (again) so until Makerbot fix it I'm unable to right now. If I remember I may do it on a Windows machine at our Local Hackspace Standards CCSS Overview and Background It's a universal connector to make garden canes into frames for gardening Lesson Plan and Activity Could be used in a school garden to teach both gardening skills AND technology Materials Needed 3D Printer Filament Garden Canes Soil Plants Skills Learned 3d printing gardening self-sufficiency permaculture