Refillable ant bait station (not a trap)

prusaprinters

<p>WHAT THIS IS FOR</p> <p>I put the word "trap" in the title so it shows up when you search for "ant trap," but actually, trapping ants is not a very effective way to get rid of them. As long as the nest your ants are coming from is alive, it will likely produce more ants than you can trap. You need to actually wipe out the ants where they live, not just where they are annoying you.</p> <p>Now if you can find the ant colony and disrupt it in place, that's great, of course; but usually you cannot. Fortunately, being rather smart monkeys, humans have come up with a clever idea: make the ants carry poison back to their colony. Commercial ant bait pulls this trick with all manner of fancy-shmancy pesticides, but you can totally make it work with borax.</p> <p>Indeed, I've been putting dabs of borax syrup in all sorts of places for quite a while with reasonable success both at attracting the ants and, after a while, at preventing their return. It's messy, though. Especially if you want to do it preventatively in a whole bunch of places. And while it takes a lot more borax to harm a human or a pet than to kill an ant... wouldn't it be nice to have it in a container that the ants can get into but your beloved kiddo or doggo cannot? That's where this little printed gizmo comes in.</p> <p>HOW TO USE IT</p> <p>Print one of these. Use a 3mm drill bit or a small screwdriver to clear out the hole in the top. Put in a drop of borax syrup through the hole in the top. Stick it somewhere that ants like to hang out. Initially, you'll probably attract more ants than before, but after a day or two, they should stop coming.</p> <h3> Print Settings</h3> <p><strong>Printer Brand:</strong></p> <p>Creality</p> <p><p class="detail-setting printer"><strong>Printer: </strong> <div><p>Ender 3 Pro</p></div><strong>Rafts:</strong></p> <p>No</p> <p><p class="detail-setting supports"><strong>Supports: </strong> <div><p>No</p></div><strong>Resolution:</strong></p> <p>0.10mm</p> <p><p class="detail-setting infill"><strong>Infill: </strong> <div><p>15% gyroid</p></div><br/> <strong>Filament:</strong><br/> Hatchbox PLA PLA black <br/> <p class="detail-setting notes"><strong>Notes: </strong> </p><div><p>Using the Ender 3 Pro 0.10mm preset in SuperSlicer, I get a build time estimate of 17 minutes for a single one of these, or 54 minutes for a set of 4. That was plenty fast for me so I haven't tested it at a coarser layer height. </p> Also, I'm aware that my Z offset is off AGAIN and the bottom looks a bit squished out in the picture. This Ender 3 is a cheap printer and while I can totally tweak it to produce a nearly perfect first layer, it never stays tweaked correctly for very long, especially in the unheated garage where it currently lives.</div></p> <h3> Post-Printing</h3> <p>The way I got this to print without supports is to design in a little bridge inside the hole in the top, which you do have to poke out with a 3mm drill bit or something similar. It doesn't have to be perfectly clean, as long as the bait can go in.</p> <h3> How I Designed This</h3> <p>This was my first time using FreeCad (realthunder branch) for a 3D print instead of Fusion 360. It's quite the learning curve and I'm still getting the hang of it, but I'm glad not to have my work locked away in some cloud service that keeps changing license terms.</p> </p></p></p> Category: Household Supplies