Rotating garden sprinkler

thingiverse

This is my design for a rotary-dispersed water sprinkler, designed for medium water pressure. My biggest problem is that my garden is pretty large; to the point that an ordinary sprayer won't get all of it. Other sprayer designs end up with no-water zones, so I have to manually move it to get total coverage. This was designed with the idea that I could put it in the middle of the garden, turn it on, and get water to every plant in the garden without moving it. I did mine in PLA, and used a servo retention screw like this: https://www.servocity.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/438x280/602f0fa2c1f0d1ba5e241f914e856ff9/l/a/large_servo_mounting_screws.jpg You'll notice the spinner is flat on the bottom of each blade. That's so that you don't have to run with any support; the blades don't start somewhere out in the air. It's a 45-degree angle, so most printers should be able to print it fine. You will probably have to drill out the center hole in the spinning part; I used a .093" drill. Obviously you could also just heat up a screw and push it through. Screw into the hole on the "base" to retain the spinner. I had significant problems with the "end" part leaking through. My eventual solution was to put some thin CA (superglue) in the bottom and let it dry. You could also use polyurethane I suppose. Just something to seal up those pores in the material. This is something like the 5th version I created; initial versions didn't have the retaining "edge" for a gasket inside where the hose goes. It works much better if you use a gasket, but it's not 100% required. I will probably make a 6th version with oblong discharge holes; in practice it still produces several fine streams that make it completely through the spinner, and end up spreading the water unevenly. I could probably also remedy this by making the spinner have no direct path through the blades; ie there is always a blade in the way of the stream. The other issue is that if you have less-than-clean water, the holes are pretty small, and might plug up. In any case, it works decently well, and has greatly reduced the amount of time I spend moving the sprinkler around. It's not yet perfect, but if you want an interesting sprinkler, give it a try. Oh by the way, the spinner doesn't have enough inertia to hurt your finger, even at full power. If a dog or cat or kid gets close enough to touch it they're going to be soaked anyway!