Sea Urchin Birdhouse - pre-assembled & expandable

thingiverse

A pre-assembled, expandable sea-urchin birdhouse - perfect for your growing flock. Prints without support. This bird house looks like a spikey sea urchin and the entrance can be adjusted for tiny birds, e.g. wrens or gold crests, up to huge ones, e.g. golden eagles (maybe a bit hopeful). Each of the twelve "leaves" is hinged on to a circular base and should print pre-assembled and ready to go. There's a hole in the middle to screw it to a tree... The idea for this came from a stainless steel steamer that unfolds like a flower. Instructions Print on your favourite 3D printer - but not too small for the hinges to work. From Emmett's advice, PLA is a better choice than ABS (which may warp). It was printed on our Replicator in ABS using Makerware's "Low" settings - no support or raft, 5% infill, 2 shells, 0.3mm layer height, Extruder 230 deg C, Platform 110 deg C, Extrusion 100 mm/s, Travel 150 mm/s. This one is ~9cm across. As you can see from the photos, I've had fun printing (and designing) this - and there was a lot of tweaking to stop things joining. The hinged part of the leaves have been widened to make them stick to the build platform - the taller (incomplete) prints had problems with the leaves being pushed over or broken by the second extruder while printing. Finally got a successful print - using "Urchin_birdhouse_thick.STL" and the Replicator settings above. It may print better more slowly... Once printed, it needed a tiny bit of easing with an X-Acto knife to open up the leaves; and one the hinges had flexed a few times it moved quite smoothly. Good luck printing this.