The customizable rolling pet food dispenser

I found several pet food dispenser designs available here. However I quickly realized there will be no chance these would fit well the pet food I give to my cat. The point is not to dispense food easily. Finding the good pattern would have required many prints.

This is why I designed this one : customizable, quick to print and material waste friendly.

You only have to change one small part, the "strip", to change the food dispensing pattern so it suits your pet's food shape well. It slides in the "shell" part so you can customize your dispenser without re printing the whole big body.

I already provide two versions of strips as STL files. But they have 16mm diameter holes because my cat's food shape is flat and wide, quite specific. I encourage you to modify the Fusion 360 file (pipolino.f3d) to generate your own strip STL. Modify the strip holes sketch so it fits the food you use.

Printing

• Strip : Print this part with the flat face laying on the bed 
• Strip & Caps : Use a parameter in your slicer to make the cap thread dimensions slightly wider and strip narrower to slide freely. The 3D model already has play but the 3D printers often inflate dimensions. Best is to compensate with slicer settings and let the model free of printer tuning. Here are the settings I used in CURA slicer 
• Caps : Horizontal hole expansion 0.25mm 
• Strip : Horizontal expansion -0.25mm
  Feel free to discuss your parameters if you don't use Cura or if your printer does not need inflate correction
• Rubber band : Print it with flexible filament (TPU) or use an hair tie or an o-ring that fits. This prevents the noise from the pipolino rolling.

Print Settings

Printer:

Artillery Sidewinder X1

Rafts: 

No

Supports:

No

Resolution: 

200

Infill:

20

Filament:

Amazon basics PLA (+ TPU for the rubber)

White