3D-Printed Birdhouse, A Sign (version 3)

This rather large birdhouse is the 3rd version of the entry/donation from my daughter and me to the 2013 Birdhouse Display and Benefit Auction at The Arboretum in Lexington, KY. My daughter had the idea of making it look like a road sign with pictographs for bird and house -- with the entrance in the house pictograph. We call it "A Sign." And it is a sign in another way too -- it is a sign that 3D printing has come of age, because this birdhouse is 100% 3D-printed.

The design is original, first posted as thing 92431 (with the cartoon-like bird shape inspired by thing 47032). This 3rd version has several improvements, the biggest of which being that it should fully work with the customizer. It also now includes a "ladder" (which I tested in thing 116905) to help bird egress, a redesigned floor plate, and (optionally) QR code for the Instructable describing it on it's back.

Instructions

See: http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Birdhouse-A-Sign/

The entire birdhouse is 3D printed in PLA using the MakerGear M2 in my lab (Aggregate.Org) at the University of Kentucky. Aside from being huge, it's an easy print (in several pieces) and should be done using very low fill factors to save on material and provide air-gap insulation... use between 5% and 10%. The birdhouse was painted, rather than printed in multiple colors, because we felt the paint would afford better protection against the weather.

Probably a better alternative is to print it in yellow PLA, only paint the raised design on the front black, and optionally clear-coat the full exterior for better weather protection. It is also possible to print just the decoration in black, either as a separate piece or by stopping the print of the front at the appropriate point and changing the filament color.

The customizer allows selection of each of the parts and adjustment of some key parameters. Previously, I had not realized the customizer still has problems with DXF files... so a big change for this 3rd version is that I had to write scripts to reprocess everything into a self-contained SCAD file. The customizer works with it now, but oddly not for the "Assembled" rendering -- it only renders the front for that...?

At this writing, I have not yet printed this 3rd version, but after having printed each of the first two versions, I expect no problems with this one.

Category: Outdoor & Garden