3D printing for the garden

After many years in a flat we are really glad we finally have a garden to take care of. The weather is pretty dry here, so the first thing we had to do is to keep our garden well watered. We found these drippers and the matching tube to install them on. But to connect these strips to our quick connect hose we needed something. And while we could buy items which connects to the quick connect side we simply couldn't find a simple solution to connect it to the small tube we used for the dripper. The simplest solution had five items, which seemed a bit of an overkill.

So we thought we might try to print something. Our past experience taught us that FDM printers cannot produce a solid enough object to be waterproof (at least not with PLA which we usually use which cannot tolerate the direct sunshine either). Not to mention the fine thread to connect to the other item was simply too many details for an FDM printer, but not so for an SLA one.

Creating the model was something different - we never made anything which required this much accuracy - but in the end it turned out pretty well (although not for the first try, of course).

It turned out to be totally waterproof and pretty durable too. We used these through most of the summer without too much of a problem. The only problem we faced was that it's pretty hard to see them in the grass - and well, they are strong, but no match for the lawn mower.