The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

Hi guys
This will be my third and last (for a while) setup in which I will be housing my third colony, I plan to keep just as much ants ant once to be able to do normal maintenance. Anyways you can find my other projects about my Ytong nests so without further speech here is my planned 3D printed ant formicarium:



The basic idea came from the AC nests on the store, sadly I couldn't afford buying one as the original plans were because I couldn't pay the shipping fees, so I will be contacting a local 3D printing company to have this printed on material cost basically. I hope they don't mind and I will be happy to share the files of this one if they need.


This is the main nest part, half is full but the other is without a floor, this is because the moisting stuff comes underneath this.


"Moisting stuff", the furthermost part will have cotton which slides underneath the main floorless part, it will be watered from outside except when cotton change is needed.



Nest part from bellow, I will glue some anti mosquito nest or something like that to the floor less area so the humidity can pass thru but the ants can't



+1 Random image, you can see some measurements on it (width of a passageway) and the two tube connections are visible as well.



Will be posting more image when I had it printed, will depend on the availability of this technology around my area.

Today I picked them up from the company that printed it, I was told that there were some errors during the process so there are a few flaws on them (yeah, I got 2!) like a little excess material but I think I will be able to correct them next week so in the end it came out better than I expected, I had to pay 35$ for both and it only took one week to get them.

Here are the pictures:

Awesome! So professional looking!

I've GOT to find somewhere round here that can do 3D printing. Did you come up with the design yourself or what? How did you go about the whole process? I love the fact that where the moisture comes into the nest only that part will have the water in it. Versus up under the entire nest when only a portion has screen. And being able to slide it out other than lift the whole thing, I'm sure will disturb the ants even less. Very nice by the way and a really great price!

idahoantgirl wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 16, 2017 9:08 pm

Awesome! So professional looking!

Thanks

xTNxANTMANx wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:01 am

I've GOT to find somewhere round here that can do 3D printing. Did you come up with the design yourself or what? How did you go about the whole process? I love the fact that where the moisture comes into the nest only that part will have the water in it. Versus up under the entire nest when only a portion has screen. And being able to slide it out other than lift the whole thing, I'm sure will disturb the ants even less. Very nice by the way and a really great price!

As I've mentioned I got the basic idea from the original AC nests and from products by other companies on amazon etc, it's been made in a 3D modelling software like CAD and then with some online converter I got the file type needed for 3D printing. The best part is by having the original file and in the program it's been built by different groups of structures, for example if I'd want to tighten every path/chamber inside I could select every column and adjust their width.

They look perfect to me. I wonder where there is excess material, and if it would matter if it stayed on. And two for $35 sounds great.

SpeciesK wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 19, 2017 7:49 pm

They look perfect to me. I wonder where there is excess material, and if it would matter if it stayed on. And two for $35 sounds great.

Sadly I didn't document the small work I've done on them, basically the bottom open part where the water reservoir is had some excess material that blocked the smooth slide of the reservoir and in the chambers on the top there were spiderweb thin plastic lines left so I removed them as well.
I bought some anti-mosquito fabric and folded it in two then with a heat gun I've melted them together so I've made the holes 1/4 of their original size so hopefully even the eggs won't fall under.

After that net was done I've glued an acrylic plate on the top of it and attached a tube which I've connected to a test tube of mine with a solenopsis queen in it. She had lost all(2) her eggs when she needed to be transferred because of a mold outbreak (she moved on her own but abandoned the eggs which were covered in mold by then) before and she didn't seem to accept food either but I still have hopes for her.
The pictures are taken the day after the setup was complete and attached to the test tube, you can see that she have already moved.

Fulkol wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:27 am

SpeciesK wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 19, 2017 7:49 pm

They look perfect to me. I wonder where there is excess material, and if it would matter if it stayed on. And two for $35 sounds great.

Sadly I didn't document the small work I've done on them, basically the bottom open part where the water reservoir is had some excess material that blocked the smooth slide of the reservoir and in the chambers on the top there were spiderweb thin plastic lines left so I removed them as well.
I bought some anti-mosquito fabric and folded it in two then with a heat gun I've melted them together so I've made the holes 1/4 of their original size so hopefully even the eggs won't fall under.

After that net was done I've glued an acrylic plate on the top of it and attached a tube which I've connected to a test tube of mine with a solenopsis queen in it. She had lost all(2) her eggs when she needed to be transferred because of a mold outbreak (she moved on her own but abandoned the eggs which were covered in mold by then) before and she didn't seem to accept food either but I still have hopes for her.
The pictures are taken the day after the setup was complete and attached to the test tube, you can see that she have already moved.

Do you have the file for this? If you do please PM me and could you possibly share it with me?