This is a cage designed to protect your growing fruits and vegetables from attack by vermin such as mice and rats. It can be used with a nylon mesh bag inside to protect from insects as well. The model consists of a lid, a slot cover for the lid, a base, some uprights, some rings and some clips. No glue is required, the parts will press fit together. The lid and base are held by securing them with the clips. Note that you don't need clips on all the struts, just 3 or 4 will do.
I have designed this model in FreeCad and it is parametric. This means that I can choose the diameter of the fruit, optionally the height, the number of rings, the number of uprights, the gauge (thickness of the parts) and the mesh size of the hexagonal mesh for the lid and base. I will begin uploading a few common sizes, since I don't know how to provide the parameterised file from FreeCad?
Printing tips:
When printing the slot cover, print it with base supports enabled and with the curve cut-out (where the plant stem fits) facing upwards.
Using a 6mm nozzle I find that the clips will stick together where they should seperate. I use a knife just to seperate them. This is probably not an issue for smaller nozzles.
Im testing it out on my tomatoes this year and will see if can get some video of the rat vs cage!
Can we improve this design? I've tried to use a design which is more suitable for FDM printers.
The author marked this model as their own original creation.