3D Printed Enrichment Toy for Pigs

Current State:

This is a 3D printed enrichment toy for my pigs.  

As they roll it around it makes noise by way of some 3D printed sound inserts. I started with cube with chamfered edges for simplicity. 

The material for the cube is Prusament Recycled PETG printed at:

• 0.3mm layer height
• 30% infill
• 3 Shells thick
• Gyroid infill(trying to give it the most similar material properties in the varying directions)

The sound inserts are Prusament PETG Orange printed at: 

• 0.3mm layer height 
• 2 Shells thick
• Lightning infill.

For the sound inserts, I tried to maximize the volume to weight ratio of inserts to make them sound more “tin'ey”.  

The sound inserts were placed while printing the chamfered cube.

I ended up placing a quantity of 2 chamfered inserts #1(the cube one) and quantity of 2 chamfered insert  #2(the long one) in the chamfered cube.

Notice the chamfered cube printed orientation to minimize the length of bridging. I did have some outer shell delamination on one side and an chamfered corner edge. The side closest to outer wall of my house while printing. I attribute this to the cold outdoor and ambient temps in my house. I am getting an enclosure to address this. I was able to salvage it with a heat gun.

Testing:

The sound that it makes is demonstrated here.

https://youtube.com/shorts/K3KYo9Dx2d0

The actual use test. Whizzers(the red-orange) and Harold(black) went back and played with it after they got their back scratches and continued to play with it.  I think they wanted treats from it.

After 5 days, I extracted it from their pen to examine it.  There was minor damaging on the side that had the outer delamination that was the weakest side of the cube that was originally  addressed with the heat gun.  This was not a surprise and should be addressed in the next version with the printer enclosure. So, I heat gunned it again and redeployed it back for its second tour. So, far it is working out well.

What is in the next few versions?

• Going to get an enclosure to address the outer shell delamination issue. 
• Going to go to a different shape, a 12 sided regular dodecahedron that has chamfer edges….. so is it really a dodecahedron anymore :) 
• Getting different colors of filament. Pigs prefer blue and red. The recycled PETG color(really deep olive green'ish) was great to test the concept out but probably was not visual appealing to them.
• Visual striations(alternate the blue and red filaments in a single print) to increase visual appeal.

Long-term versions

• Add a treat dispensing capability
• Get the Prusa XL, so I can print some big piggie enrichment toys