Tumbler Cat Toy

I made an improved version. You can find it here. 

The parts should be interchangeable, so if you already printed this, you can use the new base with the old tops and vice versa.

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If your cats are anything like mine, any toy including a feather will have a lifespan of hours to days, rather than weeks to months. With that in mind I decided to print a cat toy where the feather part is easy to replace.

tl;dr

1. Spherical bottom part as heavy as possible
2. Top rods (preferably one of the short ones) as light as possible
3. Glue feather(s) into hole(s) with wood glue. Wait 24 hours for it to dry

Materials

While most parts are printed, you need two (maybe three) additional materials:

• Feathers - I bought regular arts & crafts feathers from a supermarket for that
• Wood glue - for gluing the feathers into the hole(s), non-toxic to cats according to my research
• Optional: Some rattling filling material - I chose rice

The parts and how to print them

There are 4 STLs here. You'll need to only print two of them to assemble the toy:

The bottom part (this needs to be printed)

It needs to be heavy, especially if you want to use the long rod. I've tested two methods:

Option 1: 80-90% infill of a infill pattern of your chosing, the easier method at expense of print time and filament usage.

Option 2: pausing the print at around 30mm and adding some filler material. I opted for rice because I don't trust sand near cooling fans. Although BBs, some small (screw) nuts or really anything else would work, too.

For that method any infill that leaves a big, continous cavity is ideal. I used the Cura Lightning infill at 10% as it only closes up towards the top of the print. Watch out to fill it below the current print line.

The plus of this method is that it adds a nice rattle to the toy, which my cats love. That being said, it's the more complicated option out of the two and will weigh less depending on your choice of filler material.

The top part (chose at least one)

You have three different files here. You can print one to see if your cat(s) like the toy first, that's how I did it.

• The long rod (fair warning, for this to work, you need a very heavy bottom)
• The short rod with the single hole
• The short rod with the 6 holes

I recommend to print all of them with minimal infill because the toy works better if this part is as light as possible. I chose 10% lines infill.

Assembly

Put a bit of wood glue into the holes in your, add the feather. Let it dry for 24 hours. Screw the rod into the sphere and you're done.

Probably not a bad idea to wash all parts with water and food-safe soap before letting your cat have a go at it. Mine enjoy playing with it the most when you add kibbles into the bottom part. The rod parts also print in about an hour so I printed a few spare ones.

Oh, and…

Only my second ever published model. So any feedback or ideas for improvement are more than welcome!