Tumble Dryer Vent Insert - Mouse Deterrent

When I was mending our tumble dryer, I noticed a load of “messages” had been left behind by mice which must have been using the vent as a dormitory!

So rather than block off the vent and leave the dryer unusable, or have to wait until I could buy some metal netting, or risk having the mice continue to use it as a toilet, I decided to knock up a quick grid for the vent.

The hole through the wall has a plastic 4" liner, the external vent guard (seen better days, I admit) fits into that, and my grid fits inside the vent guard.  

The OD of the grid is designed at 95mm. That turned out to be just a smidge loose so I just wrapped about 5 turns of masking tape around it and trimmed off the edges, making it a good tight push-in fit which no mouse will be able to shift. If I reprint it for any reason I'll probably scale it up in the slicer by 1 or 2%, but adding the tape was a lot quicker than reprinting it!

Obviously there's a risk with PLA that it might soften if the vented air is hot enough, but we only use half heat on our tumbler so that wasn't a concern. In the admittedly unlikely event that anyone else actually wants to use this design, check your vented air temperature on full blast and select a suitable printing material :o) 

It's also possible that the mice will chew through it. However, if that happens then I'll be able to see it and deal with it in an alternative manner. The problem before was that I couldn't see into the duct so I had no idea they'd been visiting!

I doubt any of the print settings are critical. I used PLA+, 0.2mm layers, 0.4mm nozzle, 3 walls, 3 tops and bottoms, and 15% infill. I gave the bottom layer 0.25mm and 125% line width to make sure it smushed the first layer well into the bed as Cura decided to print a load of silly squiggly bits first instead of starting with the outer walls and working inwards, and a couple of bits caught and pulled up but it managed to complete ok and only needed a quick flick with the deburrer to tidy it up.