Barb Fitting for k40 cooling

thingiverse

I was having a hard time finding what i needed local. I am using a 5 gallon paint bucket picked up from lowes with a lid. I am using Distilled water for cooling the K40 laser cutter and I didnt like the idea of just having the tubing pass through 2 holes in a bucket lid. Drilled 2 holes for the barbs to slide through with a fastened nut on the under side of the lid. For leak proofing the lid I would mayble ad a dab of silicone our use a rubber seal between the nut and the lid. These buckets have a little flex in the lid which I actually perfer as if the tubing gets moved some there is some flex in both the tubing side and the bucket side so I dont have to worry as much about the pla getting broke by accedintal tension on the plastic. Disclaimer: I do not know how well this design will work long term. Use at your own risk and with caution. For me so far this has worked with my initial testing but I plan to replace with an injection molded part thats desinged for this for the long term. We are dealing with high voltage and water so yeah be careful. Print settings: For the barb fitting I printed standing up with the thread side up Used supports for touching the build plate only printed at 0.2 resolution with 45% infill 3 walls For printing the nut I increased the size of the part to 102% Uniform scaling. At 0.1 resolution 45% infill and it fit perfect. Depending on your printer settings you may need to adjust differently. The heavy infill may not be needed but I wanted to make sure the part wouldn't leak but that will also depend on how dialed in your print walls are. If i was going to try to use this for long term application I would maybe epoxy coat or something similar to make sure I got a good seal and added strength.