Drinking water cat guard

thingiverse

We learned that our cat likes to leap up beside the sink and lap at the drops dripping from the filtered water faucet. This is just one of several tactics to keep our mischievous feline companion away from those tantalizing drips! It's crucial that this shield be installed correctly, so water doesn't splatter against it - if not, our curious cat will have her fill lapping at the droplets. Thus, we turn it so the drops sail past the bars without getting caught in mid-air. The photographs show earlier attempts that fell short, along with our culprit cat hard at work. The earlier versions were built to be stronger by using crisscross reinforcements, but this one relies on thicker metal bars instead. The problem was that those reinforcement pieces got wet as soon as the water stopped running, and then our cat would go after them - rather than the faucet! The present version is too far from the water stream to spark her interest in licking it - now she goes for the main sink sprayer head! At least that isn't used for human drinking water anymore. So we've managed to make some progress towards keeping the faucet safe for people to drink from. Instructions We 3D-printed this design using a medium-resolution setting on our ABS printer, followed by some careful smoothing and a final touch-up using vapor polishing with acetone fumes in a specialized can to strengthen and give it that bright sheen we all love. For the printing, we used 25% infill and a sturdy raft - but skipped supports altogether. Unfortunately, I had to manually set the safety stop on one layer below our print platform or else there'd be a gap between the first layer and the raft - causing our whole build job to crash and burn! Guess there's something awry with how Inventor creates STL files! Here you can see that part A has a little shape echoing the faucet tip, but we decided it wasn't necessary. However, it really illustrates just how the design is intended to operate. To get this installed correctly - slip our cat deterrent shield far back on its rod so it clears the first stage of water, install that taper-faced interlocking washer whose curve slopes up towards where the faucet lives - then pull the rod forward until the washer clicks onto it and stays in place there snugly!