Food Ball

thingiverse

This is a food ball designed for cats or dogs that refuse to eat from a standard bowl. My cat, in particular, craves the thrill of hunting and playing for his meals. In the past, I've used dog treat balls, but they're cumbersome to fill, prone to breaking, and easily get stuck under furniture due to their small size - not to mention they don't provide enough challenge for my feline friend. So, I took matters into my own hands and created this customized food ball! It takes him approximately 30 minutes to extract all the food, although it took around an hour on his first try. The design is fully customizable in OpenSCAD, allowing you to tailor it to your pet's specific needs. Before printing, ensure you measure the dimensions of their food to match the corresponding parameters in this design. I based my measurements on my cat's 13mm longest dimension, setting the hole diameters at 13.1mm. The opening should be wide enough to prevent jamming but narrow enough to make the cat work for its meals. Given that I feed my cat a quarter cup of food, I designed half of the inner sphere to accommodate this amount. This allows me to scoop the food into the supply, lock it in place, and present it to my feline companion with ease. Feel free to adjust the food size parameter according to your pet's needs within the SCAD file. Keep in mind that rendering this design can be a time-consuming process, heavily dependent on the number of facets used. However, reducing the facet count will also compromise the render quality. As a novice designer, I'm certain there are numerous performance optimizations I've overlooked, and my code may not be optimized for efficiency. To minimize wait times while experimenting with parameters, consider lowering the facet count to under 64.