Fruit Fly Trap with Oscillating Exterminating Orb

thingiverse

Fruit flies! A bit of fruit goes soft, and suddenly you have a flurry of the annoying things around. They seem to show up summer through autumn when fresh fruit and vegetables are in your house. You can find many traps on Thingiverse that catch these little critters but inevitably allow them to survive inside the trap. I wanted an easy way to eliminate them for good. My idea was simple: design a trap from the start with extermination in mind. This small container has an opening to capture them - simply place a tiny bit of moist, ripe fruit inside. A little shelf inside holds a standard 14mm marble, which dislodges and crushes the critters when it falls. Since the interior space is designed to fit the marble's curvature, there is no escape when you shake it. Occasionally give the container a shake, and the marble slides up and down inside, squishing its residents. It's easy to tip the container back to return the marble to its holding space. I tried this near the fruit bowl and compost bin, and it did indeed gather some of these little buggers. Just a satisfying shake dispatches them. I'd like to thank Werner Stein for his miscellaneous containers that inspired me to get started on this project. The threaded part was borrowed from one of his designs. Print Settings: Printer: MP Select Mini Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: 0.1mm Infill: 25% body, and 35% for the lid Notes: The threads were a bit tight in my first print, but results might differ on your printer. They seem to get better with use. I used semi-translucent PLA for the body and white for the lid - a brighter interior might encourage more visitors. Those fill percentages are just arbitrary - probably not critical.