Garden nozzle replacement

thingiverse

2020-05-14 - Yet another year goes by and I'm stuck fixing yet another broken nozzle. This part gets mercilessly abused and I'm pretty sure water was left inside it over winter... what a mess! Either way, I disassembled the old plastic insert, measured it up, and designed a brand new one from scratch. The hardware and o-rings were still in good shape, so I reused them. I believe this is a standard component for many nozzles, and I'm fed up with wasting money on new ones and tossing out old ones that have a solid outer shell and functioning parts. One thing I want to tackle later is analyzing the fluid dynamics of this design to see if there's room for improvement. I printed this nozzle using PLA because I was too lazy to switch filaments, and I also wanted to test how well PLA holds up under stress. In hindsight, I would highly recommend using PETG or ABS (which I still need to set up and get some spools for). I printed it with a smaller diameter at the shaft end because that's where the nozzle selector turns on. Support was definitely necessary due to the large upper portion of the design. Be careful not to support the area around the o-ring, as this can compromise the seal. If you decide to print this design, please let me know how it works out for you. I tried to include plenty of supports and reinforcement where needed. If you have any suggestions or ideas for improvements, feel free to share them! **If you're interested in printing my designs for commercial purposes, just let me know. I'd be happy to work with you if you can help offset the time and materials I invested in this project. P.S. I'm still figuring out how to upload 3D models to this platform - if someone has a quick tip or two, I'd appreciate it!