Modular, expandable ant formicarium remix

thingiverse

This is a remix of the ingenious design of a formicarium from Teaching Tech: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3587348 . All instructions for slicing, for example the bottom plate, should be taken from the original. In this rexmix, there are no doors for the individual chambers so that the ants can freely choose the space that is best for them. Instead, there are optimized doors at both entrances to be able to simply close the nest completely. The port mount has also been optimized and is now more stable. Whether the original port fit was not tested, however, I provide suitable ports with many different inner diameters. If the ports are too tight in the frame, for example due to used material and tolerances, the height of the ports can simply be reduced in the slicer. Update: Today I brought my ants out of hibernation and unfortunately I had to realize that some ants crawled between frame and acrylic and died. The reason is that my acrylic pane is not thick enough and thus no pressure can be exerted from the top plate on the pane. To prevent ants from moving under the acrylic, I printed a spacer with TPU to transfer the pressure from the top plate to the acrylic. The spacer has a height of 1mm and can be easily varnished over the slicer.