Wood Dowel Tripod Fort

thingiverse

My 2-year-old thoroughly enjoys assisting me in building pillow and blanket forts within the house. Nonetheless, we both greatly dislike having to disassemble them afterwards (who has time for that?). Therefore, I devised a straightforward design that employs three wooden dowels (1 inch diameter x 3 feet; 2.5 cm diameter x 90 cm), a bed sheet or blanket, and a printed "hub" connector that facilitates rapid setup and teardown. The inner diameter of the hub is slightly undersized to account for the unexpectedly large variability in the dowel O.D. To ensure a snug fit, consider wrapping painters tape (or a similar material) around the end of the dowel that will be inserted. I strongly advise using PET/PETG! The test pieces I printed with PLA ended up failing (layer separation) after only a few uses. I utilized 5 perimeters and an infill of approximately 20%. Please note and respect that these "tripods" are not designed to bear loads! They will fail under stress, so adult supervision is highly recommended.