Heron’s Fountain 3D Printer Model

License: CC BY-NC-SA
File formats: stl
Download type: zip
Size:1.8MB

The file 'Heron’s Fountain 3D Printer Model' is (stl) file type, size is 1.8MB.

Summary

This is a fully printable and working Heron's fountain, which is a fountain which isn't requiring a pump or something simmilar. See Wikipedia for a detailed description how it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heron's_fountain

Please note: This is not an easy print as it has to be water tight and even air tight as much as possible! You and your printer have to be able to produce high quality prints or you will end up wasting a lot of time with a non-functional fountain. One single gap will ruin the whole thing!

Short story

When I got my 3D printer, one of the very first things I designed and printed on it was a Heron's fountain. It was not comparable with this one now, it was about the size of one single tank from the current model and due to my not existing knowledge about the fine print things, it would only run for 1-2s with a 2mm "high" fountain.
It was a completely fail.

But I love printing functional things, and some days ago I stumbled about DKoss Heron's Fountain. This remembered me about my initial fail of a cool thing, and I thought about printing this one.
But after studying his design (which is not bad at all!) and with my experience in mind, I decided to create an own fountain design which should:

  • Not print all in one object: If something goes wrong, you will not see it, have no option to repair it and material and time is wasted.
  • Has as few access holes as possible. Each opening to fill / drain the water will add some possible leakage.
  • Looks good enough to have it standing around on the table.
  • Is easy to fill and drain again.

So I fired up Fusion 360 and ended up with this model of a Heron's fountain!

Printing and running the fountain

Please read the instructions below carefully before starting the print.
If you got it done, you should now own a Heron's fountain which runs for over 2 minutes with a quite high fountain with the default 1.5mm nozzle. You can also try other nozzle diameters and see how it changes runtime.

Here is a video of it running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZctH1mX9gaI

Bowl.stl 772.6KB
Cap.stl 507.6KB
Cup.stl 652.2KB
Funnel_big.stl 55.7KB
Lo_Tank_1.stl 1.1MB
Lo_Tank_2.stl 343.6KB
Mid_Tank_1.stl 1.0MB
Mid_Tank_2.stl 369.2KB
Nozzle5_08_upper.stl 210.1KB
Nozzle_15_upper.stl 140.6KB
Nozzle_20_upper.stl 132.3KB
Nozzle_Thread.stl 498.0KB