How to Make a Miniature Watermill Fountain

I am a homeschooler, and I really like using Tinkercad. When I saw this contest I really wanted enter in this contest. I have wanted to make a custom mini fountain for a while, so I decided to make a watermill fountain. The water pouring out of the spout/aqueduct thing causes the waterwheel to spin.

1. PLA filament.
2. Access to a 3d printer.
3. Computer.
4. A slicing software.
5. Soldering iron.
6. Mini fountain pump.
7. 697ZZ bearings I got mine from a vacuum motor.

Before you start modeling any architectural designs, you should find some good inspiration photos. you can find tons of photos by searching the internet, or by using sites like Pixabay

Image by Daniel Shapiro from Pixabay

Image by Wally from Pixabay

Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay

The first step i to make this model in Tinkercad was to design the model into Tinkercad. The finished model is about 110 x 110. If you want to design from scratch, I would recommend using the BrickWall part. It will save you a lot of time trying to make your own bricks, and It looks great! If you want to edit any of the parts, here is the link.

The next step I took was to take everything into blender and smooth it, I did this to give it a slightly more polished look and to smooth the corner where the different brick patterns meet. Then I used the Decimate modifier to downsize my files to 25MB. You don't have to downsize the files but it will make it slice faster.

For this step you will need a printer with a slicing software on your computer. These are the print settings I would recommend using. You need to make sure that the base is completely watertight. If you have a printer with an AMS you could paint the parts.

my print setting were:

1. 0.2mm layer height.
2. 0.4mm nozzle.
3. infill: 10%.
4. top/bottom layers: 4.
5. perimeters: 3.
6. supports: yes.
7. brim: no if using glue, yes if not.
8. perimeter generator: arcane.

For this step you will need to have access to a 3d printer. If you do not own one, you have a few options. You can get it printed by companies like PCBway or you can use a makerspace or library printer. I am printing my part with a cheap orange pla filament that I have. Some of the parts may be hard for some printers to print, so I would recommend keeping on eye on the prints. For me it took about 8 hours.

Use the soldering Iron to fuse all of the parts together, you can use the photos or the Tinkercad viewer.

I really enjoyed making this project, my printer isn't great, so It wasn't the best. I found that you need to turn down the slider on the pump so that the water doesn't spray too far. I also found that It was a good idea to make a little splash shield so that the water didn't splash out the back.

I hope you enjoyed my Instructable. Happy printing!