Mushroom Snail and Slug Trap

If your anything like me after a long spring of preparation there is nothing worse than pest eating your well deserved harvest. Growing up my family would always put beer in our garden to help combat the massive slug and snail problem we always seemed to have. We always seemed to run into one of two problems with this thought. Issue one was keeping rain out whenever it would storm. The other issue was the sneaky little schnauzer who fancied himself a drink when no one was looking. Well now that I am an adult and have my own garden I figured I would try and take a wack at solving this issue. One day while tending the garden and brain storming I was remind of the fact that my wife loves the fairy garden esthetic by all the little trinkets scattered around. That is when it all hit me. After some sketches and more brain storming I had an idea to run with.

Back in the day I remember watching my family bury a plastic cup filled with beer or a cut in half beer can in the garden. While I didn't mind the plastic cup, I was always afraid I would cut myself on the jagged beer can. As an adult I am a lot more conscious of single use items and wanted to see if I could instead make something reusable. Even better I was hoping to reuse something I already had as well so I started searching. So one thing about me is I come from one of those kinds of families that always keep jars. Pasta sauce jar, old mason jars, jam jars. Jars, Jars, Jars!!! After Digging through my cabinet I was able to find two jars I thought would work and started sketching designs.

About a month before I started on this project I had saved up some extra money from picking up a few extra shifts here and there and bought myself a new 3d printer. Having some experience with a printrbot in the past I decided I was knowledge able enough to purchase a lower end hobbyist 3d printer and settled on the Voxelab Aquila. Needless to say I loved and am still loving it. (As a psa I wanted to say this is a more recent photo of my printer with a handful of upgrades.) While I've played around with software like blender in the past I found it much more simple and user friendly to take my first real steps into 3d modeling with Tinkercad. I found the more simplistic approach to UI helped to keep me from feeling overwhelmed while offering powerful enough tools to take on most job. Plus its free and web based. Cant beat that.

Supplies and Software Used in Project:

Mason

Voxelab Aquila printing PLA
Super Glue

Tinkercad

Ruler / Calipers

Primer and Paint

After settling on using a jar for this project I started to think of what I wanted the finished item to function and look. I new I wanted to try and minimize the amount of rain that could make its way in while also looking nice. Like I stated before my wife love magical and enchanted things, so I naturally drew inspiration from the mushrooms and fairy statues we have around our plants My original thought was a old cabin looking trap which you can see if you look with your eyes closed at my original design. Although the finished product changed a lot since the original sketch one thing that stuck was the three part design. Once I had a basic idea of what I wanted I jumped straight into tinkercad so that I wouldn't loose focuse on the task at hand.

The first thing I did once I got started was to look for a calculator to calculate and replicate my jars threads. I had originally wanted to use the jam jar so that I could save the mason jar for canning, but I quickly realized I had just gone down a massive rabbit hole of applied math I didn't understand and lacked tools to calculate. At this point I felt stumped, but not defeated. After the initial shock wore off I had the bright Idea to see if I could just find the thread information for a standard mason jar online and avoid having to learn a new sector of mathematics. I am a strong believer in the important of acquiring knowledge and skills, but also a man who knows when I am over my head and just need to find the work done for me. After some more googling I had found the info I needed and the project was back on.

Once I had the information I needed I decided to sit down at my work desk with my mason jar and calipers to get the needed calculation to get things started. After finding the diameter of the mouth of the jar I started out by making a disc in tinkercad. After this I used a smaller disc to make a cutout before adding the threads. I originally tried to make my thread using a technique I had found using a spring shape, but quickly found out that tinkercad didn't have the features I needed to adjust the sprint to my needs. Stuck again. After some searching though I was surprised to find that tinkercad has a metric thread shape generator. With some simple conversions of standard to metric measurement and adjustment of the thread width and taper, I had a shape I was ready to test print. Thought the test print came out perfect I quickly learned I had made a fatal mistake. I had the threads backwards. One simple rotation and a second test print and I was back in business. This time everything fit perfect and I knew I had a perfect base to build off of.

Now that I had a base I knew it was time to focus my design more. I spent some time in my garden and I spent some time in google image search. What I finally came up with was a design based on a mushroom statue we have in one of our houseplants with some additional inspiration from some paintings I had seen. With a clear direction moving forward I decided to look again in the tinkercad shape library to see if I could find any shaped to help cut my time down. After trying out a few shaped I finally settled on using a hi-res parabolid for the body. Pro tip always check the drop down menu of adjustable features before settling on a shape. Its all fun and games to get into a project just to realize you cannot adjust how smooth to make the surface of a shape.

Once I had the rough shape and size of the body I wanted I started by making it hollow. I did this by duplicating the shape and scaling it down before turning it into a hole. I learned during this project the importance of using the parts alignment tool that can be found next to the combination tool. Once hollow I took an estimated guess of how tall I wanted my mushroom to be in total and calculated the overall body height need. After this I used a square hole to lob the top off. I knew later on in the build it would be much easier to attach the cap if there was a lip, so I added a small ring around the top. To add to the fairy flair and make an entrance for the slugs I decided to make some door cutouts using a shape I made by combined a disc and a square. After that I used another disc that I had manipulated using two square to make a makeshift window. At this point it really began to feel like I had something special on my hands.

After fining up the body I already had figure out in my head how I wanted to make the cap. I started by selecting a half sphere shape and making it larger than the base. Once I had adjusted the height of the cap to what looked correct I duplicated it. This is another pro tip of mine so that you always have a backup if you mess something up. With the newly duplicated cap I decided I wanted to try and add some spots like you see in many fungal species. After tinkering around for a while I come up with a simple way to get a good look. I started out my making a disc in a size that felt visually right. After expanding the shape I duplicated it four time and set off on aligning everything. This project, and this act specifically, led me to get to know the alignment and ruler tools very well. I used the alignment tool to get everything roughly in place and used the off set part the ruler to get everything finalized before cutting it out. Once I had my holes, I scaled down the original cap before aligning it with my new holy cap. I used the same technique as I did with the body, but this time I used it to fill in the cap leaving only small dimples. Lastly, before moving on, I made a small imprint in the bottom of the cap to adjust for the lip on the body.

At this point I originally though I was done, but it just didn't feel finished. This is when I decided to add a small chimney and window to finish the whole fairy look off. Like before I used a combined disc and square to the window before using small squares to add further detail. I also used two disc to make the chimney before using a duplicate to make a hole for it in the cap. I originally wanted to print the chimney as one larger whole piece, but I decided against it so that I could print it upside down without the need for supports. My thought was I would much rather glue it into place than clear away support imperfections.

Somewhere between finishing my design and printing everything I decided to add a small lip and some extra height to my base. To do this I started out by using a thin disc to remove a small amount from the inside base of the body. I then made a duplicate of the body that I used as a hole to cut out the shape needed for the lip. This not only created a great flush lip, but also made up for the gap in the doors.

When printing the body and the cap I was able to print everything without the need for supports. Like I stated before I made sure to print the chimney upside down to keep from having to deal with removing and hiding support marks. For the base I personally decided to print it with supports. I'm sure that many of you have printers that can print this over hang no problem, but for me, at least at the time, I felt it better to use supports. Plus since the supports are on the inside I didn't feel a need to clean them up as much. I printed everything at a .2 layer height with 15 percent infill.

I know a lot people might not have 3d printer but take some time to look at options around you. There are a ton of websites that will print files or if you live in a city like mine you can get prints made at the public library. Before I bought my own I was part of my communities maker space in our library and used their printers a lot. This not only helped me learn a lot about printing, but also helped me make friends and connections. Plus many libraries receive grants to purchase supplies so many times the prints come at no cost to you.

As the title implies my next step was sanding everything down. When sanding anything it is important to take the appropriate measure to keep yourself safe. For this situation I made sure to use an appropriately rated mask and did all my sanding in a well ventilated workspace. PLA, while non toxic, is known to make micro plastic dust and can lead some people to have respiratory infections. Yuck, not for me! I sanded all the parts using three different sanding blocks and pads that I already had laying around. I can't tell you off the top of my head what the grit is on these, but based on the results it was some sort of rough, medium/fine, and fine grit. I made sure to spend some extra time when working the areas where the parts would all come together. Although I compensated for the tolerance between the parts they still needed some extra love to fit how I wanted them. Once everything was nice and smooth I scrubbed everything off well in a bath to remove any stuck on dust. Once completed I left everything to dry over night before super gluing everything together in the morning.

Once the glue had finished drying and had hardened I prepped a space outside to apply my primer. For this project I used Krylon Fusion because it advertises it ability to stick well to plastic and because it was the only white primer I could find at the time. I already drove to one store, I'm not driving to another. In total I did five layers of primer to help remove the visible signs that this was a 3d print. Another pro tip: take your time applying the layers to avoid dripping. This is advertised as non drip, but I was in a rush to say goodbye to a friend moving and proved that statement to be wrong.

After I let the primer dry over night I busted out the bag of loose paint tubes and found some colors I liked. I originally was just going to paint the cap red and call it a day, but I found the finishes between colors didn't line up and I was having a good time. I might have also been heavy handed and got red paint all in the white spots and needed to cover up my mistakes. Once I had all the whites white and reds red I decided to really finish it off by adding a dot of black to the chimney top. At this point everything was done and all that was left was putting it in the ground.

Now that I had assembled everything and finished all the decorations there was nothing left to do but find a place in my garden for it. After a while of sitting it somewhere, walking around while staring at it, and pondering I finally picked a good location by my zucchinis. I choose this location not only because my zucchinis where being slaughters, but also because I knew they would provide my trap with ample amounts of shade. With this being printed in PLA I did have to think about the effects heat and sunlight would have on the print long term. I'm not to well versed in other types of plastics aside from PLA and ABS and I almost exclusively print PLA since my printer is in my home. If you have the ability to print in other plastics it might benefit you to look into what other options you have to help the longevity of the print. I originally thought about putting a finish on the print, but I didn't have anything that didn't have issues with yellowing at the time. With the season coming to an end my thought for this trap have been to move it to a continuously shaded like the area under my porch that I can see into. Because of this I'm not to worried about the finish and kind of want to see if start to weather. Who knows I might build a whole little fairy village just to watch nature take over. I'd love to see this get all covered in moss.

I've had the best luck so far using pbr and cheap hard apple cider. Why waste a perfectly good craft beer when the pest don't mind drinking like me on a cheap date. When filling it up I found it works best to fill it a little over halfway which also leaves a little something cold for me to sip on while weeding. So long to the days of trying not to cut myself while fishing out a cut up beer can, hello days of decorative garden traps.

(Psa: The photos of the trap in the grass are just glamor shots to have something nice to show. The lighting was great and you have to say they look nice. Plus where I live almost all the soil is red clay so it didn't look nearly as nice.)

If anyone is interested I uploaded the files to Cults3d free for download. I hope everyone enjoyed the build and considers making one for themselves. I'm tempted to print a few more off myself to hold water propagation myself.

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/home/mushroom-snai...