Bird Feeding Station

This was my birthday present a couple of years ago.

It sits outside the kitchen window and I have had

great fun watching the birds feed at it.

The feeder has a number of hanging food holders

and two rings to hold a water tray and an open food tray.

Robins and Dunnocks, frequent visitors, do not like the

hanging feeders so their only option is the open tray.

Unfortunately, Wood Pigeons very quickly gobble up

the food in the open tray so I decided to design and

3D print a food tray which small birds could feed from

but pigeons could not access.

My Design

This is what I came up with.

The food tray drops through the ring for holding the open tray.

The roof is bolted to a ring which sits on the feeder tray ring.

The food tray and roof are separated by thin pillars.

The Floor

The floor of the feeder tray needs to be free draining.

Printing this was a problem at first but the solution was easy.

3D printed parts which look solid are usually mostly hollow.

This can save a large amount of filament and cost so the inner

part of what seems to be solid is usually a grid or honeycomb

to make the part rigid. The top and bottom of the part is printed

as a continuous layer usually 3 layers deep for each.

Making the grid for the floor of the feeder was simple, I just

had to print the tray without any solid top or bottom layers.

The tray is made from two parts, a ring with a brim to which

the pillars are bolted and the perforated floor which is

glued inside the ring.

The Roof

I made the roof much more complex and difficult to print

than it needed to be. It is made up of three parts which

are glued together. Each part has a tab with a hole for the bolt.

It was difficult to print because the centre of the roof is higher

than the ring around the outside. This meant that each part had

to be printed with one of the straight edges on the print bed.

If I was to make another, I would make it from one piece with

a flat bottom layer.

The Feeder In Situ

This shows the feeder sitting in one of the rings

on the feeding station. Below it is the original metal

feeding tray sitting in the other ring so that the pigeons

are not completely forgotten.