Heron's Fountain by DKoss

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

3/13/2019 Update
I finally got around to adding decorative flourishes to my fountain. I remixed jerry7171's Lions Head Fountain scan and working it over so that I could use it in my Heron's fountain OpenSCAD script. It works pretty well but I have a few tweaks here and there to try. It runs for nearly a minute before trickling out. The corks aren't sealing well and it loses pressure around both corks so the file that's posted has 0.5mm smaller diameter cork holes than what I printed.
This version is printed with 5 perimeters, 25% infill, and no supports. The walls are nearly solid. The infill will spare material between chambers and isn't really structural at all. There is no assembly after printing except for adding two corks and some water.
I will post better pictures of the final fountain when I can get them. Please share makes if you print it! I'm curious if anyone else has success with it and if they have comments/suggestions.
2/13/17 Update
I experimented with the nozzle a little bit over the last two days. I made and tested four new nozzles. The original nozzle had an final opening of 4.0mm. I tested a 2.0mm, 3.0mm and a 3.5mm nozzle. The 2.0 was too small and forced air and water out of several weak points in the walls. A little friction weld with the dremel fixed those up. The 3mm was the best balance of water pressure and run time. To mix it up a little more I made a 3mm nozzle that had a 45 degree angle to it. It almost shot the water out of the top bowl.
My next change will be to move the vents between chambers to the edges of the bowl and aim the nozzle across the top reservoir. Eventually, if I'm feeling really ambitious I'll make it look like a Greek fountain.
Original Post (2/12/17)
The concept of a Heron's Fountain is a lot of fun. No pumps just water and air pressure. There are three chambers; bottom, middle and top. Empty the bottom chamber and cork it, fill the middle chamber with water (put your finger over the nozzle while filling) and cork it, then add water to the top chamber and watch it run. Wikipedia has a better description of how it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heron's_fountain
This project needs two standard wine corks but everything else is printed. The nozzle is a separate file just because I want to play around with it's parameters to try to change up how well the fountain runs. Right now it will run strong for about 30 seconds and trickle for another 30 seconds or so. A smaller nozzle to slow it down is my next improvement. I'm open to suggestions though if anyone has any.