Wearable fountain [Build log]

As you know, I’m the dad who can’t keep things simple for Crazy Hair Day at my kids’ school. While my daughter is going to wear a Lighthouse, my son wanted something that moves this year.

His first idea was to make a rocket that takes off, flies around his head and lands again, SpaceX style. While that would have been awesome, I decided there are probably too many safety concerns with bringing something like that into a crowded school. Instead, we ended up settling for making a fountain.

I started by buying a small water pump from AliExpress. We spent a day drawing the thing in Fusion 360:

The fountain will sit inside a closed plastic container that we will somehow strap to his head. Inside the fountain, we’ll have the pump. Next to it are the two AAA batteries in a battery holder and a switch, protected from the water by a ZIP lock bag.

The outer ring at the bottom will be hot glued to the bottom of the container. To turn the pump on and off, he’ll take the lid off the container, reach down and turn the fountain counter-clockwise which releases it from the outer ring. he can then flip the switch through the ZIP lock bag.

I 3D-printed the top of the fountain in two halves, then glued them together

Unfortunately, the hole at the top where the water is supposed to come out did not end up very round and the flexible hose I have does not currently fit. The gaps between the two halves are a bit too obvious, so my son applied some wood filler that we’ll sand off.

The plan is to paint it to make it look like stone. I usually use acrylic paint with my 3D prints, but wasn’t sure how well that withstands being submerged in water, so I did a test with a failed print.

This photo shows what it looks like after 36 hours in water. The left side is naked acrylic paint, the right side was coated with one layer of Polyurethane.

Next up is sanding, painting and finding a way to get the hose attached.

5 Likes

Amazing Martin! Love these. Looking forward to seeing more pics.

I sanded the fountain. I also used successively larger HSS drills to bring the hole up to the right dimension so the hose now fits.

Test fit of pump, battery holder, hose and ZIP lock bag.

And finally I glued in the pegs for the attachment mechanism.

Ready for painting.

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Here it is with paint:

The internals:

The battery is separated from the water by a ziplock bag, enforced by tape. I ended up replacing the sliding switch with a reed switch (inside the yellow heat shrink tube). This solves several problems: It is smaller, can be activated from outside the water container and doesn’t wear out the zip lock bag like a switch would.

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I should have started earlier figuring out how to secure it to my son’s head. My first attempt was to make this part out of papier mache and cardboard, but I had to give up on this as it still wasn’t dry last night. Instead I went with cardboard and cloth.

The black cloth is from an old pair of leggings. It is hot glued and sown onto the cardboard base. In the end this didn’t work very well. The contraption is a bit too heavy and tended to slide off his head. I should have taken a close look at how a bike helmet stays on and built something like that.

Putting it all together was an exciting moment.

giphy

My son says he didn’t wear it much during the school day because it tended to slide off, but he was practically bombarded with questions about it.

3 Likes

Amazing!

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