a 3D printed object for assisting with cleaning fluid from lickometers
Housekeeping is an essential part of working with rats; providing them with the proper environment to perform conditioning tasks is critical to get good results. The behavioral boxes where they perform such tasks, for example, require of a proper cleanup throughout the day. Surfaces need to be wiped off and syringe pump tubing is cleaned with water or another fluid. Traditionally in our lab, the liquid runs through an improvised funnel as it drains out of the sipper tube, and it is deposited in a small holder. This process gets the job done, but the funnel and holder are disposable material and end up in the trash. This may seem like a minor issue, but with contamination at record-high levels, every step we take towards trash reduction is essential.
For this reason, we came up with the idea of creating our own funnel + fluid-holder artifact. The funnel is washable and sturdy, making of it an ideal middle-to-long term solution to wasting plastic. The original design of our funnel was obtained from Thingiverse, then it was cut in half to draw the corresponding apertures more accurately. Finally, the mirror image and the edited half were joined together to obtain the final figure. The final model is composed of two main apertures: One on the snout, and another one on the back of the rat. Both openings are connected to its belly, where the fluids are held until cleaned up.
The model is saved to an .STL file, and can be edited through any 3D editor site such as Tinkercad; the user can make any necessary changes to the figure before printing it out.
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