3D Printed Rain Sticks

While working on a project where I added tulle midway through the printing process, I started thinking about the things you can add to a print in the middle of printing and thought it would be fun to add beads for sound (not saying I invented this idea, just wanted to try for myself). This lead to making a rainstick and using the infill as the means of dribbling the beads down when the rainstick is turned over!

What's fun about this project is you can be very basic with the initial design (or more complicated, it's up to you), then you get to experiment when Slicing, be involved in the printing, and then decorate the resulting rainstick. It leaves you with a lot of areas to experiment with including the initial design and details in the slicing.

• Tinkercad
• 3D Printer
• PLA Filament - you don't need anything special, I used white so I could paint on it.
• Small glass seed beads - I used about 1 Tablespoon worth per rainstick
• Measuring spoon
• Funnel - this makes it easier to get the beads into the print

I started by deciding how large I wanted it to be and this was partly determined by how much space I had to print in. I ended up using 201mm tall by 40mm wide cylinder.

I decorated it with a few Torus shapes on each end. I planned to tie ribbons on the ends, so I put these on specifically to hold the ribbons between them.

That really is it.

You are only worrying about the exterior of the rainstick and you need to make sure you do not put holes through it (or you could experiment with that).

For some tests, I did just scale these down smaller, so if you wanted to make many of these (such as for classes, they can still sort of work on a smaller scale.

Slicing is where you can do some fun experimenting.

I decreased the infill to just 6% (I also experimented with 3%) and changed the pattern to Gyroid to ensure that the beads would not only fall all the way from one end of the stick to the other, but hopefully hit many things on the way down. You can try different patterns, but look at it and see if you think it will work before proceeding. One such as Adaptive Cubic will NOT work because it encloses itself over and over again.

I also gave it a few extra top layers to ensure that it didn't sag since I had decreased the infill from the default 15%.

Another thing you will need to do is add a pause to add the beads (for most printers, you can also just manually pause it during the print).

I did this about 1/3 of the way up but really you just need to let it run far enough so that the beads will fit in the base before it continues and add in the pause before it gets enclosed in the top. You don't want to go too low too in case the fan tries to blow the beads out.

Now, on to the print!

Let your rainstick start printing and wait until it pauses.

When it does, get your beads ready to pour in. I used very small seed beads, but you can use different ones as long as they fit through the infill.

I used about 1 Tablespoon or .63oz but you can experiment with more or less. I would probably not do less than that.

I found it helped to have a funnel to pour in the beads and I moved it around to make sure I put beads all over inside the rainstick.

Once they are all in, resume the print.

Careful, you'll probably end up with beads going everywhere.

Once it is done printing, you are done! Or, you can decorate! And why wouldn't you?

I used acrylic paints and ribbons. You could also use markers, paint pens, or stickers.

I only experimented with 3% and 6% infill and used the same pattern for both, but I found the 6% seemed to slow the beads down more than 3%. I put numbers on the bottom so I wouldn't forget.

You also need to shake or rotate it a little to make sure all the beads move down.