How I Use 3D Printing in the Tarantula Hobby
Last updated on by NF-Stefan
3D Printing in the Tarantula Hobby
From water dishes to housing or even subterranean cave systems, one thing is clear: when it comes to using 3D printing in the tarantula hobby, the main limit is creativity, with a few technical boundaries sprinkled in.
I bought my 3D printer a little over three years ago. It is an Ender 3 S1 Pro (not sponsored), and I am still very happy with it. It uses the FDM process, short for fused deposition modeling. In simple terms, a plastic filament is heated until it melts and is then laid down layer by layer until your object slowly appears on the printer bed.
There is also resin printing, usually referred to as SLA. This method uses a UV light source to cure liquid resin layer by layer with very high precision. The results can be stunning, but I do not have hands-on experience with it. Everything I use for my enclosures is printed with FDM, and for the purposes of tarantula keeping, it works extremely well.
When it comes to FDM printing, filament choice matters. Anything that goes inside an enclosure and comes into contact with an animal should be chosen carefully. I personally prefer materials that are considered food safe once printed correctly. The two filaments I mainly use are PETG and ABS. Both are viable options, but speaking from experience, PETG is far easier to work with. It warps less, prints reliably, and does not require an enclosure around the printer. ABS can be a bit temperamental and smells unpleasant while printing, which is another reason I tend to avoid it.
Practical Prints I Actually Use
One of my favourite uses for the printer is water dishes. Bottle caps technically work, but let us be honest, they look terrible. Commercially available water dishes often look nice, but once you start multiplying the cost by ten, fifteen, or twenty enclosures, it adds up very quickly. So I designed my own water dishes (I will share my STL-files, if there is interest). They are simple, stable, easy to clean, and visually unobtrusive. More importantly, they cost only a fraction of what store bought ones do. When you keep around twenty tarantulas, that difference becomes noticeable.
Beyond water dishes, 3D printing opens up interesting possibilities for hides and enclosure furniture. Recently, I stumbled across an underwater cave design on Thingiverse that was originally intended for aquariums. It had one open side meant to sit flush against the glass. Instead of placing it under water, I buried it directly into the substrate of a terrestrial enclosure. The result was a ready-made subterranean hide with a solid roof and a defined entrance. My Grammostola pulchripes immediately adopted it, and my Monocentropus balfouri uses it as a central tunnel hub. Watching a spider modify and expand a printed structure is surprisingly satisfying. The best part: unless they actively push dirt against the glass side, you can observe them while they are hiding.
My Final Verdict
What I like most about using a 3D printer in the hobby is the freedom. If something does not exist, you can make it. If something exists but costs too much, you can design a simpler version. And if something almost works, you can tweak it until it does. I started out with zero knowledge about 3D-modeling, but I made it work for myself using FreeCAD (free and open-source). It scratches the same itch that enclosure building and background crafting does, just with a different set of tools.
3D printing is not a requirement for keeping tarantulas, and nobody needs one to be a good keeper. But if you already enjoy tinkering, building, and improving your setups, it fits the hobby surprisingly well. And once you start printing custom water dishes, you may find it hard to go back to bottle caps again.
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