3D Printed Reef Hub - Build your own Reef at home

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Our team was looking at building a full set of Reef Scoring Pipes, but found the cost prohibiting and time consuming. This led us to trying to come up with an easier and cheaper way build it.

Here is our 3D printed Hub to connect 1.5in ABS pipes. It allows you to connect the ABS pipes together, but also accommodates the L2 and L3 scoring leg at the 35deg angle. We are using standard 45deg elbows from the supply store to create the offset for the L4 pipe.

The ABS pipes are slightly larger in diameter at 1.9in compared to the 1.66in diameter that we will see on the field. However, we feel that this difference is worth living with.

An individual Hub takes just over 3 hours on our Bambu X1C and a plate of six is approx 18 hours. Each one uses about 90g of filament. Printed with minimal support.

Here is the link to the files: Reefscape 3D printed Reef Hubs

Reef Hub Picture
Reef Hub Picture1920×2524 154 KB

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I’m glad teams are figuring out 3D printing as a path to getting the parts they need.

One question though: why design for 1.5" pipe when 1.25" Schedule 40 pipe (even if plastic) is specified in the manual?

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We have an abundance of 1.5in ABS pipe in our shop and we used what was available.

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Totally valid reasoning. Wanted to be sure there wasn’t more to it than that. Good luck this year!

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For anyone using standard 1.25in pipe, I designed these connectors that I hope will hold up well to use in practice.

There’s also this version that fits inside the tube to give the correct outer surface of the reef

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Update - the original pipe measurements in the strong printed version were incorrect. I’ve updated the pipe measurements to be correct now. Sorry for the inconvenience.