Above is a photo of my first completed 3D printing project. Earlier this week, I mentioned that I’d designed and printed a clip. Yesterday I finished realising my design and today I peeled it off the print bed and installed it. You can see the system in wet weather mode, exposing a hole in the underside of the pipe and making sure that the water that flows out is encouraged to drop into the gutter below.

When the water butts fed by the pipe empty out a bit, I’ll twist the white component on the left so that the hole is covered and the maximum volume of water should instead be diverted to my collection system. It hasn’t been properly tested yet (the Met Office suggest it might get a workout sometime next week) but it ought to be better than the regular brown pipe clip you can see on the right, which has acted as a partial diverter, and twisting the whole pipe to allow water to flow along or drop out.

It is a bespoke solution to a particular set of design parameters that most people probably don’t have and I don’t think I could have bought anything like it off the shelf. Assuming it works along the lines I intend, it pays for the design time and the material used and makes a start on justifying the investment in the printer. Meanwhile, I have started that new 3D printing category and will be adding suitable previous posts into it.