3D Printed Hose Sprayer Sets Phasers To Suds

June 11, 2026 by Tom Nardi 8 Comments

The weather is warming up, and for many of us that means more time spent working out in the yard. You probably won’t find any new life or new civilizations out there, but if you’ve spent the last few months indoors on your computer, the garden may as well be a strange new world. In that case, you’d do well to equip the members of your landing party with this Star Trek: The Original Series hose sprayer designed by [Curt Turner].

If you’re wondering how [Curt] managed to 3D print a functional hose sprayer, the short answer is that he didn’t. Once assembled, the printed parts cleverly attach to the top of a standard sprayer, specifically the model 56516 “Pro Flo” from Orbit. Without the design constraints that would have come from trying to make the thing actually contain pressurized water, [Curt] was free to focus on the aesthetics, and it shows.

Even with a garden variety — no pun intended — sprayer strapped to the bottom, it’s remarkable how much the “Sprayser” looks like the real thing. Well, not real, but you know what we mean.

[Curt] has also done an excellent job documenting this project for others that want to imagine they’re fighting off Romulans in their backyard. He’s got assembly diagrams that break down which color each of the principle components is to be printed in, as well as a build video that we’ve embedded below.

We’ve seen a fair number of Star Trek props built over the years, some of which have packed in considerably more functionality than anything they would have had back on the set. These days you can even by an officially licensed tricorder that can actually do some of the things the fictional versions were capable of.

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Building A Generator That Runs Off Hose Power

November 29, 2024 by Zoe Skyforest 68 Comments

[Paul Junkin] bought a curious product off the Internet. It was supposed to generate electricity when hooked up to a running hose. Only, it didn’t do a very good job. His solution was straightforward—he built his own hose-powered generator that actually worked.

The design uses a turbine hooked up to a small motor acting as a generator. To maximize the transfer of energy from the stream of water to the blades of the turbine, the hose is hooked up to a convergent nozzle. [Paul] does a great job explaining the simple physics at play, as well as the iterative design process he used to get to the final product. He calculates the best-case power coming out of his hose around 50 watts, so for his turbine to collect 22 watts is a win, and it’s good enough to charge a phone or run some LED lighting.

Of course, this isn’t a practical generator if you have to pay for the water, and there are other solutions that will get you less wet. Still, credit where it’s due—this thing does make power when you hook it up to a hose. We’ve seen some slightly less ridiculous concepts in this space before, though.

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An Audio Delay, The Garden Hose Way

May 9, 2024 by Jenny List 21 Comments

Creating music in 2024 is made easier by ready access to a host of effects in software that were once the preserve only of professional studios. One such is the delay; digital delays are now a staple of any production software where once they required infrastructure. [Look Mum No Computer] is no stranger to the world of Lo-Fi analogue music making, and along with his musical collaborator [Hainback], he’s created an analogue delay from an unexpected material: garden hose pipe.

The unit takes inspiration from some commercial 1970s effects, and lends a fixed short delay intended to give a double-tracking effect to vocals or similar. It involves putting a speaker at one end of a reel of hose and a microphone at the other, while the original unexpectedly used Shure SM57 capsules as both speaker and microphone they use a very small loudspeaker and a cheap microphone capsule.

The sound is not what you’d call high quality. Indeed, it’s about what one might expect when listening down a long pipe. But when mixed in behind the vocals, it gives a very pleasing effect. The duo use it on their new EP which, as you might expect, is released on vinyl.

If such effects interest you, also take a look at a 1950s reverb room at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London.

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Super Easy Small Robot Wheels

December 19, 2019 by Donald Papp 17 Comments

Anyone who has delved into DIY wheels knows that they are a trickier than it may seem, especially if the wheels aren’t just for show and need to provide things like decent traction and durability. 3D printers have helped a lot, but they’re not a cure-all.

Check out how [Robert K.] makes wheels from segments of automotive silicone hose, which are constructed with fibers embedded within them for durability and structure. Not only are these hoses easily sourced, but the silicone makes a great wheel surface and the hoses themselves are highly durable. He uses a 3D printed jig to cut a slice of hose that press-fits perfectly onto a 3D printed hub. [Robert] finds that a 28 mm hose pulled over a 35 mm diameter wheel is a perfect fit.

These wheels are for a Beetleweight class combat robot, which are limited to three pounds (1.36 kg) or less. You can see some video of [Robert]’s previous Beetleweight robot named ‘Bourbon’, and we have featured what goes into the even-smaller Antweight class (one pound or less) in the past.

World’s Largest Super Soaker Is Dangerously Good Clean Fun

July 21, 2017 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

Running around while dousing each other with Super Soakers and screaming in delight is de rigueur on suburban lawns on hot summer days, but if you build this giant replica of a Super Soaker that can double as a pressure washer, you might have the upper edge on the neighborhood gang.

You may remember [Mark Rober] from such projects as his bullseye-catching dart board and his previous entry in the awesome uncle of the year awards, the fully automatic snowball gun. We’re not entirely sure that this seven-foot long replica of the original Super Soaker will win him any uncle or neighbor plaudits, given that it the stream it produces is not far off of what a pressure washer can manage and can literally slice a watermelon in half. Fortunately, [Mark] included swappable nozzles to reduce the pressure enough that relatively safe dousing is still on the table. The housing is a pretty accurate plywood and foam replica of the original toy, but the mechanism is beefed up considerably — a pair of nitrogen tanks, some regulators, and a solenoid valve. See the gun in all its window-smashing, kid-soaking glory in the video after the break.

We realize [Mark]’s build is just a fun way to beat the heat, but it gives us a few ideas for more practical uses. Maybe a DIY water-jet cutter that’s not built around a pressure washer?

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Build Your Own Water Rocket Launcher

October 10, 2012 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

We feel like the days when you want to play in the water are far behind us. But if you can still find a warm afternoon here or there this water rocket launcher build is a fun undertaking. We figure most of the time spent on the project will be in shopping for the parts. They’re all quite common, and once you have them on hand it can be assembled in under an hour.

The concept is simple, but that doesn’t stop people from building rather complicated water rocket rigs. This one which [Lou] devised is rather simple but it does offer connections to a hose and air compressor (the alternative being to fill the bottle with water ahead of time and use a bike pump for air pressure). PVC is used to connect the two inputs to the bottle via a pair of valves. The bottle is held in place while water and air are applied. The launch happens when a pull on that rope releases the bottle.

Check out the build process and bottle launch after the break. We think that rocket needs a few fins.

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Watering System For Your Vegetable Garden

August 15, 2012 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

The vegetables will be alive when [Dillon Nichols] returns from vacation thanks to this automatic watering controller that he built. This is the second iteration of the project, and deals mainly with replacing the electronics and UI of the controller itself. He detailed the hardware used for watering in a previous post. He plumbed in a solenoid valve with a hose threading on the output end for the soaker hoses snaking through the garden beds. This is a normally open valve but we’d suggest using a normally closed valve as a power outage will let the hose run continuously.

[Dillon] prototyped the design on an Arduino board, then moved to a standalone ATmega328 chip on some protoboard for the final design. He used a 3D printer to make the custom face plate which allows access to the three control buttons and provides a place for the character LCD to be mounted. In addition to the timer settings there is a manual watering switch as well. He used a typical mains light switch, wiring it with a pull-down resistor to make it work well with the Arduino. His explanation of the timer system can be seen after the break.

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