Tappping Maple Syrup with a 3D Printed Contraption

Canadian high schooler Timothy Lapp enjoys, as so many of us do, fresh maple syrup. While the sap he can harvest from maple trees near him doesn't necessarily translate well into syrup, he still enjoys the fresh maple sap -- so he decided to create his own tap that can get sap straight from the source and screw a bottle on to collect it. He designed his tap in Fusion 360, incorporating a Thingiverse user's design for a screw thread to attach the bottle, then printed his piece out in about 4.5 hours on his Printrbot Simple Metal 3D printer. Once the tap is inserted into a hole drilled into a tree, Lapp says he's been able to fill a water bottle in just a day. His functional design is certainly seeing a lot of use already -- and he made sure to recommend adding a little bit of lemon juice to fresh sap for a great taste. Check out more details of his design process in the full article: http://3dprint.com/52503/3d-printed-tree-tap/


Below is a photo of the tap attached to a tree to gather sap into the bottle:
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload...bottletap1.jpg