We are blessed to have quite a few people who can help take care of our cats while we are gone, but when we are gone for less than 48 hours, it seems like overkill to coordinate that and take time out of their day. We have an automatic cat feeder which works pretty well, but it only takes one failure to lose a lot of trust in it.
When we were in Yellowstone last summer, we had planned to only have Megan come over every 2 days and just use the automatic feeder. But one of the first nights, I checked our cameras (yes we have a camera in the cat room) and it looked like the feeder was jammed. I don’t know why the cats weren’t eating it but something was clearly wrong, so not only did we then need Megan over there every day, but she also had to make a late evening run over to our house to immediately fix the situation. (Thank you Megan!) Ultimately I think the problem was that the divider chute didn’t meet up with the bowls well but there might also have been an issue with the food not having enough room to drop out of the machine and onto the chute.
We haven’t used it since then but we have a coule more quick trips coming up so I decided to improve it. Through a LOT of trial and error in Fusion 360 and lots of 3D prints, I eventually designed a new attachment for the dispenser which not only shouldn’t jam as easily, but it is the perfect height for the bowls we like to use, it holds the bowls securely in place so they don’t slide away from the feeder, and it holds a piece of cardboard between the bowls so that one cat doesn’t get intimidated by the other. It even has a little hook on the back that fits into a spot on the feeder to securely hold it in place.
I learned Fusion 360 through Bob Claggett’s awesome Fusion For Makers class, but this was the most complex design I’ve ever attempted and I had to learn a lot along the way. I was 20 versions into my first attempt before I trashed it and started a new one that ended up at 15 versions. But now I have a super custom solution that should work great! I’ve run a lot of cat food through it to verify my solution and so far so good.
Fusion 360 is very intimidating, and I have a long way to go, but I’m slowly getting to the point where I can bring more complex ideas to life. Being able to model anything and then print it out is amazing!
If for some reason, you want this specific model, it is posted on printables.com.