Babar – The water spouting elephant

A stomach flu visited the family this week. When I was bathing the youngest one for the third time in the middle of the night, I realised that we only have one million bath toys and we needed more!

I started thinking about water pressure, and how I would be able to make some sort of a water pistol without the need of adding any moving parts. To use a blowing action was the obvious approach, but then I had to make sure that the youngest one is not going to choke when she forgets the difference between blow and suck…

After one evening of sketching I created a simple model which was able to shoot water while still being safe from the water flowing the wrong way by accident. I decided to model it as an elephant, and with the addition of a simple crown it turned into “Babar” which was one of the favourite characters from my youth 30 years ago! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babar_the_Elephant)

Here my oldest one is demonstrating the functionality.
One for the oldest and another one for the youngest.
The trunk has three holes to make a nice spray of water.
The body and the crown are printed separately. A dash of superglue makes sure that the crown stays in place.
The correct way of blowing into the thing.
The model.
The crown has a hole you blow into.
The water is routed from the bottom to utilise the water pressure properly.
It’s a very simple design, but works surprisingly well!

You can find the files for this model here: https://www.printables.com/model/428247-babar-the-water-spouting-elephant

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