When it comes to creating geocaches it always comes to my mind what would I love to see out there. One of the biggest problem is rolling up the logs. Especially when they are old, being out and handled in not the best ways, etc. I saw many better solutions then just placing a rolled up paper in the pill capsule and then I cam to this solution with all combined.
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| The pill capsule with the log roller. |
As you can see above the log is rolled up on a plastic roller and then has a piece of straw covering it and holding it together.
Let me share with you how I made it.
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| A 3D printer log roller, two parts. |
First thing is to find a template, or create one for the 3D printer and print it out. The one I used I found thanks to instagram, where weellu posted a picture of one and shared his blog post (which is in Finnish, but easy to read...) with the downloadable templates. You can find this in his blog on
the logroller. Feel free to download and share with the world, he deserves a thanks or send him a picture of your print, I'm sure he'll be happy.
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| I printed it in different sizes. |
As the original size did not fit in any of my pill capsules, nor any other container I decided to downsize to fit in one of the pill capsules I have. The smaller one is the one I use further down here.
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| This is how it looks when assembled. |
It does not look that bad after all so far, but to be honest as with 3D printing you have to make comprimises sometimes. The one might not be trivial on the photo but I made was to print it with lower resolution at max speed I could to have it ready as fast as possible. The outcome is not that bad after all, and I can create many more in short time if needed. The only challenge here was to make it fit, as when printing with lower resolutions the hole sizes won't be that perfect and the extra material will fill in there, so it did not fit at all. To fix this I used a drill and drilled a hole with the desired size before assembling the roller together.
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| Perfect size logroll. |
The next challenge is to have a log that fits in the roller and the pill capsule as well. There is nothing more annoying to me when I find a geocache and the log is so huge that it is close to impossible to take out and due to that it is all damaged and each time someone finds the geocache it is getting more damaged. Of course it is a personal decision, but I use smaller, shorter logs in my geocaches and do maintenance more frequently to make sure they are not getting full.
After printing the log as you see above, I cut it to pieces, I always print my logs with the original instructions you can download from geocaching.com, all I do is when it goes into such a small geocache like this pill capsule I remove the parts referring to the trackables, as there will be no way to fit any in the container anyways.
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| Stampled to the end to hold the paper in the roller. |
Next challenge is to make sure the paper won't jump out of the roller as that would cause further confusion to the geocachers, and also a solution needed where the log can be replaced easily when full and the log roller can be reused.
At this stage I ran into another printing challenge, the hole in the middle of the roller also can have some extra material getting there during the print, to remove that I used a 2mm drill, took less than 10 seconds and issue fixed for good.
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| Log slided in place. |
Now that the log is slided in place carefully push the end on the roller to finish it up.
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| Ready to roll up. |
Believe or not you can get it wrong at this stage, I did once. What you need to pay attention to is the direction of rolling, you want the instructions to be visible first, if it is on the back side when rolled up you loose a chance of getting a new geocachers when a muggle finds your hide.
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| Final touch a piece of straw holding the log together. |
Another challenge can be solved with a small piece of cut straw. No matter how good you roll up your log if there is nothing that holds it together you have a chance it will roll down and fill up the container, and then you did not get too far from the original problem, all you would solve is easier to roll up.
Many thanks for Weellu for the original design. He might come up with more useful ideas so I'm saving
his blog's link here.
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