Hamster Cage - "Crittertrail" Adapter

[DanWake]

Our boys have a hamster and she lives in a simple wire cage that we bought. We'd like to add some of the external tubes to give her something to explore and make it more interesting. I picked up a single section of Kaytee Crittertrail tube at Petco to start working with and got to work in Fusion 360. I've made a mating piece with external threads, a nut, and a tapered back piece to sandwich the wires and help clamp down on the mating connection. My plan is to mark and cut four of the wires and sandwich it with the back piece and the nut and then add whatever other tubing I want from there. A simple project, but it should be a nice way to turn a cheaper cage into something nice.

[jimustanguitar]

I always liked the aquariums that had tubes like this... Maybe you should send the hamster tube through a fish tank?

They have a slide (for humans) that goes through a shark tank like this at the Tropicana in Vegas. (remember when people used to go to that place?) I saw it once on the way to a company party with Penn and Teller. Oddly enough, they had dancers (wholesome ones) in big floating hamster balls on top of the pool I guess it was a hamster themed hotel or something.

[BeeAmaker]

Pretty cool

[DanWake]

We bought additional tubing and got everything installed this weekend. After tracing the outline of the nut on the wire cage, I cut it with a Dremel to get a good fit. The nut tightens down to trap the wires against the backing piece, ensuring a strong connection and covering the pointy wire ends. Since the tubing rotates freely at the joints, I made a support out of some scrap lumber to hold it horizontally. The hamster approves!

Installed on cage with a wooden support to keep it level:


Close up of the cage installation: