It’s inevitable — somewhere along your journey, a piece of your outdoor gear is going to break. Sometimes its a buckle, sometimes it’s a zipper pull, and it always happens at the wrong time. Before you toss you out your backpack, tent, or camping chair, you should look to see if your broken part can be replaced using a 3D printer. If you’re looking to upgrade your backpacking or camping kit, there’s no shortage of 3D goodies for your GoPro, trekking poles, and more. Read on for some of our favorite 3D printable pieces of camping and backpacking gear.
Don’t waste money buying overpriced carabiners at your local outdoors store — use this scalable 3D printing file to print your carabiner at the size that you need. Just don’t try to go rock climbing with these ones.
Positioning a gas canister on an uneven surface can try your patience. Use one of these handy tripods to help stabilize your backcountry cook set. The one pictured is designed European D2 EN417 gas canisters. Alternatively, there’s also this one that fits two other sizes (90mm or 110mm)
Using a paper clip and few M2x6 screws, you can have a fully functional zipper pull for your tent, sleeping bag or clothing. If you don’t have a paperclip handy, there’s also plenty of fully-3D-printable zipper pull designs out there, like the one pictured above.
The number one thing that breaks on most gear is the buckle. This 3D printable file will replace a standard side-release buckle and is compatible with 3/4 inch straps.
Plop down too hard into a camp chair, and you’ll know it. The base mounts that hold the legs and the front mounts that secure the seat are notoriously easy to snap. Thankfully, fabricating these parts is a cakewalk for even the cheapest 3D printers on the market.
Every tech-savvy camper should have this 3D printed figure 9 style rope tightener for their tarps or awnings. Seriously. These might seem dumb and unnecessary, but they’re super handy to have in your pack, and weigh practically nothing.
These handy tensioners help you adjust the guy lines for your tent, tarp, or even your badminton net.
Need to bring along a spoon, fork, and knife on your next camping or backpacking trip? Then here is your ultimate 3D printed all-in-one utensil: The sporkinfe! Just make sure you print with a food-safe plastic filament if you intend on eating hot food with this sucker. We highly recommend Colorfabb’s awesome nGen filament.
Ever lose or break a tent stake while camping? Of course, you have. It happens to everyone! Next time you are short a stake, don’t run out to Walmart for replacements — download these files and print your own.
Want to keep your trekking poles tidy and neat while storing them? Then print up a pair or two of these handy trekking pole clips.
Paracord can be a lifesaver when backpacking — it can replace a broken shoelace, be used to lash sticks for a shelter, and more. This printable clip set makes it easy to carry around some extra cordage.
Keep your matches, medicine, and other small items safe and dry with these survival containers. Each lid is threaded to fit the various sizes of bottles that you can print.
The rubber tips are the first thing to go on a pair of trekking poles. You take them off and lose them, or they fall off when hiking. Replacements are hard to find — you usually have to visit a sporting goods retailer like REI, or contact the manufacturer directly. Though they’re designed specifically for Leki poles, these tips can be modified to fit a variety of trekking poles.
Do you GoPro your hikes and share them on YouTube? Then you should check out these instructions to print a backpack strap mount and a trekking pole selfie mount.
Duct tape is the go-to staple when you need to make an unexpected repair to your tarp, tent, or boots. Use this handy tape winder to store an emergency stash in your car or backpack, without the bulky roll.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.