Garden Cone

Hardware for plants! Protecting sproutlings one day at a time.

Comment

Loved the theme of the challenge so I couldn't resist joining in from home!

Inspiration

After the opening ceremony I went for a walk around the yard to find a problem to solve. I was struggling to think of something when I saw more of my lunchbox pepper plants had succumb to Iowa's unpredictable weather and harsh storms.

What it does

The garden cone provides protection to plants that haven't matured enough to survive on their own. It's transparent to still allow for sunlight, has an interior wall to hold water to insulate from extreme warm temps to prevent tissue damage and cold temperatures to prevent overnight freezing.

How I built it

I'm not new to 3d printing but I had yet to venture into cad designing. No better time to learn something completely new than at a hackathon! Downloaded the student trial of Fusion 360 and started playing with it. Watched some Youtube videos on how to sketch and model a design then we were off to the races!

Challenges I ran into

The weather was a worthy opponent and literally put me through the ringer. It has been a typical Iowa week where we've seen near freezing temps at night to hot dry 80 degree days to outright down pours. Pictured is technically the Garden Cone mk 3.

Mk1. Was just a thin cone placed over a plant. Wanted to really utilize the transparent material to still allow for maximum sunlight to get through while protecting the plant. Lasted less than an hour as it was too thin and lightweight. I think the wind before the storm just blew it away.

Mk2. Got a lip at the base so that it could be covered to help stay in place and implemented my dad's idea of a second wall to hold water as insulation to regulate temperature. It lasted really well through the storm last night. It took a lot of material to make and was too costly.

Mk3. I played around with more design changes that would accomplish the things I wanted it to and used less than half of the plastic to print.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

These were my first prints that I designed myself and it feels great!

What I learned

CAD software is really clunky and nothing like I've used before so it was a steep learning curve. Mother Nature is worthy advisory.

What's next for Garden Cone

I've designed and printed three different versions in less than 48 hours. I'm not sure what else I may have overlooked that Mother Nature can throw at me but now I have the ability to make design changes whenever I want. I have a few more ideas I want to try out and I plan to upload the ones that work well to Thingiverse to help other garden lovers.

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