For this section of the semester, It was my pleasure to work with my friend Lydia Miller, one of my crew mates from the Waunakee Theater. We worked together on this final project, and we helped each other when we had problems or questions for each other about the machines in the Innovation Center.
Brainstorming
Using an article from an old Boy's Life magazine about crafts and projects, Lydia and I brainstormed ways that we could make a growbed. A growbed is a small garden box that uses sub-irrigation to more effectively water any plants that you are growing. We were planning to make a growbed, in a very similiar way how the Noocity Growbed works. We were going to improve upon the design of their growbed by making ours smaller.
After doing some more research, I learned that capillary action, the movement that brings water up to the roots of the plants, is not always reliable. As an addition to the project, Lydia planed on making a vertical section to the grow bed. We realized that making a growbed would be unrealistic, would take a lot of materials to make, and wouldn't be very useful during the winter weather.
Instead, we decided to make bird feeders, using a 2 Liter bottle and a Milk Jug. Our plan was to cut off the bottoms, and make caps that could be secured by dowels around the feeding holes. The dowels would have a double purpose of letting the birds land and eat birdseed, but also secure the bottom cap to the 2 liter/milk jug.
Making the Bird Feeders
Over winter Break, I designed the 2 bottom caps and all of the dowels needed for the project.
I first used the 3D printer to print out the base for the Milk jug, and all of the dowels. Sadly, the print didn't end up working the first two times, and the printer ran out of filament on the third time. Mr. Willauer helped me by adding some extra off-white filament he had on hand to finish the print.
This is what the Bird feeder looks like before adding the Cap. For the hanging cap, we used an old coat hanger.
This is the final product. If I could change this, I would make the 3D printed parts the same color, adjust the sizes of the holes and dowels to make room for more clearance. I also want to do a better job at measuring out the holes and use the circular tool for the laser cutter to more accurately cut the holes.