final documentation self watering planter

Summary:

My self-watering planter will have a compartment for the plant on top that rests inside a container filled slightly with water. The connection between the two will be a drain-like hole that a wick will fit through. The wick will be a cotton rope that is thin enough to fit through a small hole creating a connection between the water and the plant. The wick will be knotted on the plant side of the hole and then hang to the bottom of the container (therefore, touching the water). I will have to make an exact measurement of the rope so it snugly fits. I have been researching planters all semester because I am very interested in them and want to make something that would be new. I also knew that I wanted to create something customizable that had a great range of usability. Self watering planters seemed perfect because they are a new idea that is a good design for everyone. I am going to further the universality of a self-watering planter by making the compartment the water sits in containers everyone can find in their homes – empty cans. My vision for this product is to be sold at hardware, plant and grocery stores, emphasizing the recycling process.

The 3d printed part of this will fit snugly and securely inside tin cans. I like the look of two different opposing materials being used in one project and I think the tin can will make the plastic 3d printed part and the plant look more natural together.

Click to view inspiration photos

Click to view Artist Design Statement

Click to view project presentation

 

Process:

 

Of the 5 prints I tried of the same exact file, only one printed correctly. If I didn’t run into these issues, I would have printed more planters.  Here are my progress photos:

 

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Finished product… Keep your plants happy!

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final 3d printing project inspiration

For my final project, I want to create a self-watering planter. I have been doing a lot of research on the internet of the different ways people are achieving this. I think 3d printing the parts is the best material choice for this type of project because the parts will need to get wet, they need to be taken apart easily as well as have a high level of specificity or customizability. I really like the look of wooden or metal planters, as opposed to fully out of plastic/acrylic. The contrasting look between materials is what I am going for. I am going to create a planter that will have a main compartment for the plant made my the 3d printer that rests inside a cavity for the water. This 3d printed structure will live inside a tin can like from soup or green beans. I am going to create a hole in my 3d printed planter that will have an opening at the top and bottom in which a user can pour water into the reservoir at the bottom about once a month.

My self-watering planter will have a compartment for the plant on top that rests inside a container filled slightly with water. The connection between the two will be a drain-like hole that a wick will fit through. The wick will be a cotton rope that is thin enough to fit through a small hole creating a connection between the water and the plant. The wick will be knotted on the plant side of the hole and then hang to the bottom of the container (therefore, touching the water). I will have to make an exact measurement of the rope so it snugly fits. I have been researching planters all semester because I am very interested in them and want to make something that would be new. I also knew that I wanted to create something customizable that had a great range of usability. Self watering planters seemed perfect because they are a new idea that is a good design for everyone. I am going to further the universality of a self-watering planter by making the compartment the water sits in containers everyone can find in their homes – empty cans. My vision for this product is to be sold at hardware, plant and grocery stores, emphasizing the recycling process.

The 3d printed part of this will fit snugly and securely inside tin cans. I like the look of two different opposing materials  being used in one project and I think the tin can will make the plastic 3d printed part and the plant look more natural together.

 I believe this design will improve the quality of your plants lives and thus the quality of yours.


Below, you will see some planter ideas I liked.

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 My prototype failed because the slot for the tin can to fit into was WAY too small. I am going to do another test print. screen-shot-2016-11-30-at-9-15-20-am

How-to video creative brief

Going into this class, I knew that I wanted to do a short creative animation to  bring awareness to the proper treatment of dogs. I am going to make an explainer video covering the basics on how to treat a dog. I will use “Cesar Milan’s Way” of dog training as a reference for the whole video. The facts I will cover will be the simplified top three list of dogs’ needs (exercise, discipline and affection) as well as some specific facts. For the animation, I am going to use some infographic components (graphs, lists), a voice over, kinetic typography and video footage. My goal for this project is to allow people to remove any biases they have on dog training, and look at dog behavior/psychology from a scientific and new perspective.

3d model tree height

Right now in my geography class we’re learning about Colorado tree characteristics. I used a map and picked three. I considered a way I could make a 3d object to help researchers measure how old a tree is by lining the item up with its rings. I settled on the tree height idea. It is to scale in that if the tree were 95 feet, I used 95 millimeters, 40 feet, 40 millimeters, etc.

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Ponderosa Pine, White Oak and Hemlock screen-shot-2016-11-09-at-7-57-10-am screen-shot-2016-11-09-at-7-49-53-am cambium-layer

Story Boards

These story boards are hard to understand, so I also entered screenshots of my illustrator files. All text is flying in on “masking tape” and the illustrators are all simple, the same line width and animate in and out as if flying through space. I am going to use a background video of constellations, on a lower opacity. I have yet to add my two facts about the differences between rap music and classical music personality types. I have three scholarly sources I’m using for this project on personality type and music preference.

3d printed ring set

I created a set of three rings to fit my fingers. Two are different “midi” rings and one is the size of my index finger. I used the circumference of my finger size to create the rings, created depth and then played around with the look of each ring. I made a ring set because I wanted to see what was possible to make on a 3D printer jewelry wise, because it would remove the struggle of finding rings (especially a set) that actually fits your fingers. I wanted to test how “dainty” I could possibly make an item while still printing clean. I will need supports for some if not all of these..

Creative Brief Motion Infographic

For this infographic I really wanted to choose a specific topic so the one minute video would have a beginning and closing thought, as opposed to touching on a small segment of a much larger topic. I went through a series of topic ideas branching off of my main two ideas, psychology and music. Some of my ideas included: Meyers Briggs personality type tutorial, the importance of rap music and finally personality and music genre. I am interested in what people’s’ music taste says about the way their brain is functioning. I want the mood to be dark, whimsical and playful. I want the graphics to all be consistent and child-like, almost. I don’t want to use any voice narration, but instead make it a kinetic typography piece featuring only text and music. I want there to be a sound wave featured throughout the entire video, somehow. This will help further the consistency of my piece throughout the different music genres I talk about. I plan to keep the sound wave in the same spot of the screen for the entire duration, following the actual audio I play. For the audio of this infographic, since I am not using a voice over I want to feature music from the genres in the background as I talk about each topic. The music will be in addition to the graphics and sound wave that will be going throughout the video.

 

Here are my two sources, so far:

http://time.com/16129/what-the-music-you-love-says-about-you-and-how-it-can-improve-your-life/

http://www.medicaldaily.com/psychology-music-choice-cognitive-thinking-influences-preference-music-genre-empathy-344774

3D Joinery

I wanted to create something to allow me to utilize recycled marinara sauce jars. I measured the circumference of three different marinara sauce containers (26.6, 26.8 and 26.4 mm), designed in Rhino a ring to fit snug around the jars. The ring has a slit in it that slides over the second piece that nails into the wall. I thought something like this could be used to organize craft supplies, teas, stones, etc. The nail holes look the wrong size, though… I think I made a scaling error.

 

Here are the three jars I want to mount to the wall:

 

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Laser Cut 3d Object

I really wanted to do the mountains for this project because it seemed like it would look cool spliced up in 2d pieces, almost like a topographic 3D map that is examining different layers. I also just really wanted to do the mountains for one of the class projects this semester. At first I was going to try to make it something I could hang on the wall, which would have made it harder for me to make the design appear like a mountain from “birds eye” view. So, I decided to make it desk sized.

Mini Mountain Range Artist Statement

I designed my mountains after the flat irons, but somewhere in my Rhino design process I lost hope in them actually looking like the flat irons. The scale I chose as well as the materials limited how accurate my 3D model would look in its 2D spliced form, so as I finished designing my model on Rhino I removed the “flat iron” aspect of them and focused on the final product looking like recognizable mountains as well as balance. So, the pictures below of my 3D modeling process show how my mountain design started and then lost its form. I looked at some online tutorials on topographic 3D modeling, and found one that suggested looking at the topographic elevation map of your area and then modeling it from the “top.” The first image is a screenshot of the Boulder area mountains in an elevation graph top view. From there, I drew a set of contour lines for the first three flatirons based on the picture. The tutorial said to overlay a mesh over different sides of each mountain, but that gave me some issues with all three mountains being connected at the top so I ended up lofting as well as Mesh Patch. Mountains are actually pretty easy to make on rhino, i discovered, but I would have liked to have made the edges of the mountains more ridged/jagged on illustrator after exporting it from 123D Make. I didn’t do this, however, because each 2D piece that would compose the surface area of the mountain is going to already have a jagged cardboard edge and I thought it would look too messy to have mismatched “rocky” mountain edges. This is why the mountains in the 3D software look shiny and awkward.

I put it into 123D Make and assembled it. I made the inside of the mountain very cardboard-dense so it came across more like a mountain. The process of laser cutting was not difficult, it was very fun and exciting. Assembling it went as good/bad as I was expecting… the thin joints made it very hard to assemble it without bending or ruining it, but all in all it looks like a pyramid structure/ mountain range!

 

Photos of my process

 

 

Photos of my finished product (I added some Aspen Trees….)

 

I am fairly satisfied with the way it turned out. If I were to laser cut this project again, I would make it smaller, because I think that scale would make it appear mountain-like from more angles. I also would make the middle-back peak less awkward looking. It was a good decision for me not to make the edges jagged in Illustrator, the fluidity of the layer edges makes the overall product look more clean.

Not quite the flatirons, but still mountains!