Germinate Seeds with a 3D-Printed Container

Hey, this is Ben and I code your venture free. Actually, I am kind of obsessed with tidying and minimalism. Therefore, when I grow my microgreens, I also want to keep them neat and tidy. As a hacker, here’s my solution to solve the “Growing Chaos” problem. Design a 3D-printed grid pattern container for the microgreens.

Step 1: Measure the Size of the Seeds

In this experiment, I am going to use the broccoli microgreen as a tester. First and foremost, I use the digital ruler to measure the size of the broccoli seed. It’s around 3–5 mm.

Step 2: Design the Grid Container with AutoDesk Fusion 360

Base on the size of the seed, I use fusion 360 to design a grid pattern system which can hold the seed and let it germinate. Since my 3D printer is not that accurate, after several trial and error, I finally figure out a grid holder that can place my seed.

In each of the grid, you can see that there is a little hole at the bottom. The purpose of the hole is to let the water drain out and create a space for the root system.

Step 3: Design the Water Container Underneath

I also design another container to hold the water underneath. This design will guide the development of the root system to the boom. This is very similar to a hydronic kit. After several trails. Here’s the design that I finally come up.

Step 4: Broccoli Seeds Start to Germinate

I start to plant some broccoli microgreens. I put 1–3 seeds in each of the grid in order to see the differences later on. After several days, the seeds start to germinate and the root system developed to the bottom as I expected. If you want to know the growing progress of these microgreens, please feel free to check out my Instagram later on.

Step 5: Improvements

There are definitely some improvements to the design.

Instead of PLA, PETG is a better material for this project because it is food safe. ABS or PLA filament is generally considered unsafe to use with anything that will comes into contact with food. That’s because ABS contains evil toxic chemicals which can contaminate your food and then.

Another problem is the oversized water container without any drainage. This provides a favorite environment for fruit fries. This time, I just simply use some plastic tape to cover up the container. In the long term, I will probably design a better water container that is the best fit to the grid system.

Conclusion

So this is the quick wrap up of the microgreens project. Thanks for checking out my weekend project. Have fun!