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When posed with a engineering task of developing a product for promoting environmental sustainability, our team including me and 2 other students came up with Crop-It. This engineering solution enables small to medium scale gardeners to plant seed more efficiently in tilled soil, combining the steps of planting into a single, simple action. It also eliminates risk of back pain from needing to bend over for long period of time while planting seeds.
I led my team in designing the entirety of the seed planter from the customer requirements and subsequent product features that we developed (doing so using Fusion 360). I created a novel, 3D-printed mechanism that combined both the actions of dropping seeds and expanding soil into a single operation by a simple pull of the device’s handle. We developed an FMEA model of our initial prototype, resulting in the revision of several components to reduce failure modes. I additionally worked extensively with tuning slicing settings and customizing support structures to streamline the 3D printing process.
The final presentation slide deck can be found here.
Assembly & Operation
Assembly & Operation
Seeds are loaded in the top seed "bulb" storage container, funneling them down to the dispensing mechanism. When the handle is actuated by the user, the sliding plate transports 1 or more small seed from the seed bulb to the top of the PVC pipe, letting them fall down to the tip of the planter. As the dispenser slide is moving, 3 Kevlar threads that are tied from the handle to the tip expand the 3 conical sections of the tip, creating a hole in the soil.
All of the parts seen (apart from the seed bulb, PVC pipe, and hardware fasteners) were all designed to be fabricated on a 3D printer in PETG with no need for support structures (except for the conical tips).
Handle design
Handle design
The dispenser slide is mechanically linked to the rotating handle with a pin-slot joint, allowing for the greatest range of motion. The slide itself is tensioned with a spring that provides the necessary restoring force to drive the slide back to it's "closed" position. The Kevlar thread that are tied to the tip run through tubes in the pipe's shroud to all be tied to the handle. One or more seeds fall into the plate's hole, which is then aligned with the hole in the pipe's shroud, allowing them to fall through the pipe.
"Petal tip" design
"Petal tip" design
The petal tip mechanism responsible for creating a hole in the soil when operated by the user consists of 3 individually hinging "petals" that form a cone when closed. Each petal is tensioned by a pair of torsion springs on a steel shaft.
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