Woody Carverton
Mame
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We all know that the start of a good bonsai is a great root system. About 2 years ago or so we purchased a small quantity of the brand name superroots "airpots" just to try them out and see what all the hype was about. Last year we made some of our own DIY style air-pots over an afternoon outdoors with a soldiering iron and some of the standard 1 gallon pots we get from Pro Cal (pics attached). Both the brand name and our own DIY versions had similar results, and those were amazing compared to our control trees we used to compare too.
The downside of the brand name airpots is their cost on the scale we need. Not bad for a few trees but super expensive when you start talking about buying thousands of them compared to the cost of standard injection molded 1 gal pots. The down side of making the DIY 1 gallon pots is it takes nearly 25-30 minutes to poke all those holes by hand for just one pot, and even though we're outside, the fumes from burning them are still toxic.
So, being the tinkerer that I am, and being inspired by my 3d printers, I have decided to design and build an airpot bot to poke those holes for me in an automated fashion. I'm sharing this experience here on the forum in hopes that there are others who enjoy tinkering, have knowledge of linear motion cnc systems and arduino's to help with design and functionality as well as software to control it. In the end, when all the bugs are worked out, and there is a solid working version I hope to make a step by step how-to guide on how to build your own, hopefully for under $100 so everyone can make their own air pruning pots for cheap.
Right now, I have some rough sketches for the beta version machine and parts are on order from china. Some 8mm linear rod, bearings, steppers, etc. (3d renderings to come in a future post). In the mean time, if you have a love of tinkering, knowledge of coding for arduino, or want to join in on helping with the design and functionality let me know. It is my hope that in the end we can make a cheap machine together that can make air pruning pots in an automated fashion for our bonsai trees from 1 gallon to 15 and once a few of them are built throughout the forum community here, hopefully everyone who wants to try out an air pruning pot can for super, super cheap.
As the design, build, etc. goes on, I will be posting videos, pictures, failures and so on in this thread. Feel free to share your thoughts and criticisms.
The downside of the brand name airpots is their cost on the scale we need. Not bad for a few trees but super expensive when you start talking about buying thousands of them compared to the cost of standard injection molded 1 gal pots. The down side of making the DIY 1 gallon pots is it takes nearly 25-30 minutes to poke all those holes by hand for just one pot, and even though we're outside, the fumes from burning them are still toxic.
So, being the tinkerer that I am, and being inspired by my 3d printers, I have decided to design and build an airpot bot to poke those holes for me in an automated fashion. I'm sharing this experience here on the forum in hopes that there are others who enjoy tinkering, have knowledge of linear motion cnc systems and arduino's to help with design and functionality as well as software to control it. In the end, when all the bugs are worked out, and there is a solid working version I hope to make a step by step how-to guide on how to build your own, hopefully for under $100 so everyone can make their own air pruning pots for cheap.
Right now, I have some rough sketches for the beta version machine and parts are on order from china. Some 8mm linear rod, bearings, steppers, etc. (3d renderings to come in a future post). In the mean time, if you have a love of tinkering, knowledge of coding for arduino, or want to join in on helping with the design and functionality let me know. It is my hope that in the end we can make a cheap machine together that can make air pruning pots in an automated fashion for our bonsai trees from 1 gallon to 15 and once a few of them are built throughout the forum community here, hopefully everyone who wants to try out an air pruning pot can for super, super cheap.
As the design, build, etc. goes on, I will be posting videos, pictures, failures and so on in this thread. Feel free to share your thoughts and criticisms.
