Indoor Planter: Bottom Watering, Self-Draining, Built-in Handle, Radiator Mountable

prusaprinters

This plant pot's features:Bottom Watering  This helps keeps the surface dry so the soil is less likely to mold in a lower circulation setting like the indoors. Some plants also like this form of watering and don't like moisture on their leaves, violets come to mind for this as an example. The water should creep up into the soil with capillary action as well. HandleThe watering trough's front lip is easy to hook one's thumb into for holding the pot if it needs to be moved or watered.Self StandingHas legs that are suitable for standing on flat surfaces.Fits a radiatorThis is probably less useful to most, but in my home all windows have radiators in front of them, this makes it difficult to place planters where the most light is. During warmer months the radiator won't be turned on and so it makes for a good mounting place for the pots.Self-DrainingThis model is designed to have one wall/shell as if it were printed in vase mode. If you print with large layer heights ( 0.35mm is what I did all of my testing at. ) it should have imperfections in places which will allow water to leak between the layers. You might need to mess with the settings to pull this off, but I had no trouble myself making this work.Minimal Support MaterialIt might be possible to print the pot completely upside down ( legs on top, plant opening on the print bed), but I didn't get the chance to test this out. I know it is possible to print this pot rotated so that is resting on the face opposite the handle. This can be accomplished by rotating the pot roughly 251 degrees along the Y axis. The support can be kind of hard to clean off from this face, but it is also a face that should be facing away from anyone viewing the pot, and so you can elect to simply leave the support on if you don't care. If someone wants to develop a way to print the pot upside down, that would be wonderful, and I might test this in the future, it just seemed like too much unsupported area to work so I have yet to test it myself.Aeration I don't have a good way to test this, but my hope is that if there is enough of a gap in the walls of the pot to allow water to drain, there should be enough gap to allow air to reach into the soil as well. There is no way to have worms and other things that provide aeration, so my hope is that this design will alleviate some of that. Fit next to each otherThe planters are shaped so that you can fit multiple next to each other in a row. Cylindrical planters seemed space inefficient for how I planned on using these planters indoors. Visuals : Demonstration on how to use the handle, fill the watering trough, and showing off the self-draining feature of the pot : Demonstrating self-draining and the way water pools at the bottom of the pot where the legs are, the longer you fill the watering trough, the higher the level of water will be reached in the soil. This also shows how using a translucent or transparent filament will help see the water level in the pot when watering.  :How to hold the handle :Showing off how the pot fits a radiator and a better idea of what it looks like.Example of pot holding a plant.Example of pot printed in glow in the dark filament :Demonstrating tested printing orientation ( Y-Axis 251 degrees ):  Turn-Table Render: Still Render:  Recommendations:Print with as wide nozzle and as large a layer height as you can. The layers help water drain and these settings will make the pot print very fast.Have fun with it, I printed a bunch of these in glow in the dark material, it looks neat, and who knows, maybe the plants will like the extra light?Water the plant only on surfaces you don't mind getting wet. The pot is self draining, and there is no pan under it, not all the water you put in will stay in. I recommend filling the watering trough in a kitchen sink, and then leaving the pot in the sink so that the extra water can drain out. Using a translucent filament will help show the water level in the pot when watering the plant, this can help prevent overfilling.If you have a better way of printing this or find plants that do well in it, let us know here. Backstory :I live in a small apartment with the only good windows for plants being south facing. It rains and is cold most of the year and because this building is old it has radiators for heating. All of the radiators are in front of the windows which makes it difficult to place tables or any surface that would be good for putting planters on. The radiators are water radiators, not steam based, so they don't get super hot, and there isn't a lot of light in the winter, so I wanted to have some way to put plants in front of the windows during spring and summer when the radiators would not be run. These planters fit into the top of the radiator which holds them securely and gives the radiator a use during the warmer months. Closing thoughts :Thank you for having a look at this design. I would love to hear your experiences with it and if you learn anything, please let to community know!About me : I am just some starving artist living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. If you would like to help support me continuing to make things, please consider donating here :https://ko-fi.com/guiltyimpThank you and I hope you enjoy this model! -Jaz