The print farm
A small FDM fleet turning out the functional parts that keep the rest of the projects running, plus the occasional sea creature.
A shelf of FDM printers: two Bambu Lab P1Ps with AMS for anything that needs colour or needs to come out right the first time, and three Creality machines (two Ender 3s and a CR-10 V3) for the big jobs and the disposable ones. Everything’s modelled in Tinkercad, which is about as far from production CAD as you can get and exactly enough for net-pots, brackets, and the occasional fish. Most of what comes off the beds is functional, the parts that make the garden and the lab work, and every so often something prints purely because it’s satisfying to make.
What earns its keep
The hydroponic side of the house is almost entirely printed. The tower is a stack of printed sections capped by a perforated distributor that rains the water back down the inside; the grow pods that turn it into a garden are printed mesh baskets and threaded collars, one per plant:
The same beds turned out the PicoPH sensor enclosure and the net-pots, fittings, and jigs that don’t photograph well but hold everything together. None of it is precious. When a part wears out or a design gets better, I print the replacement and move on. When you own the means of production, the spare-parts bin is a slicer and a spool of filament.
And the occasional sea creature
The articulated octopuses on the desk up top are the other side of it: print-in-place, no supports, no assembly. They come off the bed already wiggling, which makes them a brutal test of tolerances. Too tight and the joints fuse, too loose and they flop.
A salmon that says “Never Give Up”
A wall-mounted salmon head on a printed plaque. The scale texture, the green eye, and the red gum line are all in the filament, not paint. It’s the kind of multi-colour print the AMS earns its keep on.
A salmon coat hook
A salmon head on a nameplate that grips whatever you hang from its mouth. I designed it from scratch in Tinkercad and printed it to hold a jacket at the office.
A few for the family
The gold-capped Super Mario mushroom is a coin bank: it prints as two halves that thread together, white body and metallic-gold cap. That one is my son Owen’s.
A few years ago I ran a batch of buckles for the paracord bracelets Owen braided and sold for a school entrepreneurship class. The printed clasp was the only part that needed a printer; the braid did the rest.
