3D Printing for Aquaponics.... what would you make?

Japan Aquaponics

A friend of mine has recently started getting interested in aquaponics, and he is a bit of a technical and engineering wizard with his own 3D printing company... so he asked... what could he make for us?

A really good question given that 3D printing can be free of traditional design constraints - so what would people be interested in making with a 3D printer? I have seen some designs for easy airlift adapters which looked interesting, as well as the usual netpots and things like that..... but can anyone think of a really novel use for 3D printing? ... a better bell siphon for example, or bespoke plumbing adapters, a better designed netpot?

What do you think 3D printing could potentially be used for? If someone has a really good idea then we could potentially try and actually make it as my friend is itching to try out something unique!

NB: I am sure that it will come up, but for the sake of the argument we can assume that we are able to get hold of a completely safe plastic that will not leach anything into the water and will be resistant to temperature extremes and UV.

RupertofOZ

Siphons/standpipes.. would seem the most obvious... perhaps some sort of venturi aeration design....

arbe

More grow beds and fish tanks.

SuperVeg

arbe wrote:

More grow beds and fish tanks.

Lol, APART from a complete aquaponics system including the pump, media, (and fish ?)

a few things..

[*]like above, venturi, siphons etc
water proof enclosures for electroncs/other control units
[/*] <- how are you meant to use this thing ?

Charlie

*My yabbie ball design.... which I just cant get right with conventional technology.

*Made to fit quarantine tank. Something that can hang on the side of your 'round' or 'square' FT, emersed in the water. So you can quarantine fingerlings or separate for sizing etc etc. Floating baskets are good but something made to fit would be superb.

*Pump covers. Similar to a milk crate but finer meshing to prevent fingerlings entering the danger zone. A box shape doo-daa that sits nicely over your pump with provisions for sucker pads to stick to the FT floor.

Ive got heaps but that will do for now..

Journeyman

Come on guys... THINK.

Seriously, if you CAN print 3D, give us filters that emulate some butterfly wings. Design entrapment angles and indices that stop everything down to micron size AND let us reverse the current to flush them clean.

If you can print anything, you could print this pout in swathes that can be cut up, shaped and implemented to act as both solids filters - with paths OUT of the filter ; and biofilters that allow H2O to reverse flush.

And you could probably, with a little bit of clever design. leave specifically shaped pockets for the bacteria to ensure we can use tap water to flush backwards and not have to worry about re-cycle processes.

Give me THAT and I will begin to believe technology has finally given us a path to the future!

RupertofOZ

How about an entire balanced natural Ecosystem.... :lol:

RupertofOZ

3D printing definitely exists... and there's even some really large scale machines around..... but they aint cheap...

Journeyman

I know it exists RoO - I just don't believe it can be a magic producer of dreams. That is called nanotech. When they can produce little buckyball things that can manufacture from a molecular level AND then turn into couch potatoes I will begin to believe, but printing real things???

Come on, how much magic will you take before your physics kicks in.

There is a reason they aren't printing cars or computers and it is that they cannot get the tech to make all those different components come together. The machinery that lets them do plastic doesn't do shit with silicon and gallium arsenide is a whole other tech.

Where this MIGHT help is in patterning. Currently that is the ONLY thing this tech can do. And patterns is where we can make use of it because filtering is a pattern system - all those solids, all those molecules, all of them are treated the same way over and over.

Print us a real filter. Release us from the need for MBB filters and solids filters and even the need to have our fish tanks run an outside system at all.

THEN you have a good tech. THEN you have a life-increasing tech that doesn't cost an arm, a leg and most of your salary.

Japan Aquaponics

Charlie wrote:

*My yabbie ball design.... which I just cant get right with conventional technology.

*Made to fit quarantine tank. Something that can hang on the side of your 'round' or 'square' FT, emersed in the water. So you can quarantine fingerlings or separate for sizing etc etc. Floating baskets are good but something made to fit would be superb.

*Pump covers. Similar to a milk crate but finer meshing to prevent fingerlings entering the danger zone. A box shape doo-daa that sits nicely over your pump with provisions for sucker pads to stick to the FT floor.

Ive got heaps but that will do for now..

These sound like they could be fairly easily done (don't know what a yabbie ball is though!) The pump cover is a good one as we have the same problem too, and theoretically could be customised for each pump size so that it fits perfectly. It could also be designed to allow solid waste to pass through, or under, easily. What size mesh would you imagine? Knock up a quick sketch and that could be reasonably easy to make from what I understand.

Japan Aquaponics

Journeyman wrote:

Come on guys... THINK.

Seriously, if you CAN print 3D, give us filters that emulate some butterfly wings. Design entrapment angles and indices that stop everything down to micron size AND let us reverse the current to flush them clean.

If you can print anything, you could print this pout in swathes that can be cut up, shaped and implemented to act as both solids filters - with paths OUT of the filter ; and biofilters that allow H2O to reverse flush.

And you could probably, with a little bit of clever design. leave specifically shaped pockets for the bacteria to ensure we can use tap water to flush backwards and not have to worry about re-cycle processes.

Give me THAT and I will begin to believe technology has finally given us a path to the future!

I hadn't thought about printing filters, but given the small scale that these printers can work on then I imagine it could well be possible. My friend does not have the larger scale printer and so is limited to the size he can produce - but certainly no reason why it could not be done. He believes that in the next few year CAD designers will become more valued as they will be able to take ideas and actually turn them into plans that can be made real... which makes sense.

Cheap filters at varying micrometer levels that can be easily backwashed, perhaps an interlocking design that meant the filters can just be snapped together for ease of use and scalability. I will ask him how durable something like that could be made.

Journeyman

Cool... it isn't hard. Nature did it a long time back. There are butterfly's out there where the colour is because they trap various wavelengths of light with PHYSICAL structures. Solids and chemicals from bacteria and fish food are a LOT bigger than wavelengths of light.

Bags the prototypes for testing... just so none of those other greedy bastards steal my idea.

Oh, and I want credit (and cash if it fires up) for the idea about what to do and what pattern to follow.

Japan Aquaponics

A Venturi might be relatively easy to make... maybe something that could just snap on to existing fittings and pipes. If someone wants to give me a sketch and some dimensions then I would be interested in that too and can ask my mate if it is possible.

Bell Siphon: How would you change it? How would you make it better? Standard pipe fittings can be made to work without too much hassle for the most part, so how would you make a better bell siphon? You could certainly design something with an in-built breather tube for example - but that is not so exciting. Does someone have a real grasp on water dynamics through a pipe? Does a swirling action through the top of the Affnan Standpipe help to expel the air? If so, would a flared standpipe with a swirl design built into it, help the water flow better?

You might also be able to design connectors that help water to flow better - instead of the usual 90 or 45 degrees that we have now you could make a design that achieved the angle desired, but over a gentler curve for less flow disruption.

Charlie

Japan Aquaponics wrote:

(don't know what a yabbie ball is though!)

A yabbie ball is something Ive been working on since early 2011.

Yabbie balls or YabCab's are something I came up with for keeping yabbies in hard bottom tanks or AP systems. The idea is basically an overgrown bio ball or mesh ball that becomes the home for a yabbie (about the size of a small melon), in this style habitat it can crawl around inside the ball and it rolls around the tank to it can eat whatever it wants from the bottom whilst being protected from fish and fish are protected from it. Its also caged from fighting/eating other yabbie friends.

From years of experience breeding/keeping yabbies I have yet to find a fail safe and humane way of keeping yabbies in captivity. YabCab's may be the solution... but still the numbers need to be at humane levels so they can still move around and be active.

Keep in mind this idea is really only for the small scale hobby farmer or AP enthusiast and by no means commercially viable.

Its just a cool idea that I think will work, paperwork pulled me up on my development a while back so I put it aside. If I had a 3D printer.... Id make my own and give them away for a dollar each.

Japan Aquaponics

Charlie wrote:

Japan Aquaponics wrote:

(don't know what a yabbie ball is though!)

A yabbie ball is something Ive been working on since early 2011. In one way or another, even years before that when I played a part in EDU system viability. But thats a different story.

Yabbie balls or YabCab's are something I came up with for keeping yabbies in hard bottom tanks or AP systems. The idea is basically an overgrown bio ball or mesh ball that becomes the home for a yabbie (about the size of a small melon), in this style habitat it can crawl around inside the ball and it rolls around the tank to it can eat whatever it wants from the bottom whilst being protected from fish and fish are protected from it. Its also caged from fighting/eating other yabbie friends.

Like a hamster ball for Yabbies?! :cheers:

Thats sounds cool. :think:

You could make larger ones too for 2 really aggressive ones to duke it out in... like the thunderdome.

Is the trick to make it so that the mesh is small enough to allow the yabbie to walk, and the ball move, without him getting all caught up... but the holes large enough so that it can feed?

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