The Infinity Garden is my personal version/derivation of the Kontinuum Garden designed by the Rasmussen brothers of Copenhagen, Denmark.

You can read more about their awesome project, or help fund them at this address: http://www.indiegogo.com/Kontinuumgarden

Personally, I thought their design could use a few tweaks, so I created this Thing as a Proof-of-Concept, and way to share my thoughts with them. I don't mean to steal any of their thunder, and welcome them to utilize any and all of my ideas shown here!

The biggest improvement I have to offer is that everything in my design can be printed on a Makerbot Cupcake, Thing-O-Matic, or Replicator, thus encouraging maximum availability.

My design was made in SolidWorks, and I've included a .zip file containing all of my original files, assemblies, renderings, etc. Feel free to experiment, modify, and create a neat Thing out of this!

Again, this is a PROOF-OF-CONCEPT only, so I didn't check out dowel sizes at the hardware store, or figure out many of the minute details. So tweaking will be in order before anyone goes off printing this substantially print-intensive beast!

First let's briefly discuss the Rasmussen brothers' Kontinuum Garden, and what exaxtly it is/does. Long story short, it's a brilliantly simple hydroponic gardening system that utilizes the "Flood & Drain Sub-Irrigation" system. So each cell in the larger wheel contains a plant living in a hydroponic grow medium which is highly water-absorbant. The wheel turns (1 rotation per hour) slowly dipping the plants in the nutrient-rich water and then removing them. All the while, they are subjected to light from a central lighting source that provides much needed "sun" to all of the plants in the entire wheel.

Now the brothers Rasmussen suggested a 4 step process:

1. Have/Build/buy a 3d printer.
2. Use it to build a gigantic 1 METER ^3 3d Printer.
3. Print the gigantic parts for their garden system.
4. Assemble it & Grow things.

I personally think step number 2 is unrealistic, unreasonable, and not remotely cost effective to the "Urban Gardening Hipster" they say they are appealing to with this invention.

So my goal was to make a version of their design that could be printed on my Thing-O-Matic, and be supplimented with a few minor parts from the hardware store. Though this is very much a work in progress, I think it a success thus far.

As you can see in the renderings, my hoops/wheels are constructed from 32 interlocking segments which are then supported by a series of metal or printed brackets. The screw that attaches these support brackets goes through the Wheel Segment, and into the pre-drilled end of the Wooden Dowel crossbars that make up the rest of the structure.

The planter pods then slide onto said dowels, thus locking them into place and preventing them from falling out. The bottom of each plater pod has 7 holes allowing water to enter when submerged.

Rather than having this giant wheel be toothed like a giant gear like they had designed, mine sits on two cross-bars in the watering tank. These are more wooden dowels suspended in bearings in the side of the tank, and covered by a piece of rubber tubing/hose for extra traction. One end of each of these "Drive Dowels" is fitted with a belt pulley, which will then be connected to a single motor mounted on the rear pillar to turn the entire contraption.

I still have lots to add, including:

--The motor & belt

--The light bar

--A resevoir tank for maintaining the water level

--A simple control panel of some kind

Cheers everyone! Will update soon!

Message me with any questions, comments, hatemail, etc.