Hi makers, 

Spring is in the air. We are super excited to announce the winners of the 9th Snapmaking Contest. In this round, as a gesture to welcome the pleasing return of spring and deepen our connection with nature, we encourage our users to make anything related to plants! It could be gardening accessories or simply works featuring flowers and greenery. 

This time, we received not a few wonderful projects, which made the evaluation even harder. Thank you all for your participation. Let’s embrace springtime by revisiting some of the most interesting entries in this Contest!

1st Place: The Windmill and Grassland by AKI 

Sounds on, please! This well-made video walks us through the production process of a fantastic aquarium: from the introduction of the system to design & modeling, printing & testing, and finally, assembly & planting. Using Snapmaker 2.0 A250T, Aki 3D-printed a windmill and a baseplate with steps, representing a grassland landscape with aquatic plants. To strike a balance between artificial and natural, AKI mindfully chose a set of filaments with well-matched colors. Inside the windmill, there is a water pump that rotates the windmill screw and a water inlet of external filter hidden by the roof and body of the windmill. Underneath the windmill, a baseplate with steps supports the aqua soil. A remote control switch controls the windmill. AKI also inserted stones to prevent the PLA objects from floating. After the assembly part is finished, one can start planting! AKI added porous stones to maintain the soil condition, spread the soil, added foreground and background plants and water, and introduced small fish and shrimp into this thoughtfully made aquarium.

2nd Place: Sunflower Sundial by Mike Dyer 

Mike used the digital sundial model by Mojoptix for reference and modeled it into a sunflower to complete an attractive looking. With this installation, you can adjust the direction of the pedals depending on where you are in the world and never lose track of time while doing your gardening.

3rd Place: Automatic Plant Monitoring/Watering System by Wyatt Weaver

Wyatt Weaver is a Mechanical Design Engineer who always creates projects of high quality. This project comprises a capacitive moisture sensor, 128×32 OLED LCD, 9 Segment Bar Graph LED, and Micro Submersible Pump. All of them are controlled by an Arduino Nano with the help of a Power Module. The nine segments LED and 128×32 display can visualize the moisture level in the planter, while the submersible motor helps supply water to the plant once a sub 20% moisture level is reached.

Lucky Prize: Wedding table centerpiece, Bonsai tree, and Plant pots

@bakerbeardesigns created a wedding table centerpiece for the Contest with the help of the three functions Snapmaker 2.0 A350T offers. The base was made out of solid walnut wood using the CNC Module. They utilized the Laser Module to engrave and cut baltic birch so that the baltic birch could be inlaid in the walnut wood. Then they 3D-printed a candle & flower Holder to place in the middle of the base. And finally, the 3D-printed candle & flower holder was engraved by the Rotary Module!

Lennart Lamoller is a Graffiti artist from Hamburg. He designed an artificial bonsai tree from scratch and realized his first laser-cut project in large size with the 10W Laser Module！

There is more than that……

Apart from the winning projects, we would like to share other entries with great ideas. For example, a two-sided CNC project from Lilian Chamontin is based on a 3D scan of almond blossoms from Lilian’s garden.

Mark used his Snapmaker to build the frame of an indoor hydroponics garden for the lights and seed pods. The whole print was done with PETG filament for strength and durability. Besides, there is a small pump to stir the water. The pump and lights are controlled by an android smart power bar with a pre-set schedule. Lights are UV LED strings with a USB power input.

@mr_heiden designed a flower-shaped birdhouse in Fusion360 and printed it with PETG on his Snapmaker 2.0 F350. Threaded bushings were pressed into the connecting rods and connected by a threaded rod. Afterward, he also painted this flower-shaped birdhouse nicely. The last step is to pass a thread through a hole in the print so that it can be hung up.

Fungal gnats are a pest suffered by many gardeners. This funnels and irrigation system by Logan Daniels ​​is aimed to solve this problem. Thankfully, fungal gnats can only burrow through about two inches of dirt, and they require moist soil to reproduce. Hence, their reproductive cycle can be precluded by watering one’s plants two inches below the surface. The funnels and irrigation systems of this Snapmaker project were printed separately and then combined to enable one to evenly water one’s plants below the surface.

We hope these projects can brighten up your day and look forward to seeing you in the upcoming Snapmaking Contest! You can find more projects here.

From left to right: ECO-VASE by Bekim Sejdiu, The Tortle planter by Dean Randolph, Summer Flowers by Chen Chien Chen, Blossoming Lamp by Daniel Tallman

Happy making,

Team Snapmaker