I don’t know if you had the same experience or not, but after the euphoria of receiving a Glowforge had settled down a bit, there came a long time of not knowing what actually to do with it.
This phase suddenly ended some 8 months ago for me, when an unimposing product idea came in contact with the capabilities of the Glowforge.
The story begins in this inconspicuous former donkey stable, located in Löwenstein, southwestern Germany.
Little indicates that this is the production site of the bluebuddy.
The bluebuddy, as you might have suspected, is build with a Glowforge.
This is what it looks like:
At the very end I will come back to what it is. For the time being I want to show how we build it.
The whole device is designed in the Autodesk world of Fusion 360 and Eagle.
We use the plugin provided by Glowforge to generate SVGs for the laser.
The parts are cut and engraved from different kinds of acrylic and mahogany.
Here’s another view at the bluebuddy through its avantgarde bottom window:
But this is not where it stops.
We also use our parametric design to generate the geometries for tools to build the bluebuddy.
Like the assembly cages
Or the frame where we position and cast our sensors in epoxy
And to take this one step further, we also use the Glowforge to create the tools to create tools for building the bluebuddy.
This is a container in which we cast the silicone molds for casting sensors.
Sometimes we screw up pieces of the material, but nothing is lost.
Everything gets recycled right back into the factory.
So, the factory itself is partially built with a Glowforge.
Like our work lamps:
Our solar-powered site grid
Down to whatever helps to smoothen the production
As promised before, here is what the bluebuddy does.
It monitors soil moisture and uses an adaptive algorithm to switch an irrigation pump.
The overall effect is perfect soil moisture, elegantly oszillating within a selectable range.
Plants respond to this service with considerable willingness to thrive.
Thanks for following me to this point.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And I hope I don’t take a liberty when I leave a link here for those who are interested or know someone who indulges in plant production.
Cheerio from the bluebuddy team!
Andreas
It’s amazing!