3D G-Tower Assembly & Usage
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- Опубліковано 7 січ 2022
- #aquaponics #hydroponics #zipgrow #verticalgardening
2022 edition, how to assemble, install, and plant a 3D G-Tower by Panhandle Ponics. The most affordable, most efficient, and easiest to use vertical gardening tower for hydroponics or aquaponics.
More information available at 3dgtower.com - Наука та технологія
Good to see you're still in the game Uncle L.
Thanks Larry!
Welcome to the new channel, James!
Hi Larry - Nice video , do you have a link to the green PLA you're using ?
I use two different ones depending on what's in stock.
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N301T3C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VFS3P2S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
Hey Larry ! I love your design, its the best i ever seen in youtube. I am wondering how the "cap" is distributing the water to the plant, it wont dry out if the roots are not long enough ?is the water reaching the rockwool itself ? thanks for your awnser and greetings from Hungary :)
The cap has holes all the way around it at the edge to distribute water evenly down the walls of the tower. The rockwool plug reaches into the tower body about 10mm or more so they always have water. No way for the roots to dry out, no air is moving through the tower body.
If you go to 23:40 in the video you can see the cap and the holes that I mentioned.
@@PanhandlePonics thank you so much for the fast answer, do you need a certain pressure foir this ? I try to build a copy of your tower from hardwear store parts (Wye PVC Pipe Fittings (50/40) with my students cuz we dont have acces to 3d printer and frankly the budget is also very low but i will try to get more founding for the next semester and we will buy the the real deal from you! Greetings from Budapest :)
Yeah, I've seen quite a few attempts at trying to duplicate them with PVC pipe fittings and it never works out anywhere close. The two main reasons being that the wye is too long and the wrong inner diameter and the inside of the fittings are smooth rather than ribbed. Not to mention the weight and the fact that they will plug up with roots because of that narrow inner diameter.
@@PanhandlePonics hey Larry ! I finally decided to buy the licence cuz i have a guy who can print out the towers for me, but somehow i cant purcahce is from the site without an account and i just cant register one. can you help me out ? thanks a lot , greetings from Hungary !
Awesome video! Thanks. Just to be clear - the ZipGrow tower patent is just for the manufacturing method? Does that mean we can make our own zipgrow alternatives using vinyl posts and use them commercially? Are these 3D Printed parts allowed to be used commercially?
That is correct, it's a method patent only and is held by the University of Wyoming in Laramie and simply lists Nate Storey as the inventor. You could make and use your own copies if you want to, you just couldn't legally sell them without making a very significant change to them. Keep in mind that method patents are extremely difficult to defend in court and the cost to litigate that would be a waste of money because the University of Wyoming in Laramie makes no money off the patent.
Not sure why a person would put a bunch of money into copying their bad tower design when the 3D G-Tower is less expensive and far more efficient and much easier to use. If you watch the video and compare it to the ZipGrow tower and how much easier to plant than ZipGrow, you'll quickly see that copying ZipGrow is a waste of time and money.
Yes, you can use the 3D G-Tower in a commercial setting, you can even sell your own towers. It's not patent encumbered so you're not bound by any crazy limitations.
@@PanhandlePonics Hey thanks for the thorough reply! I'm designing a hydroponic shipping container PFAL for university project and dream of some day selling them. I like your tower design but I have questions regarding their optimal use in a closed space shipping container where every inch is important. What I like about the ZipGrow is the amount of plants you can stack vertically and the ease of attaching a light source. I'm not sure about the uniformity of light when the plants are arranged on a zigzag pattern. I'm coming back from holidays next week and am thinking of buying a 3d printer for this but I'm also curious regarding food safety (ex: you suggest plastic coating, but I'm worried that's highly toxic - as is the glue). I'm just learning at the moment so if you have any resources I would love to talk! Where are you based in the US?
You'll just spend a bunch of money making a cumbersome and flawed tower. I had an 8-pack of those given to me and now they're stuffed in the garage rafters because this 3D printed tower is much better and much easier to use. You can print one of these for about $20, or create a ZipGrow clone for about $65, or buy an original one for about $90. I can't see any reason that any sensible person would spend more money on a worse product.
@@vikkic3730 Interesting! I was wondering how water tight this is. Also the food grade thing might be the deal breaker - I really like these towers and might buy and print them next week. Any recommendations for a good 3d printer?
You're really paying attention to all of the wrong information...I have proven over and over how this design is more efficient than the Zipgrow because you can only plant so many plants along one plane and still stay within the plant spacing they need. Offsetting them gets around that problem, you can't cheat nature, no way to grow 8" heads of lettuce if they're only planted 3" apart. Secondly, container farms are all hype and a bad plan. Nobody who has ever wasted the money on one of those will ever earn their money back. And, as for the food safe thing, if you watched this video all the way through, you would see where I covered that. If you print with PLA filament, the towers are actually made out of food (corn). That's as food safe as you can possibly get...Seriously though, you're really paying too much attention to all of the worst information that you could be paying attention to.
also, have you tried strawberries in them? how does it work?
They're only intended for quick turn around plants, plant roots will expand to fill their planter no matter what you are planting in. You would plug up the tower with roots before you got strawberries. Not a fault of the tower, just the nature of plant roots.
Hey Larry I've been doing some research and I'm going to go ahead and purchase the license in the following days. Interested in the T1 subscription as well - do you have any videos uploaded on your website that are not available here?
By the way your website is hilarious, I love how you make the snowflakes mad. Good job on fighting the good fight.
If you purchase the license, there's no need for the subscription. As for other videos, there aren't any other ones on this channel that are hidden. I just decided that all future 3D G-Tower, aquaponics, and greenhouse related videos will be posted to this channel rather than the other one that bears my name. Anything related to those topics on my other channel will remain there as an archive, but that channel is strictly just going to be for humor, commentary, hobby stuff from here on out.
That personal website is basically the companion to the other UA-cam channel. You can almost smell the snowflakes roasting on an open fire on the website and the companion UA-cam channel.
@@PanhandlePonics Well I've been watching and reading and I'm a big fan, we think very alike on many things
@@PanhandlePonics Do you have an email I can reach you at?
How come you don't do the 3 planter towers anymore?
Is it because this is a bigger size?
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you referring to having one to the left, one to the right, and one in the middle? If so, that's just because I'm just growing heads of mini romaine lettuce and they don't need that much spacing.
@@PanhandlePonics Thank you Larry, in your previous video you said; If you were to grow indoors, which I will be, then it would be make sense to have 2 planters per tower segment, one on each side. Do you still think that is a good idea or it's better to have two complete towers back to back? If you do think double side tower is good, do you sell that in the plans?
The only way you're going to have two planters per segment is to use the 3x6 segment that I used in the video. Even if you grow in a greenhouse, you still only have light shining from left to right across the front of the tower. As for plans, I don't do that kind of stuff. As the website says, I'm just providing an accessory the same as if you were buying plumbing fittings at a hardware store. Those don't come with plans either.
which 1 performs better this 1 or Prototype?
Not sure which prototype you're referring to.
@@PanhandlePonics ua-cam.com/video/gQW4Ott01dE/v-deo.html
Believe me, if that old design worked any better, I wouldn't have bothered going this route. That's why the 3D printed towers are the only towers in my greenhouse.
@@PanhandlePonics i understand that, i see your efforts in the prosses, your honest explanations.... but what make the 3d printed towers better then old design, the size of the main pipe, foe example the bigger distance between plants and the liquids.... from your experience?
Aside from the fact that they're easier to build is the fact that the planter pockets are precisely the correct size to hold starter plugs and the water feed system guarantees that all plants get equal water, two things not possible with the heat molded PVC towers. They're also a whole lot lighter and easier to transport, no need for any media in the towers, and if you're using them in aquaponics - the ribs created by the thousands of layers in the 3D printing process colonizes nitrifying bacteria.
how much pla per tower?
Depends on the tower size you decide on. I only use 4 foot towers based on 3x6 segments and can get the entire tower out of one 1 KG roll with some spare left over to print an extra cap set.
I looked at zip grow towers, you are right, they are overpriced and getting them to the UK would have been cost prohibitive. Nothing unique about what Nate does, many people have been using tubing horizontally and vertically for decades. I found a supply of the medium which is blue filter foam which can be bought in 8*4 ft sheets. I agree with you, if you do not want the hassle of building your own system buy from Nate. The extra info he puts out on his youtube channel also is a payment stream for him. Some people are just too greedy and need to take a step back and take a look at their behaviour. I am sure that even Nate would agree that he has been given information, that he uses every day, for free. I wonder why he is now such a bread head.
The the biggest problem with him is that he's entirely too proud of a bad design that is cumbersome to use. The only reason his towers use a medium is because that bad design can't work without it.