3-D flower buds are coming along nicely

 

This bud's for you!

It's time for a Milestone update and we've been up to a lot! Lawrence biology student, Harsimran Kalsi, and Prof. Angela Vanden Elzen joined the team 10 weeks ago and have been hard at work designing and printing flower-head bud prototypes. This was a challenging step because we didn't have a real plant to scan (they only grow in the summer). I am really happy with the way they turned out!

The next challenge was to obtain a filament in a color that approximates the real plant. Lucky for us, a local 3D printing materials business (Coex LLC) agreed to customize a color that matched the hex color code that we identified from our photographs. We had fun visiting their manufacturing floor and expriencing the process of producing plastic filaments. It is a good feeling to know that we are supporting a local small buisiness. We are looking forward to receiving the new filaments next week.

 

Lawrence biology student, Hari, is designing and printing bud prototypes as an independent Study

Once the many plastic buds are printed, they will fit snuggly onto wooden dowl rods, which will be painted the seafoam color of the true stems. Then comes the fun part: we will coat the decoy plants in a sticky tanglefoot spray to make it a trap for the invasive weevils. The best part of the design is how versitile the decoy plant is. We can test tall rods vs, short rods, big heads vs small heads, and as the sticky buds become saturated with bugs (hopefully), we can exchange the old heads for new heads in the field. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks.

 

Draft of trap plant