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My name is Amir, and I'm an inventor.
My invention is trying to bring back milkweed and dandelions.
That's a food source of butterflies and bees.
Milkweed and dandelions we consider as weeds,
so we cut them down, but I want to bring them back.
So I'm inventing a seed launcher that will spread seeds
to grow milkweed and dandelion plants.
The plants can provide food for pollinators,
like butterflies and bees.
Pollinators are important because they make it possible
for plants to reproduce and make more plants,
including many fruits and vegetables that humans
and other creatures live on.
I'm a student at NuVu.
It's a project-based school where we learn
through hands-on exploration.
So I'm going to use a few tools in the shop,
to get some work done today.
For my invention, I had to figure out
how to launch a seed ball.
It's soil mixed with dandelion seeds
and milkweed seeds formed into a ball that can be launched.
I have an earlier prototype that used a can of compressed air
triggered by a servo motor to launch the seed ball.
My latest prototype uses a small jet or air blower.
In this jet, there is a motor
that is spinning a small propeller.
It spins fast like a fan to draw air in,
and blows the air out the other side.
And there's a harbor for the seed balls.
They drop down into the nozzle to be launched
by the flow of air from the propeller.
I am using a CAD program, computer-aided design,
to model the parts that I use in the seed launcher.
I can design 3-D models and send the files to a 3-D printer.
It creates each part by slowly building up
thin layers of plastic.
To me, invention means using your creativity
to think of ways to make something better
or make something new that we don't already have.
So the air blower is going to have this propeller in it,
and a propeller is going to spin and blow air out.
And when the nozzle is attached, it will blow out the seed balls.
All the parts will be attached to a wooden base.
This is the laser cutter.
Basically, a laser cutter uses a thin beam of red light.
So the laser cutter gives me super precise, quick cuts.
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The next thing I'm going to make is a motor mount.
In order to design the mount, I need to take a lot of
measurements off the motor, so that the mount
is not too small or too big.
So this is the motor mount.
It has been 3-D printed and it works really well
and holds the motor perfectly.
This rod right here is going to connect the propeller
to the motor shaft.
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(propeller rattling)
It's blowing air out.
It's good.
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So the motor was spinning and it was sucking air from under,
and it was spinning out on this side.
So for testing, I'm making these little clay balls
that were taking the place of the seed balls.
I can mold the shape so I know what shape I need
my seed balls to be.
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So, I think it came out well.
This is the backpack that I'm going to be using.
The motor and the actual launcher
is going to be at the very bottom of the backpack.
And then instead of using the hopper,
I'm using the pocket that comes with the backpack,
the smaller pocket, and I mounted the tube to it,
and there's gonna be a little hole here
where the nozzle pokes out.
So with the seed launcher inside of it,
it's still a functioning backpack.
Everything is mounted inside of the backpack,
and we know that the air can push out the seed balls
so the next step would be do a final test.
I'm loading in the actual seed balls now.
I have my seed launcher and we're going to launch
some seed balls into the wild.
(seed launcher whirring)
It seems to be working very well.
Hopefully next spring, the seeds that we launch
would have sprouted and we'll see the bees
and the butterflies have more food to eat.
I like to help nature because we humans have
a lot of technology to help us,
but animals, they don't have anything that helps them.
So my seed launcher is technology for the bees
and butterflies to find their food a lot easier.