I am intrigued by the Farm Bot, but if I wait until February (or later) to get mine I will already likely be past the ideal planting time for spring crops where I live. As such, I’m considering going DIY.
Can anybody give me an idea how long it might take to assemble the BoM “stuff” into a working system?
The FarmBot documentation has an estimated assembly time for each component. I don’t know if it’s listed anywhere, but I don’t see a total assembly time.
If you’re ordering the materials yourself, you’ll likely be able to assemble as you order / wait for packages to arrive. You could make yourself a timeline that matches your specific situation, and with the help of the documentation predict the amount of hours you will need for assembling all the parts.
For example, here are the gantry assembly instructions, stating this section will take you about 2 hours to complete.
HI @ledgehanger, morning Don, did you build one? if so how did it work out? Asking as i have started but dont know if its going to be a practical solution to family food strategy.
cheers
tanc
I have not had a chance to build one. Still intrigued… just too much other stuff going on. Sorry.
I purchased a Genesis 1.5 XL in 2020 and can tell you it takes quite some time to assemble and get working well. I’m very mechanically inclined and it still took me quite a while to get it working. I’d estimate somewhere around 16-20 hours. I underestimated how long it would take to get built and then the “tinkering” part to get it tweaked just right to make sure it would do the repetitive tasks relatability. I will tell you it’s well worth it once it’s done though. Very rewarding to see the thing go.
Good to hear, @stre1026. Out of curiosity, what made you go with the Genesis instead of the Express model? What is it about the Genesis that makes it worth two and a half times as much as what the Express costs? (I’m not doubting that the Genesis is better. I’m trying to understand what the differences are so I can decide if they matter enough to me to pay the extra money.)
Hi @Ledgehanger - For me, it was the full Raspberry Pi (not the zero) and the UTM. I want to be able to customize my bot. I honestly haven’t had a lot of time to do that, but in the future, I’d like to. I also like the idea that it was running on rails instead of just the bed.
When I decided to build my FarmBot the kit was out of stock. So I ordered the parts that were available from the shop and produced the rest of the parts myself. I used a 3D printer for the plastic parts and a milling machine for the aluminium plates.
Producing the parts took the weekends of two months. After that the buiild was similar to having a complete kit. Building the raised bed took two days (I built a bigger bed than the one from the official documentation) and the supply lines for water and electricity took another day. The build itself was done in two days with two people.
I can give you more specific tips on how to produce some of the parts. Let me know if you are interested.