Plant Support Garden Cane Hat

Does your tomatillo send out lots of chunky horizontal branches? Do those branches bear lots of fruit? Do the branches then snap off?

NO MORE! With this little hat to go on the end of a garden cane you can run strings down to give those branches the support they need.

Whilst inspired by problems with tomatillo plants specifically this is also to be put to use for hefty chilli plants… and basically any branching plant that may suffer from branches breaking under the strain of a heavy crop.

The design as it is is a little to the larger side and can accommodate a 20mm wide cane, which covers most normal garden canes plus heavier duty things like 15mm rebar. I am for the most part actually printing these at 66% scale as that size works for me. The item has been designed such that it should print fairly robustly down to 50% scale… obviously the caveat then is that the cane diameter accommodated becomes proportionally smaller.

PRINTING

The design deliberately thickens at the tip as this will be taking the weight of the branches pushing down against the cane top. In my current prints I am printing with a 0.4mm nozzle with a printing configuration with 2 shells and a 20% hexagonal infill. The design has not had much testing over time yet, but increasing the shells or infill would likely increase the strength. I have printed mine in ABS and I'm acetone vapour smoothing them mainly as this is likely to increase layer bonding strength as well.