Chia Pet Drip Tray

NOTE: REALITY-CHECK THAT YOUR PRINT IS WATERTIGHT AND/OR SEAL IT BEFORE USING. Any FDM print is only as good at holding water as the fusing of your layers. Don't be afraid to increase your flow rate, temperature, number of perimeters, etc. Here's an article with tips. (If you're doing anything that affects the interior dimensions of the finished tray—such as adding lacquer or resin—don't forget to scale up the base/scale down the insert to allow for enough clearance!)

My partner got me a M3GAN Chia Pet, and while the planter itself is amazingly campy, the plastic drip tray it comes with is another story:

• It's flimsy, making it hard to empty without spilling water everywhere.
• The capacity isn't always enough to catch all the water that seeps out over 24 hours, meaning you have to keep an eye on it and empty it repeatedly.
• The bottom of the planter ends up sitting in the runoff water, waterlogging the seeds on the bottom edge.
• It just looks cheap and ugly, like a piece of trash.

So I designed a better tray:

• It's rigid! No more sagging sides spilling water everywhere.
• It's got a huge capacity! There's enough interior volume that even if every single drop ran straight through the planter (which it won't), it should contain it all.
• The insert holds the planter above the cache tray, so it's not sitting in its own runoff.
• It looks like something designed to permanently hold the planter and can be printed in a color and material to match your decor.

Chia Pet Drip Tray dimensions:

• Because this was designed specifically for M3GAN, you'll have to do a reality check versus your own dimensions if you have a different model of Chia Pet. But it should easily scale up or down to meet different needs.
• Exterior clearance: 156mm x 120mm base, and a height of 38mm + the height of your planter
• Interior planter clearance: Very bottom of the Chia Pet should be no bigger than 151mm x 115mm (it can be bigger that that so long as the wider part is at least 2mm above the base)
• Base vs. insert clearance: There's 0.5mm of clearance around each side of the insert, so you should end up with something you can easily assemble (and take apart for cleaning) on all printers. But if you find that it's too tight, you can scale down the X and Y dimensions by a small percentage.
• Interior capacity: About 670mL, minus some volume to account for chamfering, supports, etc. (I measured M3GAN as holding a maximum of about 590mL)

Measuring your planter's water capacity is simple if you have a digital kitchen scale. Simply empty any water out of the planter, set the scale's units to mL, tare the scale with your planter on the scale, fill the planter to the top with water, and then weigh it again. But if you don't have a scale, you can get a rough estimate by filling the planter and then emptying the water into a graduated liquid measuring cup.