The design power of Onshape is helping a UK collaboration find a faster solution to harvesting seagrass meadows. Conservation charity
Project Seagrass and
Tandem Ventures have joined forces to design, develop, build and test a new automated underwater harvester that will cut and collect seagrass seed pods. This process — traditionally carried out manually by divers - is essential for restoring seagrass meadows, which quietly sustain marine life, capture carbon faster, cushion coastlines from erosion, and provide safe nurseries for countless species.
A harvester prototype, featuring a datalogging ‘brain’, was launched after several iterations in Porthdinllaen Bay in Wales, one of Britain’s most precious surviving seagrass meadows. The testing was limited to a short test harvest to prove the concept worked while causing minimal impact, with a handful of seed pods successfully collected by the new harvester pump-filter system.
Sam Rogers, co-founder of Tandem Ventures, said: “The aim is to make harvesting seagrass seeds 100-times faster than the current methods, in which scuba divers collect them one-by-one manually. Tests were promising with a radically increased collection rate, and this has given us the confidence to go away and look at refining the prototype, including upgrading the pump. With seagrass restoration initiatives in operation worldwide, the team at Tandem hope the implications and learnings from these trials will have a global impact.”
The entire autonomous harvester was designed collaboratively in
PTC’s, Onshape, a cloud-native CAD and product data management platform. This meant the team could collaborate seamlessly from anywhere - logging in from laptops on the road, in workshops and on boats, without lugging around hefty high-spec workstation PCs. Real-time version control, commenting, and simultaneous editing allowed the Tandem design team to iterate rapidly and safely. That flexibility proved crucial in a fast-moving, experimental build where the design evolved daily between test sessions.
For custom parts such as hinges, leg joints, tube guides, fins, and protective guards, the team partnered with Bambu Lab and used its H2D 3-D printer capable of building massive industrial strength components in durable TPU and PLA materials. The craft, which was roughly the size of a small car, was held together with a host of seaworthy marine-grade stainless steel fasteners supplied by
Accu Components, chosen to withstand the harsh saltwater environment.
Datalogging brainAt the heart of the harvester is its datalogging brain, components for which were supplied by Mouser Electronics. This system records depth, orientation, pressure, turbidity and temperature, providing vital feedback for researchers.
David Katzman, general manager of Onshape and Arena at PTC, said: “The seagrass harvest project is a perfect showcase for how our software can help innovative organisations achieve success in demanding environments. All of the features we’ve packed into Onshape are included to make design changes faster and in real time, with collaboration anywhere in the world one of the unique offers that accelerates iterations and gets products to market quicker.
“After the initial trial, a flexible 3-D printed blade guard, heavy duty crank-handle adjustable legs and a host of robustness upgrades were also added to the craft. We will continue to work with Tandem Ventures and Project Seagrass to further improve the prototype and, hopefully, create a faster more efficient solution to keeping seagrass meadows alive in the future.”
Following the North Wales experiment, Tandem Ventures is currently working on an entirely new pumping system to increase reliability and simplicity. This uses a vastly different pumping technique that looks somewhat like a sci-fi laser blaster.