We built a very basic vacuum seeder at the recent farmhack.
The box we used was ridiculously large as it was the one we had lying around. We’ll cut it down now we know it works.
We didn’t do any drawings as such, just learned by doing having watched a youtube video some months ago.
Steps
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Drill small holes in a piece of acrylic, sandwiched between two sheets of ply
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Add a pipe fitting to a (sensibly sized) plastic box, use a couple of thin bits of ply or aluminum to strengthen the box around the pipe fitting
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Bolt the piece of acrylic to the plastic box
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Add a lip around the acrylic so the seeds don’t fall off
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Make a jig/guide for your seed tray to make lining up the holes easier
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Bang some nails into the sheet of ply you’ve drilled through to make a bonus dibber/ plug pusher tool.
Things we learned
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Sandwich acrylic between two sheets of ply or OSB for cutting or drilling
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Take the right size drill bits
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The dibber/ tray popper tool is a nice bonus, use bigger nail heads than we used, or dowl
Planned improvements
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Cut the box down to a more sensible size (obviously!)
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Make the mating guides taller so it’s easier to get it lined up
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Add a lip as in this video so you don’t have to remove the excess seed