Cemchris turned me on to using rainbird free flowing manifolds and naked ended 1/4" feed lines. No drippers. Having done automated irrigation with 2gph drippers, drip stakes, bubblers, and
floraflex caps in the past, I'm sold on the simplicity of a single naked ended feed line. Especially for the 3" cubes. Anything that restricts flow is another failure point. The
floraflex caps work the best of the previous options but still it's more shit to clean between grows, and I saw zero difference in growth or health of the plants by just leaving the top of the rockwool open to get all funky looking with a single stream of water feeding it.
The mass of the root system is in the slab anyway so it doesn't really matter how evenly the water is distributed on the top mounted block. It'll plinko percolate its way through the wool evenly enough as is.
The timer I use I believe is an atlas or something, made by
titan controls. Has 8x on/off settings with 1 min increments. I then control the shot size by restricting the flow with a ball valve.