Custom bricks. Lego fanatics have apparently been designing and uploading their pictures/diagrams and schematics to Flickr! If you want to design something to upload to Thingiverse, this is a one stop shop of ideas. Thanks to Makezine.com for the link.
Monthly Archives: April 2010
Open Source Monopolies, Unicorns, and Perpetual Motion Machines
Want a hint? They’re all imaginary.
There’s no such thing as a monopoly on a truly open source hardware project. So what if someone cornered the market on some critical widget? The plans are open source and your options are infinite:
- Build your own widget.
- Hire someone to make it for you.
- Design an alternate part.
- Design a new assembly using more available part.
- Hack a work around until you can get the part.
Or, my personal favorite:
- Start your own business producing and selling that very same critical widget.
These are not problems. These are opportunities for creativity and innovation.
A totally imaginary interview
It’s been an interesting year for RepRap/MakerBot. We’ve seen demand for parts and electronics increase. The MakerBot crew reported that for certain components they’ve actually cleaned out every source in the world. I’m not sure which component they’re referring to, but I suspect it’s the toothed extruder pulley. I love the idea that MakerBot has created a product garnering such high demand the entire freaking planet ran out of parts.
Can you imagine giving an interview after such an announcement?
- Reporter: Guys, this has been a great year for MakerBot. What are your plans for next quarter?
- MBI: Gosh, we’ve got so many ideas! The community has been hugely supportive and their rate of contribution and development has helped us so much. Right now we’re splitting our time between production and development. Batch 12, consisting of about 147 robots, is out the door. Batch 13 has already started to ship as the parts come in. We’ve come a long way since the 22 robots of Batch 1.
- Reporter: Fantastic! What are your plans for Batch 14?
- MBI: Dang, we were hoping you wouldn’t ask that. Zero.
- Reporter: I’m sorry – zero robots? Why did demand drop off so suddenly?
- MBI: Quite the opposite – we’ve completely exhausted the entire world’s supply of aluminum toothed pulleys. We’re hoping to have some custom made, but at this point we’re competing with the Japanese for aluminum. Some people suggested we start melting down soda cans for the metal.
- Reporter: <incredulous> You’re competing with the Japanese?
- MBI: Not every Japanese person, but the automotive industry, sure. For a while India looked to be a competitor, but with the strength of the rupee I’m just not expecting that much competition. We’re far more concerned about the ability of Chinese to scale their production to meet demand. Fortunately, we think we’ve found a toner cartridge factory willing to switch over to aluminum toothed pulleys.
- Reporter: <even more incredulous> Wait, wait, wait… You’re concerned about the ability of an economy of one billion people to scale production to meet the needs of a DIY robot kit start up???
- MBI: Concerned is a strong word. The Chinese ambassador has been leaving us messages about this issue. When we finally got around to returning his calls he assured us they’re up to the task. I’d say we’re cautiously optimistic.
Homemade PLA
Ricardo Santos managed to create PLA in his home. My Portuguese is pretty rusty. Well, to be exact, non-existent. However, that’s what Google is for! Thanks Ricardo!
New design! Sweetener Holder
I’ve been using Splenda instead of sugar lately. For single serving doses Splenda comes in little paper packets – like you see at restaurants. In order to keep them in line and at hand I designed and printed a sweetener holder.
It’s the little things in life, no?
A bargain
The cheapest commercially available 3d printer on the market is the Dimension uPrint Personal 3D Printer, clocking in at $14,900. The media cartridges run $250 – and consist of coiled ABS in a plastic box. I can’t tell from their website how much plastic is in each cartridge, so I don’t know how cost effective it is. I’m not positive exactly how their cartridges operate – but I would not be surprised if they were tamper resistant, not able to be refilled, and contained special chips which authenticated them as being untampered and coming direct from the manufacturer.
Am I jaded by inkjets? Probably. I’m tired of buying printers with 1/3 full cartridges and expensive refills. The warranties are so much worse:
“Expensive manufacturer refills only! Only use paper made from unicorn tears and the hopes and dreams of orphans! Only power your machine with live baby seals. Using reasonably priced alternative supplies, making disparaging remarks, failure to properly maintain your machine, or printing will destroy your machine and void your warranty.”
My MakerBot came with more plastic than I can print in two years runs just barely over $1,000 with shipping. If something were to happen to MakerBot Industries, I can always find new filament elsewhere, adapt my ‘bot to a new source, or even a new material entirely. Or, I could just toss in a Dremel and have a mini-CNC/drill press.
Backing out the filament
I’ve found that backing out the filament after each print, while a pain, has been helpful in avoiding extruder jams. Or, rather, I have found fewer extruder jams while doing this. 1
I suspect the reason this has helped is that it removes from the PTFE insulator any of the remaining plastic that might have been about to ooze near the barrel top. Have you found that this helps you?
- Not to confuse coincidence, correlation and causation, but I have also found fewer extruder jams when wearing my underwear inside out… [↩]
Ideas for Cupcake CNC upgrades
Sometimes when using the ReplicatorG control panel I accidentally hit Z- instead of Z+ to adjust the stage height. As you might imagine, this causes problems. At best, I end up with the Z stage out of whack. At worst, the hot and extruding print head slams into the build platform or model and knocks the Z stage out of whack.
Two possible upgrades would be:
- A simple bubble level for the build platform and/or Z stage to make it easy to verify the surface is level. I would imagine bubble levels are relatively cheap.
- A bracket that fits around the lower section of the Z axis rods, which would prevent the Z stage from descending below a particular level. It could be as simple as a little plastic nub that is bolted to the inside of the ‘bot that prevents the stage from being lowered. Four of them would probably work fine. OR, you could put an extra nut on each Z axis below the nut that supports the Z stage. Someone could then design a little plastic widget that would fit on top of that extra nut and have a prong that sticks up – preventing the Z axis from lowering further.
A complete-ish RepRap sold
A few days ago I posted about a RepRap Mendel for sale on eBay with all electronics, motors, belts, etc fully assembled. 1 The auction (for a set sold in Ireland) settled at 760.00 Euros or about $1,017.18 USD.
Frankly, I would have thought it would have sold for more. Printed parts are still selling in the $300-$450 range, electronics clocking in at $250 or so, bearings at $50, and all the other bits probably costing another $100 for belts, rods, nuts, bolts. This means just the materials would cost $700 – $800. Then there’s the delay and extra expense of sourcing all of the parts for yourself.
Interestingly, I had thought the bottom had fallen out of the RepRap printed parts eBay market. However, a set of printed Mendel parts just sold on eBay for $455 on April 5. I suspect the difference is that these parts are being generated and sold in the US which makes for an easier and slightly cheaper transaction
- To be fair, the seller mentioned it would require some adjustment to start printing. [↩]
MakerBot starter kit
A little while ago someone posted on the MakerBot Operators group that they were looking for printed pulleys. Apparently he had managed to scavenge or hack together everything else.
This got me wondering – what printed parts would someone need to get a MakerBot rolling? There’s the obvious printed pulleys. If I had a friend who was putting one together, I’d probably want to give them a spare insulator retainer ring and Z axis pulley. What else should be in a MakerBot starter/welcome kit?