I’m really excited about this weekend’s Mini-MakerFaire taking place at Park Day in Oakland! There’s going to be at least 100 different exhibits and things going on. I can’t wait!!! (Just bought my tix)
Are you going? Are you an exhibitor? If so, leave a comment so I can be sure and stop by your booth and say hello!
MS just released this video bashing open source tech. There are some really amusing points about it. The testimonials describe how wonderful MS Office 2007 is – but MS wants you to buy the 2010 version. Guys, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is a word processor – for most people they just need a version of Notepad with grammar and spellcheck.1 This isn’t rocket science. I can’t imagine a business model that requires you to sell your software to your customers every 2-3 years – when the original package TEN YEARS AGO was good enough. Let alone a business model founded on a product that peaked ten years ago with XP. Seriously, the best thing about WinXP was that I never really noticed it. If I notice my OS, it’s because something is horribly horribly wrong.
The testimonials also include people who say their IT support costs soared with questions from users – and that people were used to their old MS interface. Increased support costs? Yeah, that can happen. People resistant to IT changes? Yeah, that happens too. But, the software is free, remember? Each and every license is several hundred dollars. And it needs to be effectively renewed every few years. How’s this for a new MS slogan: “Drink the kool-aid”
Several years ago I bought a pair of brand new Dell laptops with XP. Just before the warranty expired they started to go nutty, shipped them to Dell, Dell lost them, and Dell eventually replaced them – with new models that had Vista. My copies of MS Office 2000 I had bought with my original Dells refused to work with Vista. There was some “bug” that caused any MS Office component to take 10 minutes to load, operate super slowly, and crash. The fix? Oh, just buy 2003. No thank you.
I have used OpenOffice for the last several years and convinced many friends to do the same. I just cannot see spending several hundred dollars for a product the company looks at with an eye towards planned obsolescence.
No, MS, I’m not coming back. And, as soon as I can get Ubuntu to work on my computers and network, you can have my copies of XP as well.
OSS/OSH FTW!
Don’t throw anything at me, but I’m not a fan of Mac products. I don’t own an iPad, iPod, or iPhone and have never used iTunes. Windows XP has it’s flaws, don’t get me wrong, but it basically just works and I can use most products with it as I choose. Other than my operating system, I only use free/open source software.
I booted my laptop with an Ubuntu flash drive the other day, determined to give it a shot. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to recognize any WiFi networks and gave up. I can’t do a whole lot with a computer if I can’t connect it to the ‘net wirelessly.
Thus endeth my attempts with Ubuntu for now. :)
Peter Jansen's reciprocating laser concept
Peter Jansen’s latest post about selective laser sintering (SLS) is nothing short of amazing. Most of his posts on the RepRap Builders blog posts deal with his adventures and research into SLS fabrication – basically directing a laser over a bed of powder to fuse powder in successive layers into a 3D object. Since the object is being created in a bed of powder and any new layer is supported by the powder above it, the powder print media becomes it’s own support material.
His latest post diverges from his adventures with SLS 3D printing and details his efforts at building a DIY laser cutter. His idea is for a “reciprocating laser” which would change the focal length or the height of the laser above the material being cut. Peter points out that commercial high power laser cutters essentially brute force burn through the entire depth of the material to be cut. They’re so powerful that it doesn’t matter that the laser is out of focus and “cooler” at different depths.
He has demonstrated a proof of concept using much lower power laser to cut material by lowering a much lower power laser as it cuts material. The downside is that the lower power laser requires a much longer time to burn through the material – having to hit the same area several times at different depths to cut all the way through. His proof of concept setup was about the size of a CD/DVD drive – since CD/DVD drives, motors, and housing provided most of his building materials. So far he’s been able to burn through most of two CD case backs – about 2mm together. He’s hoping to push it to cut thicknesses up to 3.0mm to 4.5mm.
The incredibly small size of his setup means that it can only very small pieces of material. However, this gave me two ideas:
TheMitch22 downloaded the 3x2x1 Rubik’s cube v4, printed it, and uploaded a video of it working! The cycle is complete.
100% printable, no hardware or tools required. And it looks amazing in red.
Nophead’s Mendel1 has produced 15 sets of Mendel parts, and is hard at work on it’s 16th!!! My understanding is that it would take about 60 hours to print a full set of Mendel parts. I have to admire anyone who prints up Mendel/Mini-Mendel parts because of the amount of dedication it would take to do so. After spending 90 hours2 printing something, I don’t know that I could part with it.
My point is that we really have guys like Nophead, Spacexula, and Cyrozap3 to thank for cranking out parts and pushing replication forward.
I hereby bestow upon you gentlemen the Duggar medal of continuous replication.
The plans for the Plastruder MK6 look downright wicked
MakerBot just released the photostream and wiki instructions for the Plastruder MK5. 1 This looks like a total overhaul of their original designs. 2
It is based on Charles Pax’s Paxtruder which has such a small form factor that it is possible to squeeze two extruder heads into one Makerbot. The Paxtruder also uses a delrin plunger which is used to push the filament against the extruder pulley, rather than the previous idler wheel design. I like the delrin plunger idea since it would be a lot easier to adjust tension and remove/insert filament. The idler wheel held in by a large bolt and nut works… but is finicky and sometimes prone to fussiness.
Out are the big/small/weird and whimsical dinos in favor of lasercut acrylic “arches.” There may be a benefit to the arches over the dinos, but I’m not sure what it would be.
The entire heater element and extruder head has been redesigned as well. I don’t recall seeing any published designs which reference this new system. We’ve all seen power resistors in use in RepRap/MakerBot projects – but they’ve usually been relegated to heated build platform designs. Now a pair are being used as the full heating element in place of tempermental3 nichrome wire. The problem with the old nichrome wire wrapped around the barrel system is that if you need to rebuild the heater, you’ve got to toss out the old nichrome since the insulation is going to get peeled off as soon as you pull it off the barrel.
The new MK5 system uses a PTFE sleeve to feed the filament down into the heater. Interestingly, the PTFE sleeve is encased in a snug metal tube which should prevent any bulging problems.
My understanding of the instructions is that the MK5 is far less prone to failure than the previous MK4 model Plastruder. I’ll grant the Plastruder is easily the most4 challenging component of the Makerbot to get working.
The instructions also hint at Generation 4 electronics. Right now I’m rockin’ the Gen 3 which have served me quite well. I wonder what the Gen 4 has in store? One thing I have to really like about the electronics is that I know they’ll never really be obsolete. 5 If I wanted to upgrade to Gen 4, I can always print off a Mini-Mendel or Mendel, and swap in the new electronics.
However, if this new system is as resilient as the instructions describe, I’m on board. I’m probably not going to have a good excuse to test out this new Plastruder design for a while since my Plastruder has been behaving itself since the last time I rebuilt my Plastruder and I just scored some spare MK4 parts. 6
Ultimaker
Update 3/28/2011: The Ultimaker is available for pre-order!
Erik de Bruijn along with a newly formed Dutch RepRap group have put together this new design for a low cost RepRap alternative. The stated goal of their blog is “designing/developing an easy to build low cost 3D printer with a small form factor but large build envelope.” Erik has invited everyone to comment on this beta design. It’s interesting to see their progression of prototypes in their second blog post.
The interesting thing about this model is that it combines some of the best parts of Darwin and MakerBot and what appears to be a Bowden extruder.
The very nature of FDM1 means that the robot will only move the Z axis a little bit every once in a while. One of the design drawbacks to the Darwin was that the heavy extruder head (motors, gears, heating elements) were so heavy that the entire robot would rock or vibrate with the lateral XY movements. MakerBot got around the heavy extruder head problem by moving the platform in the XY and moving the extruder head only up and down. This design decision isn’t without it’s tradeoffs, however. One downside is that their build area is much smaller than a Darwin. Another downside of the MakeBot design is that once the object being built reaches a sufficiently large volume or height, moving the object around quickly on the XY platform causes it to vibrate, shake, and become somewhat unstable.
One of the main improvements inherent in the Bowden extruder is that it allows you to take the heaviest parts of the extruder head, separate them from the rest of the extruder head, and move those heavy pieces to a different location. Using a Bowden extruder makes a Darwin style robot much more feasible – the small moveable print head won’t have the mass to cause the robot to become unstable.
It seems that combining either of the X or Y movements with the Z probably won’t matter all that much, since the Z axis will only move about 0.33mm or so per layer and the Z axis typically doesn’t operate at the same time as either the X or Y axis. Combining the as the new RepRap version II, Mendel, design shows us that combining the Z axis along with either the X or Y axis, but not both, can lead to a very stable configuration.
What I like about the Ultimaker design is that it would appear to incorporate some of the best parts of the MakerBot and Darwin designs. It appears to have a bolt/nut/T-slot MakerBot style assembly structure using thin lasercut wood pieces for the body. I found these parts to bolt together very quickly. Contrast this to the Darwin/Mendel structure using lots of nuts and threaded rod and printed plastic parts to hold it together. At the same time, by making use of a Bowden extruder and the Darwin body shape, it appears to be able to use most of the interior volume for printing.
I suspect it probably uses fewer parts than a typical Darwin, but I can’t be sure. I also have to wonder about the cost of lasercut wood versus the cost of nuts and threaded rod.
Nice find RepRap Log Phase!
I saw this video the other day (I think as a result of someone’s Tweet?) and just around to watching it now. The things people built using data that had been opened up from the government was pretty incredible.
Interestingly, I have a totally different website that operates by only using data that is already freely available from the government. If I had more data from the government, my site would be even more useful to my demographic.1
All of this, the video, my own website, got me thinking – if the data from the government can be released as “open data” – in what ways is our government already open source? We know the laws that supposedly govern us and our administrators… I suppose, open source is the ideal upon which our government was founded in the first place.
Video from Streetfilms covered by PlanetGreen/Discovery.com Tweeted by PlanetGreen RT’d by clothbot.
To my thinking there’s basically two optimal RepRap sizes (in terms of build area):
Random tangent: wouldn’t it be cool if all RepRaps came with the designs for their own printed parts already on board? Just fire it up for the first time, calibrate, and start printing replacement parts. (I realize this isn’t quite feasible – in order to be ready-printable the files would need to be in S3G format and the machine would have to run the STL’s through it’s own Skeinforge settings).