Some people have suggested MakerBot is somehow stealing thunder from the RepRap project. Here’s a super simple way every MakerBot sold could, in a very small way, help the RepRap project.
Why not put a copy of every Mendel part as an STL on the SD card that comes with the MakerBot? Actually, why not put Spacexula’s set of Mendel production STL’s?
This is a cheap and fast way to disseminate plans for RepRap files to people who are actually capable of making them.
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…only in a way that is far less wordy and verbose than the manner in which I would typically attempt to describe the sorts of things I am thinking about.
Thank you, Cory Doctorow.
“”The way you improve your iPad isn’t to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.”
This is part of what is at the core of the Maker philosophy – empowering people to learn about the stuff of which civilizations are made, rather than being a plankton-like consumer/spectator. When something goes wrong, you don’t have to take it back to the store or call the (*shudder*) Geek Squad.
This is the heart of civilization, improving upon the work of prior generations. You have the luxury of being smarter than Einstein and wiser than Oppenheimer with 20-20 hindsight. You can know everything they know and improve upon it all. You can fix it yourself. You have all of the tools you need right now, in your home right now. You can use the stuff you already have to build the tools you need to build absolutely anything within imagination.
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A complete Mendel for sale? That’s incredible!
There has been a truly amazing progression in RepRap parts lately. While I’m not crazy about eBay as a way of selling , it’s a very democratic way of disseminating RepRap parts. The first few parts and sets of parts were all printed, then molded, now MOLDS are for sale?!
Yes, the Platonic ideal of RepRap is that a machine makes the components of the next machine. But, is it not also part of the RepRap ideal that these machines be disseminated as far and as widely as possible? It’s really great you can use a RepRap to build another – but that doesn’t mean it’s the best/most economical way.
These RepRap mold are advertised to be good for roughly 50 pourings. It is advertised to create 9 vertexes at once, but they all appear to be 1/2 vertexes. The posting also suggests it takes 12 vertexes for a full RepRap. So:
- 12 vertexes per RepRap / 0.5 vertexes halves = 24 vertex halves required
- 24 vertex halves required /9 vertex halves per sheet = 2.67 sheet uses per RepRap
- 50 uses per sheet / 2.67 uses per sheet = 18.75 sets of RepRap vertexes
Admittedly, this is only a set of molds for the frame vertexes, not the entire set of parts. However, it’s really only a matter of time before a set is up for grabs.
This makes me wonder – is there a different market value to printed parts rather than molded parts?
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