I’m always juggling multiple projects – that seems to be the mark of a Maker and/or a Maker with ADD. 1 I’m looking to tinker with a clockwork spider, an open source disc shooter, possibly an open source shooter compatible with Nerf darts, and now… I’d like to create a web app that aids in the calculation of good profile settings.
I’ve downloaded a bunch of different Thing-O-Matic, Cupcake, PWM and RMP calculators off of Thingiverse and am tinkering with them to get a better understanding of how they run these calculations. 2 Once I understand these, I’d like to make a very simple front end for these calculations.
If you have a good idea of how these things work, please leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail through the contact form. Thanks!
Which, in my experience, might just be a redundant statement [↩]
I’ve put out the call to Dave Durant to help me get a better grasp on these calculations… [↩]
I just helped my wife start her own blog. She wanted to include a license for some of things she’ll be publishing, so I whipped up a little WordPress plugin that will insert some creative commons license language with a small shortcode. Although I haven’t tinkered with one of my plugins for a while now (five or six months?) I uploaded the plugin, activated it, and it “just worked.” That’s a good feeling – writing a piece of code and having it work straight off with no bugs.
I wish I could say the same for my 3D design skills. 1
I took a few photos at the Mini-MakerFaire on Sunday, most of which will be posted over at the MakerBot blog. I was looking forward to seeing an Egg-bot, other MakerBot operators (Ace Monster Toys), and an Isaac. Unfortunately, the table labeled “Isaac” only had a kid doing his homework. 1
The Egg-bot was cool2 , it was great to meet other MakerBot operators, but I was really looking forward to seeing an Isaac.
I asked him where the Isaac was. He said, “I don’t know. I’m just sitting here doing my homework.” [↩]
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.
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 Ubuntuflash 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.
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:
If the low power lasers are so cheap, why not install multiple lasers at different focal lengths?
If the entire setup is that small, what about making the entire setup mobile? 1 Think hexapod CNC mill. If a laser cutter wheeled or hexapod robot was as small as a CD drive, you could conceivably just take out a large sheet of acrylic or thin plywood, set the robot in the dead center, and let it go. 2
This reminds me of one of my favorite sayings. “If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed.” [↩]
The robot could stay oriented in any number of ways. You could draw a grid on the material, the material could have a thin paper coating with LeapFrog style micro-dots that told the robot it’s location, you could project a grid onto the material with light or guide it with another laser like a laser guided missile. [↩]
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.
I don’t know if he’s named it yet – so I’ll call it Anna until he corrects me. [↩]
I’m just assuming it would take me 50% longer since I don’t know what I’m doing… [↩]
Dude, I realized yesterday I’ve been misspelling your name. I’ll go back through and fix that – sorry! [↩]
