User:Dvw5235
Blog
Blog#1:
Part A: 1. useful : Hanger http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44433 The hanger is pretty useful just may be hard to print.
2. artistic/beautiful : ZigZag Vase http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44153 A beautiful vase.
3. pointless/useless : Battery http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:27012 Although it's called "battery box", I do not see any useful side of this design. Well if it's large enough it could be used as a table.
4. funny/weird : 3D Catapult http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:32541 A catapult in a modern car shape.
5. scary/strange : Alien Head: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44825 A classic icon of movie industry.
Part B: Am I a tinker? Probably not. Just like every other Chinese kid, or I should say just like the majority of Chinese kids, I do not have a childhood where I can take apart of whatever I'm curious about.If I do that, it will be really a serious family event. No kidding. But, while I'm prohibited to do such "Scientific exploration", it seems that my father can "play“ with everything he wants. Just like he has been trained before, he can fix anything. Well now I know it's more like life experience than inventing. When I saw the final project David Kelly has with his daughter, my first thought was "now I know why we need to see this". I think, to invent, to be creative, you have to think out of box. Just like David Kelly united a group of people with different backgrounds, our class have students from different majors,which is really good. I think diversity is the key, which keeps the whole team creative.
Blog#2:
I can recognize some features like COPY&PASTE, Creating File etc. I have to say that I'm really impressed by his demos. If I were there, I think I would definitely have recognized the importance since it's such an impressive work. This kind of work does not need any relevant knowledge to know it's greatness. It's just simple awesomeness.
Talking about Open Source Project, I think it's a trend. Sooner or Later, more and more people will start doing open source projects and more and more of services and products we are using right now will be open source. Just like you can not hire every single engineer in the world to work for you, for one project, the people you can find that are willing are limited, but if it's an open source one, everyone could be your potential employee then you could have "every engineer" working for you, which is definitely helping you a lot.
Blog#3:
The most "famous" example of the use of 3D printer is probably the potential Futuristic Moon Colony Project(http://news.yahoo.com/3d-printers-could-build-futuristic-moon-colony-135300655.html). I think it's pretty innovative and of course really bold. But to be honest, I somehow think that may work, since we can not take every aspects into consideration but if the Lunar Colony or the Space Station has one then they can print whatever they need. But that's under the circumstance that the 3D printer tech has been really really advanced. Nonetheless, i think it's the right direction to go.
The second example I found is the open source Wiki Weapon Project(http://defensedistributed.com/). Basically, it's an open source project about 3D printable guns. If you have a 3D printer, you can just download the STL files and then print your own guns. I don't know if this is a riight way to go or not since we are in such a time that Weapon Control is a serious topic but on the other hand, if we can print a 3D gun that is strong enough to fire then we can probably also print our own Armors that are strong enough to protect us.
Blog#4:
A) I think they did a really awesome job. Of course, people can make money using technology but the primary goal of technology should be something like this, changing people's life and bringing happiness everywhere.
B) I don't know how much exactly a commercial robot hand will cost but I assume it will be no less than thousands of dollars while this one will cost only about hundreds. Even plus the cost of the 3D printer itself, the final cost should be around $1000. I think that's one of the benefit of open source projects, the cost is really relative low. The other big advantage is that since it's open source which means everybody can contribute it, so it can be easily improved. The benefit of the commercial one is that they hire the best engineers to build it and they will do a lot of R&D work to make you feel it worth every penny you paid. So I think the trend of the future is the border between the open and close will become less and less obvious. With more and more people and companies join the Open Source Projects, the world will definitely be better and the technology will develop much faster as well.
C) http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44150.Well obviously the easiest to participate is to print one. To go further we can try to improve the design.
Blog#5
A: 1. useful : Hanger http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44433 The hanger could be patented.
2. artistic/beautiful : ZigZag Vase http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44153 The vase can be considered as a work of art so it could have copyright.
3. pointless/useless : Battery http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:27012 The battery box is really simple and has no special design so I do not think it's either patent-able or copyright-able.
4. funny/weird : 3D Catapult http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:32541 I think the mechanical part of the catapult could be patented.
5. scary/strange : Alien Head: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44825 I'm sure the company who owns the the movie Alien also own everything about the Alien design.
B: I found that one of my classmates had found the design of Eiffel Tower( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:22051), which I think may have been copyrighted since it's a famous design as well as the symbol of France.
C: As the article said, the main purposes of licensing non-copyright-able files are legal and cultural. The legal purpose is the most crucial one from my perspective. Nowadays, lawsuits are happening more and more often and I think if licensing could help a bit then we should do it. By doing so we could encourage all the creative designers to keep innovating. On the other hand, the cultural side is important as well, since only in a healthy and rich ecosystem, can the most innovative and creative designs come to life.
Blog#6
(A)The first article discussed about the future of 3-D printing -- how will it impact our daily life and the world. The article goes from past predictions to President Obama's speech. I think that the 3-D printing technology definitely promises a lot but yet still needs more time to prove itself. It's pretty exciting to imagine that we can just print breakfast someday -- omelets,waffles, toast, you name it. I'm sure that such day will come when we can print everything we want but right now we are still pretty far from that level and when can we achieve it still remains as a question. We just need to be patient about it because if all the companies, all the investors and even the government are so eager to push it. It might hurt the market, the field, and then even "kill" it. Then it will take even more time to get back on the right track.
(B)I think the reason why mentioning "this year's state of the union address" is that it's such a big event and shows even the government has paid a great amount of attention to it.It's a significant point that, since it's still a pretty advanced technology, being mentioned in the state of the union address will definitely draw more attention from the public. But as I said before, it could be bad or good. This is something we should develop fast as well as extreme carefully.
(C)The merit of this method is that it's always better to be able to visualize your design or the concepts from the textbook than just studying on the graphs from the book, especially in ME field. The other good part is that it's much cheaper and more convenient to print plastic modules with strong intensity than actually using assembly line to produce real mental parts. Considering that the ME students often need to have different designs so it's actually a really good approach as everyone will be able to print their own designs. I don't actually see any obvious flows yet as I think it's a great direction to go.
(D)We might run into troubles when we try to print some complex designs as our printer can only print parts separately and then assembly the parts together while it seems that their printers have ability to "print dynamic mechanisms fully assembled" and a more user-friendly software that can directly covert CAD to 3 D objects. I probably would not say that theirs are more "advanced" but apparently, it has more functions.
