User:Jbeacham

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Blogs

Blog 1


Prompt: Go to thingiverse and look for printable objects, which other people have actually printed (there are photos of them if they've mad them), finding designs which satisfy these descriptions in your mind: A) Something amazing/beautiful B) Something funny or strange C) Something useless D) Something useful E) The 'best' printable Raspberry Pi case you can find.

A) While scrolling through some of the printed objects on thingiverse, I searched to see if someone had printed any models of characters from a game I play online, League of Legends. It turns out that people had. There were a whole bunch of different STL versions of the characters, and there were even a few pictures of actually printed things. The most detailed one I could find was the printed version of the character Ryze. It looked really similar to the way he actually looks. I thought that this really showed how awesome 3D printing was. I felt like this is an example of someone who just made what they thought would be really cool and just printed it out. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:28402

B) The strangest thing i found on thingiverse was a teacup dragon puppet. It just sorta looked like a 3D printed dragon that sat in a teacup. I didn't know why someone would want something like that or why that seemed like something they needed to print, but for whatever reason it's a thing now. 3D printing definitely allows people to run wild with ideas. The different things you can do with 3D printing are pretty amazing and can surely cause some strange things to come about because of that. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:17906

C) The most useless thing on thingiverse by far is the "NotAKeyProp." It is litterally an object that looks like a key but only attaches to the bottom of your phone. It has no function and seems rather cumbersome. In my mind that makes it very useless. I could see where it might be funny, but I don't believe that many people would be interested in it for more than a second or two. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:91614

D) The most useful thing I found on thingiverse was a set of measuring cups. I feel like this would be a really useful thing for a person who cooks and needs a specific size that might not be in regular measuring cup sets. I could see 3D printing being very useful in different aspects of measurement. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:17906

E) I thought that the red Raspberry Pi case that is in the following link was the best one on thing inverse. It is ascetically pleasing and the design on top makes it really clear what it is. If i had to choose what case I would put on a Raspberry Pi, I would chose that one. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:30843

Blog 2

Going back and looking at what interested me at the beginning of this semester, I would think that the subjects that most interested me were rebuilding the 3D printers. I find the idea of a printer that can copy itself completely fascinating. The whole process by which printers are created makes me want to build a printer entirely from scratch using another printer. Another subject that interested me was the idea of recycling used filament in order to us it on another project. This could make the waist product from 3D printing on our printers almost nothing.

Blog 3

http://reprap.org/wiki/User:Tunkelbs The post I chose to review was written by Brandon Tunkel. I found this to be a great blog post that fully informed me about an interesting topic in 3D printing that I had previously not been fully aware of. This topic was digital rights management and how it applies to 3D printing. I thought this blog told me what it was about, explained a little background with how DRM has been handled in the past, and gave insight to current events and topics while providing a ideas about the future. I managed all this in a very concise and practical way. I feel like it had a lot of information packed into short space.


Blog 4

The Arduino Project and RepRap are both using the idea of "give it away for free" as their business model. The concept is that by giving away the information that is used in making the product they will encourage other people to make improvements to the design. The Arduino Project is using the ideas and modifications that are being made by companies such as google in the new versions of their product. This is only possible by the freedom of information that the project has made possible. RepRap has a similar business idea in the way that the 3D printers are self replicating. This makes it so that the RepRap machines can become very wide spread. Sharing the STL's and ideas for the printers on websites such as thingiverse also make the open source group even more popular. The traditional business model is to keep everything a secret and patten everything so that only one company can make this product and everyone has to buy it from them. This is pretty much the opposite of that because the product that is being given away is more information than a physical project. I find this concept to be very refreshing as a new outlook on how a business can be successful and grow in interesting ways.

Blog 5

In my first blog, I found five objects on thingiverse that met some sort of guideline. The objects I chose have characteristics of being useful or creative, which makes them eligible for patent protection or copyright protection. The first two objects that i found were sculptures of different designs. These would most likely be protected by copyright. The first object I listed was a representation of a video game character, which would mean that this 3D print could potentially be infringing on an existing copyright that protects creative works. The next two objects were supposed to be things that I found useful and useless. These two objects primarily served as functioning objects, and wouldn't be protected by a copyright. They would however be eligible to be protected by a patent. The last object was an interesting Raspberry Pi case. This was a perfect blend of useful and creative. The actual case that protects the Raspberry Pi would only be protected if it was patented, however, whatever creative addition to the case would automatically be protected by a copyright. So it wouldn't be bad to print a Raspberry Pi case, but it could be troublesome to steal the artistic flair from a particularly detailed case.

Blog 6

This extension of Blog 5 made me go back and evaluate other classmates' blogs and ideas about the Penrose Triangle model, IP and how those ideas might apply to 3D printing. I think that many of my classmates had similar summaries to the article that i did. The one thing that came up in theres that i seem to have not made clear in mine is that an object that has artistic and useful qualities can be protected by copyright and a patent, but only part of the object can be protected by either one. This concept was something i was going for, but it wasn't' very clear. I think that the big points from all of the blogs was that copyrights are very protective of works of art, but patents that focus on protecting useful ideas need to be applied for in order to ensure the integrity of the design.

Blog 7

The solar solutions article is a fascinating piece about how a company could use 3D printing in order to make solar paneling. It allows for easy access to blueprints in the form of STL files that can be used to make solar panels. The hope for this project is that it will provide energy for developing nations with increasing populations such as Africa. The hype behind this project is the cost of getting this distributed and how affective the devices will be once installed.

Blog 8

The first project that AMRI is working on is laser sintering thermoplastic powders, which is a way to print metals using metal balls shaved or crushed into a powder and lazering them into a now shape. The next project is ink jet printing modified living bacteria. This would be 3D printing living organisms. The goal of this project is to improve upon the current method of ink jet printing. The next project will be printing with light using plastic as a medium. The last project is a bacterial cellstruder.

Blog 9

I thought that the coffee grinder idea was a good one. It's recycling an old appliance and making it a renewable resource. This is an easy to make product assuming that the consumer knows how to use a 3D printer. A drawback might be a decrease in coffee grinder sales for whomever is selling them. I'm assuming that with minimal modifications the coffee grinder could be easily changed into a blender for liquids. This would be a similar project. This is a great project for someone that is in desperate need of one coffee maker. The odds of someone having a broken vacuum laying around are pretty good considering everyone with carpeting probably has one. The issue with making more that one of these is that the salvageable parts would be harder to come by. If it requires a new vacuum to make a homemade coffee grinder, it would probably be just as efficient to by a new coffee grinder. The concept that makes this a good idea is that using only household items and a 3D printer, someone could make a coffee grinder at almost no cost to them.

Blog 10

Jeffrey Immelt and Terry Gou are both the heads of electronics companies. Jeffrey Immelt is the CEO of General Electric and Terry Gou is the head of Foxconn which is a company he started that contracts out to other electronics companies such as Apple. They have opposing views on 3D printing. Jeffrey Immelt has a very positive outlook on 3D printing as a viable form of production for the future. Terry Gou thinks that 3D printing has no real value in the future of production. Jeffrey Immelt might think that 3D printing would vastly reduce the cost of production and manufacturing by being able to produce what he needs from the same machine. Terry Gou may be against this because he works for companies that need different things that would be too expensive to make themselves. If 3D printers could be used for mass production and open source it may reduce his profit.

Blog 11

After working on 3D printing for an entire semester, I have found that the electronics have been the most frustrating. Not to say that the rebuilding of the bed on the rainbow printer was a cakewalk. While the different bed size that required a complete dismantle and rebuild of the entire system was frustrating it was more time consuming than perplexing. The electronic problems are much harder to identify and must be found through trial and error using more intuition than facts. It's easy to see that a belt is too small, but it's hard to see that a diode is ruining an Arduino.

Blog 12

The strengths of having a system like OpenScad is that it doesn't require a great deal of knowledge in order to grasps the basics of the program. The weaknesses of the program are that it requires a specific type of knowledge that isn't intuitive to many people that are not in the programing world and it may be easier to us a program like sketchup for a more basic design. For me, I would never us a text based design application like OpenScad. That type of thinking doesn't come naturally to me and i would much rather use a less technical platform for my designs.

Blog 13

Im going to talk about the Circuit Scribe. This is a device that allows circuits to easily be made to fit any need using only a pen and paper. It's unique in the face that it dries almost instantly and it has a kit of usable parts for easy and quick circuits. Incorporating this into 3D printing would be a very interesting endeavor. I think it is not unreasonable to think that with this pen and ink it would be possible to print out custom circuits that could be used in objects printed on a 3D printer. Using a dual extruder, it would be possible to print a circuit on the inside of a printed object. The possibilities that could come out of this would be amazing. you could make anything from glowing christmas ornaments to useful electronics already protected by a filament shell.

'Blog 14

It seems to me that the smaller, lighter smartrap mini would be a great choice that would conserve supplies and allow for more printers to be operational while others are being fixed. My only concern would be if the singular Z axis would make it unstable. Not that it would mess up the print, but it might have to slow down the print in order to preserve the integrity of the design. This would be a great idea for a first half of the semester project in my opinion due to the fact that it would be easy to start and wouldn't require as many materials.

Blog 15

The list that was supposed to be things i hadn't necessarily heard of was interesting in some ways and rather stupid in others. I thought that building a house in space was an interesting concept, but the idea that it would be 3D printed was sort of unimportant. The ps4 mount seemed like a simple solution that would be very useful. I feel like the simple ideas that can be mass produced have the greatest potential for entrepreneurship.

Blog 16

The lasersaur could have a 3D printed nozzle if it was printed with metal. The value of having a laser cutter is that it makes very precise cuts in a shorter time period than a 3D printer. The downside is more waste material and limited functionality. It would be good for us to have one because it would make printing simple parts that aren't as complicated go more quickly.

Blog 17

The comment that talked about using the liver for drug testing I thought was a good idea. It keeps the hiccup about the vasculator problem from making the stuff they have now less important. Along with this post i thought the answer to what the vasculator system was helped me out a lot.

Blog 18

I think that people in other colleges are being able to use our printers is a great accomplishment. Sending one of our printers to Penn State Brandywine is huge milestone for self-replicating printers. This could be the start of a huge spread of 3D printers. I am very satisfied with the progress Penn State has made.