User:Steven Crump

Senior at Penn State studying Mechanical Engineering. Excited to further my interest in 3D printing and look forward to working with fellow students in section 1 to create a solid top notch printer.

Blog 17: (Bonus Blog G)

Was just perusing through the bonus blogs and thought I would click on this link. Boy was I glad I did. The concept of printing your own house is mind blowing but at the same time i can see it being possible. Just scale up your reprap printer a little, well I guess a lot, and you could probably come close to printing concrete. It was amazing to learn from the video that construction has more deaths then mining. I would have thought the opposite. I also think this is a great idea for third world countries. Being that shelter is extremely important, you could make the 3D concrete printer portable and go around places and print houses and shelter one after the other. Would I live in a 3D printed house? hummmm. Yeah why not. As long as I get to design my own room and man cave on SolidWorks :-)

Blog 16:

It was very interesting looking at that demo and realizing how much technology has changed since the 1968. Now days everyone can save a file like the back of their hand. It was neat to see how the copy text and save file functions had first originated. In was also interesting how that was also the time the first mouse was introduced and it still have the same concept on screen as it used too. Of course now days we have wireless laser mouse, but the concept is still the same.

In the very near future I can see our reprap printers having duel extruders. I know we have the pieces printed out and the sclier code that can create g-code for a duel printer design. For more of a sci fi idea, it would be amazing if these machines could make themselves. Similar to a blog we mentioned earlier. We still need technology to advance a great deal before reprap printers will be able to make themselves. Who knows, someday computers and printers might have minds of their own. After all they can beat us at chess and IBM’s Watson computer can beat the best jeopardy players at jeopardy.

Blog 15:

If I had my own car I would prefer it to have unlocked firm ware. I would not want the car telling me how fast I can go and restricting me from doing what I want. I do understand that there will be people that could not handle going their own speed and could cause a lot of accidents. But I would give that up for being able to have some control over my own car. As far as the code goes, I think it could either be secure or unsecure. Either way bad guys will find a way to crack it and have their own control if they want too.

If the UN asked me to put regulatory framework into 3D printers they would be in trouble. I know very little about software and coding and all that fun stuff. Even during McDonnald’s presentation he lost me on some of the coding terms. If I were to create something, I would put a code into the main ardunios and some other common boards. This average user has to buy those boards and would be forced to purchase them with the security software if they wanted a 3D printer.

I think Doctorow’s predictions of future technologies are definitely possible. He mentioned that our kids would ask us how we got through such a hard time sharing things. I think in the future people are going to be able to share files so easily and be able to put the worlds documents on a flash drive the size of your finger. Just think, ten years we had floppy disks and now I can put thousands of songs on a device the size of my thumb.

At the end of the day I don’t think the copyright war could ever be won. People will keep creating beetter and better copyright protection and people will keep accepting the challenge to break it.

Blog 14:

The filabot design looks the most professional but they all follow the exact same principles. Old plastic gets pushed through a heater via an auger mechanism. With this new technology, hopefully the price of PLA plastic will drop. If most people can produce their own and recycle old plastic the demand will lower and intern lower price. Besides price I think it would have a huge impact on the community. Everyone I know has a box or two of parts that didn’t turn out quite right. Lots of people save them because they don’t want to throw them out. Our class room is no different. Every corner you look you usually find a little box of old plastic parts.

Building a filament recycler doesn’t sound difficult to me at all. And with step by step instructions I think most people would be able to do it. It is extremely similar to making a hot tip. You have the tip and the shaft and metal wires going to the tip to heat it up. The only difference is that it has an auger in the middle of it. The tricky in my opinion would be making the tip, no different than the hot tips. From my experience it is very tricky to drill that 0.05 millimeter center hole.

Blog 13:

Something that has always interested me in 3d printing was the finished product. Although the plastic forms are fairly solid and smooth, I always wanted to know if there was a way to improve the finished product even further. I tried looking on YouTube and the internet for people that have tried dipping there finished 3D prints in paint or a type of hardening sealant. Unfortunately I could not find much on the topic. I was thinking that you could dip your print in a type of very low viscosity paint that would make the finish product smooth like glass.

Blog 12:

Wowwww!!!!!!! Although I am in a 3d printing class and understand the technology better than most people, my mind is still blown by new types of printers and marketing ideas. I think the 3D printer booths are a great idea and a very clever novelty approach to 3D printing technology. I wouldn’t buy a model of myself being that I wouldn’t be as impressed with it as most people and the fact that I am a college student. Let’s be serious, we get all in a tizzy when cover to a local bar is 4 dollars instead of 2. My grandparents on the other hand would love to buy a portrait of my family that is 3D printed. The only problem with this business model is that as 3D printers become more and more common in the family household the novelty will wear off. Also when more people have their own printers price will drop.

I do like the staples easy 3D print station idea though. I thought the skull image at the beginning of the link was almost futuristic. The concept of stacking printed paper on top of one another and gluing them together so to speak is an amazing way to create 3D images that are colored almost perfectly. I am anxious for my local staples to get a machine like that. Maybe someday I can have my photos turned into 3D printed landscapes. Only problem with that is 3D printed objects would take up a lot more space than 24 3x5 pictures.

Blog 11:

I think a class on 3D printing is great for both college students and high schooler and maybe middle school students. In my opinion K through 3rd grade is too young for the introduction of 3D printing. Today schools are trying to promote STEM learning by teaching kids about science technology, engineering, and math. All of which are great concepts for young future engineers and future students to grasp a better understanding of the world around them.

I strongly agree with the statement that “kids love visuals”. This is my fourth year as an engineering student and 3D printing is one of the few times I can actually visualize something instead of just learning theory. This concept is true for kids of all ages. It is great when you can actually create something and see what it is you created. I think it might be tricky for younger students to make their on 3d models on 3d software. It can get complicated and very expensive. To be honest I even have trouble with Solid Works and I am practically graduated already.

Blog 10:

In the overall grand scheme of things 3D printing is still very new and has a lot of time to become more widespread and have lots of technology advancements. Two great changes I see in the near future are resolution and speed. Even in our classroom we can see high resolution with the finer hot tips. Down the road we might see Nano sized objects that are being 3d printed that could be used in various Nano technology applications around the world. Another advancement I can easily see is speed. Just like computer processors they just keep improving and becoming faster and faster as the years go by. (I clicked on a link to a video of a 3d printed “Gyro the Cube” that was on the first website link and boy that thing is awesome.)

Blog 9:

Although 3D printers are a great idea for learning and teaching students about the art, they are still not meant to be in a library in my eyes. Librarys are meant more for studying and learning and not for this type of technology. I think a lab or a separate area would be a much better location for RepRaps. Another problem with having these printers offered to the public is that someone will need to maintain them and change the filament and all those things. In addition to the initial cost this could get expensive and have huge lines of people trying to print out object. Some objects may not be appropriate for school either.

I am a Mechanical Engineer here at Penn State and I still am very unfamiliar with a lot of the library on and off campus. Although I am not extremely familiar with all the library locations, I still don’t think 3D printers are suitable for these location for reasons I mentioned above.

Blog 8:

These arguments do not support my argument that people should be able to print what they want. Although I do agree with the article that down the road a lot of printers will have this DRM software on them that will prevent people printing things they shouldn’t have. Now days a lot of people are looking for easy money and willing to sue anyone for anything and maker bot could be a next target. So by installing this software they might be able to avoid that lawsuit. But like every great lock it is always meant to be broken by someone, which is what the end of the article touches on. But if companies already have the software on it and it gets hacked, then they still avoid lawsuits.

Blog 7:

With this new technology we hopefully will be able to forget about a lot of wires for some application. Some possible implementations for this design could include tv’s. Instead of having huge liquid crystal displays you could have a little box that sends all of the image light from it to different parts of the television. A really neat idea would consist of being able to print these type of light piping ideas into our printers. Something that would have to definitely be changed or enhanced is the g code replicator. To send light to a specific spot or have a specific bend you would need to have all the strands going that way. Currently slicer makes the prints in cubes or honeycomb type shaps which would send your light every which direction.

A cool project I have in mind are touch sensitive light switches. As of now you have copper wire going all the way to a standard light switch and then all the way back to the light. Copper keeps getting more and more costly so a great cost effective way would to just use tubes of plastic and send light.

Blog 6: Bio-Printing

If you asked what I thought of bio-printing before I read the “How 3D printers are reshaping medicine” article I would have told you you were crazy. But after reading through the article it sounds a lot more feasible and extremely practical as well. I think it is amazing how the printers use this “bio link” mixture that is the same concept as our PLA filament. Except our filament doesn’t contain living cells.

Another neat fact that made me approve of bio-printers even more was that it was able to save the pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars all together and speed up their process of getting drunks on to the market and intern making more quantity and quality of medicine that we could use to help our everyday health. Unfortunately just like the blog about the gun project, these printers can have legal problems as well. Just like abortion and skin cell research, some people are very against the idea, unlike myself, and I am sure printing out cells and making organs is no different.

It would be really amazing if this technology could be extended to RepRap printers. A long way down the future I could see this being very feasible as long as we would create an extruder that could extrude the “bio link” along with keep it at all the right temperatures. Unfortunately it sounds like growing organs is still about a decade away, so for the technology to extend to the RepRaps would be even longer.

Blog 5:

1. If I were a member of the DIY gun project and ran into this problem, I would find another printer. I don't see why he cant get a different printer from a different company. Does he have to tell the rental company exactly what he is using it for when he rents it? I think if worst comes to worst he should just buy a reprap printer like the ones we have but a little nicer (and maybe a little more reliable haha). It just seems like a lot of money to rent a $9,000 dollar 3d printer when he could buy a Sargent Welch MakerBot 3D printer for $2,400.

2. I can see how a 3D printed gun could cause trouble. And if they were to actually create a gun like that wanted to in case 2 that is entirely plastic then anyone could get onto airplanes with them. And with the open software I mean literally anyone could get on to a plane with them. In addition the police would have no way of tracing the gun or where and when someone bought it because it would be the exact same gun that everyone has. So in response to the question I think it should be regulated. But with the internet now days, once something gets uploaded it is there forever. So regulation will be extremely difficult.

3. I think guns are the biggest issue by far when it comes to prohibitions towards 3D printing. Other 3d printable constructs that might cause similar attention would be anything that you could print at home that copies someones patent. Like if all of a sudden people could start printing cellphone cases successfully, those companies would have a problem .

Blog 4:

I kinda of side with Makerbot to a point. They are trying to make money as well and if they keep making everything open sourced it becomes hard for them to please their investors. As far as Thingiverse owning the rights to everything people upload does not agree with me at all. I think Prussa is taking it to far in trying to own everyone's designs and ideas. I think he is trying to push his luck with the Thingiverse terms and conditions and trying to alter all that legal nonsense. Unfortunately I also believe that if Prussa has enough money and good enough lawyers he could get what he wants. No one really reads all the terms and conditions anyways so he very well could be right with saying he owns the ideas. I guess only time will tell what the end result is. With all this buzz about what is going to happen with the Thingiverse debate I guess a great question is will we still post our own class ideas on Thingiverse. I think if Prussa is trying hard to take everyone's ideas it might be good to post our own ideas and designs on a different website. At the end of the article Benchoff was talking about a great alternative website called GitHub. I think they might be something good to look into as a class.

Blog 3:

1. I think once the 3D printing would becomes even more popular and more profitable we will start to see restrictions being placed on STL files. Some files might be very complex and take the designer hours upon hours to construct, making him or her want to place a restrictions on the file. But in the mean time and in the future for smaller or not as comprised stl's, they will still be open to the public and Thingiverse will still flourish with downloadable STL's.

2. Although I am still young and have sever passions that come and go and change as time goes by, my current passion is rock climbing. I definitely don't climb in the hopes to one day get thousands of dollars from this passion. It is more of a money pit if anything. As far as attracting mates I guess that could be a stretch. I guess getting my swell on at the rock gym could attract girls. Even though there are a lot of attractive women at the climbing wall I have had no such luck. Maybe I should take up another passion hahah.

3. I dont think 3D printing will end intellectual property. In that post he mentioned that you would print your iphone and start making them at home which is not true at all. There is no way you can print the electrical components. But figuratively I can kind of see where he is coming from. If it does end up that people can print their own things I think that would be bad for the economy. Business will no longer be able to hold on to patents and become bankrupt. And I would get fired as an engineer because all the ideas i come up with would become non-profitable once the product comes out and everyone would print it themselves.

Blog 2:

1. I think a goal of a 'self replicating universal constructor' is not quite feasible yet or else they would already exist. With the current RepRap printers the idea is getting closer but it is still not quite there. I think more advanced software and robotic engineering need to be improved and implemented before his goal can be reached.

2. The phrase wealth without money means that you can still gain a wealthy style without actually having a ton of money. I agree with the phrase to an extent. I think so future implications or problem this could have is a huge rise in unemployment. If everyone had these self sufficient machines then no one would need to buy anything. Some possibilities could be non wealthy people creating and printing things that only wealthy people have.

3. Reprap projects have come a long way since 2007 so it is mind boggling to think where they would be in the future. I can definitely see an improvement in accuracy. They already have "High resolution" printers, but down the road I can see the technology improving ever more. Another improvement that is very possible is software. They are always coming out with new software and software upgrades all the time. Hopefully down the road printers will be able to print a part in 5 minutes where now it takes 2 hours.

Blog 1:

Useful: "Hose Clamp" Simple yet very useful.

Artistic: "Mario" Life is good when you know you can print your very own Mario.

Pointless: "Automation Hand" Looks like a lot of work to make fingers tap on a table in my opinion.

Funny: "How would you feel if someone just turned you on and left" I don't think my mother will be putting up to many of these any time soon.

Weird: "Inverse Colbert" Something just isn't right here.

I have been on THINGIVERSE for a total of one day now and am already looking on Craigslist for 3D printer kits.