It was recently blogged about US law and 3d printing, after reading the entire paper I had two questions, both of which i emailed the writer, hopefully I will get a response soon. Those questions were about copyright vs patent in the law. specifically if someone posted a design somewhere i.e.thingiverse and then later a company filed for a patent for the same device, and received the patent, would it supersede the copyright or would the posting of the device automatically invalidate the patent due to not being unique or original.
After pondering this for a bit something else came to me, the copyright's that are put on things in thingiverse are (other than as a record) worthless, they have no real meaning since copyright cannot and should not be applied to physical objects, and we as makers do NOT want to change that.
really.
think about what it would do. right now a patent has a very short shelf life of about 12 years (i believe though for some reason 7 seems to come to mind) but a copyright is life plus 90 years or so!!!!
companies have been trying to get patent length extended for years and they have also tried to apply copyright law to patentable objects, so far thankfully none of these have panned out for them.
now, this doesn't mean that i think people should stop posting things or putting a gpl license on them, on the contrary, if i understand patent law then we need to post MORE things, the more we can prove non patentable the better. But also note. once something is posted it cant be patented ever, even by the original poster.
years ago back when i was a kid my uncle made a gold panning device, he made the mistake of selling a few of them before he patented it. results: patent rejected, item already exists for sale.
now, I have no references to quote and IANAL and neither do i play one on TV so don't take any of this as legal advice. not that any of it was actually intended as advice, just as a HMM moment.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
mk5 and mendel
Well, ive been working for the last month or so to get dual mk5 heater cores printing on my mendel with very limited success. My biggest issues are excessive loading of the filament through my bowden cable. I can get pla to run through it at REALY low speeds but if I try to extrude over about 10mm/s it jams and strips the filament in my wades extruder. Ive been wondering if the hobbed bolt i made was the cause so I ordered some from ebay about a month ago but have yet to recieve them.
One of the issues I have with the pla is probably filament swelling leading to excessive backpressure but so far I havent found a solution to that. The 1/8" stainless pipes I tried initialy as filament guides seemed to transfer heat too far up their length causing real bad back pressure and when I tried to shorten one of them I made it too short and the ptfe tubing swelled and deformed between it and the upper filament guide section. I currenty am trying a stock makerbot barrel and nozzel assembly and with it I can get the 10mm/s or so feed rate with some reliability though i had to add two heat sinks instead of the standard one. I beleve this is at least partly because the mendel carriage encloses and retains the heat better than a standard makerbot open air design.
One of the issues I have with the pla is probably filament swelling leading to excessive backpressure but so far I havent found a solution to that. The 1/8" stainless pipes I tried initialy as filament guides seemed to transfer heat too far up their length causing real bad back pressure and when I tried to shorten one of them I made it too short and the ptfe tubing swelled and deformed between it and the upper filament guide section. I currenty am trying a stock makerbot barrel and nozzel assembly and with it I can get the 10mm/s or so feed rate with some reliability though i had to add two heat sinks instead of the standard one. I beleve this is at least partly because the mendel carriage encloses and retains the heat better than a standard makerbot open air design.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
x axis mods
I have been working on getting my mendel printing more reliably and have changed the orientation of the x axis motor. The main design puts way too much drag on the axis to print. or at least on mine. Also working on installing makerbot mk5 hot ends so have redesigned the print carriage so the mk5 head can fit between the rods. right now im printing it on my makerbot. Im also considering a mod of the x-z connections to widen the spacing of the rods, right now im concerned that the heat from the extruder may cause issues with the carraige regardless of the new design.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
hot end experiments
I have been working on some new hot ends for a while, I purchased several kits from makergear of the Noophead style and have one of them installed in my makerbot right now. then wouldnt you know it but makerbot releases their mk5 extruder and completly changes the course of my expiriments. after looking at their design (i have one hot end on the way and parts for 3 more) I started working on fabbing some equivelents for my mendel.
I will probably post pictures of each test one of these days but the one that im fealing the most confidant about was pretty simple. take a section of 1/8" schedual 40 stainless pipe, turn down the end to 3/8" and thread it 3/8-24. then using one of the aluminum blocks from the makergear kits I drilled it out with a Q bit and tapped it to 3/8-24.
my first test used a single resistor but it could only get to 130C so i have fabricated a new one with two resistors. I have a fealing that im going to have to drive power to each seperatly with my current set up since its a gen2 pwm board so i doubt it can handle the current draw of both resistors in paralel. I may try just applying 12v directly to one and triggering the other with software.
I will post more later, hopefuly with pictures.
I will probably post pictures of each test one of these days but the one that im fealing the most confidant about was pretty simple. take a section of 1/8" schedual 40 stainless pipe, turn down the end to 3/8" and thread it 3/8-24. then using one of the aluminum blocks from the makergear kits I drilled it out with a Q bit and tapped it to 3/8-24.
my first test used a single resistor but it could only get to 130C so i have fabricated a new one with two resistors. I have a fealing that im going to have to drive power to each seperatly with my current set up since its a gen2 pwm board so i doubt it can handle the current draw of both resistors in paralel. I may try just applying 12v directly to one and triggering the other with software.
I will post more later, hopefuly with pictures.
Friday, August 20, 2010
terminator
Ive been working on some prints and watching netflix for the last couple weeks and got into watching the terminator tv series. I have to say Ive always loved the franchise but it has always caused me to both laugh and scream.
When terminator first came out it was showing the fears of society in a very real way to the best of hollywoods abuility to show, but looking back at it the whole concept is ludicris. If man were to somehow create a truly artificial intelegence there wouldnt be a fight. No war. No battle. Mankind would either cese to exist or just become a slave meatpuppet.
The good thing is, truly artificial intelegence is a long way off, not that i believe that we will not achieve intelegence in silicon soon, just not artificial intelegence.
Atomicaly precice manufacturing will soon become a reality. While i dont have much hope in it occuring in reprap first I know that once it occurse reprap will achieve it in short order. With that leap there will be a whole new dimension of technology occuring almost simultaneusly.
There are so many things I could write about but going back to the terminator stories, obviously the machines had developed the technology, at least in the form of Utility metal or as its sometimes called claytronics. The truth of this type of technology is, a war fought with it and one side possessing it only isnt a war. One of my greatest fears is nanotech being in the hands of the few or the one. If everyone has it, its just a tool. If one person has it its a weapon.
Please forgive the typeo's I dont have a spell checker on this computer so will probably edit this again when im on a different one. Also please forgive the rant. Most of you who would be reading this already know what im saying so im just preaching to the choir, but sometimes you just have to rant :)
When terminator first came out it was showing the fears of society in a very real way to the best of hollywoods abuility to show, but looking back at it the whole concept is ludicris. If man were to somehow create a truly artificial intelegence there wouldnt be a fight. No war. No battle. Mankind would either cese to exist or just become a slave meatpuppet.
The good thing is, truly artificial intelegence is a long way off, not that i believe that we will not achieve intelegence in silicon soon, just not artificial intelegence.
Atomicaly precice manufacturing will soon become a reality. While i dont have much hope in it occuring in reprap first I know that once it occurse reprap will achieve it in short order. With that leap there will be a whole new dimension of technology occuring almost simultaneusly.
There are so many things I could write about but going back to the terminator stories, obviously the machines had developed the technology, at least in the form of Utility metal or as its sometimes called claytronics. The truth of this type of technology is, a war fought with it and one side possessing it only isnt a war. One of my greatest fears is nanotech being in the hands of the few or the one. If everyone has it, its just a tool. If one person has it its a weapon.
Please forgive the typeo's I dont have a spell checker on this computer so will probably edit this again when im on a different one. Also please forgive the rant. Most of you who would be reading this already know what im saying so im just preaching to the choir, but sometimes you just have to rant :)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
steamrap
The other day i was on irc #reprap and somehow we got onto the subject of steampunk. there were a bunch of ideas thrown around about punking a reprap but it got me thinking about doing a real steampunk reprap.
My design idea's are still in the rudimentary stage but here are the thoughts on it.
using two steam pistons at 90 deg from each other on a connected cam you can make a steam steper with 4 steps per revolution, connecting this to a hypocycloidal gearbox
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3736 with a 100:1 gear ratio makes it a 400 step per revolution steam stepper. by printing the parts in pla and doing lost pla casting of bronze or copper parts I believe i could print the entire printer to include the guide rods or a equivelent design. essentialy printing all the parts for the printer. It would require some post printing/casting machining but i dont believe it would be eccessive.
if i actualy get it built I will probably be testing it with reletivly standard electronics at first but the end desire is to have it print by being controled from either a player piano style reel or with punched or raised copper disks similar to a music box.
of course so far this is just in concept phase but i figured i would throw the idea out there and see if anyone else thought this idea was just too cool to pass up trying.
My design idea's are still in the rudimentary stage but here are the thoughts on it.
using two steam pistons at 90 deg from each other on a connected cam you can make a steam steper with 4 steps per revolution, connecting this to a hypocycloidal gearbox
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3736 with a 100:1 gear ratio makes it a 400 step per revolution steam stepper. by printing the parts in pla and doing lost pla casting of bronze or copper parts I believe i could print the entire printer to include the guide rods or a equivelent design. essentialy printing all the parts for the printer. It would require some post printing/casting machining but i dont believe it would be eccessive.
if i actualy get it built I will probably be testing it with reletivly standard electronics at first but the end desire is to have it print by being controled from either a player piano style reel or with punched or raised copper disks similar to a music box.
of course so far this is just in concept phase but i figured i would throw the idea out there and see if anyone else thought this idea was just too cool to pass up trying.
moved
well, im now moved onto the boat, and actualy have been for the last month but getting organized in the new cramped environment has kept me from doing much printing. I did print out a new x axis carriage assembly to replace the one on my mendel, its a bit warped and I feal its causing a lot of the stiffness in my axis. I havent installed it yet and im probably going to print out some new footed frame vertexes before i do the disassembly and reassembly.
I also just ordered a batch of bitg head nozzels and noophead style heaters from makergear and another mega board from makerbot, my last one im having some issues with installing forth onto and all of the blog posts ive seen of my symptoms point to a board failure of some kind. I plan on downloading the new mega's kernel and trying to install it on the forth one to see if i can unbrick it, if so then ill try installing the forth kernel on the new mega and see what happens. If i cant unbrick the one well, at least ill have a save of the mega firmware to resort back to.
Im also seeing a bit of rust developing on my bots from the salt air so i may have to try installing zinc's to them first and if that doesnt help replacing all the steel parts with stainless. that could get a bit on the spendy side but i guess that is just a price you pay for the mobility of a boat :)
I also just ordered a batch of bitg head nozzels and noophead style heaters from makergear and another mega board from makerbot, my last one im having some issues with installing forth onto and all of the blog posts ive seen of my symptoms point to a board failure of some kind. I plan on downloading the new mega's kernel and trying to install it on the forth one to see if i can unbrick it, if so then ill try installing the forth kernel on the new mega and see what happens. If i cant unbrick the one well, at least ill have a save of the mega firmware to resort back to.
Im also seeing a bit of rust developing on my bots from the salt air so i may have to try installing zinc's to them first and if that doesnt help replacing all the steel parts with stainless. that could get a bit on the spendy side but i guess that is just a price you pay for the mobility of a boat :)
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