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STM32F0 and SAMD21... so it's not cheap and can't be.

Is the connector standardized for CAN? Otherwise they could have picked one that's easy to install by crimping, like RJ11. We've already been there with the Dallas one-wire networks: either use RJ11 to have power, power ground, signal and signal ground, or RJ45 because those connectors are more readily available and some extra pins are there just in case. Or maybe use an audio connector, for convenience and robustness, although those are more trouble to make up your own cables.

But there are other standards for a reliable low-speed low-wire-count low-compute-power network. But differential signaling is a must, and higher voltages help to make it more robust too.

A worthwhile next step would be to get an open core design for one of these incorporated into a next-gen Risc-V based microcontroller. Then all the makers could get behind it, just to support the open-IP ecosystem.

Remember when RepRaps used RS485 between components? (e.g. https://reprap.org/wiki/Extrud...) And there have been smart stepper motors. I kindof thought that idea was going to take off, early on, but most seem to have decided it's cheaper to centralize the logic and the stepper drivers on one board. But that doesn't scale to larger machines. If CAN has an advantage over RS485 for that, it might make some sense; but I still think one micro ought to be enough to implement it; and if it's not, then CAN is probably the wrong choice.

Wireless is popular, but every device needs power so nothing can really be disconnected for the long term, unless it runs from solar power. (Batteries either have to be plugged in to recharge, or else they are environmentally unsustainable. Or both.) And there is the ongoing suspicion that RF exposure might cause health problems too. Whenever that risk finally hits the majority's radar, which technology is going to be in position to be the next contender? LiFi could be fairly easy I think.

I had an idea years ago to incorporate optical fiber into every power cable and every power outlet (simply standardize the position on the plug, relative to the other 3 prongs, assuming a choice of fiber technology such that precise alignment isn't necessary), so that when you plug anything in, you get networking at the same time. But that's a chicken-egg problem.

Alternatively, find a way to make one of the powerline networking standards cheaper. We can't get away from in-wall wiring to power stuff; so, one way or another, the network and the power wiring ought to be combined, IMO.

Metalicarap is the real 3D printing revolution: http://reprap.org/wiki/Metalic... It can print solar panels which means it can power itself. It can double as an electron microscope, and importantly it can refine, recycle and print metals. When complete Metalicarap is going to disrupt the entire world. The plastic 3D printers were never going to be more than toys. Eventually you might have both in your house, but the Metal 3D printers are the real game changers.

RepRap project here: http://reprap.org/wiki/Metalic... is working to bring (almost) Star Trek style replicators into your home, which will free millions from having to work crummy manufacturing jobs, and will crash the price of Titanium and metal manufacturing. It is 100% open source and is being designed by engineers and programmers working together. It is also capable of printing solar panels which will help alleviate the world's energy and carbon problems.

http://reprap.org/wiki/MendeLe...

3D printed 3D printers!

Uh, http://reprap.org/

That's the underlying goal of RepRap Printers, self replication. A decent amount of the components can be self replicated.

many 3d printers are designed with 3d-printable parts so that a printer can make a printer.
reprap

it's a neat trick and a cool way for a hobbyist to make a couple of printers, but it's way way faster to manufacture higher quality printer parts.

Yep.

That's why it's so important that people document this sort of thing w/ open licenses which can't be taken back.

I've been working on that sort of thing for the Shapeko: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/i...

Anyone know of any similar wikis / resources?

  - http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Rep... --- I've tried to help out on this, but simply didn't get any help when I expressed how mystifying I found the structure / hierarchy --- finally just did a link dump of 3D printing stuff here: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/i...
  - http://www.reddit.com/r/hobbyc... --- this subreddit has a single page, which addresses the big thing which the Shapeoko wiki can't have, a list / comparison of other machines

Makerspace == workshop for geeks who missed shop class and don't understand the basics of craftsmanship

So what happens when this appears on the scene?: http://reprap.org/wiki/Metalic... high quality high detail 3d printing of metals and other materials. Good luck trying to enforce IP rights once this tech hits the market.

http://reprap.org/wiki/Tantill...

Those exist, they're called Repraps. http://reprap.org/

Not a repeat, just another project, and it is TIG. Another project called Strongprint is using TIG because the mass of the print head can be quite low and move over a large, fixed print surface. The one you cited uses MIG and moves the print surface under the print head using a delta robot, while Strongprint mounts the print head on a delta robot, and Delaire's printer moves the TIG head on a gantry. http://reprap.org/wiki/StrongP...

I just read your stuff here: http://forums.reprap.org/read....
Very cool! I'm looking forward to following your project. One thing I don't like about these is the cost of the DLP, it seems that whatever your save on the platform you have to spend on the DLP...

monopoly? huh... how?
They are dozens of 3D printers models out-there, both by big brand (like Materialize) or very small maker groups (RepRap), based on several different technologies (glued powder, extruted melted material, laser polymerisation, etc.).

There's a clear open standard to transfer data (STL).
This format is documented (and is brain dead simple).
Anything that can spit this format can be used for 3D printing.
Any printer that can eat this format will print.

The only ploy for Autodesk is that they are a dominant actor in the market of software used to make the models (the "STL spitting" mentionned above).
The more the 3D Printing market expands, the more demand for models, and thus the more creator may buy Autodesk professionnal ).

But no monopoly is going to take over the STL ecosystem,
just like the post-script ecosystem didn't got taken over by HP.

Wound up w/ a second ShapeOko (a 2, which I got so that I could write the instructions at http://docs.shapeoko.com/ ), so have been planning to turn it into a 3D printer.

The initial (naïve) plan was to just mount an extruder I'd bought, source a hot-end, connect it to a spare stepper driver on my AtomCNC board, reflash w/ Teacup or Marlin and print --- anyone who knows anything about 3D printers can quit laughing now.

The current plan is:

  - mount an extruder (a Wade's reloaded)
  - wire up a hot-end (a J-Head Mk V or so w/ 0.35mm orifice for 1.75mm filament)
  - source a new Arduino (an Uno w/ just a 328p won't cut it)
  - source a stepper shield which has 4 stepper drivers (one for each axis, one more for the extruder, plus electronics support for powering the hot-end and monitoring its temperature)

Still haven't decided if I'm going to buy a heated bed or no --- hoping to manage w/o one ---you 3D guys may quietly laugh again now.

Unfortunately, there wasn't as much in the way of documentation on the RepRap wiki as I'd hoped for: http://reprap.org/wiki/Categor...

So I'm documenting things here: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/i...

I'm surprised they based their designs on linear slides.... it looks like the next generation of RepRap will do away with them entirely: http://reprap.org/wiki/Wally

I believe so, try here or here.
The first one I linked can be used for both additive and subtractive processes.

I believe so, try here or here.
The first one I linked can be used for both additive and subtractive processes.

Get yourself a Lulzbot TAZ 2.0 3D printer

From the Lulzbot webpage:

-------------

LulzBot TAZ 2 3D Printer
SKU: 817752014304
$2,395.00

Pre-Order: All current orders are pre-orders. Pre-orders are expected to start shipping before the end of the year (this does not include the Fundable backers, which will start shipping sooner). Expected lead times for shipment are currently 7-8 weeks.

-------------

So not only are they suggesting that people BUY a 3D printer instead of making their own in the true open hardware/open source spirit, they're listing one of the most expensive 3D printer out there and it's not even going to start shipping until after Christmas/early next year.

http://reprap.org/wiki/MetalicaRap They're using an triode electron gun to melt the powder. Trouble is that most of the items needed aren't in wide use. They have made great progress though.

I never said it was going to be easy (otherwise everyone would already be doing it), but if you want it to be more popular, useful (for more than yoda figurines) and pay for itself quicker, then doubling the build area is going to go a lot further than halving the price. I'm quite interested in le big rep http://reprap.org/wiki/LeBigRep just waiting on the guy to do a bit more of the leg work.

Why does everyone somehow seem to think that additive manufacturing ("3D printing") is better than subtractive (standard CNC)?

This blog post should help out.

The materials gap is closing. Provided we actually get to a point where the physical properties of an additive object versus a subtractive object are no different, there won't be many compelling reasons to use subtractive anymore. At the very least, it'll be a question of whether you want to sweep up a bunch of sharp tailings every night or not.

A Delta-based printer: http://reprap.org/wiki/Simpson

I'd really like to see the best of both worlds (the Simpson build instructions are quite nice, while Morgan's is a wall of text...)

3d systems, the patent holder for both the process and the hardware that in fact realizes the process, has been doing this since 1986. their polymer, conveniently termed a "resin" on the Form 1 website, seems like nothing more than a creative attempt at skirting patent law. Looking at the 3d systems CubeX or ProJet 1000, the Form1 is the fucking definition of knock-off.
3d printers funded by a kickstarter make for your traditional slashdot-du-jour, but after the litigation dont expect Formlabs to be able to release their product for anything less than what a 3d systems entry-level model should cost. best to save your money go for a Mendel.

Now that we have 3D-printers that print guns, another challenge to us all: print a 3D-printer.

Might I suggest you check out this. That's the whole point of the RepRap project.

How about a printer that can print a printer?

What, like a RepRap?

So who is going to bother putting a serial number on a 3D printer thant their 3D printer just printed?

http://reprap.org/

Like Skeinforge?

You mean like the reprap: http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page ?

you might be late to the party.

3D printing of 3D printers (i.e. self-replicating printers) is the goal of a number of projects, including the Reprap project. Most of the structural parts are printable. People are working on open source printable electronics. Chips and actuators can't be easily printed yet.

I get that this is April Fools joke, but it might be worthwhile to mention that there is a real project aimed at accomplishing this goal: RepRap.

I'm a small business owner (I created OpenBeam: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ttstam/openbeam-an-open-source-miniature-construction-sys). It is basically a small, nice version of an erector set, that is currently being used for building 3D printers. (See: http://reprap.org/wiki/Kossel).

US manufacturing is *hard*, for sure, for small businesses. In fact, the system is set up so that I'm better off shipping jobs overseas.

We buy our extrusions from a small mill in California, a family owned business. Our first batch was great. We made a small engineering change on the next batch and ordered the extrusions in October of 2012. We received the parts in early December, and the black anodizing was crap - it literally looks like it's been dive bombed by seagulls with diarrhea. We shipped back 700 of 2000 pieces for rework, and we still have not received it back. Meanwhile, I'm out of stock, I have thousands of dollars of backorders that I can't fill, and I still have no idea when I'll get replacement stock back in. And to make things worse, when we complained initially about the quality of the parts, the answer we got was literally "you're small potatoes, we don't have time for you"

Meanwhile half way across the globe, my injection molder (http://blog.openbeamusa.com/2012/05/18/behind-the-scenes-injection-molding/) is churning out parts, 50,000 at a time. He always delivers when he says he'll deliver. With UPS and Expeditors I can get goods landed on my doorstep anywhere from 48 hours to less than 3 weeks for ocean freight shipping. It costed me $1000 to ocean freight half a metric *ton* of parts, and it'll be here in 3 weeks. The reason for going overseas for injection molding is simple: The material we use is a high end glass-reinforced nylon and the only shops the US that can handle it are military and aerospace molders and they demand an incredible premium.

On top of all this, I currently import a bunch of motors, pulleys, bearings for my 3D printer kits, US customs requires that I file an individual HTS classification for each line item, and taxes me individually. I then pay my old coworker's kid $20/hr, which is a princely sum for a 14 year old girl, to do my packaging and kitting. However, If I paid some guys overseas $10.00 a day to do the same job, I can declare my imported goods as "construction toy set" and avoid paying import taxes all-together. Therefore, there are absolutely NO incentives for me to keep the packaging job in the US, except for the short flexibility between an engineering change and getting the change pushed through on the line.

When it comes to export, I'm equally screwed. Until I signed up with Expeditors, there was no easy way for me to export my shipment around the world. So while I have customers in the UK, EU, and NZ/AU areas, for the longest time I had to resort to USPS Priority mail to ship them stuff, and priority mail rates just went up. Surface parcel service was discontinued a few years ago during budget cuts, so unless you are a bonded importer / exporter, you really have no option of doing a low cost export. Meanwhile, I paid US$20.00 for a batch of parts for 2 day shipping for a crate of timing belt pulleys from Shanghai to Hong Kong. There are so many Chinese logistics company these days that shipping is incredibly cheap to move things around in China.

People don't realize that the world is getting a lot smaller these days. The other day a vendor returned an email quotation - 5 weeks after initial RFQ. I had already paid someone else and landed parts in that amount of time. A supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link and it seems like for small businesses there are just no good options for manufacturing.

-=- Terence

How can you make an item illegal if anyone can print it out? How

Ban unauthorized possession of RepRap "vitamins".

It's been done, but I'm having trouble finding links.

• ABS strikes me as a bad idea because of the fumes.
• PLA has been used to do casting. It's a bioplastic based on corn so I don't believe it's toxic when burned like ABS is.
• PVA seems like it might be ideal. PVA dissolves in water, so you could make your mold and then just flush the positive out of it with hot water.

I know I've seen this on Thingiverse. I believe I've also seen people make negative molds on a Makerbot, use that to make a was positive, then use that to make a negative and cast from there.

You'd be surprised where 3d printing has gone in the last few years. Maybe it's not to the point that your clock project would be feasible today, but well tuned homebrew 3d printers already surpass the accuracy and resolution of many commercial printers. Check this out as an example. The technology is improving and becoming more accessible. If you told someone looking at the first Altair that one day they'd use a similar machine to share intimate details of their lives with strangers on the other side of the planet they probably wouldn't have believed you, but here we are.

Let me introduce you to a project started by a man named Adrian Bowyer.

Somehow I managed to not copy the link to the forum properly... clipboard derp on my part.

http://forums.reprap.org/

=Smidge=

Be prepared to spend at least $400, and that's if you do all of the part sourcing and assembly yourself including soldering the electronics. The reprap.org forum and wiki are good resources (though very slow lately!), as is the #reprap IRC channel on freenode. My experience is the community is generally quite helpful and inviting.

Kits typically start around $700 or so but involve a less assembly work and contain everything you need. I'm a happy owner of a Prusa Mendel machine built from a kit sold by Makergear (not to be confused with Makerbot!) that set me back ~$800. (Kit comes with some plastic but I ordered extra). I can honestly recommend them for what it's worth.
=Smidge=

how do you do it cheaply?

Its all at the level of a thousand hours vs thousands of dollars with a pretty smooth tradeoff in between. If you were hoping for $100 and a couple hours its not quite there yet.

This will probably be seen as heretical, but try an eggbot kit, if the electronics, mechanics, software, or price scare you away,han replicators aren't for you. However if you do the eggbot thing then say to yourself, "self, I can now handle 10x the challenge of an eggbot" then you're ready for a replicator.

If somebody's at a "curious hobbyist" level, where do they start?

http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

Even if you don't go reprap, you'll learn the terrain there.

I don't know why your comment offends me so much. But it does. I know that the reprap project claims the same thing - that 3d printers will end world scarcity, world hunger even (not that anyone who's ever been to a hunger-suffering country seriously thinks hunger there has anything at all to do with production capacity or lack of tools, but that's another discussion).

Ah reprap's "Wealth without money". Needless to say mails to adrian bowyer to get at that wealth without money (ie. that he send me a reprap, or even a mars bar, without me paying for it) somehow "entirely miss the point" according to him. The point of 3d printers' "wealth without money" is that you ... pay for them. Imagine that. No, not even when I drive over to come and get it. Somehow his "wealth without money" is only available for people forking over euros ...

Reality check : 3d printers will not end scarcity. They are not perpetual motion machines, they do not provide infinite supplies. They will not make poor people rich at all. In reality their products freakishly expensive, anyone with a normal budget will only ever be making tiny and light things with them. A 3d printed object costs you 90$/kg absolute minimum. I just checked the most expensive chair from a local furniture maker, it costs $25/kg.

What 3d printers are useful for is model making. You know, completing your marklin simulation, having a mario doll on your counter, a little model of a rocket. Making electronics casings. That's pretty much it.

So please : do not promise what you can't deliver.

And to make that point in this context ? What is your claim ? That you could have ended world hunger if it wasn't for those meddling kids multinationals ?

A little bit late for that as well, just replicate yourself (or someone else) another replicator.
http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

"Its like 3-d printing a computer case, and then having the media report the entire computer was printed, circuit boards and all".

There are people working on that if you were curious...

=Smidge=

I have a reprap on my desk. Last week I printed an adaptor for a new ssd harddrive and and couple of mike clips. I use it all the time. Cost me ~$500 to build and about a weeks tinkering to get it right. I could get one tweeked in a day or less now.

I dont recommend buying a built one as they are still at the model "T" stage and require a lot of tinkering to get them going. If you build it all the tinkering will make sense.

In the video they have a original mendel.
http://reprap.org/wiki/Mendel

  If you are starting out I recommend a Prusa Mendel, cheaper and better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3D56IpACME

your first step is to go to IRC and look up #reprap in Freenode and talk to the people in the room. Its not uncommon to find the very people who are designing these (Like Mr. Prusa) in the room.

For the initial RepRap it seems to be about 350€ of material? Which, to me seems quite OK (especially when 70€ of that is VAT.)

from here: http://reprap.org/wiki/About

What am I missing?

from the reprap site:

RepRap is humanity's first general-purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine.

so that is nothing unusual...

The prices of Photopolymers used in SLA type 3D printers has dropped to below the cost of PLA and ABS used in FDM printers and continues to drop. Photopolymers are dropping to under $10/kg in high volumes, so the costs of the materials are becoming less of an issue.

It's true that there are several open hardware printer projects for FDM type printers that focus mainly on printing with one material at a time such as
RepRap or Open Source Photopolymer DLP 3D Printers such as LemonCurry

3D printers are also printing with more than one material and are already printing multilayer printed circuit boards with only fluids. Much of the development work in 3D printers recently has been from open hardwave projects vs the industry since many of the old patents have now expired.

Check out RepRap and MakerBot

$50 for the cartridge sounds a bit expensive. You can probably find something equvalent for less than half the price from http://reprap.org/wiki/Printing_Material_Suppliers

Give them some credit for thinking out of the box ( at least as far as 3D printing boxes, anyway), Seems this is geared towards the same crowd tyhat would buy an iPad insyead of an Android tablet, because the Apple product is geared toward the person who just wants to say "I have one", and impress their friends.

$50 for the cartridge sounds a bit expensive.
You can probably find something equvalent for less than half the price from http://reprap.org/wiki/Printing_Material_Suppliers

Small, very low-cost CNC for milled circuit boards:
http://makeyourbot.org/mantis9-1

3D printer:
http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

Desktop-sized to shop-sized CNC mills:
http://www.buildyourcnc.com/