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83-Year-Old Inventor Wins $40,000 3D Printing Competition
harrymcc writes "The Desktop Factory Competition was a contest to create an open-source design for a low-cost machine capable of turning cheap plastic pellets into the filament used by 3D printers, with a prize of $40,000. The winner is being announced today — and he was born during the Hoover administration. I interviewed 83-year-old retiree Hugh Lyman — a proud member of the maker movement — for a story over at TIME.com. From the article: 'Lyman describes himself as an “undergraduate engineer” — he studied engineering from 1948-1953 at the University of Utah, but didn’t earn a degree. Though he holds eight patents, he says he’s “not educated enough to be able to do calculations of torque and so forth.” So implementing his contest entry “was trial and error. I tinkered with it and used common sense.”'"
I'm glad some people still attempt projects like these without engineering degrees.
Often better than calculations. It works, because of the assumptions often needed to do calculations are wrong. I've seen a guy spend an inordinate amount of time doing calculations and what not, and then have things still not work. go back make more calculations and wash rinse repeat. He didn't understand the problem.
Meanwhile an old timer looked and figured out the issue and had it fixed in about ten minutes.
Granted, this is just a single example, and not every case is like this.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You don't want bridges, buildings, or airplanes designed by trial an error. The errors cost too much.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I understand his invention.
What I don't understand is how plastic filament is so expensive. Surely this stuff is already produced on an enormous scale with machines that have a tiny amortized cost.
Anyone got any ideas?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Unfortunately, "Common Sense" is in short supply. It's actually the rarest element of all, and very likely, this gentleman succeeds where others fail because he applies common sense.
There are a lot of very smart, clever people out there, but not that many smart, clever people with common sense. Trust me on this.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Accumulating the knowledge so you didn't need trial and error probably took a fair bit of trial and error to start out with though. :)
Can anyone tell me how well ABS recycles? I'm thinking about something like this extruder, but instead of using bulk pellets, dicing up old projects and tossing them in the hopper. Recycle the plastic to make new stuff.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
One of the thing that makes a good 3D printer filament is a perfectly round one with a constant diameter. I'm guessing it was two requirements of the contest but the author was too lazy to put a link on the "Desktop Factory Competition" text.
Yes I can search "Desktop Factory Competition", but so will 500 other people. I'm not being lazy, I'm saying one person should have worked 5 seconds more to write the post instead of making 500 people waste 2 seconds. It's basic mathematics.
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It depends on who you let in. When I attend Virginia Tech in the 80s they'd let just about anyone into the engineering program, but very few actually graduated with engineering degrees. Today a far higher percentage who enter graduate, but the admissions standards (for engineering, at least) are quite a bit higher.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I am interested in buying a 3D printer. Does anyone have experience / recommendations? The cheapest I have seen is $500 at http://store.solidoodle.com/ but I'm curious if it is worth spending more for a 'higher quality' printer.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
See U.S Space-Launch Vehicle Technology, Hunley, 9780813031781, page 196.
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Also covered in Stephen Baxter's Titan, page 170-172 in paperback ISBN 9780006498117
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The woman below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."
"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist. "I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is, technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip."
The woman below responded, "You must be in Management." "I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Accumulating the knowledge so you didn't need trial and error probably took a fair bit of trial and error to start out with though. :)
That's why as an engineer you should consider performing a Failure Modes Effects and Criticality analysis (FMECA). Quite often you can predict the error, and account for it. Sometimes you account for the error by adding in additional maintenance/inspections, other times you have spares, sometimes you perform preventative maintenance, and sometimes you put a net underneath the bridge.
Let's assume your bridge is being constructed from stone (longevity or maintenance reasons), you know that it will eventually erode, crack, and wear out, but you build into your design features which are intended to help delay the failure, or allow for a graceful failure. So instead of designing your bridge to be covered with paint because that would block some of the environment, you forgo the protective paint and leave it exposed to the elements because now you can send a crew to inspect the bridge every 5 years for cracks/erosion/damage which might have been obscured by the paint. While the paint might have extended the life of the bridge by 10 years in ideal situations, being able to inspect the bridge might allow you to discover the crack which would cause a catastrophic failure at life-5 years.
Sometimes you have to accept error as part of the design because correcting that error might compromise other aspects of the design.
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spent 5 years at The University of Utah studying engineering? Sorry, but you learn that in your freshman year. Great story, but that part is laughable. As a Mechanical Engineering graduate '93 from WSU I know what the hell I'm talking about, just like a person above me claiming the guy is lying.
He decided he didn't want to take that route, and tinkered instead.
Although I do not recommend that, as just a little knowledge of Mathematics can save you a great deal of time and effort in engineering activities of all types, including software. I can see why he never finished college.
So, although I am similar in that I personally refuse to get any degree because:
1) You are you are forced to have a bank involved if you want to be educated.
2) You are put into a institution, like other crazy people and forced to think exactly the same way, and if you do not you are considered a failure.
3) You are not required to produce a solution to any problem in your community or society to earn this degree, only provide a solution for corporation and human resource departments to screen others who are not in on the Ponzi scheme of banking. (See #1, rinse and repeat.)
With that being said though, I do attend UW-Madison every once in awhile just to make sure I am not totally cynical, just mostly cynical. :-)
But I already have my "degree" in my opinion as I have my own professional practice, I feed myself with the solutions I come up with that people pay me to solve their computing problems and all the time I am competing with B.S., M.S., and PhD's for the same customers. (Mostly winning.)
With the exception I have a nice tidy net worth and no debts far below and above most of these people.
The few jobs I have applied for in my career, most people ask me how is it possible you accomplished all of these things?
(Most seem downright annoyed too...)
To which I reply, "I am not very smart really. Just everyone else is extremely stupid that go to Universities." ;-)
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.