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=
Gambling is the spending of a (relatively) small sum of money on the hopes of the outcome of some event. If you guess the outcome correctly, you gain a (relatively) larger amount of money. At least that's how it works in the ideal case.
Insurance is the spending of money to ensure that if something happens to you or your property, funds will be available to mitigate the physical and financial damages. Generally speaking buying insurance is a net negative on your bank account - the price you pay for the peace of mind knowing that your expenses will be covered in an emergency.
If you are buying health insurance in the hopes that you will get sick, buying homeowner's insurance in the hopes that your house will burn down, buying car insurance in the hopes that you'll get hit by a truck, etc... and thinking you'll make a profit... you are either a complete idiot or attempting fraud.
If you think insurance is gambling in the sense that you are betting these things WON'T happen, you still lose money - just less. I'm aware of no sensible definition of "gambling" that includes a net loss of money regardless of the outcome. =Smidge=
How would you like to get a crotch exam every time you walked into a government building? Or a 7-11? I mean, terrorists could be anywhere, right?
I would not appreciate it one bit, but I don't think it'd be traumatized by it if I knew it would happen ahead of time.
I'd probably be more traumatized by shopping at a 7-11 in the first place.
The doctor touches your junk as part of a medical exam to ensure you're healthy. This is something you opt in for, because it benefits you. Having some stranger with no medical training shove his hands down my pants is unwelcome and invasive, and is of absolutely no benefit to my mental or physical health.
I agree that there is no benefit to what the TSA does, but it is ostensibly done for the purpose of benefiting your health by increasing safety. I don't think it accomplishes this, but that's what the given reason is.
To go back to the doctor analogy, if the doctor says he needs to fondle your crotch when there is no actual reason for doing so, you would otherwise be unaware because you opted in for an general exam and hey, he's a doctor right? He knows what he's doing! If you go in to have a lump on your head checked out and the doc tells you to drop trou, perhaps it would be more obvious that the procedure is of dubious benefit. =Smidge=
"Small children and people with existing traumas are something else, of course"
Ahhh, the justification that makes everything the TSA does A-OK.
No, no it does not. The practice and the TSA at large are complete bullshit and not justifiable by any means that I can see. But it does not lead to trauma in an otherwise mentally healthy individual either. =Smidge=
but living under that fear should not be a necessity of a reasonably safe flying experience
There is no evidence at all that you are any safer. In fact the TSA has failed to detect smuggled banned objects in every official test, several unofficial tests, and several anecdotal accounts that I'm aware of - and there have been numerous publications on how the various methods they use are easily fooled and/or don't detect the proper types of materials.
You are living in fear and you're not even safer for your trouble. =Smidge=
I'm just about as anti-TSA as someone can get, and I have to say that as awkward and unsettling as having a stranger shove their hand in your crotch? That should not cause trauma to any mentally healthy, well-adjusted individual. It is not any more sexual than having a doctor or nurse probe your junk (unless you're into that kind of thing I guess?) and it's not like you didn't know it was coming.
Small children and people with existing traumas are something else, of course, but the TSA doesn't have any systems to deal with that properly... or to deal with anything properly, for that matter. =Smidge=
I stand outside a supermarket asking people what they plan to buy. After they walk in, I radio my friend inside who immediately buys every last one of those items off the shelves. As the person leaves the store empty handed, I offer to sell them what they wanted at a slightly increased price.
Not a perfect analogy but that's pretty much what my understanding of what HFT is; buy it before the other guy can, then sell it to him yourself for a razor-thin profit. Repeat thousands of times per day and you end up with a pile of cash.
Where is the market inefficiency that's being corrected here? =Smidge=
The Higgs was never a myth. It was a prediction of the standard model that, until recently, was never seen. (One could argue that they still have not put the final nail in that coffin, though). Key word: predicted. The math said it was going to be there, but nobody had managed to reach those energy levels until the last few years.
100 years ago I doubt anyone had any opinions on quantum entanglement, which research on didn't start until the 1930s... a but shy of 100 years ago.
So in summary, nothing in the collective theories of physics in the past century has yet been truly broken. That includes faster-than-light communication, which this would not accomplish. =Smidge=
You don't necessarily need to increase the total number of days - The problem is basically letting the mind sit fallow, so just eliminate the long vacation period. Moving to 4-day weeks/3-day weekends would just about completely redistribute summer vacation by itself. Alternately, you can insert week-long breaks evenly throughout the year. I'd have preferred 3-day weekends myself, though.
What eliminating summer vacation WOULD do, though, is make it very difficult for major renovations and additions to take place. Summer vacation is just about the only opportunity to do major construction inside the building, like replacing ceilings or renovating offices. You can't have the buildings occupied with open ceilings and unfinished floors so everyone would have to be relocated to either temporary structures or other school buildings. That's a logistical problem, though, and workable IMHO. =Smidge=
Then that idea has already been hashed to death. You can already make illegal weapons with stuff that can be bought legally, like plumbing pipe and lumber and whatever you can scrounge up from around the home if you've got appropriate levels of knack. A 3D printer actually makes things harder in several ways, unless you want a *specific* gun which you still won't get because your printed version would be plastic instead of metal.
Look around you. If you can't make a serviceable weapon with what you see then you'll never be able to make one on a 3D printer. =Smidge=
You might not appreciate it, but $500 is a lot of money. The plastic feedstock you need is also $23 a pound. You can get cheaper, but you'll have so many jamming, under/over fill, stripping, warping and delamination issues that you'll regret wasting your money within a day.
You also need electricity and a computer of course. Not necessarily available in some situations.
Meanwhile, all you need to make an operable firearm is ammo and a length of pipe. By the time your 3D printer is warmed up I'll be putting a fist-sized hole through it with a load of buckshot. =Smidge=
1) It has not been my personal experience that the machines can run properly 100% unattended. That might be true for the multi-thousand dollar ones (at least I certainly hope it is for that kind of money!) but the reprap machine I own needs to be checked on and fiddled with on a fairly regular basis.
2) Even for the expensive machines, a print of any significance takes on the order of hours. Assuming you had a machine physically capable of doing so, an AK-47 sized object would take at least 80 hours my guess, based on total volume. For reference, this part that I printed a few weeks ago took about 3 hours and had two failed attempts. It's 36mm high and 88mm in diameter.
3) Rebels in Serbia are not going to have the luxury or materials to exploit 3D printing. As before, either it's extremely expensive or it's fidgety and unreliable. Meanwhile, rebels and the like have been successfully manufacturing AK-47s and other highly effective weapons in caves and tents for decades, in some cases using what literally amount to basic hand tools and scrap materials. The bar for weapons manufacture is so amazingly low trying to use a 3D printer would actually make things much harder... but unfortunately it's some people's wet dream to "click button, receive gun" that they can't see how stupid it really is. Most of the people obsessed with printing guns don't own a printer, and none of them seem to have even tried to build an operable firearm themselves. Pure fucking fantasy.
4) Guess what? Hammers and files (and hacksaws) are all you need to make a device that fires bullets at the intended target reliably. That and about $10 worth of pipe and fittings from a hardware store. Why isn't this more common? It might be because the demand for impromptu weapons just isn't there...
5) If you still don't think effective weapons can be made with basic hand tools and whatever shit is laying around, ask an Iraq / Afghanistan veteran about IEDs. =Smidge=
If you just want to build weapons in general, it would be absolutely trivial to make an effective stabbing weapon with a 3D printer. You cold even make one out of water-soluble PVA plastic and dump it in the river when you're done!
But the very idea of using a 3D printer to make weapons is ridiculous. People have been making purpose-built weapons for at least three hundred thousand years now. Some of the tools you'd need to make a 3D printer are themselves more lethal than anything you could print. They are not at all ideal for self-sustainability since you need a lot of other resources to build and operate them. Anyone who has the motivation, time and resources to make a 3D printer for weapon making would be a complete idiot to not use those resources to make cheaper, better weapons instead. =Smidge=
The only time it's really appropriate to stop learning is when you're dead. (Though I suppose if you think learning can only happen in a school you may as well be...)
The point is whether or not the math they teach in high school is useful for anything and should be taught. The problem with this thinking is the high school years are rather formative for many people - the subjects they are exposed to and their experience with them can have profound impact on the decisions they make that will form their lives and professional careers.
So take math. It may not be "useful" but it will influence you and your worldview, and that's important.
BUT! If I were to change anything, I'd shift Calculus later and put more focus on Prob & Stat - A better understanding of prob & stat will make your life better and really help keep your bullshit detector well tuned.
Also, this comes to mind and is worth watching, tangentially related. =Smidge=
Architectural and engineering plans have copyright protection. Software is copyrightable. Therefore, software that generates engineering plans is copyrightable. No new laws are necessary.
There is nothing a 3D printer can do that you couldn't do with basic hand tools and patience. In fact basic hand tools can do quite a bit more than 3D printers.
Just like they haven't banned hand tools, personal computers, photocopiers and personal printers, still and video cameras, VCRs and CD/DVD burners because they had the potential for facilitating copyright infringement - they won't ban 3D printers either. Everything you said applies to all those technologies - and the same arguments were about them in the past - but nothing has come of it. =Smidge=
You can't prevent someone from building a patented device themselves NOW. Never could. What you CAN do - if you catch them - is take them to court over selling them.
The digital design/model files are on the same shelf as digital music and movie files. They are not patented but copyrighted - and we have lots of (heavy-handed, often draconian) tools for dealing distribution of copyrighted materials. And just like with digital music and movies, there is nothing you can do to really prevent trading them either.
In short: 3D printing just lowers the bar for what has always been possible. Content producers will have to either adapt to a new market environment or double down on the draconian idiocy. No point for guessing which path they choose. =Smidge=
Patents are supposed to cover a particular arrangement of components that perform a specific task. Even a parametric design would still have the same fundamental arrangement of major components and perform the same task. You can patent that.
Then you can copyright the script that generates the device with the given parameters. =Smidge=
If you're making 1000+ of them, you are no longer a hobbyist......and if you are not a hobbyist, there are better ways to make these things in volume. =Smidge=
I see no reason why this part couldn't have been produced just as easily using resin casting, or even whittled out of wood, using tools and materials purchased at any hobby supply for much less than a 3D printer would cost to build.
3D printing is actually a harder route for "the hobbyist" to take than the methods that have been available for decades. The only reason this is a story is because it involves the words "3D printer," which is the current buzzword. =Smidge=
No point in repeating what is actually wrong in one way or another.
Want a solid "full strength" metal part from a 3D printer? Either use a 3D printed substrate and infuse it with molten metal as a post-process (sintering method) or use the 3D printed object as a lost-material positive mold blank. Besides, if you want monolithic metal objects 3D printing is not the way to go.
As for full strength plastic parts? 3D printers can actually produce parts stronger than injection molded parts in some situations, since printed parts from an extrusion machine have a "grain" structure not completely unlike wood. Sintering methods can produce parts as strong as any molded resin part since that's what they use as binder and/or filler.
As for the machine fucking up - humans fuck up far more often. A machine fucking up is usually due to a faulty human in the process chain somewhere. It's also a lot harder to repair a damaged human... =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
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=
Insurance is insurance, gambling is gambling.
Gambling is the spending of a (relatively) small sum of money on the hopes of the outcome of some event. If you guess the outcome correctly, you gain a (relatively) larger amount of money. At least that's how it works in the ideal case.
Insurance is the spending of money to ensure that if something happens to you or your property, funds will be available to mitigate the physical and financial damages. Generally speaking buying insurance is a net negative on your bank account - the price you pay for the peace of mind knowing that your expenses will be covered in an emergency.
If you are buying health insurance in the hopes that you will get sick, buying homeowner's insurance in the hopes that your house will burn down, buying car insurance in the hopes that you'll get hit by a truck, etc... and thinking you'll make a profit... you are either a complete idiot or attempting fraud.
If you think insurance is gambling in the sense that you are betting these things WON'T happen, you still lose money - just less. I'm aware of no sensible definition of "gambling" that includes a net loss of money regardless of the outcome.
=Smidge=
You'd have thought Samsung would learn their lesson already. Don't they know that Apple patented remote data wipe technology years ago?
=Smidge=
How would you like to get a crotch exam every time you walked into a government building? Or a 7-11? I mean, terrorists could be anywhere, right?
I would not appreciate it one bit, but I don't think it'd be traumatized by it if I knew it would happen ahead of time.
I'd probably be more traumatized by shopping at a 7-11 in the first place.
The doctor touches your junk as part of a medical exam to ensure you're healthy. This is something you opt in for, because it benefits you. Having some stranger with no medical training shove his hands down my pants is unwelcome and invasive, and is of absolutely no benefit to my mental or physical health.
I agree that there is no benefit to what the TSA does, but it is ostensibly done for the purpose of benefiting your health by increasing safety. I don't think it accomplishes this, but that's what the given reason is.
To go back to the doctor analogy, if the doctor says he needs to fondle your crotch when there is no actual reason for doing so, you would otherwise be unaware because you opted in for an general exam and hey, he's a doctor right? He knows what he's doing! If you go in to have a lump on your head checked out and the doc tells you to drop trou, perhaps it would be more obvious that the procedure is of dubious benefit.
=Smidge=
You have obviously never been raped.
"Small children and people with existing traumas are something else, of course"
Ahhh, the justification that makes everything the TSA does A-OK.
No, no it does not. The practice and the TSA at large are complete bullshit and not justifiable by any means that I can see. But it does not lead to trauma in an otherwise mentally healthy individual either.
=Smidge=
but living under that fear should not be a necessity of a reasonably safe flying experience
There is no evidence at all that you are any safer. In fact the TSA has failed to detect smuggled banned objects in every official test, several unofficial tests, and several anecdotal accounts that I'm aware of - and there have been numerous publications on how the various methods they use are easily fooled and/or don't detect the proper types of materials.
You are living in fear and you're not even safer for your trouble.
=Smidge=
I'm just about as anti-TSA as someone can get, and I have to say that as awkward and unsettling as having a stranger shove their hand in your crotch? That should not cause trauma to any mentally healthy, well-adjusted individual. It is not any more sexual than having a doctor or nurse probe your junk (unless you're into that kind of thing I guess?) and it's not like you didn't know it was coming.
Small children and people with existing traumas are something else, of course, but the TSA doesn't have any systems to deal with that properly... or to deal with anything properly, for that matter.
=Smidge=
Look at the bright side. You could still play Angry Birds.
...crash the plane into a pig farm?
=Smidge=
Market inefficiency?
I stand outside a supermarket asking people what they plan to buy. After they walk in, I radio my friend inside who immediately buys every last one of those items off the shelves. As the person leaves the store empty handed, I offer to sell them what they wanted at a slightly increased price.
Not a perfect analogy but that's pretty much what my understanding of what HFT is; buy it before the other guy can, then sell it to him yourself for a razor-thin profit. Repeat thousands of times per day and you end up with a pile of cash.
Where is the market inefficiency that's being corrected here?
=Smidge=
The Higgs was never a myth. It was a prediction of the standard model that, until recently, was never seen. (One could argue that they still have not put the final nail in that coffin, though). Key word: predicted. The math said it was going to be there, but nobody had managed to reach those energy levels until the last few years.
100 years ago I doubt anyone had any opinions on quantum entanglement, which research on didn't start until the 1930s... a but shy of 100 years ago.
So in summary, nothing in the collective theories of physics in the past century has yet been truly broken. That includes faster-than-light communication, which this would not accomplish.
=Smidge=
You don't necessarily need to increase the total number of days - The problem is basically letting the mind sit fallow, so just eliminate the long vacation period. Moving to 4-day weeks/3-day weekends would just about completely redistribute summer vacation by itself. Alternately, you can insert week-long breaks evenly throughout the year. I'd have preferred 3-day weekends myself, though.
What eliminating summer vacation WOULD do, though, is make it very difficult for major renovations and additions to take place. Summer vacation is just about the only opportunity to do major construction inside the building, like replacing ceilings or renovating offices. You can't have the buildings occupied with open ceilings and unfinished floors so everyone would have to be relocated to either temporary structures or other school buildings. That's a logistical problem, though, and workable IMHO.
=Smidge=
"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=
Then that idea has already been hashed to death. You can already make illegal weapons with stuff that can be bought legally, like plumbing pipe and lumber and whatever you can scrounge up from around the home if you've got appropriate levels of knack. A 3D printer actually makes things harder in several ways, unless you want a *specific* gun which you still won't get because your printed version would be plastic instead of metal.
Look around you. If you can't make a serviceable weapon with what you see then you'll never be able to make one on a 3D printer.
=Smidge=
You might not appreciate it, but $500 is a lot of money. The plastic feedstock you need is also $23 a pound. You can get cheaper, but you'll have so many jamming, under/over fill, stripping, warping and delamination issues that you'll regret wasting your money within a day.
You also need electricity and a computer of course. Not necessarily available in some situations.
Meanwhile, all you need to make an operable firearm is ammo and a length of pipe. By the time your 3D printer is warmed up I'll be putting a fist-sized hole through it with a load of buckshot.
=Smidge=
1) It has not been my personal experience that the machines can run properly 100% unattended. That might be true for the multi-thousand dollar ones (at least I certainly hope it is for that kind of money!) but the reprap machine I own needs to be checked on and fiddled with on a fairly regular basis.
2) Even for the expensive machines, a print of any significance takes on the order of hours. Assuming you had a machine physically capable of doing so, an AK-47 sized object would take at least 80 hours my guess, based on total volume. For reference, this part that I printed a few weeks ago took about 3 hours and had two failed attempts. It's 36mm high and 88mm in diameter.
3) Rebels in Serbia are not going to have the luxury or materials to exploit 3D printing. As before, either it's extremely expensive or it's fidgety and unreliable. Meanwhile, rebels and the like have been successfully manufacturing AK-47s and other highly effective weapons in caves and tents for decades, in some cases using what literally amount to basic hand tools and scrap materials. The bar for weapons manufacture is so amazingly low trying to use a 3D printer would actually make things much harder... but unfortunately it's some people's wet dream to "click button, receive gun" that they can't see how stupid it really is. Most of the people obsessed with printing guns don't own a printer, and none of them seem to have even tried to build an operable firearm themselves. Pure fucking fantasy.
4) Guess what? Hammers and files (and hacksaws) are all you need to make a device that fires bullets at the intended target reliably. That and about $10 worth of pipe and fittings from a hardware store. Why isn't this more common? It might be because the demand for impromptu weapons just isn't there...
5) If you still don't think effective weapons can be made with basic hand tools and whatever shit is laying around, ask an Iraq / Afghanistan veteran about IEDs.
=Smidge=
If you just want to build weapons in general, it would be absolutely trivial to make an effective stabbing weapon with a 3D printer. You cold even make one out of water-soluble PVA plastic and dump it in the river when you're done!
But the very idea of using a 3D printer to make weapons is ridiculous. People have been making purpose-built weapons for at least three hundred thousand years now. Some of the tools you'd need to make a 3D printer are themselves more lethal than anything you could print. They are not at all ideal for self-sustainability since you need a lot of other resources to build and operate them. Anyone who has the motivation, time and resources to make a 3D printer for weapon making would be a complete idiot to not use those resources to make cheaper, better weapons instead.
=Smidge=
The only time it's really appropriate to stop learning is when you're dead. (Though I suppose if you think learning can only happen in a school you may as well be...)
The point is whether or not the math they teach in high school is useful for anything and should be taught. The problem with this thinking is the high school years are rather formative for many people - the subjects they are exposed to and their experience with them can have profound impact on the decisions they make that will form their lives and professional careers.
So take math. It may not be "useful" but it will influence you and your worldview, and that's important.
BUT! If I were to change anything, I'd shift Calculus later and put more focus on Prob & Stat - A better understanding of prob & stat will make your life better and really help keep your bullshit detector well tuned.
Also, this comes to mind and is worth watching, tangentially related.
=Smidge=
Architectural and engineering plans have copyright protection. Software is copyrightable. Therefore, software that generates engineering plans is copyrightable. No new laws are necessary.
=Smidge=
There is nothing a 3D printer can do that you couldn't do with basic hand tools and patience. In fact basic hand tools can do quite a bit more than 3D printers.
Just like they haven't banned hand tools, personal computers, photocopiers and personal printers, still and video cameras, VCRs and CD/DVD burners because they had the potential for facilitating copyright infringement - they won't ban 3D printers either. Everything you said applies to all those technologies - and the same arguments were about them in the past - but nothing has come of it.
=Smidge=
You can't prevent someone from building a patented device themselves NOW. Never could. What you CAN do - if you catch them - is take them to court over selling them.
The digital design/model files are on the same shelf as digital music and movie files. They are not patented but copyrighted - and we have lots of (heavy-handed, often draconian) tools for dealing distribution of copyrighted materials. And just like with digital music and movies, there is nothing you can do to really prevent trading them either.
In short: 3D printing just lowers the bar for what has always been possible. Content producers will have to either adapt to a new market environment or double down on the draconian idiocy. No point for guessing which path they choose.
=Smidge=
Copyright the plans, patent the actual device.
Patents are supposed to cover a particular arrangement of components that perform a specific task. Even a parametric design would still have the same fundamental arrangement of major components and perform the same task. You can patent that.
Then you can copyright the script that generates the device with the given parameters.
=Smidge=
If you're making 1000+ of them, you are no longer a hobbyist... ...and if you are not a hobbyist, there are better ways to make these things in volume.
=Smidge=
I see no reason why this part couldn't have been produced just as easily using resin casting, or even whittled out of wood, using tools and materials purchased at any hobby supply for much less than a 3D printer would cost to build.
3D printing is actually a harder route for "the hobbyist" to take than the methods that have been available for decades. The only reason this is a story is because it involves the words "3D printer," which is the current buzzword.
=Smidge=
No point in repeating what is actually wrong in one way or another.
Want a solid "full strength" metal part from a 3D printer? Either use a 3D printed substrate and infuse it with molten metal as a post-process (sintering method) or use the 3D printed object as a lost-material positive mold blank. Besides, if you want monolithic metal objects 3D printing is not the way to go.
As for full strength plastic parts? 3D printers can actually produce parts stronger than injection molded parts in some situations, since printed parts from an extrusion machine have a "grain" structure not completely unlike wood. Sintering methods can produce parts as strong as any molded resin part since that's what they use as binder and/or filler.
As for the machine fucking up - humans fuck up far more often. A machine fucking up is usually due to a faulty human in the process chain somewhere. It's also a lot harder to repair a damaged human...
=Smidge=