Category Archives: Desktop 3D Printing News

Aidan Leitch’s Silicone 3D printing process

Aidan’s Syringe Extruder Top View

A few months ago we held a Contest whereby we challenged our community to develop a new 3D printing technology using an Ultimaker Original. 13 year old Aidan Leitch was one of the winners and attempted to make a Silicone 3D printing process.

You can download the files here on YouMagine.

Aidan made a Syringe extruder that uses a peristaltic pump to extrude a two part silicone into a basin to cure. The resulting shapes he’s been able to create are closer to blob than Michelangelo but this is a very promising idea. There are many two component materials such as polyurethane & epoxy adhesives. If we could make it possible to print materials such as these reliably it would be a big step forward.

I asked Aidan about his project and he said that,

“One of the biggest issues was making a good syringe extruder. There were some designs already out there but none that truly fit what I was doing. The part that took me longest was making changes in Cura. “

What more work will you do to improve the project?

“To improve, I’d need to make a better syringe extruder (possibly a direct one, as opposed to using the filament to push the syringe) and also a better system for delivering the other part of the silicone mix. The peristaltic pump I used was really slow.

The basin fixed to the build plate

What results do you have right now?

As of right now, I have successfully had the printer add one part of the silicone into the basin of the other part and have them cure. To make it work better, I’d to make the previously mentioned changes (better syringe extruder and better delivery system) along with further tuning of the software. Many of the parts for the paste extruder are fully 3D printable and attach directly to the printhead. Besides this, there are the electronics/pump, the basin, and some changes in the software.

What did you learn?

I’ve learned quite a bit from this project! Here’s some examples:

-How to read and write basic Gcode

-How to accommodate in software for physical issues (like friction in the syringe)

-Uncured silicone is messy stuff

Because it is all deliciously open source you can download and build on Aidan’s project here.

YouMagine Community 3D Printing Survey Results Part 1

In order to find out how to improve YouMagine we conducted a survey with 501 Community Members. We’d like to thank all of you who participated! We’ve analyzed the answers and read through all of the input and suggestions you gave. In addition to the responses that we can tabulate directly we asked for a lot of “open” responses in order to get suggestions & ideas. We’re currently comparing these ideas & suggestions with our development roadmap to see how we can change the roadmap in order to better meet our community’s needs. We’ve already put a number of easier to implement ideas and improvements into our development backlog and these will be built soon. We’re also going to be doing more analysis in order to see what YouMagine should become in the future. We are building YouMagine for you and the better we can make it suit your needs the better it will be. Because of this the survey was very important to us. We are looking for more mechanisms whereby we can let users tell us what to build and what to change. If you have any ideas in this regard, please do tell us.

Survey Limitations

Even though 501 respondents is a significant sample of our community and can be used as a representative sample for the 3D printing community globally due to its nature this survey will have some limitations. Firstly, the people who are likely to complete a survey will tend to be predisposed to caring about the subject of the survey. What the silent majority thinks is not something you can actually ever survey. Or in other words, “What percentage of people don’t like surveys?” & Why don’t some people like surveys?, is something we’ll never know. Our community consists of people who tend to be passionate about open source and open hardware. Our sample is also skewed towards people who are experienced 3D printer operators. We will also tend to have more people who have been 3D printing for longer and have built their own kits as well as designed and built their own 3D printers. Because YouMagine is supported by Ultimaker we will also tend to have more Ultimaker users and Ultimaker-minded people than the 3D printing population at large. We will also tend to reach more people who like to share their open source designs online because that is what the site does at the moment. We therefore are assuming that we’re missing many companies, closed source people and noobs in the sample. But, generally the sample, if qualified as above, can be used to gauge what our community needs and be used to generally learn about 3D printing peoples.

Survey Feedback

We got some feedback about the survey itself. Many found it a very positive thing and told us that it was good that we were listening to our community in this way. Some did however think that the survey was too long. We will make any surveys we do in the future shorter. Some others thought we should have more “other” and Not Applicable responses. We will do this next time. Some were confused by the bed adhesion question. In this question we asked “For bed adhesion I use…?” People noted that it would depend on the bed and material. We added this question also as a control question but understand that it may be confusing. Similarly for the slicer and 3D modeling software questions people indicated that they used several instead of just one.

Findings

Where does the YouMagine community live?

We know from Google Analytics that our community comes to us from 218 countries and territories worldwide. People from 49 different countries completed the survey. Immediately this shows us the limitations of our survey approach. The most popular country by far is the Unites States.

Analytics top ten

USA
Germany
Netherlands
UK
France
Spain
Canada
Italy
Australia
Switzerland

Survey top ten

USA
Netherlands
Germany
UK
Canada
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Belgium
France

We can see differences between the popularity of the site versus the respondents and should be mindful of these. Below you can see a heat map showing you the top 25 countries and the relative popularity.

What do we need to improve most about YouMagine?

We can clearly see that the biggest point of improvement needs to be search. We’re working on this and it will be improving soon. People also think we need to have better navigation. Generally if we read through the comments people also feel that we can improve the usable space. A lot of people don’t like the margins around the pages and think that images can be larger and we can be using the space more efficiently. We will be working on a complete site redesign that incorporates these wishes.

If we break out the users we can see that two different distinct user groups can be identified. One group wants things such as pagination, see many designs at once, scroll quickly through many designs etc. They want to find and download things quickly. We’re looking at how we can speed up the workflow from this group. The other group wants more interaction and social features. We also learned from the survey that often single features such as issues with the aspect ratio of the photos is a huge turn off for individual community members. We’re using the outcome of this survey to build the site as you would like to have it built. If you have any suggestions as to a feature or improvement, please do email joris (at) youmagine.com

The second part of the survey is here and the third here.

Interview with Ryan Adams of the MaplePrintMini 3D printer

We love it when our community shares 3D printer upgrades, improvements or entire 3D printers on YouMagine. Ryan Adams did just that, he made his MaplePrintMini 3D printer and shared it with the world. We were curious about his machine and asked him how he made it. We were especially intrigued since apart from the electronics, screws and motors the MaplePrintMini is entirely 3D printed.

Ryan Adams leaning forward next to his MaplePrintMini 3D printer

Ryan Adams and his MaplePrintMini 3D printer

Why did you make this printer?

My original reasoning for this printer was to prove that I could design and build a printer myself. All of the printers I had owned up to that point (A Printrbot and MakerFarm Prusa i3) were built from kits, and I wanted to prove that I could design and produce a similar printer to theirs. I was also captivated by the idea of the RepRap project, and wanted to see how far I could take the project’s philosophy in designing this printer, with the end result being one which is, excluding mechanical components, almost entirely 3D printed.

How did you do it?

When I set out to design this printer, I had two main goals, the first that I be able to print as much of the printer as possible, and the second be that the overall foot print of the printer be less than that of a legal-sized sheet of paper. Strange, I know, but I wanted to keep the printer’s foot print small and portable. The design process was fairly straight forward, I set up my size boundaries, and designed the printer within those boundaries. I used AutoCAD for most of this process, and relied heavily on my own calipers, and rulers to measure mechanical components that I’d then model in CAD, and build the printer around. It had been several years since I last designed or modeled anything with this sort of scale, so it was very much a learning process for me, trying to remember how to model and design parts correctly. The preliminary design took place over the winter holidays, and took about 30 hours from conception to printable designs.

Did you design the whole thing in one go and then build it? Or was it more an iterative process of improving parts?

Throughout the initial design process, there was multiple times that I would spot an issue, or think of a better way of designing a part. The extruder carrier, and X-axis have probably gone through 4 or 5 revisions before I even thought about printing. The revisions were far more minor once parts were printed though. I tried my best to catch as many errors and flaws as I could while still in the design stage, so that I could minimize my printed waste and build the printer quicker. With the exception of 4 or 5 parts, every piece was printed the way it was designed initially. I was honestly surprised that when the build process begun, that parts fit as well as they did, and that most everything just seemed to work correctly. As the build progressed, I revised a few parts to aid in the assembly process, or in the case of the extruder, to add additional cooling, but for the most part, it was a straight forward build with very few issues.

What’s so special about it?

I think what sets the printer apart is its printable design. No component on this printer is larger than 195mm x 195mm, which allows anyone with a average sized 3D printer to print all the parts for this project on their own. I also feel it embodies the RepRap philosophy better than some other machines with which to the extent of how much of the design is printable. I admire printers such as the Prusa i3, MendelMax and others, but seeing their wooden and metal rod construction takes away from the concepts of a true RepRap, so I feel this printer is proof that it is possible to build a strong, accurate printer using almost entirely 3D printed parts.

What would I need besides the design files on YouMagine to build one?

Aside from the design files on YouMagine, you will need a 3D printer or someone with a 3D printer to print the parts. Expect the parts to take 60 or so hours to print, it’s a long job, but worth it when it’s done. Once you have printed all the required parts, you will need the ‘standard’ mechanical components which consists of the usual NEMA 17 steppers (in this case, 36 oz smaller units are used), 8mm linear rod and LM8SUU linear bearings. You will also need about a meters worth of GT2 belt, and 16 or 20 tooth pulleys, 4mm threaded rod and couplings for the Z axis as well and you will also need 3 micro switches for the end stops. Extruder wise, I used a Printrbot Aluminum extruder, and a Ubis hot end, though you could mount your own direct drive extruder and hot end of your choice. Electronics wise, your choice of controller, RAMPS or a printrboard should fit in the enclosure. Lastly, you will need screws, a lot of them. There are about 150 M3x10 socket cap screws used, and about 30 M5x20 socket cap screws as well.

Shark test piece made on a MaplePrint Mini.

What kind of print results do you have?

Print results have been fairly decent given the relative state of calibration that it has received. I was very pleased that upon printing my first calibration cube, that the dimensions were accurate in both the X and Y axis, and that the details and layer heights seemed well defined. Subsequent prints such as Mr. Jaws have pretty well defined detail in the teeth and corners, and came out better than I was expecting. I’m still tuning the printer, and calibrating the e-steps and extrusion, so there are still improvements to be made, but overall, the printer prints better than some of my first prints on other machines.

What software did you use to design it?

All of the design was done in AutoCAD 2015. I prefer the work flow and familiarity of AutoCAD over that of Inventor or Solidworks. All of the mechanical components were modeled in AutoCAD as well. Before printing, I ‘plated’ the entire model, that is, disassembling my design into ‘plates’ of correctly orientated parts that could be exported to STL’s and printed. This saved a lot of time later on and removed the need to have to manipulate or optimize the part in my slicer.

What firmware does it run?

The printer uses a stock RAMPS 1.4 controller running ErikZalm’s MarlinFirmware. I selected Marlin over others for its configurability and simply configuration. Total time from downloading, modifying, flashing, to printing, was about half an hour.

What was the most difficult part of making the printer?

Probably the most challenging part of the entire process was printing the frame. Each frame panel required 5 hours of print time, which given my daily schedule made it difficult to fit these prints in. It meant that these pieces were printed on weekends and days off, which in turn delayed the entire process. Aside from that though, the process was fairly straight forward, if I had any other complaints about the process, it would be the almost-insane amount of screws required in the build. I wanted to ensure the printer was structurally sound and rigid, so I designed it with many mounting points, but it was only when I started building the printer did I realize juts how many I had used!

MaplePrint Mini 3D printer printing.

Where do you hope to go from here?

Well I’m on to bigger and better things already! Shortly after finishing this printer, I embarked on the design of its successor. While I’m pleased with how this printer came out, I recognize that there is still a lot of room for improvement and optimization. Now that we know it’s possible to build a printer from almost entirely printed parts, I’m again using this approach for version two. I’m finalizing the design now, and hope to be printing parts for it in the next week. I will again be publishing my progress and design, and releasing the designs for the printer on YouMagine shortly, but I can promise that it will have a much larger build volume, and equally small foot print, improved rigidity, and far fewer parts to print and assemble. Aside from that, I hope I can continue to design and release printers, components and upgrades that further the RepRap project, excite current 3D printer users, and introduce new users and designers to the amazing industry of 3D printing!

3DPL released: an Open Source License for 3D Printed things

Sketch by Olivier van Herpt

At YouMagine we’ve spent the last months creating the 3DPL for the 3D printing community. The 3DPL is a license for 3D Printed things that has been specially made so that people can create, improve and share their inventions with the world. Most of all we want to let us all stand on the shoulders of giants. We want people to build upon previous technologies, improve them, remix them and individualize them. We wish to create the preconditions for a 3D printed world where all the stuff in the world is iteratively and fluidly collectively improved. The 3DPL is a part of our effort to make all the things in the world malleable.

We’re doing this for you and so would like your help. Please give us feedback. Tell us what doesn’t make sense to you, what you hate, what we should change. Please involve others. We’re especially interested in home 3D printer users, companies that use 3D printing, lawyers, people from the wider open source community, inventors, artists, designers, makers and creators in the broadest sense. The 3DPL itself can be found here on Medium and you can comment on it there. Feel free also to ask questions or discuss it in the comments below this post. We consider the license to be in beta, so anything and everything is open for discussion and change. We would like to make it as inclusive as possible in order to cater to the entire 3D printing community so please get stuck in there and tell us what we need to improve.

Why should you get involved in shaping the 3DPL?

We have a real opportunity here to lay the foundations for a world where much of the emerging technology landscape will be available to all under an open source license. A world where a good portion of the inventions made in the future will be shared and created through 3D printing.
Other open source licenses were not created with 3D printing in mind.
In order to safeguard and encourage creation we have to properly protect inventors and innovators or progress and breakthroughs will be impeded.
In order to ensure progress on collectively developed technologies disputes over intellectual property should be resolved in a quick and efficient manner.
In order to encourage sharing and remix it should be clear what rights are held by whom and what one can do with a file that has been shared.
Since the 3DPL is the first and only license for 3D printed things it may just end up being the standard one everyone uses. And it would suck if the 3DPL sucked.

Sketch by Olivier van Herpt

What are some interesting things about the 3DPL?

The design must always be attributed.
All subsequent derivatives of a shared file must be available for remix and sharing.
If the creator requires that you include reference to be printed on or in the physical printed object, such as a logo or name, you have to respect that and are not allowed to remove that reference without the creator’s approval.
If one doesn’t abide by the terms of the license the rights granted under the 3DPL will be terminated immediately.
If you fail to comply with the license such as selling a work that was meant to be non-commercial then you must pay the creator 3 times the gross revenue you made on the sale.
Arbitration for conflicts between parties is arranged for in accordance with the WIPO Expert Determination Rules.

We have 3 license types:

REMIX: With a REMIX license your derivative work must be available to remix and share by others.

REMIX — NON COM A REMIX — NON COM license restricts the use of the Design File, the modified Design File and any Designed Product to non-commercial use only. The Design File, the Modified Design File or any Designed Product may not be used with the intent of making money directly or indirectly from it.

REMIX — RIGHTS MELT REMIX — NON COM for 12 months melting down to REMIX after 12 months. With a REMIX — RIGHTS MELT license your design file is available as a non-commercial share-alike file for 12 months. After this period the license will automatically become REMIX.

Process

We will be hosting a Google Hangout on Tuesday the 17th of March at 20:00 CET.
We will review your comments, ideas and suggestions and incorporate them whenever possible into the final version of the license.
We will then work with our lawyers to correctly implement your ideas.
You can read and comment on the license here.

Sketches by Olivier van Herpt

JJRobots cool open source robots on YouMagine

Open Source Air Hockey Robot by JJRobots

One very inspiring YouMagine community member is JJRobots. They make super fun robots such as an open source air hockey robot and an open source self balancing robot. This is just the kind of innovation we’d love to support here at YouMagine so I interviewed the team to find out what they’re up to.

Open Source Balancing Robot by JJRobots

What is JJRobots?
We are two electronic hobbyist who really wanted to share the ideas and knowledge with everyone who loves DIY robotics. JJrobots want to… fill the gap that exists in the DIY world, in which you need to have an electronics/ computing background in order to start a project. JJrobots is oriented to the MEDIUM skill level “maker”, we want to provide them with useful, affordable and flexible electronics that you can use for a lot of different projects. B-robot and the Air hockey robot are just two of a big list of projects we are developing right now. The following project will use the same electronics we are currently selling now in our shop.

Why did you start it?
The idea of JJROBOTS born nine months ago when I, Juan Pedro, working and living in UK, told Jose (my partner here) to open a web page to host the projects that Jose had been publishing in other blog and make it easier to people to make them by themselves (and create a platform to grow with new projects).

JJROBOTS is a blog with information about the projects, documentation, build manuals, schemes, a “how it works” section, and an online SHOP for the hardware parts (electronics, plastic parts…). Our goal is that people have fun making their own robots and, at the same time, learn how it all works. ALL will be OPEN, shared and documented. There will be a growing community behind with forums so you could get help from us and from other users.

We want that people take our projects as a base, and feel free to hack/modify them to the limits!

B-ROBOT is a good example. Starting from the design Jose published last year, we have been improving it in many ways. We have created a new electronics shield for an Arduino Leonardo, instructions, building manual and schemes. The code is now much simpler and better documented. This project is very FUN and ,as you can see in the video, the control is WIFI excellent too! (Kids love the robot)

This is an unique gadget that you could make by yourself (DIY). This is not a toy, it is a robot that uses good motors, quality electronics, and sophisticated control algorithms.
Our idea is also to reuse most of the components involved in the early projects in another future projects. For example, the Wifi module (which is not cheap) will be used soon in more projects (subscribe to jjrobots to keep you updated). You are investing in electronic components that could have several lives (motors, Arduino, wifi…)

Over the years we have realized that people love the open projects that we have been publishing here (B-ROBOT, arduspider, Air hockey robot…) but people have problems to reproduce them. Now there are no excuses! Everyone will have available all the parts and documentation to let them be successful!

Why do you share your designs on YouMagine?
I wanted to use YouMagine since I bought an Ultimaker 6 months ago and I knew about the existence of this website. I do love my 3D printer (now printing with FLEX PLA which has skyrocketed my “maker” capabilities!). This is a very good platform to spread the project.

How does your balancing robot work?
There is information here. But as a short brief:
“B-ROBOT is a remotely controlled self-balancing Arduino robot created with 3D printed parts. With only two wheels,B-ROBOT is able to maintain his balance all the time by using his internal sensors and by driving the motors. You can control your Robot, making him move or spin, by sending command through a Smartphone, Tablet or PC while he keeps the balance.

B-ROBOT reads his inertial sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes integrated on the MPU6000 chip) 200 times per second. He calculates his attitude (angle with respect to the horizon) and compares this angle with the target angle (0º if he wants to maintain balance without moving, or a positive or negative angle if he wants to move forward or backwards). Using the difference between the target angle (let’s say 0º) and actual angle (let’s say 3º) he drives a Control System to send the right commands to the motors to maintain his balance. The commands to the motors are accelerations. For example if the robot is tilted forward (angle of robot is 3º) then he sends a command to the motors to accelerate forward until this angle is reduced to zero to preserve the balance.”

Why make an air hockey robot?
Everything started when Jose (my partner and friend) built his 3D printer. First, the possibility to design and build our own parts and second, how could we hack the components of a 3D printer to make something different?

Jose´s daughter loves the Air Hockey game and we love robotics so one day an idea was born in our mind… can we construct…??… Mmmmm …. it seemed very complicated and with many unresolved questions (puck detection??, robot speed??), but that is also part of the fun…

What do you hope to achieve with JJRobots? Why do you think its important to teach kids about robotics?
Well, we are loosing the contact with what lies beneath technology. You can buy an Iphone and play with its tactile screen but not know anything about how this device really works.
How does an industrial machine detect broken cookies during the packaging process?

Hacking can be performed only when you really know how a thing works. We want to “hack” ordinary stuff and create cool things showing how it is done. We want to let kids (and adults!) to do it by themselves and by asking for a helping hand in our webpage´s forum.

How large is the company?
Just Jose and I (Juan Pedro). Each one have our own jobs beside jjrobots, so right now, these ideas can not feed us, we will need to find time for this exciting project.

This is a really great initiative and you can check out their shop here or download the parts from YouMagine here..

Interview with Roy Ombatti

Roy Ombatti is a Kenyan mechanical engineer social entrepreneur. His projects Happy Feet and DIY ShoeLab aim to use 3D Printing to combat a horrible disease. We leant Roy an Ultimaker 3D Printer and helped him a little with the files. We interviewed him so he could tell us more about his projects.

Roy Ombatti HappyFeet

Why did you start this project? Because I am an idealist who believes in making the world a better place…no matter how small my efforts are. And for me it starts with my country. And there are more than enough problems that my country is facing. I figure if each of the Kenyans (myself included) do something leveraging our skills and creativity to help the country then we wouldn’t be experiencing the problems we face. And if we had collaborative efforts with the more developed world then together we would certainly be able to overcome all of the world’s problems. So it starts with me…this is me trying to make a difference.

That answer is to the question on a greater scale. On a more specific not, the jigger problem is a result of poverty as the people who are affected cannot afford water for proper hygiene and neither can they afford shoes. Those who are affected have deformed feet and cannot fit into a normal shoe. So my solution is about providing affordable and custom-fitted shoes for the people who are affected by jiggers, as well as tackle the issue of poverty.

Why is this project important? We are all one people and the gap between the poor and the rich is strikingly painful. I always say that it is amazing that the world has developed such futuristic and high end technologies that can do such amazing things to make life better…but sadly I feel like our priorities as a people are misplaced and so we have failed as humanity. If we instead focus our efforts and redirect them towards helping each other then the world will truly be a better place. This project is important to me because I want to help out. Like I said, it starts with me but I cannot do it alone and so I am telling people about it and asking for help. I am not asking for money (yet) but I am asking for help!

More specifically, the shoes are important because they prevent reinfection (which is very prevalent) by the jiggers which cannot jump. An affordable source of shoes would be great as it could empower the community and the solution would be even more effective if the community are engaged as part of the solution. Ideally they should make the shoes themselves and hopefully even sell them.

Roy Ombatti Happy Feet

How many people does this affect? 265 reported deaths so far, 2.7 million registered infections (1.5 million being school children) and tens of thousands of school drop-outs daily. But these figures are grossly underestimated as there is a lot of stigma and shame around having the jigger infection that many people hide it and very few come out to be helped.

How does this disease affect people?: The jigger measures about 1mm in size and feeds on the flesh and blood of it’s warm-blooded host. The female jigger burrows itself inside the flesh where it lays eggs. The infestation results in pain, itchiness and discomfort as a result of the sores. People are rendered immobile and cannot go about their daily duties such as tilling their land and thus cannot earn their daily bread. Children cannot go to school. The stigma and shame prevents people from seeking help which only contributes to the spread of the infestation. Infestation results in pain, inability to walk and function properly and can ultimately lead to death if not attended to.

How do you hope to help? My proposed solution involves providing customized shoes from recycled plastic, using 3D printing. A scan of the deformed foot can be made in my ‘mobile shoe shop/lab’ after which a frame or skeleton of the shoe is printed. A normal shoe is then built around the frame using locally available materials. The community should ideally be the ones making the shoes themselves, including the recycling of plastic to make filament. The collection, sorting, cleaning and extruding of filament can be run by the community as well as the actual shoe construction. There would only be need for some technical support in terms of the shoe-frame design.

Introducing the YouMagine Team: Erik de Bruijn

When did you start with 3D Printing?

Back in 2008 I discovered the RepRap project, looking for a circuit diagram. When I found a wiki with a schematic that was open source (hardware) I discovered that the rest of wiki was about making a 3D printer that could make parts to improve itself, I happily volunteered to help that machine ‘evolve’. Of course that was easier said than done. By may 13th I had done my first print and a few days later I started replacing parts.

First sip, a nice Bacardi shot.

The 3D printed mini mug.stl!

First functional printed part!

Printed the optoswitch bracket as end-stop for the Z-axis.

What drew you to it?

I already have a special thing for open source. Also, I like how technology can impact on prosperity and wealth especially if it’s in the hands of many people. My dad taught me to solder and make electronics first from a kit and then my own circuits, later he taught me how to program in basic. I kept playing with these things from that point onward.

When I found the RepRap project, it involved 3 types of things: action, shared learning and meaning. Action is “building stuff”. Shared learning means collaborating and developing knowledge. Finally, it has meaning because we’re fundamentally changing who can have access to an increasingly powerful technology. It’s great to work on something and ponder on the implications on wealth and the economy.

The right ideas can have little impact without action. And they’re never good ideas if you don’t continuously learn and meet people with other perspectives.

When did you join the RepRap project?

In March 2008 I started sourcing parts. Immediately after I’d decided that this was the project for me. I also started blogging about it as soon as I started, because I believe the ideas and ideals are as important as taking action.

Why?

I was in my graduation year at the faculty of economics, and RepRap was the perfect way to justify avoiding my studies. But in order to graduate and work on RepRap at the same time I needed some help, which I got!

The visionary MIT professor Eric von Hippel wrote about open source and open hardware way before 3D printing was well-known.

“In a sense, hardware is becoming much more like software, up to the point where you actually fabricate an object,” von Hippel says. “That’s why you’re starting to see open source techniques in hardware. Design is largely going to shift out from manufacturers to the communities.”

Through my role with RepRap and Ultimaker I had the opportunity to talk to the leaders in their respective fields, like von Hippel, Yochai Benkler, Glyn Moody, Frank Piller, etc. This was fascinating by itself, but writing about it helped me connect the dots between their work.

Von Hippel helped me convince my university board and I graduated.

Officially, my thesis was about the viability of the open source development model for the design of physical objects (PDF). In short it investigates why this community works and how fast it’s expanding.

What did you do?

Since 1999 I had founded two IT companies, LowVoice and BudgetDedicated. I learned how to (not) do business, Linux, sever management, virtualization and how to develop your own rack-mounted electronics for datacenters. When RepRap came on the radar, the earlier companies gave me the opportunity to work on that for a while without needing a job on the side. With time and the urge to learn more you can do remarkable things!

How did end up making the Ultimaker?

Ultimaker Founders

I met my co-founder Siert Wijnia in Amsterdam at workshop for developing green technology (pic 1, 2). There I told someone that I had built a 3D printer and Siert later found out. Siert was setting up the first FabLab in the Netherlands, called Protospace. Martijn Elserman, the other co-founder was one of the first to enter this new lab with amazing digital production machines. The FabLab even had a 60k euro 3D printer from Z-Corp! Siert asked me to show people the RepRap printer and wanted to know whether it would make sense to build them in groups. I told people they shouldn’t start if they wanted nice prints, but they should if they liked to tinker with a wide array of technical disciplines. Everybody there said yes, started building RepRaps and it was exciting! Some had electronics knowledge, others more mechanical, etc. We learned by doing and solved a lot of problems along the way. Martijn joined because he had knowledge on how to make moulds from Z-Corp 3D prints from his first visits to the FabLab. The Z-Corp prints were too fragile and too expensive to be used for making the RepRap, and we didn’t have enough printing capacity to make them with my RepRap. Eventually I printed about 5 sets of parts before I got fed up with that.

The process of making RepRaps took a long time (mind you, between 2008 and 2010 it could be tedious). Martijn had learned about the laser-cutter at the FabLab and decided he would buy one for his home. He made the first Elserbot frames based on inputs from Siert, myself and others. Later we decided to call it the Ultimaker Protobox, the precursor of the Ultimaker Original. When we were getting a lot of requests for kits, we decided to start a company. It seemed like a great opportunity to work on 3D printing full-time (which we were, but making a living from other sources). Eventually you end up spend a lot of time on building a company, not on 3D printing, but with really smart people around you, you can always keep learning.

What do you think the main advantages of 3D Printing are?

It lets you see the world as a place that you can shape to your desire. In software this was already true, you could change things you don’t like by building virtual stuff. To build real stuff, you need to be good with your hands or need a 3D printer. It used to be either expensive or very difficult to make physical objects, with 3D printing this is changing rapidly. Also, it allows you to collaborate (digitally) with people across the world on a real physical object. Perhaps some niche object that just a few people care about, but there are many niches, and the can all reach critical mass as more barriers to entry are removed. Already, many of today’s hardware projects wouldn’t happen without 3D printing. And there are many non-niche things that matter, like the e-Nable project (3D printed custom fitting prosthetics) can find a distributed network of designers, medical professionals, 3D printers, programmers and many other kinds of volunteers. That is an incredibly powerful mix.

I think that a 3D printer can reinvigorate something that we’ve lost during the second industrial revolution. We became consumers and we’re outsourcing design, control and manufacturing of the tools we use. We should be back in the driver seat. And by sharing we can build better things, to which everyone will have access. It’s more than advantages, it’s a fundamental step forward.

Why YouMagine?

Now that we have powerful technology to create, we need a place to share and collaborate!

What are the founding principles of YouMagine?

I’m personally on a mission to encourage people to share more, to empower others and to allow global collaboration. The technology to create things, in the hands of the many can lead us into a new age of innovation and prosperity. YouMagine could play a large role in this. Also, I wanted there to be a place where I would personally like to share things that I’ve made. From before it became part of Makerbot until recently, I’ve been a huge advocate of Thingiverse. Me and many maker/RepRap friends believe we’ve helped make it happen. But now Thingiverse isn’t what it used to be. There has to be a good place to share, and I intend to make YouMagine as friendly as possible and stick to our ideals.

What are the main problems with 3D printing?

People are still creating things in isolation. Their source files are on their local drive. I want 3D design to become more of an online experience. We’ve build YouMagine to support this and are releasing the first features in the upcoming weeks. Also, people share STLs but don’t always share the original files. We want to change that and encourage people to share those, so the next person can take it to the next level.

What is the future of 3D printing?

Recently I’ve had the pleasure to speak with Eric Drexler, a pioneer in molecular nanotechnology. He said that the tools of 3D printing are not that different from those that will be used for the design of nanotechnology. When 3D printing becomes a process at the molecular scale, that can create radical abundance. He and I had both concluded that 3D printing is paving the way for real nanotechnology and the radical abundance that it can create. Not the kind of nanotechnology that keeps shoes from getting dirty, but the kind that cures most diseases, creates an abundance of energy can restore global climate problems and enable interstellar space travel. At the same time he says:

“imagine a world where the gadgets and goods that run our society are produced not in far-flung supply chains of industrial facilities, but in compact, even desktop-scale, machines.”

– Eric Drexler

3D printing is just the beginning but the concept is very similar to what will come after it: Nanotech!

Do you have any hobbies? Or only do 3D printing?

Besides this and 3D printing I like to with electronics and software. I’m fascinated by toolchains that go from idea to thing mediated by software, internet technology, people. I’m also concerned about global warming.

A lot of things do revolve around 3D printing, but I have a beautiful wife and 8 month old daughter. The most amazing creations are still made by nature!

Google Glass Interviews: Christina Rebel of Wikifactory

As part of our Wikimania interviews I interviewed Christina Rebel of Wikifactory. Wikifactory is “developing a collaborative ecosystem to democratise design and production.” They are trying to develop the tools & software so people can make many things together. So a lot like YouMagine!

Follow Christina on Twitter here.

3DShare: Sharing an Open Source license for 3D Printed things and our ToS

At YouMagine we want to help people collaborate, remix and design together online. We want to build the tooling to make it easier for anyone to design, work together and share using 3D printing. We’re not alone on this, there are a lot of fellow travellers who are doing the same or similar things. We’ve been thinking about how we can act as a force multiplier by helping our competitors and companies in the same field. If we can make things cheaper, easier or better for them the chance that one of us succeeds will be higher. The chance that we will collectively succeed in making things as supple as other data will be higher also. After all YouMagine wants to make the plumbing for 3D printing and make things as malleable as memes. We see our task as that of creating the necessary infrastructure on top of which others can build. And not in the sense of being a platform as Apple is a closed platform but rather a source of data, information and tooling for other people’s platforms and the community as a whole. We’re not a platform, but rather a foundation supporting other platforms not locking anyone in. Simultaneously we’ve been thinking about our community and how we can work together with them to create a better YouMagine. We’ve decided to let our community influence and guide all the major decisions and directions we take. So we want you to tell us where we need to go and what we should be doing. Feel free to at any time contact me with feedback, ideas, critiques etc.

Share3D

This is why we’re sharing our first major Share3D project with you. Share3D is a part of YouMagine that we will share with the “internet of things”, open hardware & 3D printing communities. It is a set of tools to help them accelerate their development. We looked at obstacles to a 3D printed world, costs that others would have to incur & problems other people were not solving. We decided that the most important first thing to make and share were in the legal realm. A lot of people overlook legal and its implications. When people do look into it they all individually have to spend a lot of time and money to understand all of the patent, copyright & liability implications and issues surrounding the sharing of things. We concluded that we would have the highest immediate impact on the community by ameliorating their risks and to give their users clarity about their rights. We’ve holistically looked at this issue from the point of the designer, the 3D printer operator, the platform and the end user. We have tried to come up with the clearest & most equitable guidelines for all. We’ve found this especially important because a lot of the people involved in the sharing of things are persons but may be faced with severe measures usually reserved for companies (eg infringement, product liability, wrongful death). Also a single tort case in the US for example would be enough to sink any one of the platforms in the Sharing of Things market.

Sharing, so that others can build.

This is why we will create a Terms of Service & license for 3D printed things and share these with the 3D printing, open hardware and IoT communities.

Terms of Service

We’ve decided to share our Terms of Service with any and all platforms or websites that do co-collaboration, sharing of 3D data, online 3D collaboration, IoT & 3D printing. We will use our experience to work with our community on formulating an ideal ToS document that can be used by any and all free of charge.

ToS Goals

We want a huge corporate platform and a one man band to both be able to let people remix and share online without falling foul of relevant laws.
We also want a ToS to be available that respects community member’s rights. We want this ToS to be as clear and concise as possible and via bullet points point out the major legal implications to users.
We want this ToS to be functional in reducing legal risk to platform owners and community members alike across the breath of criminal, IP & other tort risks.
We want to preempt the first serious legal challenge for patent infringement on a platform by doing what we can to mitigate the impact this would have on an organization or individual.
We want to preempt the first serious product or manufacturer liability case by clearly reducing the risk to the 3D printer operator, end user and platform.
We want to make sure that end users of parts understand that there is a “user beware” principle in effect and that the functionality of end use parts can not be guaranteed. We want to indemnify 3D printer operators and designers from any liability that could be incurred from the use of their parts.
We want to make sure that printer operators and end users of parts understand that the fact that the designer, person who modifies a part, person who prints out a part & the user are all separate actors and have very little control individually over the functionality of the end use part.
We want to ensure that end users understand that because parts are designed and modified by many the functionality and fitness of any individual part for any individual task can not be guaranteed by any individual.
We want end users of parts to understand that due to the high variability of 3D printers, 3D printer settings & consumables the same file printed by different people or printers may result in a completely different object.
We want end users to understand that the same level of product expectation can not be required from a product that is individually 3D printed than that of one who is mass produced.
We want end users of parts and any parties to whom they give access to those parts to understand that if a file has been designed and shared for free it would be unreasonable for them to expect any kind of true functionality from that part.
We want to create this document with as much feedback as is possible.

Some questions we’d like to ask:

Questions 1.

Of the things mentioned above, what do you disagree with?
What have we missed?
What are some IoT or open hardware projects emerging that we should pay special attention to?
For automobiles, drones and the like liability poses a high risk. Should we exclude these things from the license? Make a another license for high risk things?
What do you feel we should do about guns? We could exclude these completely or let them be shared?
Is it fair to the user to in a blanket way just label everything that is made with IoT, Open hardware & 3D printing experimental? Is it tenable in the long run?

3DShare: An open source license for 3D printed things

Existing licensing such as Creative Commons or GPL has been created for use with software or things such as images. These licensing structures are not designed for physical objects but rather for bytes alone. We anticipate a remix world where complex 3D printed things will be made using lots of different parts and many designers. Attribution, attribution of changes, taxonomies of the things themselves and functionality of the thing would not fit in existing licenses. Also product liability and other real world concerns have not been defined within the framework of these licenses. This is especially important because we see things emerging such as 3D printed houses, open hardware projects that spawn consumer devices & the use of open source design files in commercial products & projects. Because of this we will together with our community and lawyers create an open source license for 3D printed things. The aim of this license is to provide for an as free and fair as possible sharing of design files for objets. We hope to encourage collaboration and remix of design files, projects, devices and tools. We hope to make it clear which rights are and are not transferred. We hope to also make it clear what the liability and level of functionality that can be expected is. We also want to let designers decide who can do what with their files under what circumstances.

We would like your feedback on what this license should contain. So below some questions:

Questions 2

Open Source or Free Software?
If Mary makes a design file for a hinge and Bob adapts it. Should Bob & Mary be considered the designers of the object? Or should Mary be designated as the designer and Bob the “adaptor” of it?
If a team of ten designs an object together should they be listed in order of the level of their contribution? Or should they all be considered the designer of the object collectively & equally?
Should a designer be able to specify that their object can not be remixed or changed in any way?
Should a designer be able to specify that their design can not be used in a particular type of design? eg my hinge can not be used in a gun design.
Should a designer be able to specify that their design not be used in particular type of object. eg You can use my hinge for a football helmet design but not to make an actual football helmet.
Should the license always require attribution? From all designers and remixers of a particular design?
Do we want to embed “half-lives” in the license? So, my design can not be used for commercial purposes for two years, but after this period can be.
Do we want people to be able to differentiate between the types of users and their rights. eg My design may not be used for commercial products except if it is a prosthetic device. Or companies that have revenues over 1m may not use my design for commercial products. Or frighteningly, Italians may not use my design for commercial products but Belgians will be able to?
Similarly, do we want designers to be able to specify that the design can only be used for a particular application, group or purpose, excluding all others? eg My hinge design can only be remixed if it is to be used by the e-Nable community to make a Talon 3D printed prosthetic. eg My design is non-commercial except for this list of ten friends enclosed who can totally use it for commercial applications. eg My design may only be used to make interior design objects namely red vases, nothing else.
Should we always err towards protecting designers rights or towards increasing the sharability of the design?

Steps

We will gather feedback and discuss these points for the next 3 weeks. Then we will in two weeks work on and prepare the Alpha version of both the ToS and the license. We hope to present these for feedback by the end of September

Please comment and ask questions below, email joris@youmagine.com to contribute. You can also look at this article over on Medium and comment next to it.

Interview with Printrbot’s Brook Drumm

Image of Printrbot founder Brook Dunn moving into his HQ

Printrbot’s Brook Drumm, left, moving into the new HQ

Printrbot is a successful fast growing 3D printer manufacturer. The company makes capable machines that are pushing down the prices of 3D printers. Its Printrbot Maker kit is only $349 and its Printrbot Simple metal goes for $599. At YouMagine we’re always interested in learning more about 3D printing and think that Printrbot’s affordable 3D printers can have a high impact on 3D printing. We’re also super proud that Printbot has released the design files for its systems on YouMagine, sharing them with the world through us. You can download the files for the Printrbot Simple Makers edition, Go 1212, the Printrbot Go 1408, the Printrbot Jr. 1402, the Printrbot Jr. 1307, the Printrbot LC 1308, Printrbot LC 1302, the Printrbot Plus 1303, Plus 1306, Plus 1311, Simple Makers Edition, Simple Makers Edition 1401, Printrbot Plus 1404 and the Printrbot Original from YouMagine. All are available, open source and on YouMagine! As well as the 3D printers Printrbot has a number of upgrades and accessories that you can make as well. We interviewed Printrbot founder Brook Drumm to learn more about the company and his plans.

Joris Peels: How did you first become involved with 3D printing?

Brook Drumm: I got a cupcake in January 2011 and became completely obsessed. I started building a Prusa Mendel in February and started a RepRap meetup in march. My PrintrBot designs immediately followed that march. I dove in head first from the beginning.

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