DeltaMaker on Kickstarter

It takes a four person team with degrees in Aerospace, Electrical, Mechanical, and Software engineering to copy the Rostock, designed by one guy, and make it with extrusions.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deltamaker/deltamaker-an-elegant-3d-printer-0?ref=live

Worse yet, they don't even credit Johann Rocholl for the design.. only his Marlin fork that supports it.
Who needs a degree in software engineering to copy and download stuff written by others?
Sheesh.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2013 08:00PM by lincomatic.

They credit Reymond Clavel however. If they did credit Johann Rocholl will it be enough, or will they have to credit helium frog designer too? But to answer your question, nobody. Rostock isn't made of extrusions, their design is, so its redesign at least not a copy.

extrusions eh? John "Oly's" Rostock Max already does that with at least the frame.

And if their designs are built from designs released under GPL, aren't they in violation by not crediting? Did they say if they will release their sources?

As long as we're assigning credit, we shouldn't forget VDX. He was working on this back in 2007.

VDX, wow, never seen that one before! Very cool! Are you still playing with it or?

As for deltamaker, yeah, see what a bunch of degrees get you. A whole lotta ripped off work, packaged prettier to the media.

Wonder why they need a software engineer? They are using repetier host? I pushed roland to get a round build volubutme displayed, z home at max, and many of the delta specific features hr has since added. So, what does a software engineer do when theres no software to be made?

Kinda bummed really, i honestly LOVE more printers, but "baffling with bullshit" never impressed me much, and all their pitch is full of it.

... I've designed and built my "Tripod" then only to demonstrate the special joints formed by ball-magnets ... gave it away recently to another enthusiast

Was busy with this sorts of 'delta-kinematics' since maybe +20 years, but mostly for really expensive microtech, so had no plans for DIY or such then.

I'm happy, if someone pushs this some steps further - there is much more potential in non-cartesian designs than obviously ... especially when the software reaches maturity ...

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

I don't see where they say they are releasing their designs. It is a a derivative and should be released.

jzatopa Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't see where they say they are releasing
> their designs. It is a a derivative and should be
> released.


Agreed. I'm not a lawyer but everything I know about drawings/designs says they are allowed to be released under GPL. Which means they are protected by GPL from people branching work from it and making it proprietary...

nuff said.

edit] and no way to contact them or comment publicly... They deserve nothing. Their backers are fools.



Apparently kickstarter is a great way to steal GPL works, take a crapload of money from people, and make yourself rich all while being scum.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2013 07:20PM by xclusive585.

I think we have been through this before. Hardware designs are not covered by copyright, the GPL does not apply.

Even if copyright did apply to design files, if they did not use any copied design files, but created the designs from scratch, they would not be in violation. However well GPL protects a particular piece of work it does not protect the idea of the work. If I write my own image manipulation program, I don't have to give credit to GIMP.

The linear delta robot is hardly a new idea, and Johann may have popularised it within the Reprap community, but he certainly did not invent it.

It always seems strange that the Reprap decries corporate ownership of ideas, yet if any outside party appears to do similar work there are cries of "hey, that idea belongs to us, give us money!".

bobc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If I write my own image
> manipulation program, I don't have to give credit
> to GIMP.
If it uses GIMP code yes you do, and it has to be released under GPL.



Anyways:
I don't want to argue about this and you are correct about the hardware aspect of it absolutely. But there is alot of gray area here with the specific reprap designs being released under GPL, and this design looking alot like it..

bobc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It always seems strange that the Reprap decries
> corporate ownership of ideas, yet if any outside
> party appears to do similar work there are cries
> of "hey, that idea belongs to us, give us money!".

The community has its own little version of a patent office.

xclusive585 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Anyways:
> I don't want to argue about this and you are
> correct about the hardware aspect of it
> absolutely. But there is alot of gray area here
> with the specific reprap designs being released
> under GPL, and this design looking alot like it..

Actually this is a good opportunity to talk about this gray area. What specifically do these guys owe and to whom?

My feeling on the matter is that it is respectful to cite Johann's work because he showed the feasibility of this mechanism for printing. I'm not sure what else beyond that is owed to anybody.

And if they alter the firmware for their machine they are responsible for releasing the source under GPL, that is a fact.

Let's hope they abide.

Is there any reason to expect that they'd alter the firmware?

xclusive585 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And if they alter the firmware for their machine
> they are responsible for releasing the source
> under GPL, that is a fact.
>
> Let's hope they abide.


Why would you assume they wouldn't?
It would have been nice to mention being inspired by the Rostock, but outside of that I don't see anything particularly disingenuous in what they are doing.
I could live without the team of experts speak on their Kickstarter page, but it's not hurting anyone.

billyzelsnack Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is there any reason to expect that they'd alter
> the firmware?


As companies head down the proprietary road, yes. Especially if they have a decent software engineer they will most definitely in time start altering the firmware. This could be beneficial to us however if they do a good job. :-)

Firmware could certainly use some work for Delta printers.
The current solutions in both Repetier and Marlin, are basically a hack, they break down the move into a bunch of linear moves and add them to the planner, this causes an issue where sometimes the planner buffer is filled and on long moves very occasionally you get stops mid move. Marlin seems to be more susceptible to it than Repetier, but both will do it.
The "right" solution is to do it when generating the step pulses, but that's hard and might not be practical without more CPU cycles.

... this was mainly the reason I've dropped the delta idea and stayed with cartesian machines for my projects ... and why I'm eager after some 'mature' software with 'path-planning' or look-ahead for parallel kinematics

My first approach was too dividing the cartesian XYZ-move into smallest pieces and recalculate the displacement of starting-to-endpoint by ABC-angles.

With our goal of microns resolution the sheer amount of data was overwhelming ... and even with 0.005mm step resolution of the linear drives the 'ripples' on horizontal planes, caused by this angular movement (in contrary to absolute even planes with XYZ-moving) were enough to frustrate the customer, so we reverted again to cartesian mechanics

But the delta is perfect for lasercutting with a 'remote' optical head from a fiberlaser, so I've used this successfully for a micro-laser-welding system and for some tests with 'additive fusing' (a sort of SLS)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2013 02:41AM by VDX.

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

xclusive585 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If it uses GIMP code yes you do, and it has to be
> released under GPL.

Yes, but do you have any proof so this is the case here? What sense does it make to take OpenSCAD design file of this printed strut and modify it into this? Wouldn't it be actually simpler to design them from scratch (beside the fact they look like normalized piece of hardware just cut to size)? Especially if they possibly used different CAD.

I made this comment in 3dprinter.net

I have mixed views on some of the 3d printer kickstarter projects. It’s so evident it’s all about the money. At the very least it helps spread the technology, but is it by taking advantage of unknowing people?* these projects don’t bring anything new, it’s the same reprap with a different packaging… but more expensive (!). You can build a reprap for 400 bucks (not sure about rostock, maybe around 600).

So the 40k – 100k are not for backing up say, research, or equipment for a new original thing, but for establishing a business. I thought that was not the point of kickstarter, that would be alright in indiegogo I guess.

VDX Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... this was mainly the reason I've dropped the
> delta idea and stayed with cartesian machines for
> my projects ... and why I'm eager after some
> 'mature' software with 'path-planning' or
> look-ahead for parallel kinematics
>
> My first approach was too dividing the cartesian
> XYZ-move into smallest pieces and recalculate the
> displacement of starting-to-endpoint by
> ABC-angles.

I did the math (though I wouldn't rule out errors on my part) and even with Marlins somewhat bogus approach of basing the number of segments on the time to target (which I assume is based on performance issues) , rather than making it error tolerance based, for most moves the accuracy is better than the microsteps on the steppers and the slop in the universal joints. But I don't need sub micron accuracy.
FWIW of the 3 printers I have running, the delta produces the most consistent layer alignment.
I suspect you'd need a much faster processor to do the correction in the planner, but I might get around to looking at it at some point, I have a couple of 800Mhz ARM boards around that ought to be more than enough.

I was just going to ask. If someone wrote proper firmware for deltas, would some of us be willing to test more "intense" firmware with a different electronics package? I know I will be willing to.

I think ARM is the way to go, to get the processing power needed while still using a package that is a programmable SOC setup.

(We can start a thread somewhere whenever, I'm still a couple weeks from even getting the parts for a delta let alone have a working unit)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2013 02:14PM by xclusive585.

Looking at this printer there are a few things I can say I like about their design. It is simple, time has been taken to lower part counts and hide all wires. I also like how it uses makerslide for it's rails, something that we should be doing with repraps going forward if we want to simplify their designs. They really have not broken any new ground though, which is a shame.

Even if they don't release the designs, it would be a very easy design to recreate. I am sure that someone who is well versed with the rostock could redesign it to copy their designs in a day or two. Anyone up to the challenge?

Personally I think that the Rostock/deltamaker designs need to be made wider. Is there some limitation of the delta armature that prevents this?

fourteenfuckingnintynine??

1499$ for a makerslide rostock, no fucking way! can't belive people are willing to pay this much for it. Shouldn't even be 699$ more like 500

Why wider though? They already have almost the build width of our standard 200x200 machines...

But that's the cool thing about the rostock/delta design I think it looks pretty scalable.

Anyways I think proper firmwares need to be in place for the deltas before we worry about redesigning them.

Polygonhell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> FWIW of the 3 printers I have running, the delta
> produces the most consistent layer alignment.

Not-wild guess.. Your other printers all have screws for Z?

billyzelsnack Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Polygonhell Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > FWIW of the 3 printers I have running, the
> delta
> > produces the most consistent layer alignment.
>
> Not-wild guess.. Your other printers all have
> screws for Z?

Yes and I agree this is at least part of the problem, but I think you gain something from 3 identical axis as well, any error is consistent across all the directions of motion.
I had a really cool print failure trying to dial te delta in where one stepper was intermittently skipping causing the entire print to gradually twist over.

I too spotted this on Kickstarter and if you read down the page, they do in fact credit Johann for his Rostock, they don't credit me for the Helium Frog delta, but that is OK as it is much more Rostock than Helium Frog. If we carried on like this the credits would need to be longer than those at the end of a film, begining with Dr Adrian Bowyer. I can see nothing wrong with selling the delta design for profit even if it was an exact copy. The GPL licence allows for this.

If they don't release their designs or firmware, probably the best way to stick it to them is find someone who has one of their machines and copy the firmware, photograph / reverse engineer the parts and post all the designs up online. They would have to be foolish to take anyone to court.

What upsets me is how they are hijacking kickstarter. Both I and Johann developed our robots in a few months without external funding. The total cost must have been less than £400 in my case. I had no need to raise $150,000 before I got started.

Kickstarter is for funding projects that need initial investment for tooling etc. which otherwise would not get off the ground. Unless they are using the startup money for injection moulding tooling or something, this is just an excuse to get money in the bank for something that they could do on their own. By the looks of their site its already setup and there is no need for funding.

On the subject of firmware, my Helium Frog firmware calculated position on the fly. Each loop it calculated expected postion using move time and then moved the robot to it in a sort of closed control loop. It worked quite well. As the delta calculations are trivial, I would expect it could work for fast travel without issue as the loop time is extremely small. As the moves get faster and faster, the error and segmentation would increase a little, but this is much better than having a fixed number of steps for long moves.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2013 08:00AM by martinprice2004.

xclusive585 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> bobc Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > If I write my own image
> > manipulation program, I don't have to give
> credit
> > to GIMP.
> If it uses GIMP code yes you do, and it has to be
> released under GPL.

By "my own" I mean "not using someone else's code". Surely that is just reading comprehension. I've no idea how you managed to construe the exact opposite of what I said.

However, we do agree.

martinprice2004 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What upsets me is how they are hijacking
> kickstarter. Both I and Johann developed our
> robots in a few months without external funding.
> The total cost must have been less than £400 in
> my case. I had no need to raise $150,000 before I
> got started.

That comparison doesn't make any sense, and is not even the right number! Are you saying that because you did not avail yourself of Kickstarter, no one else should be allowed to?

> Kickstarter is for funding projects that need
> initial investment for tooling etc. which
> otherwise would not get off the ground. Unless
> they are using the startup money for injection
> moulding tooling or something, this is just an
> excuse to get money in the bank for something that
> they could do on their own. By the looks of their
> site its already setup and there is no need for
> funding.

So now we are policing Kickstarter projects on behalf of Kickstarter? I am pretty sure we can leave that to them. They have a definition for what constitutes a valid campaign, and if you read their guidelines it seems to fit.