crazy idea - school program

I've been enjoying the wonderfully fun task of sawing M8 Threaded pipes for the last hour or so after I read this post.

Then, in the midst of my most intense bordem--my imagination suddenly caught fire.

I want to make one of these generators, and add on some reprappable fan blades to make wind generators. then i want to make a hundred more.

I thought it might be cool to make these and donate them to something, like a school, to power the lighting in some building (ideally the whole school, maybe a small country-side school) as both a charitable and wonderfully ecological thing to do AND a great demo for the RepRap.

Imagine:
Open a 6-month/1-year class/after school activity and teach the kids how to build their own RepRaps (this would be donated to the school in the end) then establish a production floor and start churning out the wind generators. After the everything is up and running, you'll have a whole classroom of kids who know how to make a RepRap, have novice level experience in metalworking, electrical engineering, 3D design, mechanics, etc etc, a school with a reduced power bill, and a couple of RepRaps ready to clone themselves. Thoroughly document the whole process on camera. Of course the kids might love to have a copy of the tape, and they should get one for free, but the main purpose would be to submit it for grants to do other RepRap projects.

In my Jr. High we had wood and metal shop, separate classes, but no electronics (i did them at home on my own). The equipment we worked with was much more dangerous than what's necessary for making a Darwin and we certainly never made anything so cool. I don't think constructing the Darwin is beyond the capacity of your average 13 year old.


Also, the main site must be updated more often or we're going to need a new and better repository for .stl files. Granted, all the reading is helpful, but digging through pages of forum and blog posts and to randomly discover objects is not the most productive sharing system.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2008 05:54AM by David Pimentel.

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David

Tommelise 2.0 is made mostly of wood with just that in mind. I figure such a programme ought to have each student taking home his own Reprap home with him at the end of the course.

Posted by: David Pimentel (122.220.192.21) (Reprapper)
Date: October 24, 2008 08:52AM

>>Forrest

Also a very good idea!

I can't decide about giving them to the students or leaving them with the school. Obviously the school wouldn't need so many, but I wouldn't want any kids to be left out at the end either (including kids who couldn't participate for one reason or another). Raffle them off maybe? It'd make a decent fund raiser.

How serious are you about doing this kind of thing? I have no means at the moment (i don't even have a reprap yet), but i think it could really help the project, so I'm up for a little scheming and certainly collaboration. As a kid I was involved in a lot of fund raising projects and such things, but I've never been on the adult site (being the leader, doing paperwork, keeping things together etc).

David
Server.jp
Oita/Tokyo, Japan

Posted by: ErikDeBruijn (s5593c808.adsl.wanadoo.nl) (RepRap Guru)
Date: October 24, 2008 09:26AM

>>> I don't think constructing the Darwin is beyond the capacity of your average 13 year old.

Don't forget that this is something really incredible. The reason I agree that really young people can already build revolutionary machines is because they can help each other out and get support from a teacher. Debugging things is where it gets hard, other than that, building a RepRap is pretty easy. I see this working in a school setting. Much better than a lot of people doing it in isolation.

Regards,

Erik de Bruijn
[blog.erikdebruijn.nl]

messageRe: Reprap-able generator: STL files included!
Posted by: Forrest Higgs (69-12-229-157.static.dsl.mbay.net) (Core RepRap member)
Date: October 24, 2008 09:26AM

dadederakh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> How serious are you about doing this kind of
> thing?
>

Serious? I'm DOING it. Look at my design and see if there is anything in it that couldn't be done in a middle school woodworking shop. There isn't. Most school woodworking shops have a planer, which means you could build most of it with scrap lumber.

I could do one more half-design iteration on Tommelise and be there, but I'd like to get the price way down by making the steppers replicable, so I figure another year. Why do you think I've gone to all the trouble of making it possible to run a bunch of my machines off of one PC. Woodworking shops typically only have one or two PC's. That's also why I've stuck strictly to Art of Illusion. It's free and I don't want middle school computer labs to have to front a commercial 3D modelling system. smiling bouncing smiley



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2008 09:32AM by Forrest Higgs.

RepRap School Project
Posted by: David Pimentel (122.220.192.21) (Reprapper)
Date: October 24, 2008 06:10PM

>>Erik

Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes! Absolutely incredible!

>>Forrest

I know your designs are ready! I mean getting an actual project off the ground. Designing the machine is only half the enterprise: getting something done about it is the hard part. Necessities: Contacting a school (somewhere in the world), setting up a program (terrible paperwork), purchasing parts, travel and shipping, etc. Possibilities: Partnering with a charity, getting a grant, making a press release, getting experts in on the project, etc. Perhaps we could set up a project homepage to get the ball rolling? RepRap101.org? Given where I work, I think it fairly likely I can get a domain and set up the hosting.

It'd be ideal to have the program in phases, with a specialist teaching each phase. ie: Construction with a mechanic, electronics with an engineer, software with a programmer, printing with a designer, etc. This would also reduce the workload on us. One thing I love about the RepRap is how many fields of knowledge it crosses, which provides an amazing learning opportunity.

For now, this is a dream, but I don't think it's unfeasible. I've also talked with my boss about the RepRap and doing promotional work with it. I might be able to convince him to do some sponsorship eventually, if I can make it look somewhat profitable, but he's a fairly forward-thinking guy for a businessman. He's just opened a side venture marketing economical/ecological (in Japanese they just say "ecco" and it means both) products for industry.

Should this discussion move to it's own thread? Moderators, is this possible?

David
Server.jp
Oita/Tokyo, Japan

messageRe: RepRap School Project
Posted by: Forrest Higgs (69-12-229-157.static.dsl.mbay.net) (Core RepRap member)
Date: October 24, 2008 06:29PM

dadederakh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Should this discussion move to it's own thread?
> Moderators, is this possible?
>
Hmmm... It's easy enough to start a new thread, but what I'm doing isn't Darwin, so I don't know how many feathers that would ruffle and how much hissing would ensue. I have a forum over on my 3dreplicators.com website that isn't seeing much use except as a spam bucket. That might be the proper place for it.

As to the "getting it off the ground", I've been doing consulting in K-12 education since I moved to the US in 1996, so I'm fairly well connected in this country, at least

> It'd be ideal to have the program in phases, with a specialist teaching
> each phase. ie: Construction with a mechanic, electronics with an
> engineer, software with a programmer, printing with a designer, etc.
> This would also reduce the workload on us. One thing I love about the
> RepRap is how many fields of knowledge it crosses, which provides an
> amazing learning opportunity.

I'm not at all sure that that is necessary. First off, training sessions are how you make money on open source. You have to do it quick, because in 6-8 months graduates of your first classes realise that they can make money training as well.

Second, building one doesn't take specialists and I'm very averse to getting a bunch of specialists in the mix. Specialists tend to try to make the world specialise rather than get people through what they need to know, witness the ridiculous experience Reprap Darwin is having with the cultures of Linux, Java and C. The way I figure it is that if I can't show somebody how to do this in maybe two days of hands-on training, I'm screwed and so is Tommelise.

> He's just opened a side venture marketing economical/ecological
> (in Japanese they just say "ecco" and it means both) products for industry.

So you're working in Tokyo? That is my son's dream when he graduates from UCSB this coming Spring. He wants to eventually get into technical translation and technical writing starting in Japanese/English and go from there to Putonghua/Japanese and Putonghua/English.

It sounds to me like what you need to do is look into the possibilities of getting Reprap in one form or another into the Japanese education system, if that is practical.

Re: RepRap School Project
Posted by: David Pimentel (122.220.192.21) (Reprapper)
Date: October 24, 2008 07:24PM

>>Forrest

The Tomelise may be more practical, but I'd also rather do it with the RepRap because it would get a lot of people interested, which would mean more community, thus more development, thus better RepRaps, and so on and so forth. I really care about the viral distribution factor, and have hope that someday RepRap will reach 70-80% self-replication. However, the idea works for both machines, so let's see which gets more support. I'd really like to see more members comment on this idea!

Trained, licensed, expensive experts are not really what I have in mind. I mean RepRap experts, like nophead or vik and others--people who are experts on the RepRap and have been involved in it's development and have enough reputation to represent the project in the press. (Sorry to call you out guys, I know you are busy people.)

The Japanese education system is extremely conservative and troublesome. It's very difficult to make contacts unless you are already employed in the system. It's also unlikely that a Japanese PTA will take on any radical ideas for projects. There are trade schools (high school ages only) that offer classes doing hands on work with machinery, but they're private and it's almost unheard of in normal public schools. Also, from the first year of Jr. High and sometimes earlier, studying for college entrance exams takes priority over every aspect of education in Japan; students frequently and suddenly drop all of their extracurricular activities for this, as I witnessed firsthand while I was a private English teacher. I've actually lost elementary school students to crams schools because their parents thought college more important than English (yes, it did in fact happen, many, many times).

This idea is much more likely to take in the western world. Perhaps after the project is complete, and we'd have a demo to show schools in Japan and other countries, some would be more open to the project. That's what it takes here at least: your theories should be proven before they are proposed. Actually I don't think that is such a bad thing; it's just very conservative thinking.

It's also a real world issue to be faced with this project: the first time will be the most difficult, and it must be successful or it will probably not happen again, anywhere.

Also, now that we have completely derailed this thread: Could someone move this discussion to it's own? Pretty please! I feel bad for ruining Gene's topic.

David
Server.jp

Re: Reprap-able generator: STL files included!
Posted by: Forrest Higgs (69-12-229-157.static.dsl.mbay.net) (Core RepRap member)
Date: October 24, 2008 07:42PM

Well, if you want to do all that with Darwin ... have fun. You're going to need all those people to get training with that rascal going properly. My big fear with Darwin is that they're going to try to the song and dance about the gospel according to Saint Linus Torvalds and then try to show people how to hold their little finger while doing builds for half a hundred possible configurations of Linux and their audience is going to go glassy eyed. smileys with beer

Right now, the Darwin community is largely self-selecting for people who like geeking around with things like Linux, Java and C and sharing a common faith that some bright morning the whole world is going to wake up and realise that they need to adopt that true faith. That's fine as far as it goes. No harm in it at all. The mindset does, however, make addressing a much larger audience of people who haven't the obsessiveness to get into all that really problematical.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2008 07:49PM by Forrest Higgs.

Sorry everybody. The thread didn't split cleanly. I had to copy most of the messages across.

>>Forrest

I'll have to draw up some rules of conduct for volunteers. The promotion of any religion, including Torvaldsim, will be strictly banned. lol.

Yeah, I know not everyone in the community is a trained educator. I have enough experience to give a few pointers, but this is what curricula are for: Draw out a plan of exactly what to teach, step by step toward a specific goal, incrementally building on the knowledge gained in the previous step; severely critique each piece of information in each step and reject anything unnecessary; include flexibility to repeat or revise steps all along the way.

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David

Also, as far as software goes, hopefully development on the Live CD will provide a one-size-fits-all solution. I really don't see any other way as viable for viral distribution.

Sure, people who can and want to should compile their own software, and there will be cases of custom setups and applications; but in the case of kids, hobbyists, novices, etc. ONE cd (dvd may be pushing it) with ONE integrated software setup is MUCH better. Ordinary people obviously don't care what type of architecture it's built on so long as it works.

---

David

This sounds like a lot of fun, and a great idea to boot! I'd be interested in helping out as well. I have a small amount of teaching experience in adventure sports, but not much for actual in the classroom teaching. I am a good generalist though, and can debug just about anything, especially electronics. I'm currently in eastern Canada, but plan to be in Australia this winter.

As for the OS and even Reprap/repstrap/??? arguments, I think it's a bit early to tell yet what's going to work. As far as I know, we've only really had a single replicated machine that works. My Darwin has only started producing usable parts this past week. Once we get a small base of machines up and running reliably and producing parts we'll be in a better position to start talking about which design or OS or host software we should standardize on.

The nice thing about the Gcode format is that it's mostly independent of host software. Yesterday I ran my Darwin off Ubuntu, Xandros, and Windows Xp, and I nearly ran out and bought a Mac out of frustration. I may still buy one, actually. But it's working now, and I really don't care what OS it's on, as long as I get little shiny trinkets out of it.

Wade

All the RepRap software is cross platform and so is the alternative Python stuff so I can't see Forrest's point. How can having it tied to Windows make it any easier for people to use?

As it is people can pick the OS they are most familiar with. There may be different bugs on different platforms but they will get fixed.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

nophead Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> All the RepRap software is cross platform and so
> is the alternative Python stuff so I can't see
> Forrest's point. How can having it tied to Windows
> make it any easier for people to use?
>
Neither can any of the other core reprap team. I just watch the threads posted by people struggling to get things running and think that that is telling us that we have a serious problem. I'm apparently alone in that opinion.

Forrest, you are not alone in that opinion. We have a serious problem. You ARE however, alone in your approach. From what I can see, it's a "commercial is fine as long as it's reasonably low-cost" approach. Which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't work for me (I don't own a copy of windows) or for people with strictly-limited budgets. I imagine there are probably other reasons to reject the commercial software scene as well, such as difficult distributing the live-cd, philisophical differences, etc. Ultimately, no von-neumman machine that's based on per-processor licensing makes much sense. If you have to pay per copy, "viral replication" doesn't work.

I'm of the opinion that Java is a joke, and python is the way to go. Nobody has made a python-all-in-one installer for windows with skienforge etc. preloaded, but there's no reason I know of not to. Except that the installation is so much simpler than the Java install that it hasn't been needed? Python install questions on the forums are quite limited. That MAY of course be because most people are using Java, but I think the install is much less prone to problems as well.

The CAD environment still being up in the air is a major sticking point, but I think it's mainly because there is no open-source package that really meets our needs yet. Maybe when the new BRL-CAD frontend is done? Blender will always be extremely intimidating for beginers, I think. And AoI has a LONG way to go, nevermind that it's Java and therefore subject to the same installation problems.

---

--
I'm building it with Baling Wire

Yes all the problems seen in the forums seem to be Java rather than anything to do with which OS is used.

The reason there is no Python installer is that you don't need to install Python programs. You just dump the files in a directory and run them. On a Linux machine Python itself is generally already installed. On Windows it's a simple download and install from Activestate.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

>>Wade
Great! We'll need anybody with any teaching experience! And you're right, we do need to take some time to plan what machine and how to use it.

>>nophead
Regardless of the architecture, there must be some version of the software that runs in every operating system currently used on home computers, including windows, and it must run easily; ie, no compile, no installing an interpreter, no emulation, etc. at least, the user must not need to know if these things are happening and must not need to make any complex changes to their system. Take a look at the language in your last post and ask yourself "Does this really make sense to the average Joe?"

>>John
You are right, commercial and viral distribution do not mix; keep in mind no one is going to distribute windows with reprap software. Making free software for a commercial os that is by and large the most common worldwide (as much as that makes me cry) is actually a good idea: and still free.

---

David

Viral distribution of a 3D printer that is strongly linked to a PC, regardless of it's OS, makes nonsense of the notion that Reprap is supposed to be a low energy device that can be run off of a car battery.

Forrest,

While people are still working tightly with a computer, this makes sense.
When RepRap starts spreading into places where the access to the computer (or the power) is limited, "print cartridges" (SD cards preloaded with designs) will become a priority.

(or so I assume, I am not aa policy maker)
("print cartridges" are just one way of detaching the RepRap from the PC of course)

-Leav

Leav Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> (or so I assume, I am not aa policy maker)
> ("print cartridges" are just one way of detaching
> the RepRap from the PC of course)
>
Yup, Zach is making Sanguino SD compatible with that in mind, I think.

The problem with making Reprap completely off-line capable is that your microcontroller board(s) have to start looking more and more like a PC, not so much in computing power but in the ability to handle the basics of a user interface, viz, a keypad and some sort of display. Zach and Bruce Wattendorf are presently fielding an LCD display for Sanguino.

My take on it all is that by the time you make a Reprap autonomous you've added the cost of a really cheap PC to it without the getting the benefit of having the PC. With Tommelise, I am presently using big EEPROMS and will eventually go to SD cards, but I'm sticking with a "not always running" PC to do the user interface job.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2008 03:12PM by Forrest Higgs.

I recently added a 16 character LCD and four buttons to a project for <

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I am working on a 2 or 4 line LCD and 5 buttons not to one up you Nophead.

The chip we are using (microchip mcp23017) only uses 2 data wires from Arduino / Sanguino this will control an 8 bit LCD and 5 buttons using I2C.

I think that a menu system will work fine you will be able to select and load a file move the head of the machine and if we find we need more buttons you would just have to add a 2nd board since we are using I2C communication you can add up to 7 boards. if you are using only one display then the 2nd board could be used for all control buttons.

The only thing I see is the changing of a settings file it could be done with the buttons and LCD but I think that might be done outside of the machine for now. So I think this will allow us to use the same gcode file for each machine and have a settings file that will be set for the individual machine.

Bruce Wattendorf

>>nophead & Bruce
Incredible! Just wanted to say that.

---

David

Sorry guys, I have just found this thread,

It is entirely possible to run a machine without connection to a PC. As far as I can see a PC is still needed to prepare files but after that dump the G-Code onto portable media and go run off the parts.

My machine runs exactly like this, there is a board with LCD screen and a joystick with buttons, with this you can pop in the SD card and scroll through the files, pick the part to print and off you go.

If you strip out the working parts and do a bespoke board for the machine, it has potential to be an extremely low cost solution. This is the long term plan for the design.

Have a look at the builders blog to see a little more of the potential for this approach

Tony.

I'm one of many people who want to do a project at their university. However, I am fairly isolated and don't have all of the expertise needed to get started. Is there enough demand to set up a kind of mentoring program where experienced reprappers hook up with others so they can share the knowledge and spread the message?

I got approved to write up a software proposal for CS course work credit, so that's what I'm looking at now, but the hardware side will be just as important - it's just that I am a CS major. Both the CS and Engineering Science departments are into it and supportive.

-Daniel

Santa Rosa is "isolated"?

Heh, you're right - objectively speaking Santa Rosa is relatively urban and well connected, considering the proximity to the SF Bay. However, as a newcomer who does not yet drive (this is going to happen in the next month hopefully) I've obviously developed a skewed perspective having grown up in NYC.

Hopefully I'll get to meet some of the SF Bay area people who are posting to the user group thread.

Anyone interested in being a mentor for this project? I promise I'll buy you lunch.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2008 01:57PM by obscurite.

I'd be happy to, except that I'm guessing that you're going to be building a Darwin, right? I'm doing the Tommelise project and haven't taken time to build a conventional Darwin.

Thanks Forrest, maybe this would be a good match. The question is, how would Tommelise affect the project vs. Darwin? Does Tommelise differ significantly in electronics and software? Would we be diverging from the Darwin project completely? Would our contributions help both projects? Thanks for fielding all the questions.

The goal is to have a rotating project with a few contributors at any one time building on the work of previous team members, from both the CS and Engineering departments. We do have a machine shop on campus but I don't yet know how friendly they will be to this project. I am pretty sure we can get access to the electronics labs, for what that's worth.