Hello all,
The aim of this post is to seek for contribution help, if you like, and asking for your opinions on a new project. (all help is very appreciated!)
We currently start working on a new open-source project, which aims to "transport" goods from one place to another with 3D printers and scanners.
Admittedly, we are only in the idea-development phase of the project, and we are looking for contributors to share ideas, or to help making the
implementation after we decide some deatails. If any of you might want to ge involved, or share ideas, it would be great. That said, let me explain the project in detail.
We want to "transport" goods from a location to another, without transportation devices, and 3D printers and scanners.
The basic procedure to make such a "transportation" is this:
1) Scan the good at the sender side with the help of a 3D scanner.
2) Send the file to the other side.
3) Let the 3D printer in the receiver side to "reproduce" the good.
As you notice, this is not actually a transportation, it is just a production. And also, you can do this even today!
There is nothing preventing you to email a 3D model of an object to a friend, and let her produce the model. So, what is original with this?
Well, we don't want you sending the file to only a friend of yours, we want you to be able to send 3D models to anyone!
That is, we want a "global internet of 3D systems", where every 3D system is connected, via which, everyone is able to
"send" goods from anywhere to anyone. Internet connection is an integrated-part of this project. We want everyone
in the world to have 3D printers, (and scanners) and use the 3D machines similar to how we use the computers.
That is, instead of a computation device, we use a production device, to allow "physical" transmission.
Instead of software packages, we want to send real packages.
Limitations:
1) We want to make the transportation as general as possible. The transportation means production in this system, so that
any good to be transported, it must be able to be produced with 3D printers. Note that any production device could do the job,
but 3D printers seems a more appropriate candidate due to their ability of "generalized" manufacturing.
However, even so, the additive manufacturing devices are so diverse, with different methods and devices, and with different
production results. Note that when we want to "transport" a good with production, we need to give some guarantee that
the reproduced good at the receiver side is similar to the quality of the good in the sender side (if the exact same quality is not possible),
otherwise we would be only making a cheap copy. That is, we need to push the generalization and quality of 3D printers, in a cheap way.
Today, desktop printers are developing fastly, with their printing quality increases every day, and they are the ones that we need to do,
so that every one can use them in their homes. Cost is also a very important factor. For the system to be used by anyone,
it must be cheap! Again, what are your suggestions? Do you think existing dektop printers are enough for
doing such a job, do we need to develop our own desktop printers, which are cheap and accurate, or do we need another 20 years to make this technology?
Again, it is not possible to transport "every good" with the exact quality of initial factory production, but can we get a closer home-manufacturing
to make transportation?
2) 3D scanners are also a pain-in-the ass. Note that the basic idea of making transportation this way depends on the initial assumption that
when we 3D scan a good, we will get a good-quality 3D model of the good. However, this is not always the case. Again, there are so many diverse 3D scanners with
different results. In some cases, even simple photography is enough to get simple shape information, but not in our case. We want to reproduce the exact good
(or a close-second) at the other side. We might end up finding ourselves developing a new 3D-printer-scanner combined unit to make this project. (Any idea if we should?)
Since this is an interdisiplinary area, before we start the actual implementations, we need to decide the boundaries between systems. Should we start our own cheap-and-accurate
desktop printer project, or should we design a combined 3D-scanner-printer unit? (all open-source) Of course, we don't want to overcomplicate the project, because the internet
part is already as complicated as this, and has its own limitations (security being one of the most problematic). Thus, any suggestions at this point is very welcome.
When implemented, we want this project to get world-wide adoption, and this is why we do this open-source.
Anyone must be able to access such a technology cheaply. If you like the idea, want to share the great ideas of yours, or are interesting on contributing,
this is the
Github repository of the project. You can just share your ideas here, if you like. On the repository, you can learn more about the project in the documents.
Thank you very much in advance for your interest, and have good printing days!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2022 03:03PM by spike_spiegel.