User:Conraider

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Introduction

My name is Ryan Conrad. I am an Electrical Engineering student at Penn State University.

Blogs

Blog 1

A: Something amazing or beautiful

I think it that a fractal LED light looks pretty stunning. You can find a link to it here.

B: Something funny or strange

This is something that i fount that is really weird. It is a carrot man action figure type of thing. You can find a link to it here

C: Something useless

Something that seems pretty useless is a book ring. It holds the book open when you read it and it just seems like something that you don't really need. It's solving a problem that doesn't need to be fixed. You can find a link to it here.

D: Something useful

I found this to be something very useful. Most people know how messy loose computer cables can be and this solves the problem. You can find a link to it here.

E: Raspberry Pi case

I found this Raspberry Pi case on thingiverse and it seems to have good ventilation and good access to all of the different inputs and outputs on the Raspberry Pi.

Blog 2

Something in class that interests us

I am very interested in all the electronic components of the class. I have been working on soldering the RAMPS boards for some time now. They are a very interesting design that is simplistic yet works very well. I would also be interested in designing or working on other electronic components. I am having a bit of a problem coming up with ideas of my own so any input in class is welcome.

Blog 3

I think that Crosby has a very nice blog with a great layout. He really seems to know how to code the wiki and make it look organized and easy to read and view. It's very organized especially with Blog 1 and the the pictures of the items he chose on the right side of the page.

Brandon Also has a very nice blog set-up. I like the way his blog is inverted with the most recent blog at the top. Also the fact that he also seems to be pretty good with coding the wiki. I also thought his blog 2 about the 3D printing DRM because it taught more about it than what we just did went over in class.

Blog 4

The first thing discussed is the arduino project. It is aimed to people who have little to no knowledge of electronics and programming. It can also be used by people like me who have more knowledge of electronics to easily and cheaply make their designs come to life. Arduino is open source, so it's designs are available for free and open for people to modify, use, or sell different designs based on it as long as they are credited. The next thing discussed is RepRap. As we all know RepRap is a 3D printer that can make other 3D printers. RepRap is also open source and easily available online just like the arduino. It is designed so anyone can build the RepRap from ANY 3D printer. RepRap 3D printers are growing exponentially since they and create themselves.

All of this stuff is very interesting to me. I've been interested in Arduino for several years now and use it for my own projects. And i have been interested in 3D printers and RepRap ever since i found out about them some time ago. These are great projects because it opens up these things to everyone in the world to create, design and improve and hopeful make them even better as the time progresses.

Blog 5

A.) The only thing in my first blog that I think could get a copyright is the fractal LED lamp. The carrot man could also possibly get a copyright depending on the direction the person who created it wants to go with it.

B.) The Yoda and my little pony on Quinn Carpenter's page are definitely a copyrighted design. Also many people have a Raspberry Pi logo on their Raspberry Pi cases. I looked into it and it is just trademarked like i originally though, you can find more info on it here.

C.) It comes down to the ability to enforce it and they way other people go about using your objects. On one hand you have the ability to claim something you spent your time on as yours, but then you could have someone fix one small problem with it or just change a few things and call it their own if we have no form of way to "claim" it as your own. If you don't decide to make your work open everyone then you also lose the help of millions of people to make your design that much better.

D.) You can tell the author is naive just by looking at the title "3D Printing Hits a Strange Milestone: Shape Pirates and Copyright Claims". Copyright claims are nothing that new in the world of 3D printing. Copyright claims in 3D printing sounds like something people could have thought of happening to it since we started using them to make objects.

Blog 6

I feel that Matt brought up a good point about the weird grey area where an object can be both artistic and useful at the same time. For example the Fractal LED lamp might fall into this category because it is both artistic with the fractal design and useful a lamp.

Blog 7

For blog 7 I chose this article.

The article describes how someone could use the game Minecraft to build an object and export it as an STL file.

My hopes for this is that it will introduce people to the concept of 3D modeling with an easy interface. Minecraft is a very simple game to play and people of all ages play it. It would definitely get more people interested and involved in 3D printing if they can work hard on something in a fun way and then see it actually come to life. It could also possible make creating things that need to be in block easier to create, for example, a QR code.

It may be too over hyped though. If someone already knows how to use CAD software, Minecraft will just be tedious to them and limited. Minecraft is limited to square objects with no slopes or curves. While it can be an easy too to get more people involved it is not an end stop. The person using Minecraft to start out 3D printing will then go on to have to learn CAD programs to go any further.

Blog 8

A.)

 1. Open SLS. This project is an open source laser sintering machines. It is cool because the current SLS printers are expensive and an open source one would open up a lot more possibilities for 3D printing.
 2.  3D Printing bacteria. This is a very interesting project about 3D printing bacteria. I do not know much about bacteria, but this seems useful as well as pretty cool. Its done by using a normal 3D printer and replacing the head with an Inkjet printer head.
 3. Open3DLP.  The projects uses a  DLP projector to print 3D objects. It is a very interesting project that created cool things like the clear tree that was printed upside down.
 4. CellStruder. The project is a 20mL syringe that extrudes a liquid at a microliter level.

B.) Some that i can think of are:

Engineering DIY Create Future

C.) What I though of was ROSAM: Research into Open-Source Additive Manufacturing.