User:Dslewicki
Introduction
My name is Dimitri Lewicki, a student at the Pennsylvania State University Schreyer Honors College in my second year. I am majoring in Mechanical Engineering and am pursuing minors in Engineering Entrepreneurship and German. My career goals include product development and serial entrepreneurship. I intend to graduate May 2016.
BLOGS
Weekly blogs will be written based on prompts provided by the professor. These blogs are often related to RepRap.
Blog Number One
Part A
An item that is amazing/beautiful
There is a really beautiful vase made up of external curves and crevasses that are apparently parametric sinewaves. It curves out at the bottom and tapers toward the top. Here is the link: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:145913
Part B
An item that is funny or strange
I found a bow tie that you can tie to your shoe as a fashion piece. It looks really weird, especially on the shoes that the guy is wearing in the picture. Here is a link to the page: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:145406
Part C
An item that is useless
Someone made a miniature model of a smart car. I see no purpose in this, and certainly does not have the "wow-factor" that a model of a supercar would have. Here is the link: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:141481
Part D
An item that is useful
I found a DNA Helix model. Someone printed all the cross rungs and the outlying end pieces. Then they assembled them around a metal rod. This is useful for educational purposes. Her is the link: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:145329
Part E
The best printable Raspberry Pi case I could find
The best one I could find got good reviews and many likes (60), which is more than a lot of the other cases. Also, the top and bottom of the case are interchangeable, so the design is quite versatile. Many users have printed the design. Here is the link: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:26922/#comments
None of these designs surprise me, but I could see that some of them would need support material to be printed properly.
Blog Number Two
I am currently working on two projects for the course. The first is to finish up the Yellow/Green printer. This is going pretty well so far, though we did break one part the other day and had to replace it. But we are making headway with determining what all has to be done to finish it mechanically by looking at other finished printers. We started printing new parts for it on Tuesday and will continue doing that in the next class.
The other mission I am working on is to fix up and finish the Solidworks model of the Open Hybrid Mendel printer design. The fixing up entails converting the STL part files into editable Solidworks part files, because some of the custom parts are only in STL format right now. I am going to look into programs that could possibly convert the STL files back into Solidworks part files. But I think it may just be easier to remake them in Solidworks, because all the features would be lost in a conversion from STL to SLDPRT format. After fixing all the parts and completing a final assembly, I can potentially create a set of assembly instructions that would instruct users on how to make an OHM printer from scratch.
Another project I may want to work on after these projects is the portable 3D printer solar cart. I love the idea of being able to push a 3D printer around campus and print objects for people, all the while running off of solar power. My question about this would be if we need DC batteries, in case the sun goes behind clouds and there isn't enough sun power for a short period of time. I do not know much about solar power, so this project would be really enlightening for me.
Blog Number Three
I think Tom Stewart's blog is very well done. Here is the link: Tom Stewart. The first blog post is the most in depth I have seen thus far, and the pictures are good. I also like his second blog post. It is very in depth as well, and the topic he discusses about the corporate use of 3D printers is well thought out and detailed. If I were to make a suggestion, it would be that his second blog post should be broken up into multiple paragraphs, because it is long for one paragraph. That would make it easier to read.
