User:Med5342

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Introduction

My name is Matt Digel and I am a Senior at The Pennsylvania State University majoring in Industrial Engineering. I intend on graduating in December 2014.

More coming soon!

BLOGS

Weekly blogs are assigned by the professor and my answers to the prompts will be displayed here. These blogs will relate to 3D Printing and sometimes more specifically the RepRap printers

Blog 1

Amazing: Chainmail

The Prompt: Go to thingaverse and look for printable objects, which other people have actually printed finding designs which satisfy these descriptions in your mind:

A. Something amazing/beautiful

I have always found it amazing that the metal chainmail knights used to wear into battle could protect the wearer form the sharp blade of a sword. Now even more amazing is that the same loop within loop pattern can be made using 3D printing instead of by hand with steel wire. The STL file can be downloaded here.
Funny: Glasses



B. Something funny or strange

Funny sun glasses are always a great accessory to have at a theme party or for halloween. I have seen some with a mustache that hang below the lens, or ones that looks like a window blind that's ironically pretty difficult to see out of. These glasses provide the funny aspect of having curled eye brows attached to the lens while also still being able to see out of them. The STL file can be downloaded here.
Useless-Action Figure





C. Something useless

In a day where kids are growing up with video games and toys that are more technologically advanced than my first cell phone I believe it's pretty useless and wasteful to print out this block headed action figure for any child. It doesn't even have a face?! Action figures usually come with a cool story about saving the world or fighting off some villain. This guy looks like he could barely fight off a fly.
Uslessful - Ice Cube Tray Holder




D. Something useful

Living with 4 other roommates in one apartment can make for a crowded refrigerator. This little ice cube tray holder is simple, but would be very useful for any group of students or family needing to increase available space in their freezer. The STL file can be downloaded here.
Raspberry Pi Holder





E. The 'Best' printable Raspberry Pi case you can find At this point I don't know too much about Raspberry Pi holders, like what would make a good or a bad one, but what I do know is that this holder has 84 likes on Thingiverse and it looks very smooth, clean and put together. There were a few others that had around 50 likes who also had a nice color combination. My only worry is that these holders got likes for the way they look as opposed to their actual functionality. The STL file can be downloaded here.





Blog 2

The Prompt: Write about a topic (or two, or three) which interests you which we've discussed so far - or not discussed in detail yet.

Crazy Toothbrush Holder
Crazy Toothbrush Holder


This week I’ve found a problem in need of a solution in my bathroom. My roommates and I have trouble keeping our bathroom counter organized especially on the weekends. One thing that I think could help would be to have a toothbrush holder to reduce the clutter on the counter surface, while also adding something interesting to look at while your standing at the sink. I searched thingiverse for toothbrush holder designs with some good results but none that completely fulfilled my functional or aesthetic requirements, but definitely gave me some good ideas. I think it would be fun and an interesting learning experience to take this toothbrush holder idea from concept to design to physical product with one of our RepRap 3D printers. Though I do enjoy building the printers, I think my interest lies more in troubleshooting designs themselves and figuring out what can be printed, what can’t and going through the process of actually designing and creating something for everyday use. As it stands now, the specs for my toothbrush holder would be that it has to hold 4 toothbrushes and maybe the toothpaste tube as well. A design look that appeals to me is one that is tall and slender and kind of resembles an umbrella. The trick with a tall design would be figuring out if the toothbrush holder could be done in one print or would have to be broken up into two different parts. Either way the process necessary for product development with 3D printing is one I’d like to explore. To the right are some of the toothbrush holders I found on thingiverse.

Blog Number Three

The Prompt: Read some of your classmates blogs, find the best ones and suggest improvements to those who need it

Brandon Tunkel ‘s blog on digital rights management I found to be the most interesting and informational. He actually discussed a company I talked about during my show and tell called Authentise that plans on using a business model similar to Netflick, but instead applied to 3D printing. I liked reading about how the streaming DRM method they use is called SendShapes prevents users from saving the CAD file. It has gotten to the point where companies are having to send cease and desist orders to service bureaus to prevent the printing of trademarked figures and items so it seems that in some industries technology might be necessary.

Scott Milander ‘s blog on 3D printed kidney and how it can live up to four months I found to be very interesting. I had known previously from my research over the summer that companies like ONVO were printing human organs, but I hadn’t heard they could live for so long. I am still skeptical about their potential quality though. I find it hard to believe that science and unnatural processes could adequately create and replace such a personalized and unique part of the human body. Scott also had a very nice introduction that included a link to a page that gave a status report on the Rainbow printer that he is working on. This is something I should do with my Black Printer next week.

Crosby Owens’s blog on 3d scanners caught my eye. My question for him is if he has ever heard of the iPhone app called 123D Catch. I learned about it from a lecture given by the CEO of Dimensions, a 3D Scanning company based out of Baltimore. This app will create a 3D render of an object after you send it 40 pictures of the object from every angle possible. The Direct Demensions CEO had tried the app out on a statue head, by taking the pictures, creating the render and then printing it out on a Makerbot. I got to hold the printed statue head in my hand after his lecture at a conference this summer. Pretty cool if you ask me.

I also think Crosby’s discussion on food is interesting. Though I can agree that printing food will help to save food cost and waste, I have a hard time believing that the food from a 3D printer will be healthy or even appealing to customers by the time the technology is more advanced. Organic, and natural food companies and grocery stores are expanding and becoming more popular as we speak. People are beginning to be willing to pay more for healthier food. In my opinion, 3D printing food will never get paste printing deserts like chocolate.

Abbie Letts has by far the best blog 3. You can tell she read everyone’s blog for both week 1 and week 2 and genuinely thought that Brandon Tunkel had the best week 2 blog and Tom Stewart had the best week 1 blog. In addition she gives improvement comments to two classmates and then creates a whole new section for other posts she’d like to comment on.

Improvements: One thing that stuck out to me in a few blogs, specifically Brandon Tunkel 's, was that the introduction did not include very much information. I would have loved to learn a little bit more about him in his introduction. Right now it is only one sentence.


Also, after looking on the mailing list and comparing the names on that to the scrugmembers wiki homepage I found that Josh Beacham wasn’t on the wiki homepage. Or maybe he is just on the mailing list but not in the class?


Blog 4

From the user perspective I certainly love the open source business model. This idea of giving away a companies primary product for free is actually the foundation of not just Google, but a majority of internet companies. Every time I go on Facebook, Youtube, Ebay, CNN, or Glassdoor websites I am utilizing that companies primary service that adds efficiency and value to my life and I don’t have to pay for it. The traditional business model is followed by companies who create their primary product or service to be directly sold to a customer or user. For example, Proctor and Gamble makes and sells toilet paper, Toy R ‘US buys and resells toys, and UPS sells a delivery service. All these companies get paid for the main way they provide value to their customers. They spend money on material, machines, vehicles, warehouses and supply chains because they make money off of physical objects that can’t be infinitely copied or travel across the world in seconds. The internet allows companies to mass produce value to a customer without any physical costs and thus have nothing to lose by giving it away for free. By giving value away for free they can gain brand recognition and sell advertisements. In my opinion this is a win-win for the customer and company. The customer doesn’t have to directly pay for the specific product, but the company still has a way to make money through other means. The arduino and RepRap projects are examples of the rare exception of the “give away for free” approach applied to physical objects.

The arduino project is geared toward designers in a hope to get them thinking more about the electronics in objects. The goal is to help innovators easily make interactive objects and environments by receiving information from its sensors and powering lights, motors and other machines. This project represents a company that is based on IP and only makes money off their patented logo. This allows third parties to make and produce different types of the electronics platform and make money off a design that is open to everyone. I personally love this type of business model because it promotes learning, trial and error and maker communities. There’s no doubt that arduino’s or some platform like them will be used all over the world to teach electronics and computing within the next 10 years. For me though the hardest part was understanding what exactly an arduino could do. Below is a list of examples that I found here.

-Want to have a coffee pot tweet when the coffee is ready? Arduino. -Want to have plushie steaks glow? Arduino. -Want to make your own heart rate monitor for cycling that logs to a memory card? Arduino. -Want to make a robot that draws on the ground, or rides around in the snow? Arduino.

It seems the arduino has opened up a new world of creation to those that don’t know much about electronics and I think it’s greatest influence will be in the classroom whether that classroom is your own garage or your kids highschool.

The RepRap project is a result of the arduino platform and essentially the same concept of open source sharing but instead with the ability to make physical objects. My favorite part about both of these projects is the potential they create for those with the motivation to teach themselves. Though I realize it’s not to late for me now, I can not help but be a little jealous of the third grades being introduced to these incredible learning tools at such an early age.

Blog 5

Before reading “What’s the Deal with Copyright and 3D Printing?” I did not know much about the rules involving intellectual property. I knew that I wasn’t allowed to copy and paste articles or essays for my school papers and that if I download a song from the internet besides on iTunes that was illegal. In regards to 3D printing I assumed that you just couldn’t copy another person’s design file because you didn’t make it. Well it turns out it is not so straightforward.

To start, I first learned the difference between copyrights, patents and trademarks. A copyright protects creative and artistic works like paintings, movies, novels and sculptures from the moment they are created. A patent protects useful things that you would expect an engineer or scientist to make like machines and technical systems after the creator applies for protection. And finally trademarks cover symbols and recognition in the market.

The extremes of examples on the copyright vs. patent spectrum are easy to understand. A beautiful painting is protected by copyright and a new key lock design can be protected by a patent. The questions and confusion arise when things start to fall in the middle, meaning they are both artistic and useful. In cases involving things in the middle the law will only protect purely artistic features that can be “severed” from the rest of the thing in question. The best rule to determine severability came as a result of a court case on the copyright law of a beauty school head where only the face of the head was granted protection. The rule states: Determine if independent, artistic judgment drove the creation of the non-functional elements. The objects that lie in the middle of the spectrum are the ones that cause the most copyright confusion.

The .stl files that are sent to 3D printers fall to the protectable extreme of the spectrum because the copyright law states that “maps, globes, charts, diagrams, models, and technical drawings, including architectural plans” are eligible for copyright protection. The disruptive aspect of this is that no copyright for a design of a useful object extends to the actual physical object. The legal questions result from whether or not a file in allowed to be copied based upon it’s artistic and useful elements. For example useful objects with a digital file created by a scanner are allowed to be copied.

Overall my biggest takeaways were that not every .stl file is necessarily protected by copyright law, and that most physical objects aren’t either. Now, I am going to examine the objects I selected originally in my first blog and see if there is any copyrightable or patentable elements.



My Objects:

Chainmail: Useful in the sense that it could be used as actual low quality chainmail, but in my opinion more artistic because it’s size could not actual protect much and seems more meant to look at

Funny Glasses: The glasses frame itself is useful, but the eyebrows, the part that makes them funny is artistic so perhaps that feature could be copyrighted

Action Figure: Though in my opinion boring and useless, some may consider this a work of art and therefore copyrightable

RasberryPie Holder: Useful and therefore not copyrightable


Other Classmates Objects:

Madeline Roche’s Mickey Mouse Statue: This objet is infringing on a artistic copyright law because they are using characters owned by another company… this may actually be a trademark, but I am not totally sure.

Atokarz’s Statue of Liberty: The Statue of Liberty is a work of art and therefore can not be copied unless the rights were given to this designer.

Dgdwazzaaa’s Octocat: This strange object is definitely a work of art, based on nothing I have personally seen before and therefore would be eligible for copyright protection.

The fact that most physical objects are not protected by copyright opens up an interesting realm of possibility for making money. By scanning useful objects onto a computer, redesigning them to be a little better or cooler and then printing them out might be a profitable business model that develops in the future because at no point in that process are you breaking copyright laws. Sense there is no copyright in place the license to recreate the object is essentially meaningless.

The author in the first article was naïve because the designer doesn’t have copyright claim over the figure at all because it is based off of an optical illusion, which are not subject to copyright law.

Blog 6

Prompt: Blog 6 is in some sense an extension of blog 5. I want you to go through your classmates responses to blog 5 regarding IP and the penrose triangle model. The main thing I missed in my pervious blog was including a wide range of objects from my classmate’s blogs. In blog 5 I summarized the reading and took away the some main learning points. My biggest takeaways were that not every .stl file is necessarily protected by copyright law, and that most physical objects aren’t either. Overall I am really glad we were assigned to read this article because before I read it I knew virtually nothing about the laws associated with 3D printing design. What excites me the most about this is that any of the “useful” designs I might find on Thingiverse I could potentially print with my own 3D printer and sell off to make a little extra cash.

Blog 7

Though I did read some of the articles posted in the email and found the Immunization Beads Garner Top Prize in 3D Printers for Peace Contest to be the most inspiring I am going to discuss a project that I found on Kickstarter.com today that has some disruptive technology that will affect 3D printing.

The name of the project is called Spike: Laser accurate measurement and modeling on smartphones. Basically the idea is that this smart phone accessory and app allows you to “capture, measure, map, model, share and 3D print any object up to 200 yards away.” This type of technology is nothing new though. Spike originally started with a product called ikeGPS that was meant for industrialized measurement solutions. The ikeGPS was big, held like a gun and very useful to the United Nations in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Now through Kickstarter, Spike is pushing to bring this technology to everyone. What caught my eye originally was purely the idea of measuring things far away with laser accuracy, but what kept me reading was how Spike advertises its ability to help you print a 3D scale model of the a building. This is something I have wanted to do with my own house, so I investigated Spike’s role in this process.

Here’s what’s required: -Take three pictures of the building with the Spike and your Smart Phone -Upload to your computer and highlight the vertical and horizontal lines of the building on each picture -These lines help translate the dimensions and model to a CAD program like Google SketchUp -Then it’s up to you to add the details of the building like windows, doors, shutters, etc.

So is it possible to use this device to help print 3D scale models of buildings? Yes. But do you still need to have a moderate knowledge of how to use a program like SketchUP? Yes. Good news is that Sketchup is easy to learn. The Spike costs $299 dollars on Kickstarter, but what is interesting is that there is an app called 123D Catch that can also help you 3D print a model building by taking over 40 pictures of the building and stitching them together. I am curious to see which technology would do a better job.

Here is a link to Spike's Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ikegps/spike-laser-accurate-measurement-and-modelling-on?ref=live


Blog 8

At the moment there is no good names to describe what goes on during ENGR 497J: Open Source 3D Printing, the 3D Printing Club meetings and the variety of Additive Manufacturing that is intertwined with departments all over UP and other Penn State campuses. Our regional neighbors in Virginia Tech have what they call the DREAM Lab, which stands for Design, Research and Education for Additive Manufacturing Systems. DREAMS Lab stated mission is to be “a leader in the transition of rapid prototyping technologies to new paradigm of additive manufacturing.” In the lab they have a variety of printers most of which are meant for industrial use. These printers include Stratasy’s Object PolyJet Printer and FDM 1500/1600, ExOne’s R2, and ZCorp’s 402 and 510. These industrial printers are comparable to the printers at Penn State’s CIMP 3D lab located in Innovation Park. CIMP 3D, stands for “Center for Innovative Materials Processing Through Direct Digital Deposition.” CIMP 3D’s mission is to “advance and deploy AM technology of metallic and advanced material systems to industry.” The printers in CIMP 3D’s lab are EOS’s M280, Sciaky Electron Beam-Based System and Optomes Lens MR-7. The main difference I see between DREAM Lab and the CIMP Lab is that though there is an industrial focus in the DREAM lab they still have desktop printers like Makerbot and Fab@Home’s open source printing. CIMP 3D however only focuses on industrial grade printers and applying them to industry, that is wear ENGR 497J fills the void with our desktop and open source printers. So if we are to describe what’s going on with Additive Manufacturing outside of the CIMP 3D lab at Innovation Park at Penn State, the distinction needs to be made that we use desktop and open source printers.

Part A) Jordan Miller’s AMRI (Advanced Manufacturing Research Institue) out of Rice University has worked on the following projects:

1. 3D Printing via laser-sintering of thermoplastic powders 2. Ink-jet printing of genetically modified living bacteria 3. Digital light projection (DLP) photolithography of plastic and hydrogels: 4. Bacterial cellstruder for synthetic biology studies:

It seems these project are a little out of the scope for the equipment we have here in Hammond 312. When you begin to print with cells, bacteria and hydrogels I would think we would need completely different equipment and lab space for that. Otherwise I think the laser sintering of thermoplastics is within our grasp. Currently there is a desktop SLS printer on the market called FORM 1 by Form Labs. Below you’ll find links to videos about FORM 1. This could be potentially something to save up for.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/formlabs/form-1-an-affordable-professional-3d-printer http://formlabs.com

Part B) Adjectives besides Open Source, Design, Learning, Education, Research, Additive Manufacturing, and Fabrication and State College RepRap Users Group that describe what we do: -Desktop -Disrupting -Hands on


Part C) Memorable Words OSPREY: Open Source Platform for Research, Education, do it Yourself

The A+MOLDER’s Lab: Additive Manufacturing for Open source Learning Design Education and Research LOADER Lab: Learning Open Source Additive-Manufacturing through Design, Education and Research

DARED Lab: Desktop Additive-Manufacturing through Research Education and Design


Projects

Build Black RepRap