User:Mts5140

Blog Entry #1: 5 Thingiverse Designs 9/3/12

1)Useful- coffee measure spoon

I found the coffee measuring spoon to be the most useful design on thingiverse which I stumbled upon because when I went to make coffee this morning i realized that I had misplaced my coffee spoon. The end result was a bad cup of coffee and if I had a reprap in my home I could have printed out a new scoop and avoided the situation entirely.

2)Artistic/Beautiful-Companion Cube Upgrade

I don't know if beautiful is the correct word to describe this design but I really enjoyed it when I found it because it is a design from the game portal, which I am currently doing a run through and when I came across it I wanted to include it in this post.

3)Pointless/useless-Cliff Evans

I found the Cliff Evans design to be the most pointless design while I was stumbling through thingiverse as it is simply part of a group of designs that were made as busts of random people and serve no real purpose.

4)Funny-toilet seat hinge replacement

I found the toilet seat hinge replacement design on thingiverse funny because as I was conducting my random search I came across a patch of a lot of reprap parts. And then all of a sudden there was a picture of a toilet seat in front of me and it made me laugh. Therefore it earned the funny spot on my page.

5)Weird-Leia 3D

I thought that this design was weird because I don't know who has time to get there dog to sit still for them to make a CAD model of their dog...

Blog Entry #2: RepRap Background 9/10/12

1) I believe that the goal of a ‘self-replicating universal constructor’ is feasible and that we are on our way to achieve it. What needs to be done in order to achieve this goal is to be able to create the components of the rapid prototyping machine that one still needs to go purchase such as power adapters and stepper motors. I believe that we are on our way to being capable of doing this as both plastic additive manufacturing and metal additive manufacturing advance. Hopefully in the future a replicating machine could be made to print both plastic and metal as to be able to make the components that one would have to buy now.

2) The phrase "wealth without money" is used in the article as a way of saying how somebody would not need money to have the things that wealthy people have in a world with a universal constructor which could replicate itself. Basically, it is saying that with a rapid prototyping machine one would be capable of making things that would cost more to buy and that you could in a way make money by furthering the evolution of RepRap. In my mind, this idea could also be extended to mean that one does not need to have money in order to make money in that starting out with a cheap RepRap, one could continuously further its evolution to be able to create new and better things and in a way, create money for ones self.

3) The main way that I think RepRaps will evolve in the future will be the capability to print electrical and mechanical parts. Once this is achieved it will be possible to actually print working machines right from the start. It could be done by having multiple extruders which extrude different materials, such as filler support material for the capability to create more complex structures, as well as some sort of extruder or way to print metal as to do circuitry and other metal components. What needs to happen in order for a huge leap such as this to occur would be for 3D printing to escape simply the engineering and scientist community and make its way into the home so that the evolutions of the machines can happen at a greater rate with more minds thinking about them.