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Vinny Iachini

Introduction

H3110 w0r1d. My name is Vinny Iachini. I am currently a sophomore at Penn State University (Spring 2014). I am involved with RepRap through EDSGN 497J which is an open source 3D-printing class. I am also a member of the Penn State 3D-Printing club from August 2013 to present. My page is pretty bland for the moment but be sure to check back in the future to see some good content! Enjoy.

Blogs

In EDSGN 497J, part of the assignment consists of writing blogs about assorted topics throughout the semester. In this section, I will be posting the prompt followed by my response.

Blog 1

Prompt: Go to Thingiverse and look for printable objects, which other people have actually printed (there are photos of them if they've made them), finding designs which satisfy these descriptions in your mind.

A) Something amazing/beautiful
For my amazing and or beautiful, I was having a hard time trying to chose just one thing on Thingiverse. I eventually settled on a very neat Monster Shaped Toothpaste Pusher. I think they look cute and they serve a purpose.

B) Something funny or strange
For my funny or strange, I found Minions with Expressions. I guess I find the expressions funny because I like the movie that they come from.

C) Something useless
This category could be almost anything because even though there are a great amount of people on Thingiverse that post new and clever ideas, there are so many items that make you just sigh. The biggest sigh I let out while browsing Thingiverse today is Jetpack Bunnies. These are useless because they are just little figures of bunnies that have jetpacks on…

D) Something useful
For this category (like almost every other category), it was too difficult to just pick one thing, so I have my two top choices. The first is a Customizable Luggage Tag. I find this extremely useful because I know that while traveling, it can sometimes be difficult to determine which bag is yours, especially when getting it back at an airport or on a coach bus, and having a 3D-printed luggage tag will make any bag stand out. The other thing that I chose for the title of "most useful" is a PlaysStation 4 Vertical Stand. This is particularly useful for me because I do not have enough space to set my PS4 horizontally, but just setting the PS4 vertically with no stand blocks a cooling fan. Sony sells stands (which still block the cooling fan) for $20, but I can make a better one for a fraction of the cost.

E) Something which surprised you
Thingiverse (like much of the internet) always seems to push the limit and never seizes to surprise me. Instead of going the route of “why would any sane person make this?,” I decided to try to find something completely different from anything I’ve seen. What I found was a company that posted very detailed and beautiful miniature homes to be used as a Bungalow Birdhouse.

Blog 2

Prompt: Watch the TED Talk. Marcin was just here at PSU talking about his Open Source Ecology project. You may notice or suspect that 3D printers are on his list of systems which should be included in the toolkit. Respond to the following:

A) I want your general impressions of the OSE project; positive, negative, utopian, etc. Please do a bit more research than just viewing the video, as it is now several years old and they have made some progress since then. Links to more recent videos and media will earn you a better blog.

The OSE project seems awesome to me. It may be a bit farfetched, but it really excites me. The part that seems farfetched is because all of these designs are supposed to be DIY. This may be difficult for a lot of people because some of the things to build on here require very skilled labor (like welding for example) for not only initial labor, but also for maintenance. I found the wiki that they have created OSE Wiki and I have already spent at least a few hours just browsing and being amazed. I love how many things are included in the Global Village Construction Set. Many of the things on here I would love to try to build someday (after all of the validation and testing).

B) The New Yorker magazine recently had a fairly critical article regarding Marcin's OSE project. Find/link that article and summarize its critique. Marcin had a response to that: I'd like your response to both of these pieces.

The New Yorker article can be found HERE. The author, Emily Eakin, has many problems with the OSE project. The first thing she points out that several people that show up to help do not have the skilled labor required for building these things. Another major topic that the author criticizes Jakubowski about is food production since the farm does not produce enough food for the people working there yet. Another thing that Eakin jabs at is that he is punctual. I do not understand why the writer is complaining about Jakubowski wanting to maintain a schedule and have a plan. After this, the tone of the author is hard for me to determine because I do not see how this project could be interpreted as a bad thing.

Marcin’s response to this was very well crafted and addressed many misconceptions brought up in the initial article. Basically, he addresses that the spin Eakin put on the project is misleading. I feel that Eakin, as a reporter, needs to make articles interesting and poking fun at somebody with different ideas, like Marcin, is an easy thing to do. Marcin also points out that this project is an experiment and nobody knows how it will end, but he has a much more optimistic view on the potential outcome than Eakin.

C) Imagine we want to create capabilities similar to what Marcin has made at PSU (something like an OSE student club, or another effort). I don't think the administration or trustees would support such a thing, but there might be professors who are interested in supporting such a thing. Do you know any of them? What do they do, and why do you think they would be interested in such a project? Imagine you are looking for allies to do such a thing. Whom is on your list and why?

As a disclaimer, I am only a sophomore so I have not had many specialized classes where I could get to know professors well. That aside, I know of two professors that I believe may have interest in this project. The first professor is Leland Engel. I had him for ME 496 during Spring 2013. I worked with him on the Shell Ecomarathon vehicle. He has a very optimistic personality and he has a good deal of knowledge with many different mechanical systems. Another professor that I believe would be a good fit for a PSU branch of the OSE project is Dr. Dave Brown. I had "Dr. Dave" my first semester for Econ 102. I know this may be a different type of professor than other students may be saying but I think it would be valuable to have an economics professor analyzing the economics of the OSE project.


Blog 3

Prompt: Read and respond to this: RoboHand Article
Who created this design and when/where was it done?
If you wanted to make one, where would you go to get it?
How many news articles can you find which reference this technology?

Thingiverse Image of RoboHand

The design was originally created by Ivan Owen and Richard Van As in South Africa. The original design was for Van As when he lost fingers in a workshop accident. The design in this article and video were modified by Mason Wilde in Johnson County, Kansas. This specific Robohand was for a 9 year old boy named Matthew.

If you wanted to make one, you would go to the Robohand Thingiverse Page. This page actually has a few different designs with this being the one that was adapted in the article.

Just by doing a simple news search on Google, I found several news articles talking about this design. This design has only been on Thingiverse for a little over a year, so I expect it to become more popular with stories like this one coming out. One story that I found is about a RoboHand Made for a Preschool Girl. This is the site for the company that designed the Robohand.

Blog 4

Prompt: I thought that many of your responses to blog 2 were thoughtful, and I'd like you to reflect on the thoughts of your classmates. Read your teammates blogs, as well as the blogs of at least 5 other students in class this semester. I would like you to find any thoughtful points made by others which you did not note yourself in Blog 2. (What did your classmates notice which you think worth adding to your own discussion?)

At least two of your classmates found links to the entire new yorker article, for those of you who haven't read the whole thing due to it's paywalled host, I encourage you to dig that up and check it out.

Kevin seems to have a fairly similar view as mine. We both think that it is a great idea, but not so sure about how practical it will be to implement. We both point out that very skilled labor is required where there might not be any. Kevin also makes a good point about larger corporations wanting to suppress this type of movement to protect themselves financially.

Yuchao makes a few very good points that I overlooked. The main one being that safety is not addressed with the OSE project. Yuchao points out that with such large, and complicated machines that require a great deal of work, if something goes wrong, it could very seriously harm somebody. Overall, I think Yuchao seems to share a similar opinion with myself about it being a great idea on paper, but may not work in practice.

Carson looked at the OSE project with a bit more skeptical view than me. Carson is studying agricultural engineering, and knows much more about agriculture than I do, and he points out that these machines that Marcin has built and plans on building might not be good enough to accomplish the task that they are put up against. One thing that I noticed while watching the video is that the tractor is very basic and does not have all of the bells and whistles that I am used to seeing with a commercial tractor. Carson was able to articulate this point well and name specific parts that this tractor was lacking.

Tom has a skeptical view, like Carson, and points out even more things that are wrong with the project. I absolutely agree with Tom’s statement about in order to create a better quality project, there should be smaller groups that focus on individual things as opposed to everybody working a little bit on everything and trying to crank out 50 designs. This is now common knowledge that specialization has increased productivity dramatically over the years in whatever field you are talking about, so one group of people with little experience in any one design is less than ideal when they are trying to build everything at once instead of focusing in on one topic. Tom also gave links to different stories of people that worked on the farm having awful conditions and hating it there. I was not aware that the situation was that bad when I was doing my research, so this changes my views slightly.

After looking at several blogs from classmates that aren’t in my team, most of the things that I found were further reinforcing what my teammates have already said. I’m glad that I went through and read all of these blogs because my classmates made some really strong points that have made me reconsider my initial opinion. I feel much more skeptical about the project, but I still hold on to hope that the project will take the correct trajectory and make a difference in the developing world. The OSE is young considering how much it hopes to accomplish. I now feel that the OSE should shed some of the other projects (like Tom suggests) and focus on implementing features that would allow these to be comparable to commercial machines (like Carson suggests).

Blog 5

Prompt: Look through the RepRap Media timeline page (accessible from our SCRUG main page) and attempt to identify the most significant events from the last few years. If you think there's something missing from the timeline, add it and claim it for XP - but include a summary! What projects continue to recieve coverage/press over time? What projects seem to have slowed or stopped?

Make sure you pick and point out at least one entry which you find:
1) An event very important in the progression of 3D printing technology (open source or not)

There are many things that I found on the Media Timeline that I saw that seem very important to me for the progression of 3D printing. The first one is from October 22, 2012 which is about 3D Bio-Printing that may allow medicines to be “sent via email.” This is awesome because it could allow people to get medicine customized for them and get it almost immediately. The downside of this is that you must have a special 3D Bio-Printer in order for this to work.
Another important 3D printing event is from April 26, 2013 which is about printing graphene. Graphene is graphite (carbon) sheets that are only one atom thick. Because of this bizarre characteristic, it has some very unique properties including conductivity and being harder than diamonds!
The final event that I believe will be very important is from December 1, 2013 and is about a 4 nozzle hotend that will be able to mount on RepRap printers (and other printers). This is awesome because each nozzle will be able to print something different, which would make it very useful to print support materials or multiple colors.

2) A not so important event in the progression of this technology (something overhyped perhaps?)
I did not find very many events on the timeline that I thought were overhyped, but the one that I thought was the most overhyped was from February 19, 2013 which was about the 3Doodler which is a 3D Printing pen. This is essentially a high tech hot glue gun with really expensive filament. $10 of filament will get about 20 feet of 3mm filament, as opposed to 1 kg for about $30 (using some internet math shows this is a bit over 400 feet). It seems like a great idea, but you would have to have a super steady hand and be able to control speed perfectly in order to make anything. It seems like a cool idea, but it seems impractical to me.

3) Something which you found interesting which you would like to think or speak more about. This might overlap with #1 a bit, depending.
All of the things I talked about for number 1 I obviously find very interesting, but I also have some other topics that I find very interesting that may not be as influential to the progression of 3D printing. The first event is from November 12, 2013 which is about the Mini Metal Maker which is a desktop metal 3D printer for significantly less than other metal 3D printers. Unfortunately, the print bed is very small (6 x 6 x 6 cm) and the print has to be baked after being extruded.
Another interesting event was from January 30, 2014 which is about a West African inventor who is using E-Waste to produce 3D printers for less than $100. This is interesting, but the E-Waste ends up there because it is considered waste to us. Even though there may be some good life left in the electronics used, I would be very hesitant to use one of these printers.


Blog 6

Prompt: After watching you all for the past few weeks and reading up on your blogs, I feel confident in saying that this is one of the most collectively impressive groups I've had the opportunity to teach. While we each have our strengths and weaknesses, the collective capability demonstrated is strong.

I hope that in the last blog you came to appreciate the merits of our collective impressions of a project. Not everyone agrees with each other, but I think we made sure to touch upon the key points there to find.

I'd like to capitalize on these collective capabilities, and here's how:

You've seen the various projects which Alexandre was working on, you've seen the prosthetic hand, the OSE project, and hopefully a variety of other similar DIY projects which are not beyond our reach.

What projects do you think would be a logical next step for us to pursue? These may be things you see others doing elsewhere, or ideas of your own to push the boundaries of what we are using.

We have been putting in significant effort to upkeep the printers we have, but as we get good at that, where might we go next?

What would enhance our capabilities or put a new twist on what we are doing?

Can we make a composite printer? Do we need more dual extruders everywhere? I know some of you have had ideas on this subject already, so please document them in this blog for everyone.

There are so many possible directions to go next and luckily we have enough students to pursue several options. I think having more than one dual extruder printer could be nice. Dual extruders would be nice for simple things like printing in two colors at once, as well as helping to build more complicated things that may require support material.

I would be interested in looking into making a different type of RepRap. I’ve only ever seen the OHM printers, and I know there are many different models out there. To be honest, I feel that the OHM has too many small parts, especially on the x carriage. I know some of these other models have combined parts, and the prints take longer, but I feel that the longer prints would be worth it. There may be other models that are easier, more sturdy, or cheaper that I feel we should look into.

As for other projects, a composite printer would be pretty cool to have, but I do not know how the quality of the composite prints compares to regular composite pieces. If the quality is significantly worse, I do not see the point in building one just to have one. I’m not suggesting that the quality is much worse, but I am just concerned about it being such a new technology, so it may have some major bugs to work out.

One project that I think could be really helpful would be to make a troubleshooting guide. I know there have been several times where I have no idea how to solve a problem, but it is a problem that I’m sure others have fixed in the past. Also, if there is some kind of troubleshooting guide, problems could get fixed faster since students will immediately start to fix problems instead of waiting for David to come and tell them what to do to fix it. There is only one (and a half) instructors and twenty some students.

Overall, my feelings towards the current printers are that they break down so often (because they are used by so many different people and used often) that it would not be wise to start too many people on new projects because there will always be printers to fix. Some projects would be awesome (and necessary) to start because we don’t need everybody working on just repairing printers. It’s about finding the balance between repairing and starting new projects, in my opinion.