User:Vpi5002

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.

Blog 7

Prompt: Read this -

What do you think about this idea? Can you think of any examples of cheap research equipment we have made?

Read this -

What do you think of this? Does it seem printable to you? Why or why not? Relate it back to the first article. Discuss the importance (or lack thereof) of open source in this.

I think the idea of printing scientific tools could be awesome, but there could be some major flaws. If it is the case that the tools are too expensive because you can only buy from a company that has a monopoly, then it could be awesome to print an open source version for significantly cheaper. This could get a great deal of equipment to people who could really do well with it like the article mentioned. On the other hand, if the parts are very expensive because they have to be manufactured to very specific specs in order to be accurate, then this idea may not work. The article talks about these tools being printed on RepRap printers. RepRap printers are great for demonstration pieces and making parts for other RepRaps, however, many of them are not precise enough to get the specs that may be required for something to take accurate scientific data. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any research equipment that we have made (other than the piece that is being designed right now for the micro force transducer).

As for the LEGO AFM, I’m not too sure. I have no idea what goes into an AFM (this is the first time I’ve heard of one). My concerns with this are very similar to my concerns with the last article: precision. This seems printable, but why print it if it will not work the majority of the time? These stepper motors move in small increments, and when you are looking at something the size of a nanometer, any adjustment by even a single step will be so much that whatever you are looking at will not be within the field of view. I think this is a great step, but making one at the quality that our RepRaps are made, at around $500, does not seem reasonable in my opinion. If better motors are used, more demand could be created for these better motors, and ultimately driving price down (because of mass production), then not only could this be possible, but RepRaps as a whole may become more accurate if these better motors are possible for use.

Blog 8

Prompt: Intellectual property is something which many companies base their operations upon. Research and describe (and contrast) Copyright, Trademark, Patent, and Trade Secrets. Then read this: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/3dp.2013.0005]
What are the five I's and what do you conclude from them?
From the perspective described in the article (or your own if you disagree), what are the futures of copyright, trademark, patent, and trade secrets?
How does Creative Commons fit into your perspective?

All of these terms are used often but there is sometimes confusion about the differences in these words. A copyright is a legal right that gives ownership of some kind of art to somebody (or group). This would be useful for artists, musicians, photographers, and other professions. A trademark is a legal right giving ownership of a symbol or words to somebody or group. This is useful to companies to register and own the rights of a logo or slogan. A patent is the legal right given to a person or group to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention. This is useful to inventors, companies, and a wide range of others. A trade secret is not registered to any entity. It is a secret that a company does not release anywhere. This is beneficial over a patent because patents expire eventually, and require specifics of a product to be submitted. If anything small is changed, it would not violate the patent and the specifics are available to anybody to read.

The “Five I’s” of IP are Infringement, Identification, Impractical, Impossible, and Irrelevant. I can conclude that the future 3D printing will either make IP laws much more robust, or they will become laws that will be enforced less.

The feel that I got from the article is that the author believes that IP law enforcement will start to dwindle and become irrelevant as 3D printing grows in popularity. I like the example that the author gave comparing the future of 3D printing to digital music. Music is widely illegally available on the internet and that is how 3D files may be for IP protected things in the future. There is a large body of people who pirate music, but there is also a very large portion of people that feel that artists deserve their pay, so they buy music legally (some people may also pay for music because of fear of punishment if caught). I know of a growing trend with musicians and video game makers that is a “pay what you want” kind of system for their work. I think that the future of IP law will become more centered on this type of system. I love this type of system because the artist will appeal to a wider range of people and still make a decent amount because some people will pay more than anticipated, some will pay less, and the average will fall right around what the artist would have charged in the first place. Another benefit of this system is that each buyer is happy with the price, as opposed to the standard system.

I actually did not know about Creative Commons until this blog post. I think that Creative Commons would work extremely well with the future of 3D printing. It is awesome because you can reserve rights so you can prevent companies from coming in and making a small change and patenting or copyrighting your work, while still allowing end users to have your work for free.

Blog 9

Prompt: Now that you are gaining experience 3D printing, you'll notice that there's a lot of little details that someone can get swamped with. Even something like "What filament do I use and where should I buy it from?" becomes a tedious question.

Given the subject of filament materials and suppliers, I want you to do some searching to find links which are useful. They may be aggregated suppliers, filament reviews, or other sorts of content on the subject. I want you to apply your brain to the following problems. Find links. Post them in your blog. Explain why you think they contain useful content. There are several areas of interest here:

1) We want to know the good, bad, and ugly with regard to suppliers. Who makes quality filament at a good cost? Who should we avoid?

2) Materials. We want to start doing dual extrusion on a more regular basis. There are a variety of ways we might start using support materials. Which materials do you think we should use? (Here's a starting place: Filament Guide) Why do you think we should use them? Once you've chosen a material you think we might use, find suppliers and estimate costs in $/kg or $/lb.

3) Pretend you are shopping for material for your own needs. Who do you choose?

1) I’ve looked through several suppliers, and I tried to get a decent range of what is on the market. I looked at the Filament Suppliers page on the RepRap wiki to get started. To try to keep things consistent, I only looked at US based companies. I also only looked at reviews for black PLA because filament can be tricky depending on color additives.
The first supplier I looked at was Ultimachine. I’ve heard from friends in the 3D printing club that Ultimachine makes good filament, but the prices are a bit high. From the reviews that I have read, I agree with this conclusion. For 1 kg of 3mm PLA, the average cost is $44 with an additional $11 for shipping. Another company that I’ve heard similar things about is Lulzbot. For 1 kg of 3mm PLA, the average cost is $43 with an additional $15 for shipping. Both of these companies have great reviews for their filament, but the prices are high.
Then I searched for the cheapest suppliers I could find. One supplier I found is Amazon RepRapper filament. This filament is only $25 and has free shipping. The reviews on this filament are mixed. Surprisingly, there were a lot of good reviews saying that once you find the correct temperature, the PLA prints very nicely. Some other reviews said that the material was not sticking, but these reviewers seemed to have not tried anything other than the default settings that the printer had from before. The next supplier that I found was Makerfarm. This is a brand that I trust because the club bought 2 Prusa i3 kits from Makerfarm last semester for a good price. For 1 kg of 3mm PLA, the average price is $30 with $13 additional for shipping. This is a pretty good price and I’ve used a bit of this filament with the kits that we got and I’ve never had problems with it. The final supplier that I wanted to review is Monoprice. This not a company that I’ve heard of but this was the first result when I did a google search for “3mm PLA filament” so I decided to give them a shot. For 1 kg of 3mm PLA, the price is $27 with an additional $10 for shipping. This price is very reasonable, and the reviews on the site say that it is pretty good filament. Some people have had small issues, but no two people claim to have the same issue, so it may just be different standards for different people.

2) Choosing the right material can be a difficult task, especially when you have not worked with any of them. From the chart that was provided, I believe that the best support material for our needs would be PVA. The main reason is because it is dissolvable, but unlike HIPS, this type of material does not require a heated bed. We use mostly PLA on our printers with no heated bed, so it would be beneficial for us to use PVA which would not need a heated bed. Finding suppliers for these support materials is significantly more difficult than standard filaments (ABS and PLA). The first site that I found was Ultimachine again. For 1 kg of 3mm PVA, the price is $88 with an additional $11 for shipping. This price seems high compared to PLA and ABS prices, but this is a reasonable price compared to other suppliers of PVA. The site that I started my research with, Thre3d.com also had several suppliers listed on this page. Several of the suppliers on here only sell 1.75mm diameter filament, but a few sell 3mm filament that will work with our printers.

3) If I were to buy filament for myself, the top companies that I would try are the Amazon RepRapper filament because it is the cheapest, has free shipping, and Amazon is a site that I trust and use frequently. The other supplier that I would try is Makerfarm because I have used this filament before, it is relatively inexpensive, and I’ve had no problems.

Blog 10

Prompt: Apply the same analysis you did in blog 9 to the subject of hot tips. (what designs are currently available, how do they compare, who should be avoided, etc) I have tried to give you some basis for knowing what is available the other day in class, but more options are always appearing. I want you to tell me what designs you think are most reliable based on your own research (pros/cons are nice). include links or lose XP.

I’d like to start this blog by saying that I’m glad that we had these prompts. I have been on the fence about making my own printer, and after looking at parts, doing research, and spending 10 hours printing service prints today, I am heavily leaning towards building a printer now. There are many types of hot ends available today. I tried to make this more compact and talk about 3 different designs that are very common and my opinions on them. The first type I researched was a J-Head hot end. This is a very common hot end consisting of a plastic body lined with PTFE liner, and a hot tip heated with a resistor. The one I linked to is from MakerFarm, and it is $54 before shipping. This is such a popular tip design that there are knock-offs being made that may not perform as well, so beware of what you are actually buying. The second hot end I found was new to me: a Hexagon Hot End. This is an all metal hot end (not even a PTFE liner), so it can heat up to more than 400° C. This is hot enough to print Nylon, Polycarbonate, ABS, PLA, Flexible Filament, LayWood, PVA, and HDPE. The hot end that I linked costs $90 (at the time of this blog, this kit is on sale for $70) before shipping, and includes the hot end, mounting plate, ceramic heater, fan, thermistor, and hardware. The final hot end that I wanted to discuss is the E3D all metal hot end. This is like the last one, but it has a circular body and a printed fan shroud that wraps around the body to help with cooling. This is the hot end that the 3D printing club bought for Ruby and it looks great (as of the time that I am writing this, Ruby is still under construction so I can’t discuss its functionality). This hot end is made in the UK, so shipping costs are still a little high, but there are some US distributors (or so they claim (the websites do not look very professional)). The average price is $80 before shipping, and comes with the hot end, fan, and electronics.

If I were to buy one of these hot ends, I would choose the Hexagon Hot End because it has the capability to print more materials, it comes with a mounting plate, and it is a kit so I do not have to individually source parts.

Blog 11

Prompt: