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For this class we write weekly blogs on a variety of topics that have to do with 3D printing.
Blog 1: Thingiverse
We need to search Thingiverse and explore some printed items witch satisfy these descriptions:
A) Something amazing/beautiful
This Gyrornament is such a cool deco that let me think of two ancient Chinese item; The first one is Hexagon Cap Bottle, a Yuanmingyuan precious pottery vase with a smaller one inside but cannot take out; The second one is the Universal instrument(maybe you can only see the picture), this structure can let the core layer sustain the same direction regardless of the outside direction and position change, which can easily use to navigation.
Still, I love this design because of its beautiful, interesting and amazing.
Highly recommend to watch this video!
B) Something funny or strange
This Strawberry Stem Remover is a good idea to invent tools to remove strawberry stem, because if we use our hands to do so, the strawberry will embed into our fingernail which is pretty uncomfortable and hard to clean. But this design is a little strange, because I think the manipulation is not comfortable and easy to slide. if this item cannot make people feel comfortable and convenient, people will not try to adapt it and change their habit.
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C) Something useless
In fact I used this Cable Holder (Cable Clip) 2 years ago, just curious about its design and experience, but I feel very bad. First, a plate surface stuck on a projected item looks like strange and inconvenient; Second, the double side tape cannot perfectly connect the table and holder, because the holder is made by rubber, the tape can move on it; Third, if I want to remove the holder, the table will leave a black stain and hardly clean it. I prefer to simply use tape stick the cables directly on the table.
And I think the material should be soft, so normal hard plastic 3D printer may not available.
As to solve the problem of mass cables, maybe the second picture about Diagrid Bracelet can be a good idea. Using some soft elastic material to build that kind of structure which can be easily elongate and recover its original shape by itself.
There is a good TED about a kind of fantastic material: Skylar Tibbits: The emergence of "4D printing"
D) Something useful
One of the most inspiring things that 3D printing brings to an engineering student is printing gears of any shape, so we no longer concern much about the gear modulus and size, so the motion transmission design becomes much more easier, and it also reduces the limitation of products shape that standard gears bring to.
Look at these fantastic examples:
Nautilus Gears With Modified Bar
E) Something which surprised me
Watch this Escher's "Penrose stairs" carefully!
The world of 3D printing is full of innovation, I'm eager to know more about this technology!
Blog 2: OSE project
We were asked to research about OSE projects and respond to the following:
A) General impressions of the OSE project.
B) The New Yorker magazine recently had a fairly critical article regarding Marcin's OSE project. Find/link the New Yorker magazine's article which about Marcin's OSE project and summarize its critique, and response to this article and Marcin's response.
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?
Here are my responses:
A) My first impressions of the OSE project is surprise, just like the TED words: Ideas Worth Spreading. It's definitely a good idea to involve much more people into the designing field to contribute their ideas, and good for them to be knowledgeable through a scientific effective way. However, as for its feasibility of the manufacturing part, I hold the negative position based on the following reasons.
First, to make most of the design into reality, we need considerable knowledge of various fields to prevent danger, just following the video on OSE website is not sufficient for us to finish it, especially when these machines need strong power to drive. It's pretty OK for them just design it on paper or digital picture, and spread their ideas with others, but building up a big machine need to let experienced experts do. (It's not as easily as cooking!) For example, look at this Powercube, we can build it for fun, or for studying purpose, but we can hardly design it by ourselves and do some improvement, not only because of its difficulty, but also limited to the different materials each person used.
Second, much of their works are just waste of resources. each of their project is very sophisticated if you want to realize it as perfect as possible. We need to calculate the economic balance between the cost of building the machine and final benefit of it brings to us, including the energy consumption, material, labor input, and so on. It could be even significantly hard when accounting take into account. As for an engineer, we need to check each bolt force, circuit power, and pipe strength to ensure safety. Not everyone can endure the horrible workload even within a test level devices, not to mention the industrial equipment.
Anyway, I think Marcin's idea about OSE is great since he encourage more people to contribute their thoughts to make our life more colorful, but it's not necessary to inspire everyone to manufacture their idea by them own.
(Interestingly, This video about Factor e Farm Spring Cleaning Sprint, the 1'28" the upper picture was photoshoped, I don't why he did this instead of posting the original photo.)
B) Here is the New Yorker magazine's article about Marcin: The Civilization Kit
In general, the author thought the OSE project was too utopian. For more details, the environmental condition of e farm village was too hard to handle by project volunteers. Project volunteers were less skilled compared to expectation. The whole project was really struggling rather than the beautiful and efficient image in Marci’s head. The author consider the OSE project is too idealistic and Marci always try to use passion to solve the problem which is not appropriate.
C) I think the ecocar team probably will have interests on auto parts DIY sharing. However, I still feel negative about this idea and think the open source sharing should be limited to simple mechanical parts and systems.
