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.

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

Gear Bearing

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 This article said that the people who show up at his farm typically display more enthusiasm for his ideas than expertise with a lathe or a band saw, and his dream is too idealism to realize.

As far as I'm concerned, OSE does have some problems, but we cannot say it is not worth to do. As the article said, some people showed their interest on his ideas, and OSE has so many fans working for it happily, so it means OSE created many value for our society. Although people didn't showed much enthusiasm for his expertise, we cannot say OSE is failed, after all OSE is not a technical school, it is a way to let people exchange ideas, learning technology, and make new friends who have similar interest. As for this angle, OSE did very good.

Marcin's response is here: New Yorker - Article Response He said that New Yorker misunderstood what OSE were doing and what their aim was. He said OSE building up an open source innovation system to educate and inspire people to do so through "one of a systems perspective that results in responsibility." They were striving to optimize production to One Day of build time while involving a non-alienating social and learning process. And they are building a recreation center, which indicates that their condition is optimism.

As Marcin said, they've invited economics/industrial design specialists to collaborate with, it means this kind of open source design is relatively difficult for most of people, especially when the production time and financial issues take into account. But still, as I mentioned before, it will be a good way for education and innovation, since it can involve more brains to do so, but I'm not optimism with the manufacturing part.

Reader's response for Emily's article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2014/02/03/140203mama_mail, the reader said OSEr are too naïve about technology, and open source hardware design is not as easy as software does, and only technology alone cannot fix the problem they want to solve.

C) In my point of view, the most possible professors that might support such a thing are Timothy Simpson and Matthew Parkinson.

The first one, Prof. Simpson, is the leader of the Engineering Design & Optimization Group and the member of the Center for Innovative Materials Process. He impressed me favorably because he did so many researches about innovation and product design, his paper like Strategic Product Design for Multiple Global Markets, and From User Requirements to Commonality Specifications, An Integrated Approach to Product Family Design, and so on, clearly indicate that he loves hardware design and greatly support innovation activities. It not only is a good idea for us to create capabilities similar to what Marcin has made at PSU, but also a good chance for Prof. Simpson to do what he like to do.

The second one is Prof. Parkinson, the leader of OPEN Design Club, may shows strong interest in this open source hardware design idea. According to his research like Techniques, tools, and representations for solving design problems considering anthropometry, and Interdisciplinary Graduate Design Programs, Results and Recommendations from a NSF Workshop, the key words of his academic interests is anthropometry, design, and education, which have a big part intersect with our idea.

I arrived Penn State only for less than a month, so I just know these professors through website introduction and their papers. But I'm applying for my graduate program and they are the professors that I want to working for, so I think I will contact them later and talk about my plan about innovation.

Blog 3: Prosthetic Hand

We were asked to read Kansas teen uses 3-D printer to make hand for boyand response the following questions:

A) Who created this design and when/where was it done?

B) If you wanted to make one, where would you go to get it?

C) How many news articles can you find which reference this technology?

Here are my responses:

A) As the sentence on the article "Owen co-designed the original 3-D printer Robohand with Richard Van As, a South African woodworker." , "The two agreed, and the Robohand prototype, made of metal, was born in November 2012." , "The first 3-D printer version was made in January 2013, and Van As and Owen put free instructions online." The design was made by Richard Van As and Ivan Owen in November 2012, and printed it in January 2013, Owen had the interview at Bellingham, Wash. And Manson Wilde printed it at the Johnson County Library for the boy, Matthew, the 3-D printer was located in an area called the Makerspace that opened nearly a year ago.

B) The easiest way to make one is download it through this page Complete set of mechanical anatomically driven fingers, and print it at Penn State by myself.

But I think the reasonable way to make it is to find someone really need this thing first, and later scan his or her hand in a natural condition via some 3D-scaning app or holography so that do get a perfect shape of the hand in a 3D image. After that, download a proper 3D prosthetic hand file, adjust the scale to fit the user's size, and replace the attaching side with the scan 3D image, ergonomically correct the image under the consideration of the 3D printer performance. Then we can print it, and polishing it according to some realistic reason, assembling all the part. Finally put it into use and get feedback from user for revising and improving.

C)

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