User:Zzl5038

Blog #4

Read the article "How cheap 3D printers built a replacement hand for a five-year old boy"[1]

Part A

Thoughts after reading the article and watching the video

Part B

Compare and contrast this technology to that of a closed-source apparatus. What are the benefits and weaknesses of each? How does the cost compare?

Part C

Find the open source project they refer to starting in the article. How might we participate?

The project on the website Thingiverse[2] can be found here[3].

Blog #3

Part A

TEDxOjai - Behrokh Khoshnevis - Contour Crafting: Automated Construction [4]

The video shown a very advanced application of 3D printing. It applies the three dimensional printing technology to actually construction. It prints out different parts for a building. I think this technology would increase the building pace, however, this would cause a drop in employment. On the other hand, as suggested, implementation of such technology on other planets would definitely applicable.

Part B

How 3D Printers Are Reshaping Medicine [5]

I have seen the TED Talk on this before. ([Printing a human kidney, http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html]). It was about printing out the actual kidney for medical use. It was developed by Anthony Atala's team. This is a great success in applying 3D printing technology to biomedical fields. Printing out an organ means more than cloning, for the fact that it would fit in different individuals better.

3D Printed Vascular Networks Made From Sugar [6]

It is an article on application of 3D printing to biomedical fields from University of Pennsylvania. However, this one indicates that the source of the feed is made from sugar, which implies other use of 3d printing, such as food field. This is not only for medical implementation on human beings, but also for experiment on getting new solutions for medical problems.

Part C

3D printed burger [7]

Applying 3D printing on food field kinda amazed me. I would have never imagined such an application. The price in the title shocked me too, a $300k burger, who would ever buy that? It is ridiculous. Therefor I feel like this implementation does not worth it.

3D printed chocolate [8]

Applying 3d printing on chocolate makes more sense. However, the technology existed previously had the ability to personalize chocolate. However, according to the article, each unit costs about $4,600, which enables the technology going public, rather than controlled by large firms. I actually don't really care what the shape of chocolate is, as long as they taste good.

Part D

3D printed dress [9]

Printing dresses seems cool. It will save a ton of money by printing out dresses, if you like buying clothes. However, this bring up the legal issues. Illegal downloading dress files, and then print it out. This is breaking laws by violations of copyright. You can check the gallery here [10]

Part E

I think printing out food would work if the shape is really weird, and hard to make by hands. For instances, fortune cookies and the shapes shown in the video [ 3d printing: now print food too, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6WzyUgbT5A].

Blog #2

Mother of all demos [11]

I was not quite impressed by his demonstration. However, the features of a computer mouse and cursor were almost the same. For instance, the selecting action on different lines in the text was done by clicking; the movement of the cursor was done by freely move the mouse. If I were one of the audience at the time, I would have recognized the convenience that this new invention had brought to us when using computers.

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Richard Doyle Presentation [12]

Professor Richard Doyle mentioned that Douglas Engelbart's invention was treated like a hoax by the people at the time. No one thought it is going to be useful.

Sharing of information makes individual's dream come true. Also sharing of information will improve the existing information. For instance, for our reprap, as we make it open source, it has been improving over time. This could be applied to a larger scale. To have a better product/ future, sharing is very essential. However, when we start to sharing information, there are always people trying their best to block our way. They change the existing information to something wrong, or even delete it. To have a better information sharing environment, we can build a web space that could only be adding stuff to it rather than editing or deleting. Then, have a monthly, or weekly (depends on the size of the space, and frequency of adding) collaborating to clean out space for more new information.

Blog #1

Part A:

1. useful:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40903

The design in the page is a removable 3D printed shower head. This is very useful, since the shower head sometimes are stucked with small particulates in water. Those particulates are hard to be removed due to the reason that the shower heads are normally fixed.

2. artistic/ beautiful:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40864

It is a really cool robot arm design. The rendered picture looks fantastic.

3. pointless/ useless:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40935

A bedroom sign printed by 3D printer. It has to be a relative large size to be printed. I think it would be a really pointless job for it.

4. funny/ weird:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40912

This funny looking design is a tippe top. It just looks funny to me.

5. scary/ strange:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:41127

The design is a flash light mount on wall, it looks strange to me. It is kind of hard for me to follow why people would need this thing to be printed out. Or even need it on a wall.

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Part B:

Article [13]

I don't really consider myself a tinkerer, however, I think my roommate is a serious tinkerer. He always tweaking around stuffs that are broken in our apartment and tried to fix them by himself. The influence of corporate culture on tinkering is kind of negative. As the more corporate it becomes, more money concerns and legal issues brought up. Therefore, tinkering would made the individual or company having law suit troubles. I agree with the author's idea that tinkering would bring this nation back to track as it has been proven. Like Steve Jobs, his innovation was from tinkering, and a lot other inventors or innovators started from tinkering. Therefore, to continuously growing, tinkering is definitely an important point.

Video [14]

Cooperation of people from different background is a great thing I learned from the video. His group has a really large diversity. I was surprised when the printrbot was on the screen. The cooperation idea would definitely apply to our work here. For instance, collaborating people from a computer science background with people from mechanical/ material science/ and etc. would bring this reprap come to life. Only depend on the mechanical engineering, none of the machines would work, and vice versa.