I think a lot of the initial first climb is over. We’ve hit our first major plateau.
We’ve reinvented what industry had 20 years ago using commodity parts. We’ve simplified the parts to the point where they can be easily mass produced.
To my knowledge the only frame styles left to develop in the hobby as a copy of industry is the industrial robot arm, and multi-axis milling machines & Swiss lathes.
This will push us into 4+ axis motion.
The software needs to catch up to our current state of hardware. Wireframe printing reveals a bit behind what will be behind that curtain. When the software starts processing in 3 axises and not stepping through the third but only really working in 2 axises, the next climb will begin. DLP resin printers will grow parts without pausing to form a layer, just a continuous smooth growth.
Frames like the sixupterton (sp?) will start getting built in mass after the software makes it’s 2d to 3d motion processing.
We will see crazy stuff like a laminer flow resin waterfall moving through a space with DLP projectors during the resin as it falls. Parts will be printed in multiple directions at once. Things that take hours today will be done In seconds.
So yes, we have slowed down. We have caught up to the current patents. We are going to start seeing the hobby breaking free of the current paradigms. These new ideas will get patented, and developed in industry to maturity.
We will start seeing hobbyists make big new inroads. The Internet will recreate the environment of innovation that existed a hundred, hundred fifty years ago. RepRap & Internet or things are the new printing press, cotton gin, and model As that our grandkids will read in the history etextbooks.
One step at a time.
@Brook_Drumm that is part of the problem, there are no longer any clear goals or bounties. Personally I have a few goals: normalize 32 bit controllers. Use encoders for motor positioning. Automatic filament calibration. Normalize 24v or even 36v hardware. Improve slicers. Automatic print calibration. Automatic head change. Etc.
@Stephanie_A @Brook_Drumm I actually think what we need to work on is reducing fragmentation. That fragmentation includes major 3DP communities that don’t talk to each other, lack of accurate/central/authoritative technical resources, firmware dev teams that don’t adopt best-practices from other firmwares (like safety features), hardware designers that would rather reinvent the wheel and rehash old mistakes than study other designs (and just enormous amounts of “not invented here” syndrome in general), people who claim “world’s first X” without doing any research, ignoring non-English-language 3D printing entirely, and, at the risk of irritating the faithful here… hostility against people who, say, don’t entirely hate Makerbot, or who think some limited patents might be justified once in a while.
3DP is a big world now, we’re never going to get everybody on board with anything, but it’s insane how fragmented everything is right now. A few self-imposed “hobbyist industry” standards for things like terminology and design safety principles, plus some centralized+curated technical resources (not ancient wikis) could help a lot. I don’t think it’ll happen enough – we have the usual open-source syndrome (perfectly exemplified in Marlin) where all the attention goes to nifty features and insufficient effort goes into keeping things cohesive.
I don’t disagree, but how do we organize? Getting businesses to agree on adding any sort of standardization will be difficult but adding cost to current business will be even more difficult. Profitable businesses don’t exactly have a track record on getting together on standards. They usually need to benefit financially - especially public companies. Just facing facts.
I would endorse and support anything that benefits education and students. Perhaps a collaborative open source curriculum- it would force buy in on some of those standards.
Another effort that would perhaps appeal to businesses and hobbyists alike would be a 3D printing competition like first robotics is to robots. I would think adults would want to get in on it. The goals of the competition could be important ones (energy, homes for the third world, recycling, some sort of 3D printed car race or something)… Perhaps open source companies could be a focus. It may sound self-promoting but drawing attention to the output of 3D printers instead of the printers themselves could draw positive attention.
Whatever happens, Offering advantages of participation as incentive is a great approach.
Uh, truthfully due to the evolutionary model of repraps, whoever built it first made the standard.
You want to make a direct extruder (or mount a bowden nozzle) for a Prusa carriage? 50mm screw distance should be written in stone in your heart…
@Brook_Drumm Where you can effectively get businesses to adopt standards is either when it benefits the bottom line (eg because consumers don’t want non-standard products, such as filament size) or when there is prestige/shame attached to compliance/non-compliance (eg with safety standards).
I predict the consumer/hobbyist 3DP market is going to get the bejeezus regulated out of it – by people who don’t understand it – shortly after the first publicized house fire fatality. And that’s going to happen eventually, it’s really only a matter of time with today’s hobbyist tech. I’m sure you know where you want Printrbot to be sitting when the media frenzy breaks out. “Certified school-safe” or whatever, right?
The best thing any industry can do to prevent idiotic knee-jerk regulation after an incident is to have credible voluntary standards/certifications in place beforehand. Then when a shoddy cut-rate knock-off printer goes up in flames, responsible manufacturers like Printrbot can point to the standard and say “See? We follow industry-standard practices that would have prevented that incident.” And that will often redirect the media attention and legislative energy in more productive directions. In the end, it becomes a competitive advantage for compliant manufacturers. Either because consumers learn to look for the certification, or because the government uses the industry standard as the starting point for drafting new requirements.
I think the starting point for this stuff needs to be a credible technical group/association (along the lines of API, or SAE, or ASME, etc) to act as a central working group for identifying common issues, gathering data, and drafting technical standards. The 3DPA comes to mind, but I don’t know if it has this as a mission focus.
On the other stuff…
I like competitions – particularly if they get big-name sponsors. For example, Makerbot does Thingiverse design challenges, and many of those get outside sponsorship. You see some really great output from those. Thingiverse is a good place for model design competitions since it’s so incredibly dominant as a content platform… I’m not sure how we would do this for hardware, unless it goes so far as to become something like a school-driven competition circuit. That’s an awesome idea but very difficult to bootstrap.
I also like the open source curriculum idea. It rings a bell… where did I see that… Oh, here we go: http://www.seemecnc.com/pages/seemeeducate
I like the school driven competition. kinda like the pellet filament extruder contest a while ago. I have been thinking of putting up my own cash to have a contest. even if the prize is only $1,000 it’s better than nothing. I really think that there needs to be a reprap foundation that collects donations and pays out bounties.
Or even start up some competition on Instructibles. “Create an open source SLS machine using only PVC tubes and bubble gum.”
We should get a bounty list together and start a fund. I’d host a competition too!
Awesome. What’s the best platform to do this? It would be great if people could “add to the kitty” for bounties they care about. Then someone needs to decide who meets the criteria to earn the bounty, and then administer funds.
I am clueless. Surely this exists though!
MAybe ask whoever was in charge of the GADA/Uplift competition?
@Ryan_Carlyle
Wait… that sounds familiar. Like a bug bounty program.