Duno @Marcus_Wolschon , consider how little the tech improved while it was under patent. One thing we have proved, is that open source - although fragmented and often seemingly unfocused, it beats patented stagnation as far as progressing the tech actually goes.
It definitely does. I agree.
Although we haven’t managed to come up with a machine that matches one of the patented ones (heated chamber, very good reliability)
@Marcus_Wolschon yes we have. The Ultimaker and many others. When properly built they are just as good, if not better sometimes.
The ultimaker has no heated chamber.
The brand new Ultimaker II got a heated bed but I’m not aware of any heated chamber (with the stepper motors outside the chamber and the air being kept at a given temperature via PID control)
We can do even better then the commercial ones. That one point is simply something we haven’t done yet.
@Marcus_Wolschon heated chambers are patented. So if you want that you must pay a premium, seems you missed the boat again.
Patents don’t cover the private use of the method nor the use in an experiment.
So someone can build a heated chamber for himself and talk about it.
Collaborating on it could be hindered but is not impossible.
Situation here:
http://www.patentrecht.justlaw.de/patent.htm
Last I checked, a heated chamber wasn’t required with 90% of the materials we use, and prints come out absolutely beautiful.
So what’s your point. Its protected and private use still breaks the law as world wide patents are different to country specific ones. So @Marcus_Wolschon its a bigger kettle of fish than you believe.
Basically, that page says that it’s fine if you only use the patented concepts for personal use or for research (we’re all researching, right?).
So the Kuehling & Kuehling printer violates the heated chamber patent. Is it still on the market?
Anyways, as long as it’s not disassembled, my Mendel90 is closed off on all sides (making it one big ugly black box), which passively raises the chamber temperature about 10 to 20C. It obviously helps with long (>300mm) ABS prints and I’ve talked about that on numerous occasions. In my opinion, though, the idea is not a huge deal and it’s totally not worth extensively documenting how to cut plywood to size to make the side panels.
Many concepts, like a properly constrained Z-axis, reach far into mechanical engineering and are fairly hard to explain to someone who’s otherwise not as engineer-y. Other ideas, though, like closing off the sides of your printer, are trivial and merely a product of common sense, and should be reproducible without instructions by anyone who has managed to get their open-source printer working.
Honestly, could anyone answer the original question? What is the state of RepRap? Isn’t the the RepRap Core Devs responsibility to provide that information? Sending someone to the Wiki page is a death sentence. There’s no way of knowing which RepRap is obsolete or newly developed unless you read the forums everyday. I’m starting to feel I made a mistake in telling my friend to check out the Wiki page for information. Couple months later, he’s got a Mendel Kit assembled which is great but now he’s asking for help in solving his filament jamming issue. Turns out, he purchased a hotend that nobody ever uses anymore. Was it my fault for not guiding him to a more standard hotend (Jhead, Ubis, E3D, etc) or did my friend just not do enough research? What we need is some kind of review site where people can rate/write about their experience. Going to the forums works but it’s not efficient. How ridiculous is it when you find the answer to your problem was a post from 2010. A troubleshoot FAQ would be great but judging by the response in this post, nobody wants to take responsibility in doing that.
3D Printing can be easy if the documentations are prepared properly. A complete BOM with source links, an assembly guide and a developers change log is probably the most important thing to provide.
BOM with source links @Chris_Lau for something being built all over the world, you really are asking the impossible. How relevant is a USA source to a person in China or India.
We have a WIKI.
A BOM with one, non proprietary source and placeholders for additional sources to be added is all it takes to have a BOM.
You just need immutable versions, so people don’t silently update the design without the BOM.
Damn, I’m sourcing most of my stuff in China anyway.
As far as a chamber goes, the change is significant as the steppers and filament drive want to be cooled and thus outside and the target is not +20 degree but (I guess) closer to what we have our heated beds at.
@Chris_Lau There are many printers out there with BOM’s, build instructions, even videos. They just don’t happen to be in one place. If you want to learn how to cook chicken, what single website gives you all the info. Yes the reprap page is pretty useless, but most webpages that aren’t selling things are. But the forums, all you need to do is spend a few nights reading. Search for noob, or newbie. Look for sticky’s. If you’re not willing to do the research, you’re gonna have a bad time. It’s that way with any hobby. There are books that are very helpful, but like any technology, they go obsolete very quickly.
@Marcus_Wolschon , as for heated bed, I believe @Stephanie_A uses an old hot air popcorn popper to actively heat her chamber.
Somebody else mentioned a hair dryer or heat gun, all good ideas that are easy to implement.
They’re not very publicized, because like many things in 3D printing, it’s just a kludge that makes it work.
@Nigel_Dickinson I totally agree about the BOM. Not every BOM works for everyone but it should at least provide enough information that one will know what to purchade and can then source locally. Also, how relevent is a lasercut drawing to someone in a developing country?
@Eric_Moy I agree. There are a lot of printers being developed which is great but when you start reading BOMs with ??? and instructions with no pictures, do you really want to cook that chicken dish? Even if you do, it doesnt taste as good as you thought it would be. We all know the reprap page is useless but we send noobs there anyways. It was the first response here right? The forums are great, I read it all the time. We all see the same questions all the time too. Its coming to the point where if one wants to get into reprap, one has to read 4 years worth of info. We are basically creating a market to fix other peoples printers.
@Chris_Lau lol, nice to stick with metaphor. You make a good point, most of the bom’s are very much considered draft. I guess my thought is, the information is free, people are kind enough to share their knowledge and experience, it’s my responsibility to sift through the days a determine value. That is true for the internet as a whole, now that I think of it. Otherwise Rick Santorum would have never known the unfortunate definition of his name.
I think the biggest problem with extruders and documentation(or lack of) is that vendors often do not clearly state the thermistor or provide thermistor tables.
The problem with most BOMs is that:
- An item is out of stock and/or not due in stock for a while so you need to source a replacement.
- They don’t get updated when an item gets removed from sale and a replacement is found.
- They usually don’t contain information about what’s a suitable item so you can deduce what is a good replacement for it (which also makes it hard to figure out stuff for new suppliers too).
- Prices vary over time. What was once the cheapest option, is now no longer, and when people find out, they complain LOUD AND BITTERLY that you (the author of the page) didn’t do enough research, which tends to drive authors away.
BTW: If you’re seen doing stuff on the wiki or the forum, and then you say “Hey, I’d be happy to help out with x” you’ll most likely be considered to be given extra responsibility. It’s simply impossible to tell what a person will be like from one post, or one suggestion, or one edit on a wiki - The existing people need to see some regular history of what you’re like and how you deal with things before they’ll go “ok, here you go” and give you extra access to do stuff, because otherwise, who knows what you will do?
We’ve had people who said “I know X and Y and Z and I want to help redo everything to make it better” who either dropped out as soon as they realised how much work was involved, burnt themselves out because they took on too much, or were simply unhappy at the fact that they couldn’t proceed with their plans (either because they wanted to do stuff that no one else would agree to allowing, or because the people they needed to do other stuff weren’t “immediately available” and so they ran off in a hissy fit saying “no one gives a shit”).
@Stuart_Young You bring up a lot of good points. Is this something you’ve experienced yourself? This is my first time releasing an open source 3dprinter and I figured I do everything right now and fix the minor mistakes later. I’m hoping the open source community can point things out for me so then I would make the appropriate changes. To counter the out of stock problems, I usually just look for another source and make a note of alternative vendors.