You know, with work like this already out there, and with the advent of a print-in-place gearbox, we’re really not all that far now from a clock you print, soak, and then operate. Prospects like that kinda blow my mind. Also, they make me want to see how small I can print one of these with a powder-based printer and still have it run…
I remember a comment a while back from someone who was pretty adamant that sharing everything would pretty much immediately ruin their business, and I have no reason to doubt that, in that case, this is a reasoned judgement. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in companies sharing everything, opening their doors, and in general collaborating with their customers, in the open.
But a lot of your customers aren’t used to this, and unless you’re directly marketing to consumers, nearly all of them will be locked in to the trade secrets, patents and trademarks model– and from experience, I can tell you that at least some of them will treat open source almost like hazardous waste.
Winning with Sharing in these cases is a heck of a lot more challenging than if you’re working in a field where what you sell goes directly to individuals, because where individuals are eager to form brand loyalty to the more open provider, institutions in this climate are broadly sharing-averse. But while a radical leap into deep sharing may very well be as dangerous as starting a new company altogether, there are things that aren’t, such as:
Of course none of this will fix the problem that these days bringing a product to market can require a war chest of patents, or that in a lot of sectors open source is a four-letter word, but the steps above are in the right direction, and to me at least they look like good business choices too.
Bre recently posted this on the MakerBot blog, and it seems appropriate to repost here:
Here at MakerBot, we make open source hardware and we freely share digital designs for our products on Thingiverse.com. As a business, we strive to be a model for the bold companies of the 21st century that embrace sharing. You can download the design files for the things we sell on Thingiverse.com.
We created Thingiverse to be the digital design sharing utopia of our dreams. Thingiverse.com integrates with open licenses that encourages Thingiverse users to let others copy and change their work so that others can stand on their shoulders and create the products of tomorrow and the solutions for the next generation. Every day I look on Thingiverse and say “Wow!” when I see the new things that have been shared. People who upload designs to Thingiverse are my heroes.
Things, and digital designs for things, are very different than other types of media. Copyright doesn’t work the same way on things as it does with music, movies, and books. If you’re into exploring the intellectual property landscape of things, you need to read “It will be awesome if they don’t screw it up” by Michael Weinberg.
The Pirate Bay announcement of a new category for digital designs is interesting because it’s another place where people can share digital designs for real things. As a technology, torrents are particularly great for super mega giant files because they distribute the downloading load and I’m curious to see what kinds of things will begin to show up in that category. Because The Pirate Bay takes a bold, no-holds-barred approach to sharing, I’m sure there will be controversies as companies and people who long for the proprietary days of the 20th century come to terms with the raw power of contemporary sharing technology. Cue squeaking of the world’s tiniest violin.
In the contemporary age of sharing, those who share will be the leaders of tomorrow. The sharers will be the ones who will emerge in the 21st century as winners in the rapidly changing innovative landscape. I’ve consistently advised individuals and companies to push their comfort level and share more. If you have a company that feels threatened by the idea of someone sharing digital designs for your products, I suggest you join the sharing community and share those design files yourself on Thingiverse.com.
The picture of this outstanding build pretty much says it all. Dual extrusion, with soluble support on one print head means you can do any overhang you please. Water soluble PVA is actually more expensive than the plastic you print on top of it, so when designing your support network you may want to economize a bit.
The good news of course is that modern extruder designs are very sleek and can fit onto small bots, and even at that price support is less than ten cents a cubic centimeter, and the PLA itself is less than four, so “expensive” is kind of a value judgement…
The distance between awesome animatronics projects is shrinking, and the quality is improving. Soon, I suspect, they’ll be just another one of the streams of stunning work in Thingiverse. But I think this one is from some time in the future, because it’s more amazing than I was really expecting.
Vogal the Dragon is a shoulder-mounted animatronic dragon with wings that fold and a head that moves. Eventually he will be autonomous, riding his owner through the conventions, etcetera… and not long after, I think, sights like him will be common. Wow.
Thing is, I’m not entirely kidding…
The neural interface captures data from her brain and a microcontroller transmits it to the ears. It’s easy to become dismissive of stuff that’s “just X, Y, and Z hacked together,” especially if you see it happening all the time, but let’s look at this, as it is, for what it is, and that’s a neurally-linked robotic prosthesis, purely for entertainment purposes. The parts aren’t even that expensive…
So now we’re starting to see “mainframe” recycling of plastics take on more robust characteristics like true throughcycling (as opposed to “downcycling” where you always go to lower-grade plastics from virgin ones) with, and this is the important part, computerized sorting to produce high-quality, low waste plastics from discard plastics.
The next step obviously is to be doing this locally and ubiquitously, which I think eventually we’ll really see home 3D printer users pioneering, because they’ve got a lot to gain (cheaper feedstock and peace of mind) and a relatively simple version of the problem (known plastic types mixed in known ways). Sure, the new extruder modules are compact enough that we’re starting to see more and more multicolor prints, but even then, the user knows just what those plastics are, as well as a thing or two about their melting points and other physical properties!
When we started Thingiverse we didn’t want there to be weapons on it, but there were a number of awesome toy weapons that blurred the line and so we changed the TOS to something more blurry and toy weapons carried on. In fact, if you shoot anything on Thingiverse fast enough, you could hurt someone. There have been a lot of things on Thingiverse that could be classified as weapons, but they could also be classified as toys. A miniature catapult is technically a siege weapon, but it could also be classified as a toy. To summarize, our weapons policy has been a blurry line.
Recently there has been a lot of discussion around guns since the lower arm of an AR-15 model went up on Thingiverse. It’s a beautiful model. It’s also the only part of the AR-15 that you can’t just mail order. It’s been possible and legal to make your own firearms since the beginning of the USA, but is Thingiverse the right place for deadly weapons?
We’re discussing this internally and we’re spending time exploring the legalities of firearms on Thingiverse. We want to make sure that Thingiverse can be accessed from schools and is student friendly and we are exploring the implications of weapons on Thingiverse for classrooms.
It’s a controversial subject. For myself, I get a lot of satisfaction from shooting guns in the woods at tin cans, but I also had my best childhood friend commit suicide with a gun he bought by routing around the registration process. I’m not convinced that 3D printing is easier than buying a gun illegally, but it does offer another avenue for weapons to enter the world. Will the next war be armed with 3D printers? One thing that’s for sure, the cat is out of the bag and that cat can be armed with guns made with printed parts.
Before we make a decision, I’d like to get the Thingiverse users’ feedback. We’re going to either change the terms of service or not, but we want to get your feedback before we make that decision.
On Thingiverse you’ll find a poll in the sidebar with three possible choices. Below the choices is a place for you to leave your comments. This poll can only be seen if you’re logged in. Each Thingiverse user can only vote once and once you’ve made your choice, the poll disappears. I hope you’ll take the time to tell us what kind of Thingiverse you want and use the comment section to tell us why.
I heard a radio piece this morning about 3D food printing and tonight I found that Fast Company actually has a LOT of 3D printing articles. 3D printing has a lot of the same smells on it that computing did a few decades ago, and the media (and accompanying capital) is starting to notice, and with good reason.
The changes that 3D printing will cause are deep, and they are many. It might not in the end be an exaggeration to say that personal 3D printing will have as big an impact as personal computing has. It might, in fact, be an understatement.
No really, woa.
This to me represents a pretty significant watershed for low-cost 3D printing in that it looks a heck of a lot like what’s been happening in software for ages now, except now it can happen to hardware, because hardware can go through the wires now.
This robot is the work of Project Biped, a group working from academic inspiration to create an open source implementation that anyone can use, a model quite familiar to the Blender crowd by now.
The work so far is very impressive, and I can’t wait to see more awesome robots from this team!
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