Gada Prize (now called Uplift Prize) new Deadline and more Flexible Criteria

Hello everyone,

Yes, the prize is still alive. Due to an insufficient number of serious entries by the Dec 31 deadline, we have revised the criteria to make them more flexible, with a new estimated award date of June 30, 2013.

Guidelines here :

[humanityplus.org]

Submissions for the new deadline can be made as per the directions in the link.

Thanks again. It is hard to create a prize that estimates just the right level of difficulty in criteria, as it is easy to make the prize too hard, or too easy. But the new broader criteria may encourage more entries this time.

The new rules look great! They really make it clear what the prize is about. (My only complaint is that May 31 seems like a very short deadline).

As Traumflug pointed out in a related thread: If you actually want people to enter the competition, publicity is important.

If this is posted to the General forum, I'm sure it will get more attention.

It wouldn't hurt to send an announcement over to the people at hackaday. Maybe an announcement and/or interview could be arranged for an upcoming issue of Reprap Magazine??

Nice to see the prize is still alive!

Matt,

Oh, the prize is alive. It is just hard with an all-volunteer team. The deadline extension is 6 months from the previous one, in the hopes that people don't have to modify too much from their existing work, but may not have entered if the previous criteria seemed restrictive.

Yes, I agree. So far, the only major places a likely entrant might frequent, that I have been aware of are this forum and the Wiki. By the general forum, do you mean this one : [forums.reprap.org]
Or is there a different one that I am not aware of?

Hackaday is a good idea - I hadn't thought of them. I will be in contact with RepRap magazine (I only learned of them two weeks ago, as they are new).

Thanks again!

Kartik

Hi Kartik,

The general reprap forum is this one
Some other places you might consider making an announcement include:
G+ 3D printing community page
3D printing subreddit
Reprap subreddit
Reprap IRC channel
reprap-dev mailing list

I think many people who frequent the broader 3D printing pages would be interested in the prize. Best of luck! -Matt

looks interesting. I had this crazy idea that I think pertains to this. What if almost the whole printer was plastic? Gears for the motors, screws, nuts,frame, almost everything. Of course, you would have to wire it up and add heat shielding in certain areas to keep from melting the plastic parts. You might not even need a completely new design. Just make all the parts out of plastic. Any thoughts are appreciated as I am completely new to 3d printing. (I havent even decided which printer to go with.)

Well, Jacobblue34, it depends on what you mean by "the whole printer". You mention: gears, screws, nuts, and frame. It is actually quite common to see functional designs with 3D printed gears and pulleys. Some designs have frames that are almost completely printed. The original (non lasercut) version of Tantillus is one example, as is Webca's 3D printed full size makerbot.

Every single 3D printer out there, absolutely without exception, relies on a fairly large set of unprintable "vitamins". This set includes:
1) manufactured metal nuts, bolts, and springs
2) manufactured metal rods and bearings (either linear or rotational)
3) motors
4) machined (or glass-blown) extruder hot end components
5) interface and/or control electronics (up to and including a PC)

(if anyone knows of any exceptions, please prove me wrong )

"Low vitamin count" printers would benefit the community as a whole, but very few people are interested in developing them. A small business developing a new printer for the market has no incentive whatsoever to make their printer "more self-replicating".

The Gada/Uplift Prize is a great opportunity to develop new 3D printer technology because it provides incentive for people to make "low vitamin" printers.

A lot of ideas have been tossed around for how to make more replicatable printers. Take a look at some of the threads in the Gada Prize subforum. You might also be interested in these recent ones:
Dreaming of a Static Motor Arrangement and Less Vitamins
Stepper motor alternative?
Convergence to self replicating