prize for reprap development

Sarrus Linkage Mark III [www.thingiverse.com] is comming closer, but the $.10 material is VERY limiting. Unless you can come up with a home made subs trait for printing we are not going to reach this.

Remember ABS is $10 a lb and we have to get to $.1 to win. It's not going to happen easily

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

I'm gonna shoot in the different direction...

if someone is ready to give 200 000$ for a price why not put that money in form of subventions to help those out there develop their idea. I'm certain that lots of you out there don't always have the funds to pursue your ideas.

The committee could judge the submissions as in any other subvention programs.

I am uneasy with the whole idea of a prize to the final team or machine. Lets say for example i use Sarrus Linkage Mark III by fdavies and built a machine with it, as he will surely do, will i be eligible ?

Right now i can improve or build on others ideas and work but with a price at stake it would make it morally harder as it will be as robbing fdavies (for my example) part of his money if i was to win.

Robbob

I think it would be sensible to base the award at least in part on output from the machine rather than just the machines themselves. There was an old Philip K. Dick story called "The Zap Gun" that described an arms race in which successive generations of weapon from each protagonist were described as being more destructive, more able to be quickly used, more portable - except that none of them were functional weapons, just notional deterrents.

Right now i can improve or build on others ideas and work but with a price at stake it would make it morally harder as it will be as robbing fdavies (for my example) part of his money if i was to win.

This is why it's important to document your work. (Speaking as one of the librarians in charge of the documentation.)

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I think it would be sensible to base the award at least in part on output from the machine rather than just the machines themselves.

That's a good point. Prizes for added functionality.

I'd suggest prizes for
(1) Pick and place*
(2) Spool Head*
(3) Laser Cutter*
(4) SLS*
(5) Increased print volume rate* (at a given ~.5 mm precision, each time we improve deposition rate by a factor of 1.2, we distribute prize money.

* - documented on wiki.

Etc.

This is why it's important to document your work. Sorry. That was snarky.

I've been wrestling with the "who documents parts and projects what where, and why" for a while. It's a library matter.

I agree that a prize like this may be more disruptive to the progress of creating a "cottage 3D printer" than productive. I'm convinced that setting up a project for creating such a machine, will have some people - not all - but some people joining the project out of pure altruism.

The price of a Mendel is already within the size of what can gotten through micro-loans, only modest changes will be required to make it operate without a supporting computer and be operable by somebody illiterate. The actual machine is within reach of 3rd. world cottage industry, the problem will be all the rest, power, extrusion material, etc.

Although going into solution mode is probably premature, I have a couple of suggestions, which all have their problems:

1) Sand is dirt cheap, crank the extruder up to 1,500 celcius and you have glass
(Problems: cost of extruder, power consumption, fire hazard, purity of material)

2) Extruder capable of using "homebrew PLA"
(Problem: access to the bacteria, purity of material)

3) Attach a 3D scanner and make a simple copy machine
(Problem: Quality of scan, CPU power/Memory required of the onboard firmware)

1) Sand is dirt cheap, crank the extruder up to 1,500 celcius and you have glass
(Problems: cost of extruder, power consumption, fire hazard, purity of material)

PourStraps, where we make molds, and then fill them with (polymer) concrete, etc. seems more straightforward. Polymer concrete is epoxy and rock filler.

3) Attach a 3D scanner and make a simple copy machine
(Problem: Quality of scan

There's a RWB project proposal I've been thinking of, because a GPL hand laser scanner is needed in medicine. Rural dentistry, etc. (It helps generic RepRap users too.)

CPU power/Memory required of the onboard firmware)
This is why we have laptops, or linux on a board stuff.

SebastienBailard Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 1) Sand is dirt cheap, crank the extruder up to
> 1,500 celcius and you have glass
> (Problems: cost of extruder, power consumption,
> fire hazard, purity of material)
>
> PourStraps, where we make molds, and then fill
> them with (polymer) concrete, etc. seems more
> straightforward. Polymer concrete is epoxy and
> rock filler.
The problem here is, what cheap material would you use to print the molds?
>
> 3) Attach a 3D scanner and make a simple copy
> machine
> (Problem: Quality of scan
>
> There's a RWB project proposal I've been thinking
> of, because a GPL hand laser scanner is needed in
> medicine. Rural dentistry, etc. (It helps
> generic RepRap users too.)
>
> CPU power/Memory required of the onboard
> firmware)
> This is why we have laptops, or linux on a board
> stuff.
Operating a laptop will require some academic training and sufficient funds to buy one (unless OLPC based), linux on board will require more ram and probably more processing power than the current electronics can handle.

Operating a laptop will require some academic training and sufficient funds to buy one (unless OLPC based), linux on board will require more ram and probably more processing power than the current electronics can handle.

This is a minor technical issue. We bootstrap by using a laptop, and then move to other computing like arduino mega, OLPC, or whatever later.

If you'd like to wiki-fiddle it and fill in your thoughts in a tidy way:
[[RWB/Hand_Scanner]]
[objects.reprap.org]

I think there is demand out there for this.

Also, I'm trying to lure the guy who wants it into the forum to talk to you guys, so wiki-fiddle away, but keep it tidy and clean, please.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2010 07:05PM by SebastienBailard.