D3D Fusion thesis

Requirements

Conditions of satisfaction (technical)

• One day build?
• Host # number of data-collecting workshops?
• Print quality?
• ...

Requirements for approval of Distributed Enterprise goals

• It is an enterprise, generating income?
• Does it dog-food its own products?
• Is replication of the enterprise at the core of its strategy? (Does it train its own competitors?)
• Are there free licenses on all source code and design files?
• Other ethical requirements?
• Is it a productive enterprise?
• Is product produced in a short amount of time?
• Can the enterprise produce a range of different products?
• ...

Compliance with University Requirements

• Presentation with opponent?
• A written thesis following thesis guidelines?
• ...

Hopefully, we'll also be able to formulate some goals.

Goals

• Building web-based community, like a MOOC?
• Achieving actual workshop propagation?
• Getting other collaborators on board?
• Usage of OSE distro?
• Created good FreeCAD introduction for OSE distro?
• ...

Earlier Work

Printer Designs

Troublemaker 1:

• Proprietary formats for some of the files, AutoCAD (dwg) - [1]
• NC license - license incompatibility issues. Need to resolve if we use any of these files.

Troublemaker 2:

• Blog Post 1 - [2]. Design spec is to be full open source hardware.
• Blog Post 2 - [3]
• License not stated at repo- [4]

Lulzbot

Lulzbot has an open source bed leveler. http://lulzbot.com

Prusa Mendel:

It was the first printer to be realistically build-able during a weekend workshop[5] (this was 2009-2010). It's printed parts took 10 h to print, compared to the 20 h of its main contester at the time of release, the Sells Mendel[6]. Many Reprappers wanted to print printers for their friends at this time, so it received a lot of initial interest for its short print time[7]. It established a reputation as easily customizable.

Josef Prusa was active in the community[8], listened to feedback and the git repo was updated almost every week. Mean days between commits on master branch: 5.5[9]. He would travel the world giving workshops, and managed to pay airplane tickets by pre-selling the printed parts to workshop participants.

Estimated number of Prusa or remixed Prusa printers by January 15 2014 worldwide, based on retailers' summed estimates[10]: ~70000 to 80000 (300 of these printed by Prusa himself)

He currently sells printers assembled and kit printers[11] through an OSHW enterprise. Most customers by January 2014 was companies[12].

MOST lab workshops

The MOST lab has a very similar concept. They have

• Their own kit and kit supplier
• Detailed online documentation describing both how to build the printer and how to host a workshop
• Gathered data from workshops
• Free software source code and design files
• A separate Train-the-trainer program

Seed Factory

Dani Eder had a similar initiative in 2013, called Seed Factory. He wrote a Wikibook where he introduces several useful concepts and shares lots of engineering knowledge.

Difficulties

1. Making actual potential workshop instructors in a short time. I (Tobben) have never seen a newbie that became a good instructor in < 1 year. Confirmed by MOST lab having separate (and very detailed) train-the-trainer program.

Links

• D3D Fusion printer design
• Tobben Log