GrabCAD Script

Text GrabCAD is a platform for crowd-sourced mechanical engineering and product design. We found out about it in 2011 after the founder, Hardi Meybaum, contributed to our GVCS Last Mile Kickstarter campaign volunteering to host our design projects. People post design challenges and offer a reward. The design challenges are then solved by any designer or mechanical engineer in the world. The platform is useful because it produces competitive bids on design work – removing the inefficiencies and risks associated with finding qualified designers. Moreover, GrabCAD is a great recruiting platform for finding designers for other OSE development efforts. OSE has used this platform in 2012 to design the backhoe (LINK), ironworker machine, and quick-connect wheel units for the tractor. We have received a dozen contributions on both the backhoe and quick connect wheel challenges. We hosted two of these without any reward outside of contributing to an open source project We put a $700 reward for the backhoe, and the winner provided a useful design – which we are currently using to build upon with our work. GrabCAD remains a premiere tool that OSE can use to crowd-source designs – and it would lend itself especially well in module-based design. The key to modular design is the ability to post bite-size design challenges – with clear conditions of satisfaction – so that designs can be iterated rapidly and so that many such challenges can be posted in parallel. This is simply another route for managing a number of contributions, where the OSE Product Lead can oversee progress on the platform. We are using Design Sprints as a key part of our crowd-based design strategy. GrabCAD would fit well if we could use it to post other design challenges in parallel. (the limit to this is the payment terms with GrabCAD – where before, GrabCAD offered to host our projects for free. How many projects are they willing to host for free as we scale?) The advantage of Design Sprints is that it is a social design platform – where people get together either in physical space like a hackathon, or people collaborate remotely via Google Hangouts. We can integrated the GrabCAD platform into the Design Sprints as a place to post finished contributions. GrabCAD's nature is currently competitive. People compete to win a challenge. This may be desirable in some cases for people who do not want to collaborate, but we can also encourage an added layer of collaboration. To do this, in our design challenge description, we will post a link to collaborative communication channels. First, we will set up a Twitter hashtag, OSE_Dev– specifically inviting collaboration between OSE-GrabCAD challenge entrants. Second, we will open an IRC channel – OSE_Dev – specifically inviting discussion on the GrabCAD challenge between 'competing' groups. Third, we will also set up a dedicated OSE Forum for that specific GrabCAD challenge - specifically with an intent as a communication channel for the GrabCAD contributors. Fourth, we will encourage ongoing evaluation and review of the GrabCAD entries by using an instance of Stack Overflow specifically for the GrabCAD challenge. To help us fund the design sprints, we will put up a crowd-funding basket – true to our crowd-funding roots - where individuals have a chance to fund the project directly as a tax-deductible contribution, through a platform such as Raisedby.us, Donors Choose, or use another donation option such as ChipIn, Flattr, Dwolla, or other. Search for others. This way, the reward is funded, up to a specific amount, such as $1000 reward – where any excess money is put into seeding another GrabCAD campaign or funding the build of a particular project. We could also consider setting excess money aside to pay other contributors to the GrabCAD campaign – such as animators or graphic designers who make preparatory materials for GrabCAD campaigns. To fund enterprise development based on our products, we will also call out for Ethical Investors – those venture philanthropists who buy a share of the company, with no voting rights, with non-convertible shares. Governance shall remain 100% within the Board of Directors, currently under development. The requirement of Ethical Investors is providing strategic and recruitnig assistance to spin off allied efforts that bootstrap-fund OSE via collaborative production where users who make the equipment are repsonsible for participating in machine builds. We are designing our products for such Social Production, with one day production times and preparation carried out by the collaborative production participants. This relies on 100% open source production equipment and in-house feedstock production. Now we may be getting ahead of ourselves with enterprise development, as pilot projects are a way to develop the quality control still needed for our machines. Therefore, initial Ethical Investments will go to spinoffs of enterprises that begin with pilot projects. To put up a design challenge – one needs to describe and post specifications, consideration, deadline, and reward terms on the GrabCAD platform. A campaign gets approved by GrabCAD staff – and then it is posted to the world. As such, we intend to begin generating OSE designs – ready for prototyping – including collaborative BOM and Fabrication Procedure generation - at a rate of one machine iteration per week by the end of 2013. In 2014, if things go as planned, we want to generate 1 new enterprise per month – pending mastery of CNC torch table, heavy duty CNC multimachine, ironworker, open source welder, Hydrafabber, and open source plasma cutter.