In this episode you’ll get to hear not one, not two, but three Hackaday Editors! Now that the dust has mostly settled from the 2024 Hackaday Supercon, Al Williams joins Elliot and Tom to compare notes and pick out a few highlights from the event. But before that, the week’s discussion will cover the questionable patents holding back a promising feature for desktop 3D printers, a new digital book from NODE, and the surprisingly limited history of welding in space. You’ll also hear about the challenge of commercializing free and open source software, the finicky optics of the James Web Space Telescope, and the once exciting prospect of distributing software via pages of printed barcodes.
Direct MP3 download for offline, “easy” listening.
Episode 296 Show Notes:
News:
What’s that Sound?
- Congratulations to [Jon] for guessing this week’s sound, getting lucky with the 20-sided die, and for having the “most correct” answer to boot!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- Brick Layers: The Promise Of Stronger 3D Prints And Why We Cannot Have Nice Things
- A Beautifully Illustrated Guide To Making
- Building A DIY Nipkow Disk Display
- NASA Announces New Trials For In-Space Laser Welding
- The End Of Ondsel And Reflecting On The Commercial Prospects For FreeCAD
- Why The Saturn V Used Kerosene For Its Hydraulics Fluid
Quick Hacks:
- Elliot’s Picks
- Tom’s Picks:
Re “first panel at Supercon”: There was a panel about the maker business journey at Supercon 2019, hosted by Jasmine Bracket of Tindie fame, featuring Erika Earl, Paul Beech (Pimoroni), and Spencer Owen (RC2014):
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/11/three-tales-of-making-it-in-electronics-design-and-manufacturing
Aha! We stand corrected. That’s a good group too!
Brick Layers / hexagonal bead packing for FDM and why we should be able to have nice things.
1) Patent has no international family – it’s US-only.
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/09/brick-layers-the-promise-of-stronger-3d-prints-and-why-we-cannot-have-nice-things/#comment-8060467
2) The legal way to invalidate the 2020 patent is to file an Ex parte reexamination. What [Geek Detour] did in the video is the collection of material and a snapshot of the state of the art in the open source scene, on record via youtube videos and project repositories. Now someone could formalize that, pony up the $3k and start the reexamination process.
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/09/brick-layers-the-promise-of-stronger-3d-prints-and-why-we-cannot-have-nice-things/#comment-8060721
3) The “legal advice” also seems to be: the open source community should be proactive here and make sure the 2020 patent gets invalidated or reduced to whatever is novel when the prior art and state of the art as of pre-2020 are considered.
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/09/brick-layers-the-promise-of-stronger-3d-prints-and-why-we-cannot-have-nice-things/#comment-8060346
4) Documentation matters. Whatever is described in the expired patents is safe ground, so to implement brick layer printing in a defensible way, a proposal should be written that describes exactly how the implementation is based on the Stratasys patent and later pre-2020 contributions from the community.
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/09/brick-layers-the-promise-of-stronger-3d-prints-and-why-we-cannot-have-nice-things/#comment-8060346
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/09/brick-layers-the-promise-of-stronger-3d-prints-and-why-we-cannot-have-nice-things/#comment-8060346
Last two links should be
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/09/brick-layers-the-promise-of-stronger-3d-prints-and-why-we-cannot-have-nice-things/#comment-8060354
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/09/brick-layers-the-promise-of-stronger-3d-prints-and-why-we-cannot-have-nice-things/#comment-8060345
Y’all sure that SAO badge was the sound of a daisy-wheel typewriter?