Open Source, Forced Innovation, And Making Good Products

November 23, 2024 by Elliot Williams No comments

The open-source hardware business landscape is no doubt a tough one, but is it actually tougher than for closed-source hardware? That question has been on our minds since the announcement that the latest 3D printer design from former open-source hardware stalwarts Prusa Research seems like it’s not going to come with design files.

Ironically, the new Core One is exactly the printer that enthusiasts have been begging Prusa to make for the last five years or more. Since seeing hacker printers like the Voron and even crazy machines like The 100 whip out prints at incredible speed, the decade-old fundamental design of Prusa’s i3 series looks like a slow and dated, if reliable, workhorse. “Bed slinger” has become a bit of a pejorative for this printer architecture in some parts of the 3DP community. So it’s sweet to see Prusa come out with the printer that everyone wants them to make, only it comes with the bitter pill of their first truly closed-source design.

Is the act of not sharing the design files going to save them? Is it even going to matter? We would argue that it’s entirely irrelevant. We don’t have a Core One in our hands, but we can’t imagine that there is anything super secret going on inside that couldn’t be reverse engineered by any other 3DP company within a week or so. If anything, they’re playing catch up with other similar designs. So why not play to one of their greatest strengths – the engaged crowd of hackers who would most benefit from having the design files?

Of course, Prusa’s decision to not release the design files doesn’t mean that they’re turning their backs on the community. They are also going to offer an upgrade package to turn your current i3 MK4 printer into the new Core One, which is about as hacker-friendly a move as is possible. They still offer kit versions of the printers at a discount, and they continue to support their open-source slicer software.

But this one aspect, the move away from radical openness, still strikes us as bittersweet. We don’t have access to their books, of course, but we can’t imagine that not providing the design files gains them much, and it will certainly damage them a little in the eyes of their most devoted fans. We hope the Core One does well, but we also hope that people don’t draw the wrong lesson from this – that it does well because it went closed source. If we could run the experiment both ways, we’d put our money on it doing even better if they released the design files.

3D Space Can Be Tiled With Corner-free Shapes

November 23, 2024 by Donald Papp 4 Comments

Tiling a space with a repeated pattern that has no gaps or overlaps (a structure known as a tessellation) is what led mathematician [Gábor Domokos] to ponder a question: how few corners can a shape have and still fully tile a space? In a 2D the answer is two, and a 3D space can be tiled in shapes that have no corners at all, called soft cells.

These shapes can be made in a few different ways, and some are shown here. While they may have sharp edges there are no corners, or points where two or more line segments meet. Shapes capable of tiling a 2D space need a minimum of two corners, but in 3D the rules are different.

A great example of a natural soft cell is found in the chambers of a nautilus shell, but this turned out to be far from obvious. A cross-section of a nautilus shell shows a cell structure with obvious corners, but it turns out that’s just an artifact of looking at a 2D slice. When viewed in full 3D — which the team could do thanks to a micro CT scan available online — there are no visible corners in the structure. Once they knew what to look for, it was clear that soft cells are present in a variety of natural forms in our world.

[Domokos] not only seeks a better mathematical understanding of these shapes that seem common in our natural world but also wonders how they might relate to aperiodicity, or the ability of a shape to tile a space without making a repeating pattern. Penrose Tiles are probably the most common example.

Drilling Rig Makes Accurate Holes In Seconds

November 23, 2024 by Lewin Day 4 Comments

Drilling holes can be quite time consuming work, particularly if you have to drill a lot of them. Think about all the hassle of grabbing a part, fixturing it in the drill press, lining it up, double checking, and then finally making the hole. That takes some time, and that’s no good if you’ve got lots of parts to drill. There’s an easy way around that, though. Build yourself a rad jig like [izzy swan] did.

The first jig we get to see is simple. It has a wooden platter, which hosts a fixture for a plastic enclosure to slot perfectly into place. Also on the platter is a regular old power drill. The platter also has a crank handle which, when pulled, pivots the platter, runs the power drill, and forces it through the enclosure in the exact right spot. It’s makes drilling a hole in the enclosure a repeatable operation that takes just a couple of seconds. The jig gets it right every time.

The video gets better from there, though. We get to see even niftier jigs that feature multiple drills, all doing their thing in concert with just one pull of a lever. [izzy] then shows us how these jigs are built from the ground up. It’s compelling stuff.

If you’re doing any sort of DIY manufacturing in real numbers, you’ve probably had to drill a lot of holes before. Jig making skills could really help you if that’s the case. Video after the break.

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