The Prusa i3 Is A RepRap That You Can Flat Pack

You may or may not already know who Josef Prusa is. If you’re reading this…odds are you know.

He’s taking his “3rd Iteration” (i3) RepRap to the Open Hardware Summit, and the coolest thing is that it breaks down into two flat sections!

Finally it’s easy to travel with a 3D printer. Don’t print on your desktop, print WORLDWIDE! [from Josef Prusa’s twitter]

For those who are interested in the ever increasing diversity of the RepRap family tree, the i3 seems to be based mostly on the design of Nop Head’s Mendel90.

There isn’t much information available at the moment, but it looks like Prusa has created some special components, particularly in the extruder. Here are some notes, and the github. And here it is printing a giant vase…

Makerbot’s Lawyer Explains Thingiverse Terms Of Use

Apparently Makerbot’s in-house lawyer has more important things to do than explain legal jargon to the public.

In a concise and coherent post, Rich McCarthy explains how Makerbot has structured their legal relationship with Thingiverse contributors. The short of it is that they are using roughly the same terms as sites like Youtube.com, they make no claim of ownership on anything uploaded to Thingiverse, and whatever license you attach to your work (like Creative Commons) they respect.

Well…that’s it. I don’t like doing tiny posts, so here is Josef Prusa explaining how to use the “new” Makerware program with old “unsupported” Makerbot printers.

The Definitive Makerbot Open vs Closed Source Discussion

I did my best to document all the different points of view that are relevant to the open source hardware world but are spread all over the interwebs.

The original Makerbot founders.

This post got big, fast. Really big. After the jump you can find key quotes from Bre Pettis, Zachary Smith (Hoeken), Adrian Bowyer, Josef Prusa, etc.

An Ex-Founder Of Makerbot On Open Vs Closed

Zachary Smith (aka Hoeken) was on of the three original founders of Makerbot. He’s posted a response to the recent scuffle over the release of the Replicator 2, Josef Prusa’s public questioning of its open source credentials, and Bre Pettis’ “load of corporate double-speak bullshit” response to the community.

Check it out…it’s a little depressing (and not just because of the sad kitten).

 In 2009, I invited my friends Adam Mayer and Bre Pettis to go into business with me building 3D printers. Thus, MakerBot Industries was born. Fast forward to April, 2012 when I was forced out of the very same company.

MakerBot was built on a foundation of open hardware projects such as RepRap and Arduino, as well as using many open software projects for development of our own software. I remain a staunch supporter of the open source movement, and I believe the ideals and goals of OSHW remain true.

I’m trying to contact people to find out what the real scoop is but so far nobody is talking, and my ex-partners are not returning phone calls or emails. It certainly doesn’t look good.  The best information I have found is a load of corporate double-speak bullshit that has come to characterize my interactions with MakerBot in recent memory.

For me, personally, I look at a move to closed source as the ultimate betrayal…I had assumed that Bre would continue to follow the principles that we founded the company on, and the same principles that played a major part in the success of our company. Moving from an open model to a closed model is contrary to everything that I stand for, and as a co-founder of MakerBot Industries, it makes me ashamed to have my name associated with it.

 

Makerbot Might Be Going Closed Source

When I saw the Replicator 2, and Makerbot’s slick new marketing, and the glaring lack of ANY reference to providing the design files, I asked the question.

So did a lot of other people, including Josef Prusa, the guy who put together the Prusa Mendel and and sells the Ultimaker. In the tweet heard ’round the open source hardware world, Prusa reported that he called Makerbot support and was explicitly told that Makerbot’s new printer is not open source.

The silence from Makerbot was deafening. They obviously didn’t simply forget to mention that the Replicator 2 is/isn’t open. Unfortunately, when Bre finally did address the issue, it was to use 1,000 words to say “maybe.” Or, in Bre’s own words, “We’re working that out and we are going to be as open as we possibly can while building a sustainable business.” There’s a pretty good timeline over at Tales of a modern life.

So far Josef Prusa seems to be leading the “give me open source or give me death” charge with an Occupy Thingiverse Test Cube and an open letter to Bre/Makerbot.

What finally motivated me to write this article is a something very sad that happened today. Makerbot turned closed source, or at least all the signals lead to it…And you know what is the biggest, sneaky move? Not mentioning it while they announced it. My guess is, that they will mention it when first pre-orders ship out. Which is after OPEN HARDWARE Summit where Bre gives a talk (I wonder about what, lol) and Makerfaire and all magazines writes about them as Open Hardware heroes.

To put things into perspective, Prusa is so committed to the ideals of open hardware that he has an image of a RepRap infill-ed open hardware logo on his wrist, and he’s tweeting stuff like this glassdoor.com page with negative reviews of working at Makerbot.

Things might be a little personal.

It looks like this Replicator 2 release is shaping up to be a real turning point for the infant open hardware community. We’ve got comments going back and forth on slashdot, Make Magazine, and reddit. I wonder how much impact the community will have on Makerbot’s business decisions. Back when Makerbot was as just the team of Bre, Adam and Zach they talked a really good game about not only being part of a community, but being motivated by the goal of “as open as possible.” That Open Source FTW page was last edited back in October 2001 (325 days to be precise). I hope their goal hasn’t changed since then, but it’s hard to be optimistic when Bre (just Bre) says that building a sustainable business is more important than being open.

Automated Customization with 3D Printers

A 3D printer is, at heart, a prototyping machine. They will never be able to compete on volume alone.

What they can compete on is high-volume customization. Josef Prusa, the designer of the Prusa Mendel, wrote a Python script to automatically add a custom pair of initials to the many whistles he prints out as gifts.

If you look closely, you can tell that each whistle has a different pair of letters embossed on the top.

The great thing about open source is that people do cool stuff like this and then give it away! You an download the WhistleGen program Josef Prusa wrote from his GitHub repository. Perhaps someone could modify it to take advantage of two-color or multi-color extruders.

Related Links

• Hack A Day
• Make Magazine