Tag: fabbing

Beans, romance and biking

A couple of days ago I’m standing in the kitchen rinsing the monthly batch of beans under cold water, and Sara is making tea next by me, absentmindedly singing “the thrill is gone.” I believe it’s called “the good life” as everything is mellow and comfortable at the moment.

But in order to mix it up it was a blast to go for another alleycat Saturday: Svartkatt 2012. We donned some makeup — Saras and Zenobias more elaborate than most — and biked around for a couple of hours, looking for clues to riddles, counting stuff in dark places and generally running around suspiciously with headlamps. As a sidenote, this was the first time ever that I’ve used a headlamp, and it’s so bloody useful that I’ll be using one at the slightest pretence — my God, I could actually see stuff without chipping my teeth on a soggy flashlight. What times we live in when this is possible!

Just as last year, I solemnly swear that until the next time I will actually exercise and have more than illusory muscles. Because of an organisational snafu we rode the second part of the race first, and once that was over my thighs were melting fillets of glue and painfully painy pain, so I called it a night and had a beer. Sara and Zenobia only rode the second part, swearing over the too big borrowed bikes. As of now they’re looking for race or road single speed bikes, so if you have one lying around get in touch.

Also, perhaps there is a gadget which could help Zenobia not to be half an hour late to the start of the race? Like a watch, but perhaps with an electric shock function?

In other news, I got a grant to do some outreach work with 3D printers. This is excellent since much other work has dried up, and I get to spend some time and effort to see what all this fabbing can lead to. I’ve taken the plan of cutting back on the number of projects too far and do hardly anything; certainly not my intention. So back up into the saddles, etc, which will be easier with the grant money. And this here brand new laptop I’m using.

The pirate ebay: Fabbing

This can be interesting: The Pirate Bay is sharing 3D models for printing, so far only using the category Physibles on the original site. Right now there are mostly dupes of stuff from Thingiverse, and seeing as the interface is the usual forum link-dump there’s no preview or version control, but it’s still an interesting development for two reasons: For one, once 3D sharing sites will start to be harassed on IP-issues, there will be be a chilling effect on the distribution and usage of models, so we’ll need a safe haven for that. TPB has proved rather resilient.

(Further on, it’s easy to foresee 3D-printers which won’t print non-signed models, taxation on printing materials used privately, consumer protection laws which are stretched to encompass personal fabrication, etc, so there will have to be forums to discuss circumvention and open source practices)

Think about it this way: If piracy of IP today mostly is a concern for a few companies in the western world – regardless if it’s clothes, movies or medicine — what will happen when the manufacturing industries start to feel threatened by the infringement on their manufacturing prerogative? Previously, someone ordered 1000 Gucci bags from your factory and you spat them out, regardless if the person you ordered them from was a pirate or Gucci; either way, you had a business model – making stuff. If now the pirates are not only threatening the IP of some of your clients, but also the necessity of including you in their piracy, you’re suddenly standing with a factory without orders.

I think that fabbing can be a boon to humanity in many ways, but as always with disruptive technologies there will be a huge backlash, and the sooner we can build infrastructures for dealing with reactionary policies the better. Which ties in with the second reason this is interesting, which has to do with the development of a public discourse on the subject.

So far the ideas surrounding fabbing are best described in science fiction and by those in the field – Bruce Sterlings Shaping Things comes to mind — but they’re slowly gaining mainstream attention; Petter told me he saw 3D printing mentioned in a lifestyle & decoration magazine which usually is concerned with spring colours and feelgood food. Just as in art though, the debate will sooner or later come down to what we are printing, rather than that we are printing, and if TPB can be a platform to foster experimentation with fabbing, we’ll have another generation which is used to remix and copy and paste and mash things up, only now with physical objects rather than media. But for that to happen there needs to be practice and debate, and tpb putting it’s weight behind the issue can only accelerate that.

Turku: Presentation & summery

For the first time since I got back from Finland, I strapped on my tights, beanie and running shoes, and ventured into an absurdly warm november evening to frighten people by doing wheezing and shuffling noises. It went well. And to rekindle another positive habit I entertained in Turku, I’m posting another video from my residency; I finally have an edited version of the presentation I gave at the end of the project.

It’s just short of forty minutes, and it includes a short backstory of me and projects which seemed relevant to fabbing, a brief timeline and explanation of 3D printing in general and the RepRap specifically, and then an overview of how the project changed during in the process of realisation.

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Doing the RepRap #14: Updates and upgrades

Here’s something that I didn’t think about. I had skipping on extruder as well as Y & X, but hadn’t thought that the pulley grub screw needed a flat surface to press against. Here I was thinking that the heat was melting the inner bore and allowing slippage (which might still be happening) but filing the motor shafts flat hadn’t occurred to me. Lucky me there’s an instructional video on the process, which seems straightforward enough.

→ Filing flat a motor shaft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBnKPEnt9a4

Regardless, I’m still getting metal pulleys, and having looked at how coarse the T5 belt is and how it’s jumping on my printed pulleys, I’m probably moving to T2.5 belts. Now if I could only find a local source of the stuff which didn’t cost a fortune, I’d be set. On IRC I spoke with some guy in Poland who was buying and shipping the stuff, but couldn’t get a quote from him. And the pulleys had to be hand drilled, which seems a bother if there are pre-drilled ones available. Suggestions are welcome; the ones I’ve found so far seem too expensive for what it is, I mean, how much can diecasting pulleys cost?

Someone is starting to assemble a guide for beginners into the art and magic of building a RepRap, and it’s off to a good start. If you want an overview of the build process, check out reprapbook.appspot.com. I wish that page had been live when I started out, but you know what? Back then we didn’t have fancy e-books but read the wiki and begged in chats, and we would count ourselves lucky!

Doing the RepRap #13 — Printer finished

It’s been a long road, but my Reprap Mendel Prusa 3D printer is finished and I’m printing stuff. There have been so many problems and fuckups along the way, that when I finally started printing stuff a week ago I didn’t think much of it, but with hindsight it was a Grand Moment™. I’ve joined the ranks of 3D printers. You may now commence the “oohing” and “aahing” I understand are my dues.

So far, with the exception of a frog and a replacement LM8UU Y axis holder, I’ve mostly been printing calibration cubes. These are shapes intended to troubleshoot your printer and give you an opportunity to get your Skeinforge/Sfact setting correct. As you can hear in the video there’s some rattling going on on the Z-axis, and I have some trouble with Y-alignment on some prints, but with lowered acceleration on Z and Y, and perhaps tightening of the belt on the latter, I think I’ll be able to print halfway decent parts.

Sara came over for a few days, and as any good boyfriend I set about making her feel comfortable helping out with the build. It was much appreciated as it often seems I have three hands too few to get something assembled. Making the print bed was slow going, and as I’m using plexiglass for print surface we broke off a couple of pieces before getting a more-or-less square one. The plexi is actually good for printing on cold, at least once the PLA starts sticking to it, but if your hotend gets too close the PLA fuses with the surface, and you’ll inadvertently run the head through the board which will create pockmarks in the surface, and possibly plug your nozzle with plexi — which is the reason I’m printing with the 0.5mm nozzle instead of the 0.35 I started with.

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We were leveling the print table for a good two hours, and found that the design with springs between the lower and print bed wasn’t optimal, since the springs were unevenly springy. I had bought a whole kit with the suckers but none seem to fit well enough and give enough force to work. It’s a good design on paper, but we found that it was just easier to use two sets of nuts per fastener bolt. Protip: Get spanners which fit instead of fiddling with adjustable ones or pliers; it’ll save you so much time and temperament it’s worth the expense.

At this moment thanks might be in order. A great amount of those go out to Traumflug for design and massive help with the electronics, and Kliment, Triffid_Hunter, Action68 and everybody else who’s been quick to lend support in #RepRap on IRC or on the reprap.org forums. When you’re as ignorant of a subject as I was about the RepRap, you rely on the help and input of friends and strangers, and without the support of everyone from awesome girlfriend Sara to KKV electro to that guy who barely spoke English but cut me some metal rods, this project might have fallen over and not gotten up after any of innumerable stumbles.

Of course, thanks to the people here in Turku for providing an incentive to start this, as well as the means and time to finish it. Ultimately, bigup to Adrian Bowyer for getting the RepRap project started, as well as all those who keep improving upon it. I have a public presentation of the project on Thursday 6th October at 1800 in Gallery Titanik in Turku, and if you’re nearby I’d love to see you there.

Turku: The art bit

For the past three weeks I’ve been in Turku, in the studio of Gallery Titanik, whacking away at the RepRap Mendel Prusa 3D printer. I’ve been kept so busy toiling with this that I’ve lost sight of the grander scheme of things, like why I’ve been building the printer in the first place. I’ve been putting off communicating what I’m doing not because I don’t think it’s worthwhile, but rather because the more immediate problems of finding screws or getting the electronics to work seemed so much more pressing; and besides, it ought to be obvious what I’m doing, no?

Then again, every once in a while it’s good to remind oneself that one of the few telling differences between an artist and a crazy person is that an artist at least nominally does her stuff for an audience, while the crazy keeps to herself or only occasionally performs for medical personnel.

If the Work of art in the age of reproduction spoke about the disappearance of aura, of authenticity and a direct interaction between any one artist and her audience, the means of reproduction through RepRaps and similar DIY machines reintroduce at least the authenticity of the machine — or its configuration, parts and calibration — into the object.

There are things about fabbing which sets it apart from traditional reproduction, as for example there is no original on which any copy is modeled but only a digital model created to exist in a different medium from that of any physical copy. Any artworks which are printed from a CAD file are originally only ever mathematical descriptions in a 3D-file format on computer storage. So although the printed object isn’t unrelated to the artwork, it certainly has a random element to it, a stutter in its materiality.

Historically art was about creating objects which based on esthetics and social function were considered “artistic,” then around the time of Fountain it became explicitly about an artistic aura, and then fluxus removed even the “work” part of “art work” which after post-modernism left us with the free-for-all shit buffet we’re at today. Perhaps fabbing could at least offer a lifesaver?

With fabbing, we have the possibility of having art which is highly conceptual, but which manifests itself physically not by the mediation of the initial artist, but rather through printers — machines and their operators — which exist in a DIY sphere and so are all different, temperamental, uneven; In another word, they are unique. But just as we don’t give artistic merit to the assembly-line worker who manufactures the printer with which we print our photographs, we are unlikely to attribute artistic merit to whomever assembled the printer which prints our CAD-models.

Rather, an actualized 3D-print might be the artwork of an artist, but it’ll have the aura of the machine, or rather the aura of the DIY home fabrication process of building and tuning the machines; If movements can impart aura, it’s an aura of industry dependent on craft, an inversion of industrialization, transforming engineers into cottage industry artisans churning out other peoples art objects.

nathan7: and I want a good print
nathan7: a really good print
nathan7: without overhangs ruining things
nathan7: it’s about the end result here

From a discussion on IRC #RepRap

The idea of personal fabrication is positioned to affect the manifestation and appreciation of art as soon as some critical mass and manufacturing capacity is reached: The result will be analogue objects bearing the likeness of art; not simulacrum or simulation, but a second order relation to the artwork, twinned with the aura of machine. Perhaps fabbing can be a disruptive enough technology to change the artists role into something new, something interesting, something other than making artworks.

Doing the RepRap #11 – Frame & motors

I got the frame of the Prusa more or less assembled, even though I still need to make sure that it’s straight and so forth. The motors are mounted and connected to the correct rods or belts, and they are stepping at 1/16 nicely, although the LM8UU bearings don’t seem as smooth as I’d like them to be; I will probably re-assemble the Y-carriage whenever I add the hotbed, seeing as that might be cause for some misalignment and grinding.

Robin from the forums popped by the studio and we compared builds and I got some advice which is always welcome; where to source materials, in what order to assemble specific parts, why patience usually pays off better than a flamethrower, etc.

The long M3×60 screws for the adjustable extruder have proved elusive, so I’ve gone for an M3 rod I’ll put wingnuts on. Once you get warmed up and understand how things are supposed to fit together and what functions they perform, you relax enough to improvise. It’s a good feeling. The Makergear hotend shipped with a mounting plate which doesn’t fit my Accessible Wade’s Extruder so I schlepped the studio bike around looking for 4mm plywood to drill a replacement. Once that’s done and the hotend built, I’m pretty close to testing to print.

Perhaps I’ll be able to melt som plastic into a horrible blob in time for tomorrows opening of the new show here at Titanik and impress Sara who’s coming over for a few days. That would be most excellent.

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Doing the RepRap #10

Before you can print from your STL file you need to convert it to gcode. Think of it as Postscript for 3D-printers and 2D routers. The tool of choice for people working with RepRap has been Skeinforge, which has acquired tons of functionality at the expense of usability: It’s ugly as sin and has more features than are properly documented (or documented at all) so I’m happy to see that there are alternative versions cropping up, like SFACT.

Also, putting the printer together I ran into some issues with the otherwise excellent documentation put together by Gary Hodgeson, namely the parts using the LM8UU linear bearings instead of printed bushings. Because I don’t have any spare parts I’m terrified of messing up those I bought from Greg Frost (shipped all the way from Australia) so am anxiously browsing the RepRap wiki and forums in search of instructions. I’ve already managed to put the Y-motor bracket in every position possible, and finally had to email Greg to get a picture of how to do it properly. I’m documenting every step, but so far it’s more of a blooper reel…

I finally found an excellent description of how to fit all the parts together: How to build up a LM8UU Linear Bearing Prusa. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and with the exception that I’m going for a three bearing bottom plate, I ought to be able to finish the build in no time. Now, if I could only settle on which lubricant to use for the rods, I’d be set. “Light machine oil” or “PTFE spray” is the question.

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Update from the comments. In the video below I’ve inserted the pins from the wrong side. The black plastic bits should go on the underside of the Polo, so that it’ll sit flush with the mounts. As it stands, the Polos work for me soldered this way as well, but it’s more finicky and there’s a risk that you’ll have too much solder left and won’t be able to push the pins far enough into the mounts.

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Make: Excuse

You know how it is. One day when you’re cleaning up the terrible mess which is your apartment you find all the bills, reminders and last notices you were meaning to get to, and you yelp a little. Or like earlier today, when I couldn’t find my other glove — I had to leave in a hurry to get the voting done — and felt stupid for not having lost a single glove all winter, and waiting until spring before managing it.

Then again, I later found the glove further down in my man-purse, so perhaps the example isn’t valid. An example which is valid, is my realisation the other day that I have fuck-all to do all summer. Being self-employed, this means I got fuck-all income. So, I set myself to task with filling the weeks ahead with dilligent work and ambition, trying to see if any of my almost-competencies can be harnessed for cash and/or grants.

So far, I’ve managed to code a webpage for the Mateusz Saves project (I’ll post it here as soon as it stops blowing squid balls) and today we had an etching workshop at KKV. I managed to etch my first PCB ever, which was somewhat similar to doing my first photographic print, only more corrosive and smelling of chloride gas.

The purpose of todays exercise was to establish a standard process of making PCBs, and with just a few adjustments — and enthusiastic support for building a bubble tank from some quarters — it seems as if we succeeded. Watching paper dissolve from an ironed-on piece of copper and glass fibers might not be the most exciting thing to do, but it sure feels productive in a sciency-sort-of-way. The stuff we tried printing was the control board for a RepRap, which co-incidentally is what I need for the SUMU residency later this fall. I’m thinking of setting up a table in the kitchen and have the RepRap there, come odours or noxious fumes, allowing for the possibility of the following dialogue:

— Y’know, you really ought to get small holders for these chopsticks.
— Oh, why don’t you describe them to me and I’ll FUCKING PRINT THEM FOR YOU!

Because that is what every adult with a 3D printer dreams of saying, right?

Fabbulousness and the taste of masses.

Bruce Sterling allowed Starship Sofa to podcast his novella The Kiosk the other day, and it’s two hours well spent if you’re in the least interested in the (possible) disruptive tendencies of fabbing and rapid manufacturing. Go listen to it before it disappears, then come back here. (You can skip the first ten minutes to get to the story)

Skip the first ten or so minutes, which are of more interest to sci-fi people rather than you, and take notes on which predictions you agree with. Having listened to the story, I had to remind myself that rapid prototyping is still in its infancy and not a foregone conclusion, lest I give up on it in favour of something more bleeding edge.