[CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Fab@Home

Hey folks, I was discussing this with a pal of mine, the fellow who wrote
ArtOfIllusion:

On Wednesday 10 January 2007 01:14, Peter Eastman wrote:
> You're probably already aware of this, but it looks like another
> project with similar goals to RepRap:
>
> http://www.fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
>
> Peter

Yes, I'm aware of that group's work. We exchanged some cordial emails with
them a few months ago, at my instigation. They've done some fairly
impressive work. One thing I like about their setup is that they can
fabricate most of their frame out of acrylic using a CNC router/signmaking
shop. This something we've discussed, but shelved for the time being.
(They've got a beautiful new CNC router over in the Carleton architecture
dept., but I haven't wrangled access to it yet.)

This was Graham Stabler's (of the CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO mailing list) take on it,
which feels a bit harsh even if there's nothing in it I can really disagree
with:
"[CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Fab@Home
A laser cut perspex CNC router with a syringe. It seems silicon
sealer might have been the nearest to an engineering material it has
laid down. Not getting overly excited here but I do like efforts
towards low cost rapid prototyping.

Graham"

My thoughts:

* Their hardware seems like it's all one piece, using specially sourced
components. It all works, and apparently rather well, but you can't just
bodge one together from copper pipe, lego, some lengths of wood, or a
benchtop mill, as you can with a RepStrap. Or, you know, use your handy
rapid prototyper. (What, you mean, you don't have a rapid prototyper? I'll
print one off for you.)

* "The current cost of all the materials as ordered from the current list of
vendors is about US$2500."
For that price, you can make about 5 RepRaps. Or buy a tabletop CNC router,
machine/borrow a print head, and you're printing. Later, when you've printed
off your RepRap parts, you still can use the CNC router for subtractive
fabrication.

* Their machines are sterile. They haven't designed their printer parts to
be RP-able, so they can't make parts for the next generation printers. This
is my largest criticism.

* They don't have a working hard-plastic extrusion head, and they're not
really interested in right now. If you want to make a bunch of robot parts
or replace a gear in your sewing machine, it won't be useful for that. You
can't even make the plastic parts of a RepRap. Their machine would seem a
lot more useful to me if they were to mount a mk 2 RepRap extrusion head on
it.

* Their driver won't work under OSX/Linux. A 3D printer needs a few hours to
make anything larger than a shirt button, which means it needs a dedicated PC
sitting next to it, or tethering your laptop to the printer for next few
hours/day. If all you've got is a mac laptop, you can use that, or you can
go to the nearest used computer store and pick up a $50 used desktop, run
ubuntu, and that will do the job nicely. But (and this is my both biased and
uniformed opinion as a diehard penguinista) older windows machines are a bit
more obnoxious to keep up and running. This is more of a quibble than a
valid criticism.

* Their hardware is all imperial units. This means if you want to build a
fab@home machine, and you live in Europe, Africa, or Asia, you're going to
have to order a lot of parts from the states. This is a major annoyance. If
you want to repair or replace parts, you can't source things locally. With
RepRap, you may have to order some metric-dimensioned threaded rod from
mcmaster.com, Amazon.com Industrial & Scientific, or your local industrial
fasteners shop, if you live in a city of more than 50K people, but it's not a
major pain in the hiney; it's just waiting three days to a week for the UPS
guy to show up. And if you're outside of North America, you can pick up
those parts at any local hardware store.

* One thing which vexes me is that they never approached us and offered to
work with us. I wouldn't mind working with them, but when I mentioned it
casually, they said they were busy with they were fairly tied up with their
own project at the time, but that we should stay in touch. I'll drop them a
line once I've machined/RPed a few RepRap extrusion heads and see if they're
interested.

I suspect RepRap will end up making them irrelevant because of the
price/self-replication aspect, and wish they'd merge with us/vice-versa, so
we don't have two groups of people reinventing the wheel. They seem like
decent folk, and very sharp.

Regards,
-Sebastien