Ben Heckendorn and Chris Kraft rejoin the podcast to discuss if Open Source Hardware has run its course or is the dream still alive in our souls.
Benjamin Heckendorn rejoins the podcast to discuss Pinball Hardware and Text Adventure Games.
Visit our Public Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!
Benjamin Heckendorn
Chris Kraft
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
Ben
Welcome to the macro fab engineering podcast. I am your guest, Benjamin heckendorn
and I am your guest Chris Kraft. And we're hosts are the hosts. Sorry.
It's Steven Craig.
This is episode 153.
Benjamin heckendorn is an electronics hacking entertainment guru and former host of element fourteens. The Ben Heck Show and he likes to smell his own farts. Chris Craft is a tinkerer currently working as a software engineer in the financial services industry, extensive background in 3d printing and building anything that seems interesting.
Ben
I think it's important to have a closed feedback loop on your farts. So you know, just how bad they are. That we can analyze them.
Do they evolve over time? Are you?
Ben
Well, it depends on what you eat. You know?
That's, that's one of the inputs. Right,
right. Yeah. So both Ben and Chris were last seen on the podcasts on episode 75. Does the simulation match reality? So Ben and Chris, What have y'all been doing since then? It's been like, almost two full years.
Ben
Really? It's been that long.
It's like two summers ago.
That was back in the bomb shelter.
Ben
Oh, all God that place that got destroyed in the flood, didn't it?
Yeah, you guys and you guys either had right before or you were going right after to fly in a b 17. Bomber, right?
Yeah, yeah. That was pretty awesome. Oh, yeah.
Ben
Yeah, cuz we had to go up into Houston. Then we went back down to Galveston. Yeah. We
went to the we went to the Battleship Texas. Yeah, I
Ben
still have my my wallpaper on my computer. My big computer is from that flight.
Nice. The Battleship Texas flight.
Ben
Yeah, let me flew around in a battleship. Smelling your own
farts.
Ben
All I could smell was farts and diesel fuel as far as the nose could see.
Oh, fantastic. So so yeah. What's what's been up since then?
My blood pressure?
Ben
Actually it's gone down. So it went up and then down.
When after after? Because you're not. You're the former host of the element 14. The Ben Heck Show. Yeah,
Ben
I stopped filming The Ben Heck Show in June of 2018. So since then, I've been working on some other projects that I've been wanting to wanting to improve over the years but never had time to. And yeah, just kind of semi retired. So well. I've worked like seven hours a day now. Yeah.
As opposed to what was it before? Eight? Well,
Ben
I mean, there was there was a time when I was doing the show full time and working on pinball machines on top of that. So there were actually some pretty stressful years, probably like 2013 2014 were pretty busy for me. So it's nice to kind of slow down. Right. And,
and the I think we talked about this back in episode 75. But the pin hex system is sort of named for you, right?
Ben
Yes. Although I don't like that name, even though Well, Parker and I both designed it. But whatever. Somebody called a pin hack. So great. I didn't I didn't want The Ben Heck Show to be called The Ben Heck Show. That was not my idea, either.
I think my favorite thing was about that. At near the end, you all had a contest to change the name of the show. Yeah, of the show. And then it wasn't said to keep the name. But they
Ben
were they wanted to change the name because, you know, they knew I was leaving in a year. Yeah, me leaving the show is a long, a long thought out process. There's like at least a year and a half. So I think they should have stuck to their guns and just changed the name then because then they had to scramble last spring to do it. So
I haven't looked into it. What what's it called now?
Ben
Now it's called element 14 presents. So what they did was they hired a whole bunch of different people to create content. So what they do is that I think they had like 10 to 15 people making stuff now. But what works works better about it is that each person since there's so many people working on things, each person doesn't have to create something every week. It's basically Hey, whose project is done next. And then that's the video they produce. They still have a weekly release schedule, but they're not burning out. You know, Ben and Felix
a single person. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, cuz you were doing you were doing all lot of work to have fresh and interesting content every single week.
Ben
Yeah, and then if you do multi part episodes are like, Oh, it's part three of three building this clock or whatever, people, viewership drops off very rapidly when you have multi part episode projects.
Yeah, that's something I think is interesting when you look at, because you're now posting just your own videos on your own YouTube channel. And a lot of people are saying not a lot, a lot of comments are, oh, this is so much better. And I don't want to reply to people in comments, because it's just a minefield. But it's, I want to kind of say that the show was the way it is because it had to be that way for the viewership that they're going after, and your private channel is great. But you can get away with things that because you're not trying to please that audience.
Ben
Well, not just pleasing an audience. But you know, when you're representing a large company, they want to create videos that meet a certain production standard. You know, they want the audio to be good, they want the lighting to be good, because the way the videos are made reflects on the company, whereas when I make my own videos, I don't give a fuck.
You can go one way or the other. Do you
get the curse on your on your YouTube channel?
Ben
Actually, I don't because I actually monetized My channel is doing actually really well right now strangely. Because yeah, it's like, I just make long videos with all the detail the way I want to, and yeah, actually, my videos now are more popular than the show was. It's weird. Yeah,
I think the point I'm trying to make is that the people who liked those long, more detailed videos. But when you tried to do that, on the show, there were people complaining about it. So it's like, you can't win well, and
Ben
also, this came from the revision three days, but there was definitely a push to keep everything no longer than 20 minutes. And so you end up having a lot of you have to edit out a lot of the steps and basically show just the overview of it. But the thing that the irony of that is YouTube rewards watch time, more than views. That's why like, let's plays and whatnot became so popular on YouTube, because it's really easy just to sit there and play video game for an hour and create an hour long video, which actually, YouTube will reward that over like an amazing two minute animation. So I guess my point is having longer videos on YouTube is actually desirable. But we were trying to keep things at 20 minutes.
Yeah, well used to be the YouTube algorithm was like, going towards 12 minutes was like the ideal timeframe. And now it's changed. While it probably changes like every week. Yeah, the AI at YouTube.
Ben
Yeah, so I just I bought a 4k camcorder from Best Buy. And that's, that's cool, because you can just you record in 4k, but then you make an 10 ADP video. But if you want anytime you can basically like zoom in 200% for free, because you're recording twice the pixels. And then I just I just caught up into the desk, turn on my overhead lights, which I'm pretty good lighting in my basement. And then I just talk I did get feedback that it's in stereo, and people are like, Oh, your voice is either to one side or the other. And I'm like, Well, I'm not going to wear left, dammit. However, in the future videos, I will mix them down to mono. So you can't tell
why it makes sense. I guess that's the speaker on that speaker. The microphone is a stereo microphone.
Ben
Right? And the cameras either to one side of me or the other, which I guess headphone listeners noticed it more than anyone else. But
yeah, I think podcasts are mono.
They shouldn't they should be yeah, there's no there's no I mean, what's the point of having a stereo voice? You know, like, well, you
Ben
can you can just work one person on the left and one person on the right. So there's a little bit of separation.
Yeah, you can do that. But a lot in a lot of ways it starts to get disorienting when you when you do that. So it's a it's a lot easier to let I guess whatever the room is doing dictate where the people are as opposed to like artificially pushing them to one way or the other.
Ben
Okay, Chris, you should tell us what you've been up to since the last podcast.
Let's see. I I dabbled in resin SLA printers. But I haven't done it much just because after a few prints that the print quality is absolutely astounding. I mean what you can get out of a resin printer is amazing. The thing that they don't really sell you or they don't really kind of give you the whole picture is it's messy and smelly when you're working it like even if it doesn't smell when it's in the printer. Once you go at once you take the pen And out and then you go to cure it. It's that whatever that fume is so then you need a well ventilated area and the the you got to wear gloves while you should wear gloves when you when you're handling this stuff. And it because it's photosensitive, you kind of need to store it properly. And at the end of the day, I just felt like, as cool as it is, because I'm not doing it as a commercial entity. I'm not selling prints to anyone. I just for now, the printers kind of sit in the corner. And I don't know if I'll scavenge it for parts. But I definitely have, I've kind of have the attitude of been there done that I don't need to go back right now. So
Ben
I think if if you were using it for business, like you're making jewelry or something, and you had a workflow in place where you could easily manage all that post processing that it requires. That might be different, I think, but for a hobbyist. Yeah, like, it's just I had the form one printer for a while they sent me one and actually sent it back. Because it was such a pain just to deal with the prints. I mean, that looked amazing. But everything about it was the amount of effort it took to get the high quality prints I did not feel was worth the high quality. And for me, it wasn't really what I used 3d printers for anyway.
Yeah, I mean, it's almost like when people used to have do amateur photography, and they'd have a photography studio, in their homes where they'd have the developer, and the cleaner and and all those steps. And that's kind of like, because you'll have your thing with a 3d print. And then you take it out and you dip it into like an alcohol bath. And then you dip it in another bath to clean it. And then you put it under the curing light. And as you said, if you had a space set aside and an like a ventilated area and you had a workflow set up, it's, it's fine. But for me, I just I've done it, and I'm ready to move on to something else versus an FDM printer where you pull it off the bed and it's ready to go. Yeah, yeah, the for me, I
guess because my FDM printer, I print polycarbonate and I have to like bake it afterwards. Bake it at the big at 100 degrees Celsius to like, relax the plastic.
Ben
Oh, so it's not under tension.
Yeah, you can do that with a lot of newer PLA materials to where they'll have your back in an oven. Like a toaster oven.
That's what I do with mine.
My dilemma there is I bought I went to Menards or no Walmart Ben's favorite store and bought a toaster oven. That is not my favorite store. And you know the lady at the checkout, the lady was like, Oh, this is really nice. What you know, what are you going to cook with it and I didn't have the heart to tell her I was just going to use it to bake a bunch of plastic pieces and never use it for anything else because I don't like commingling my food and my raw plastic materials. That's reasonable.
Ben
I have my solder paste in the lowest drawer of my refrigerator.
Actually at macro fan for the longest time we use the freezer to store paste until we got enough people to we're like we're like okay, we need a separate fridge now
Ben
we can justify.
We at work we may or may not have had paste in the butter drawer in the break room fridge.
That's where my solder paste is right next to the butter.
Ben
Well, mine's mine. Mine's in a tube in a bag inside of a plastic bin with a lid. So you know, a couple layers of abstraction. And it's it's totally fine. Anyway, yeah. So you guys wanted to talk about 3d printers today? Yeah. And
so Chris, go ahead and take the first topic there.
Yeah, so I've been following this project called the Hank printer. And I'm not sure how I found out about it initially, but and it's probably hard for people to it's hard to explain once you see it, and it makes a lot of sense. But it kind of grew out of the idea of a Delta printer where the printhead and a Delta printer is kind of hanging down onto the build surface. And in a Delta printer, there's usually three kind of legs going up that the there's three axes that that the printhead hangs off of, and by the way they interact. They can either go up or left or right or you know whatever direction so you get all the axes. That way with a Delta printer What what this, which I apologize, I don't have his name in my notes. What he came up with was, instead of having those legs, he basically hangs the axe, the three accesses from the ceiling, essentially, and then puts the motors on the floor and he uses cables to go up and then down. And by doing that, essentially your print area is as large as the area you can put the printer in. And you so you basically clamp it to the ceiling. So if you had a large space, you could this thing could be printing things, you know, 1020 feet tall. It's still kind of in the works. So he's made a lot of progress. But it's he's still working on it.
Ben
How does the Z work? I'm looking at the animation right now.
Just Just like with a Delta printer, if all three, if you were to pull all three of the wires at the same time it's going to go up.
It actually reminds me of a sky cam that they use for football.
Yeah, that's a that's a great example. Yeah.
So so it's just it's a system that's constantly intention, three points, or multiple points, maybe not three, I'm not exactly sure how this works, but multiple cables that are in tension. And basically by pulling or releasing tension on one or two or three of them, you can change the XY and Z, right. But if
Ben
it's attached to the ceiling, are those wires changing as well? Well,
the polio be what you'll attach something to the ceiling, that then the wires go up. And then over and then down to the printer. Also, there's a pulley on the ceiling, basically. Yeah, I mean, oh, okay. He has, I mean, he's gone through a couple different iterations. But the one I saw, there were plates that went on the floor. Well, it keeps changing. So you'd have to look at it to see what the latest iteration is. But
it probably depends on the the space that needs to be set up in and that kind of stuff.
Yeah, and he's done demos of it in different spaces to kind of show how it's, it can change shape, depending on the the area that it's in. I really like it, because for years, the 3d printing spin kind of at least on the FDM side, it's been Yeah, we had the traditional kind of just what we're all used to now. And then the Delta printers came along. And those were pretty cool. But not really, the Delta design ever really made a lot of sense to me in the sense that you don't need that speed for FDM printing.
So is that the difference between like a normal Cartesian printer or setup, then versus delta? is speed.
At least an industry like if you look at any places factories where they have high speed packaging robots, you'll always see Delta printers because they can like, pick things up and put them down and rearrange things super fast.
Ben
I think the problem with Delta 3d printers is that you still can't extrude as fast as the Delta robot can move. So you're limited by the extrusion?
Yeah, so it doesn't make a lot of sense. But with this hanging printer, he's kind of turned that around. So that now because you don't have these solid structures, you can make it as big as the space that you have available. So how accurate is it? It's okay, it's not great. Not yet. He's working on that. But and that's, I mean, it's open source project, and people are free to contribute, I think the one area where I would like if I actually was talking to the guy and trying to encourage him, he's pushing this idea that it's cheaper, because it's simpler, which is true. But for me, the idea is so appealing that to me, I would say, don't even think about making don't focus on the fact that it's cheaper. Instead focus on how kind of amazing this is from a from a potential functionality standpoint, and focus on consistency and, and, you know, the functionality of it. And I wouldn't really focus on the cheap stuff, because there's been other projects where they've come along and said, you know, we're super cheap. And then I mean, like
Ben
a peachy printer.
I was gonna bring a printer bought
a printer bought. Yeah, the thing is, they work but then when the focus is just on the price, that's what you're kind of known as it's cheap, and then you make all these compromises, to make it cheap. And then you're suddenly out of headroom for oh, you know, we'd really like to use a higher quality part in this. But we promised that it would be, you know, cheap to make, or like you focus on 3d printed parts, and well, maybe, maybe it's worked better with milled parts. So. So that's why I'd be like, You know what, this is such a cool idea. Don't Don't worry about it, the fact that it's cheaper?
Well, that's the one thing about like, printer bought their big thing when they came out on Kickstarter was they were a inexpensive, quote, cheap, unquote, printer. And the thing about doing that is all it takes is someone just to undercut you at that point. Well, they
Ben
were they were the cheapest printer at the time until all the Chinese clones started showing up.
Well, that's all I mean, is they started, you know, basically, people move their manufacturing over the China and just undercut everyone, like, you know, like, replicator to MakerBot. Like, got cloned to hell.
Ben
Yep. That's
true. And so if you, if you if you're basically your one shining thing, that your product is just as cheaper than the competition, someone's going to come along and make a cheaper version of that. And that's going to be their shining achievement of their product. And if so, if you're designing something, that it's the only thing that's good about it is it's cheaper, you probably want to do something else.
Ben
Why did they say you need to be the cheapest? The first or the best? Yes, with a product?
Yeah, one of those three.
And again, I would say in this case, he has such a unique and innovative product. That, to me, that's your, you know, that's your headline feature. So
he's first to do this kind of thing.
Yeah, for sure. And, to me, it's, it's interesting, because like, I could see this, it might not be practical, but in my mind, because it's just these cables, I could see a printer using like, huge cranes to hold up the axes, you know, and then have your cement just kind of blobby and out of the thing. So you could print like building sized objects.
Which thing things of that sort, do exist, just I don't think they use the technology of hanging with cables. And you know, what's what's sort of going through my head right now, as I think about how this thing actually operates is, if you think of the build envelope of the size that the head can actually move around, it seems to me that there would be some trouble if the head moved close to one of the where the cables meets a pulley, in terms of the XY location, that you you have a lot of problems with the head potentially rotating or having an angle to it, depending on how the cable actually leaves the pulley and has to, you know, come down to the head at a specific angle. It's really hard to describe this stuff using just audio. But it's but like with the Delta system, they're rigidly connected to the arms, even though the arms do have the ability to rotate it. I don't know at least seems like there's a lot of stuff to overcome with that.
But you'll notice that even with Delta printers, the beds are always circular. And that's because there is a restriction on the build area. And there is I mean, that is one of the limitations of the Hank printer, although I think in one of the videos, they kind of explore that. And they've been working to make that build envelope bigger, but it's if you didn't need to print something at that height, or that or that scale, then I would not say it's your solution. Like if someone's saying, oh, I want a printer from my house, I'd be like, Well, no, let's build one because you think it's cool, but don't plan on that as being your day to day, you know, go to printer.
Oh, just convert your entire like guest bedroom into a ginormous printer.
Yeah. But like, I think in one of the examples, he was printing that the Tower of Babel at I think it was an art gallery or something. And I think it ended up being two flights tall or something like that. And it's like to actually do that with a traditional printer, even a delta. You need physically it needs to be that tall. And then, you know, the taller it gets, the harder the structural stability gets.
Ben
Well, I should definitely include some links to videos to this printer in your topics so people can visualize it. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, we'll post the links in the YouTube videos. They look really cool.
And then the other thing that I found I found while researching the Hank printer is his latest generation uses this old drive from old driver up dicks. Yeah. And we'll have that in the notes too. But and it's a it's a motor controller designed to basically take like hobby grade brushless brushless DC motors, and give you the the kind of fine servo and closed loop feedback, motor control. As an alternative to stepper motors are these are cool. And I don't know how that'll work because people have been trying to use DC motors for a long time at a lower price level. But if it works, it could be really cool. Like the cupcake
Ben
printer back in the day.
Yeah, yeah. All on the extruder. I mean, all extruders initially were DC motors and but I'm saying like just in general, at all, because years ago, many years ago, back in the late 80s. I worked in industry where we were using DC large DC motors with closed loop servo feedback and all that stuff. But they were super expensive. Because that kind of control was just expensive. But who knows with modern technology, anything's possible.
I'm looking at the demos as I think it's actually Oh, Dr. Robotics. Not Oh, driver optics?
Or Obata? Oh, yeah. Oh, Dr. Robotics? Yeah, yeah.
Man, this thing is fast. These are so much faster than like the stepper based XY tables I've seen. This is cool.
They probably also, stepper motors lose torque really fast with faster speeds. I bet you these hang on to torque a lot further into higher speeds. And it
looks like he's using like, basically brushless motors that you would buy for RC robotic robotics, RC cars and planes and stuff.
Yeah, that's what it's looking like. And they have that. Yeah, they have that really specific sort of banana style connection.
Ben
Yeah, it was basically quadcopter motors, right? Yeah.
But like beef, beefy quad copter motors.
Yeah. Yeah, he's got a draw bought. That looks really cool.
I mean, you definitely benefit from tapping into more commodity parts. If it works, it'll be pretty amazing. Like, because DCE the encoders are always super expensive, too. So I'm be curious to see how he's approaching that.
I'm gonna take a look into that in the future. Nice. And so going off 3d printer topics. MakerBot came up with a new printer.
Ben
Oh, the MakerBot method?
Well, that's why it's called a performance performance 3d printer. Hmm.
Well, what is what is what is that supposed to entail expensive?
Yeah, a lot of us have been talking about it. We don't know what performance 3d printer means. It's a confusing term. I think it means as you said,
Ben
it's $6,500. Is it really
I think it's kind of like, it reminds me of it's like a prosumer. product?
Well, they say it fuses industrial performance with desktop accessibility.
Ben
It seems that what we were talking about printer bought earlier. And it seems like what's happening is the remaining players are going up market. I mean, we're seeing this with Baker gear as well. They're going up market because the low end has been completely overtaken by Monoprice stuff.
I mean, yeah, I've got a Monoprice printer. And for 500 bucks, you cannot beat that printer.
Ben
When I would go to trade shows or maker fairs and random people always asked, what's the cheapest I can build a printed for what's the cheapest printer cheap, cheap, cheap? Well, that's all you know, people always want the cheapest thing. And now you can get you can get like what $175 printer for
Monoprice. Yeah, their low end one is Yeah.
And the funny thing is, I think it was a quite a few years ago. And we might have even talked about this on the last podcast. But people are always saying to me, oh, once they figured out, you know, get rid of the steppers and DC motors in their do this and that they'll be able to buy a 3d printer for no more than what it costs to buy an inkjet printer. And then there'll be an every home and I said back then I said, No. They'll never be in every home because there's not a laser printer in every home. There's not an inkjet and
Ben
everything shouldn't be a laser printer in every home.
That's things a inkjet printer has steppers in it still. So I don't think that's a good argument.
I'm just saying like the thought was, if you make a cheap enough, there'll be in every home. And I said, No, it won't matter how cheap you make it. Because if you don't need a 3d printer, if you don't know how to make it work, then you won't buy one just like not everyone goes and buys an inkjet printer. And I said at the time, the growth area will be the prosumer. Because at that time, the cheapest the absolute cheapest printer you could get was like 50, or $60,000. So if you could say sell a printer for six grand this was the argument I had, like six years ago, was, if you sell a printer for six grand, and it's capable, it has the same capabilities, you'll destroy the market, because all those engineering firms and all those people will want to buy those pictures and put them on every one of their engineers.
Ben
I think that's what MakerBot is hoping to do. You know, obviously, you know, they're not going to buy a cheapy Monoprice printer. But if it's like oh, well, instead of having like a $25,000, straight Asus printer, here's a $6,500 printer, which has comparable quality. I think that's what they're going for.
Yeah. And they're owned by Stratasys. Now, so and that's another thing I noticed was, it seems like they're preferring technologies, that Stratasys either already has a patent on or that they can patent. Which again, makes sense because Stratasys I think within MakerBot. And since Stratasys bought them that I think their attitude is the world stoled from them, which is incredibly inaccurate. For anyone who remembers the history, it's more than the other way around. But so I think going forward, they're going to be pushing these technologies that they have patents on, I think it's
they're going towards reliability. Like, instead of buying a $300 Monoprice printer that you have to basically babysit it while you're printing stuff, or tweak it to make sure it prints good prints. I could see MakerBot basically going okay, let's make something that's really reliable. So you all you have to do is take it out of the box, put it on that engineers desk, and the engineer hits print and it prints. Yeah, guess the
filament is stored in a sealed chamber. So humidity can't affect it. On that printer on the MakerBot method. Yeah, underneath it, like under the bed, it's stored and it doesn't it doesn't have a heated build platform apparently does not have a heated build platform. They claim that it's superior design to heat the chamber, and just let the ambient temperature heat up the build platform.
I mean, when I was printing with PLA, I never use a heated bed. I just printed on tape.
Ben
I still use a heated bed with PLA.
I use the heated bed but I just print right on glass. So I found that around. It depends on the the temperature but somewhere around 80 degrees Celsius, a clean piece of borosil class PLA will just stick to it like it's glued on.
Ben
So how are the heating the chamber? Are they is it just a sealed chamber and it heats passively from the print nozzle? Or do they have some sort of active heating element?
It's a smugness of MakerBot breathing into all the hot air.
It's hard to tell because they just had some fancy animation on their website. But I my guess is there's a Peltor some kind of Peltor in there somewhere and then something to circulate the air around that you might guess so it's
Ben
a miniature inverse dorm frigerator. Yeah.
I mean, it works. I've used pelters to go in the opposite direction to warm up a pie once. So like the kind you eat or raspberry pie. Yeah. An actual edit. Yeah. And edible pie. Yeah.
Ben
I almost kind of wonder if MakerBot if it's okay, so if you can make a printer that works for 300 bucks, and make your boss making their stuff overseas anyway, so there's not that aspect anymore. Maybe it's like, okay, if we can make a decent printer for 300 bucks in China, but we're MakerBot so we can make a really good printer for like $2,000 but then we'll sell it for $6,500. So businesses will take it seriously.
Oh, and you know, if you look at their site, they're offering basically you buy this with support as well.
Yeah, and I think for sure there's there was a point in time where like schools and a lot of places bought MakerBot because of that reason you got support. It was quote reliable, but they had so many problems with their last generation of extruder. Yeah, in the smart exterior, they called it which a lot of people Will derived it. There were places that were getting replacement smart extruders, like every month, and just, they were just constantly shipping new ones. And then
Ben
they they fixed it by drilling a separate hole in it. Because the main problem was that the filament enters. And then basically it is like a 45 degree turn around a encoder wheel. And as you know, Chris has a lot of field filaments that are quite fragile. Yeah, you can break them easily with your fingers. And that's what was happening. As he got on the encoder wheel. The curve was too tight, and they were they were cracking. So what you do or what they did to fix it was actually drilled a different hole straight down, that the filament could enter into leaving the original entry point on the back like a useless prehensile tail.
So So I think, but it'll be interesting to see if how well this goes because I've talked to granted there people from competing companies. But I've talked to a couple people from competing companies that said, their business just went crazy. And it was all former MakerBot customers, and they said, the reason why they're their business exploded was because all of those people were sick of dealing with MakerBot printers that weren't functioning. So they were ready to buy anything that was more guaranteed to work. So is it too late enough for them? MakerBot to get that business back? I don't know.
Ben
Well, I mean, how much cache does a name really have? I mean, if you think about like, you know, we all remember when 3d printing became hot. You know, what, eight whole years ago? It wasn't that long ago, really to think about Yeah. And, you know, for better or worse. MakerBot did lead the charge, you know, and there's no reason Joseph Prusa it it's like, it's like the difference between like a Wozniak and a jobs. You know, Bree was jobs and Prusa was Wozniak. Right?
Well, I would say even within MakerBot, there were people who you would say, because there was three founders of MakerBot. Yeah. To that that are no, we're essentially pushed out where your was is basically.
Ben
Yep. And then all that was left was Bri. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Cuz one of them's that maker gear now. Is yet and yeah, one of the founders of MakerBot. Yeah, it was funny. He was we were talking about I think, this bar during the flight. And he was like, Yeah, I remember I was back there at the very beginning, when like, we were like, living, we were staying in the same room. And like sharing a mattress, we were so broke with three. But then now, you know, one person cashes out another person's left behind, I guess as business.
So I did a quick search on Kickstarter for 3d printers and see if there was 3d printers, like having active campaigns. And there are three right now. That's it. A lot of them have been completed already. And so they're probably not going to get their stuff, because that's just how it goes. But the best thing about is all three of them have in their titles, the more affordable blank. Yeah, so like the most affordable ceramic printer, the most affordable metal SLA the most affordable 3d printer ever.
Ben
Not you should you should compare that to how many active wallet Kickstarters. There are right now,
this, what Adium.
And my plan is for people to not buy printers off of Kickstarter. And unless they are something strange or experimental. But generally I say if don't, first thing you can find them cheaper. You can find them cheap, fairly cheap, anywhere. Monoprice, whatever. But the other thing is imagine you get a printer off of Kickstarter. And it works perfect, let's say for the first six months and then it apart breaks on it. The Kickstarter is over. For all you know the guy he could be completely legitimate and still be gone. Because Kickstarter is a point in time. So
Ben
you're saying that things could be just peachy. But you'd still be up a creek without a paddle? Yeah. Yeah,
I would say if you're if you're buying your first printer, I personally go to Monoprice buy something there. They've they've made hundreds and 1000s of those printers. And so there's parts everywhere.
Ben
Didn't you update the firmware on yours recently? Parker? Yeah,
that was actually the first time I ever dabbled in the open source SNESs of of the maker or the 3d printer community.
Ben
Don't most of them use Marlin anyway? Yes. Okay.
Quite a few. I mean, there's other all Turning there's other popular alternatives like Repetier. And you know there's there's a few others but Marlon is the standout
Ben
Parker I mean, that's surely not the first microcontroller you flashed. So it shouldn't. It shouldn't have been that scary for you. No, no, that
part wasn't scary. It was the whole, like, downloading the source and, and getting that to compile correctly and that kind of stuff. Because usually with open source projects, at least the ones I've used, they just go, here's the source code, and then you spend four days trying to get past compiler errors.
Ben
Oh, that reminds me that, yeah, I remember about three years ago, three or four years ago, when all of those like $500 MakerBot Replicator, one clone started showing up on eBay. Yeah, I bought it for Monoprice. But there was one I think Andrew got one and it had this dongle on it. The dongle was like a consumable. Did I ever tell you about that? No. Oh, it was so jank. So you know, good. Yeah. You know, it's one of those $500 printers, but this one, okay, so you had to have a filament dongle, right? So you buy it, you had to buy a roll of filament from them, and it came with a USB dongle. And he stuck it in the machine. And then in this case, one China. Yes, it was one of those $500 printers. But so we took it apart. And it wasn't even USB device, the USB dongle was powered ground. And then I used to see to an EEPROM which was basically just counting down until the dongle was inactive.
And then you could just write whatever number you wanted to it.
Ben
Well, we just reflash it using the AVR ISP mark two with Marlin because, of course, there's just a MakerBot clone. But yeah, so basically, it was a lot it was a it was it was Marlin firmware that they added basically an I squared C consumable dongle check to DRM. So jank.
That's crazy. Yes.
I wonder if that company saw around? I doubt it.
Ben
Chris. Remember the old days of having to wrap nichrome wire around screws and then covering it with like putty?
I remember. Yeah.
Is that to make your own heaters?
Yeah. Back in the day, we would take? Yep, nichrome wire, wrap it around a barrel. Or like, I think the first one I ever made first extruder ever made. I used a TIG welding tip. And then, yep, wrapped the Nitrome wire around it and put some ceramic paste on it. And
Ben
that was back when maker gear, they kind of got their start making the good extruder for the cupcake. Right. Yeah, because it was a stepper because at the time that the cupcake was using a DC motor, but the maker gear was a stepper motor with a gearbox on it. And it worked so much
even before that maker gear started because at the time, the MakerBot, their extruder would jam up constantly. And then you'd have to try to clean it out. And you'd have all this ABS stuck in there and either could burn it out or, you know, soak it in acetone, but I wanted to have a spare in case because I actually broke one of my barrels trying to remove the nozzle from it. And I contacted them they're like, sorry, we have no spares. We're not going to have any spares until we finished shipping out orders. And I don't know how but I ended up getting in contact with maker gear and he had he was making replacement parts barrels, nozzles and insulators. So I bought the parts from him and put it on my printer. The same DC motor, same everything else just new barrel extruder and nozzle barrel and it's heat insulator. The second I put that on, I didn't have another jam after that. So I was sold because he basically his parts made my printer functional.
Ben
Awesome. Hey, what's this topic? consumable? consumable? What's this topic? Consider the humble loofah loofah. Yeah, I was at that plant that looks like a sponge. It is a sponge.
I was thinking the other day about how different additive manufacturing is then traditional subtractive or even casting where like forever we've made things by grinding them or cutting them and getting them into the shape we want. But with additive, it's, you're basically growing the shape you want. And I think that's really different. It's a different way of manufacturing. It's a different way of thinking about manufacturing and as you get to lower and lower levels, you know eventually just moving, you know, molecules around or even atoms around. And once you get to that point, like all of manufacturing could radically change. If a machine can literally just push molecules into positions, then the manufacturing has just been amazing. And then it dawned on me that there is something like that right now. And that's the way nature works. Yeah, everything biological, it grows out of raw materials. And you know, there's molecular machines that are following DNA codes, to construct whatever it is that it's growing. And I mentioned the LUFA, because a lot of people who own LUFA sponges, and they don't even know where they come from, they just have a lift of sponge they think it's either made, or they literally just don't have any idea. And then it comes from this thing that looks like a giant zucchini or something. And then they peel it apart and process it and pull out the loofah sponge. And yet, when you look at the interior of a loofa sponge, it looks like the infill from a really fancy 3d print algorithm.
You know, we should have that as an infill option in your slicer.
Yeah, loofah loofah option. You could never launch and say never, but trying to program a slicer to produce infill, like that would be insane. And yet, I imagine within a loofa it's just growing, it doesn't even have an algorithm, you know, it just happens? Well, it's
Ben
probably, you know, procedural in nature, there's like a base seed to it. Pardon the pun. Yeah. And that dictates the manner in which it grows. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you think about it, Chris, all technology is basically reverse engineering of nature.
I would agree, except the way we've been doing it like with heavy manufacturing, machines and and CNC is that's not the way nature does things. And that's why I think this is interesting, because if you imagine using a technology like CRISPR, and let's say you reprogrammed a watermelons, DNA, so that when it was done growing, you cracked it open instead of being watermelon. It was, I don't know, liver. Well.
Ben
We did already reprogram watermelon DNA. I mean, watermelon is quite different than it was hundreds of years ago. It's like much like a dog. It's been bred into a different kind of kind of fruit.
I think, what I don't remember exactly what book it is. But Richard Dawkins has a book where he dedicates an entire chapter to cabbage. And the fact that cabbage as we know, it, just flat out did not exist. That is entirely like a genetically engineered vegetable that we created.
Ben
There's quite a few of those like Bananas,
bananas at all, because it can't reproduce by itself right now.
Well, in the banana, what was the most common banana was wiped out by a banana plague, or something like that. And that's how we ended up with the bananas we have now although there's a new plague forming that they say if that hits bananas might cease to exist completely. So lot to 3d print them. Yeah, get them while they're while you still can. Yeah, and like corn is another example of that. Modern corn doesn't look at all like what corn looked like 100 years ago. So. But that's usually I mean, there's some genetic engineering some of it is genetic engineering, just by crossbreeding but
or selectively picking the plants and
Yeah, or like,
Ben
you know, selecting dogs with short legs and 1000 years later, you have a corgi. Yeah.
Or crossbreeding corgis with Huskies to make Huskies with tiny legs. Which sounds terrible, but or he's
hoagies.
Ben
I mean, really, if you think about it, it's it's, you have a species humans and they're smart enough to actually affect the evolution of the creatures around them. Yeah. Which is kind of weird. But if you think about it, it's still all part of nature because, you know, would you say a beaver damming up a river is unnatural. I mean, it's a creature just like
us. Yeah. Well, and but imagine like, if you could this, you know, like the loofa, which is a natural plant, but like, imagine you had a zucchini that you cut open and it had tenderloin steak in it, because it's already cooked. Even Yeah. And then it's like, well, what do you say to someone who's vegan, you know, it's like, well, it's a plant. You know, it just produced meat.
Ben
I mean, if we're talking about it, that I mean, yeah, you had the subtractive manufacturing or caste manufacturing for 1000s of years. Now we have additive manufacturing, but what you're talking about is still, you know, several steps even beyond that organic manufacturing. Yeah, what I'm saying is, at which point you'd basically become a god. I don't know. But that but yes, he totally would be a god because you'd be creating things that that are life that actually can like, you know, build themselves and sustain them. Wait, okay, so when you get pregnant, you don't have to sit there and 3d print a baby, it just kind of pops out. Right? Every every pregnant woman listening to this, oh, it just pops out.
Right. So given given Chris's example of, I guess, the lever melon, the lever, we, I guess there's life in that lever at that point, or like a craftsman wrench inside of a melon husk?
Well, yeah, I mean, like, if you can, if a plant can. If the if the biological material in a plant can move molecules around, then if you were to feed enough, say iron into the nutrient bath for the plant, I don't know why I couldn't just move the molecules around, say, yeah, you cut it open and find a wrench,
Ben
I think I think there's randomness to that as well. Because you know, all of your loofah sponges aren't going to be identical. They're going to be different based off their environments, and the light and the shade. And like, you can see that with a house plant, like you can move it around, and then it'll actually start moving toward the light source. So if you're trying to, like create a wrench inside of that,
well, you might get a 10 millimeter, or you might get a half inch.
Ben
Exactly. So, but that's interesting way of thinking about it. I mean, I think before you even would need to do that. I think, as you're talking about just like, you know, additive manufacturing with the molecular manipulation is probably something that would happen before we're able to actually grow our own wrenches.
So you're talking like building a Star Trek replicator, then?
I guess, I mean, I don't know exactly what the, quote, science behind a replicator is. But if it's a similar idea that they're using molecules, you know, or using something to be able to assemble something out of component, I guess that's my point is, is that everything around us is is made by collections of molecules. So if you achieve the point where you could manufacture at that level, move molecules around, you could literally grow anything.
Ben
Right. But would it be growing? I mean, if you're, if you have a machine that's moving molecules, that's different than growing, because things that grow grow themselves,
right, right. I meant when I meant grow, I meant additive manufacturing that, you know, it would it would construct, instead of being constructed by taking something and banging away at it, you it would grow in the sense that like, when you watch a resin printer, it's like the object seems to be growing out of it.
Ben
Right. So basically, we're talking about as additive manufacturing is at a much, much, much, much, much, much smaller scale. Yeah. And I guess if you think about in a way that you talked about subtractive manufacturing, in the end, you're taking a 1.75 millimeter filament, and you're mechanically, basically making it smaller than squirting it out. But, yeah, I mean, I mean, they can move, you know, they make molecular pictures already, that's already a thing. So it'll happen.
And honestly, I think one of the areas that that really can shine in is the area of, of small electronics, like we're already at the point where the gate on on a MOSFET is 100 atoms across. So if if we could accurately place silicon or silicon dioxide atoms on top of, you know, a pn junction or PN channels, we could we could theoretically get to what is like the best MOSFET? Using that technology,
Ben
you know, until you get into quantum mechanics. Well, yeah,
I mean, we're already fighting that as it stands, right. But like, there's, they're there, if we could find the optimal arrangement of atoms that has not grown in a heat chamber, you know, with gas. Yeah. Effectively, we put every atom where we want it to be and you basically say, given this materials, this is the best MOSFET that can be for whatever application. Yeah, cuz if you think about the way
Ben
they make Why can't I think of CPUs? It's, you know, they do it layer by layer, and it's kind of like a photographic process still, and that's where the limitation comes from it. And then again, in the end, it's just like, oh, you know, materials are laying down, wherever you want them to lay down. But yeah, you're talking about discrete atomic control.
Oh, yeah. You start off with a A perfectly I guess we're this is super idealistic, but you start with a perfectly flat silicon wafer, and then you build on top of that or you etch out, you know, I guess, chambers and you put Oh, no, no, you can't add to that subtract. Okay. Okay, so yeah, I guess, I guess to start from again, you, you wouldn't need
Ben
to do that. Because if you can, you can arrange molecules, you know, they like they stick together like little ball bearings, right? In the corners, you know, you can make well, near perfect walls, you know, they wouldn't be straight because they're they're Maalik, artmous iron atoms. Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. I mean, I'm sure we'll get there at some point as it
takes, it takes a little bit of time, chemical processes work a little bit faster than moving individual atoms.
Ben
Right. And then, as we've all seen, like Moore's law is totally done. And I think that's why is because we're pushing the limits of, because, you know, we're technically still making, you know, CPUs the same way we were decades ago, just at much higher precision.
Yeah, the other thing that would be interesting is the, the product that you could produce would be limited by the source materials. And the plans, you know, the model, but one machine in theory, could, you know, create a wrench and then the next run, it could create a chip, as long as you fed the right kind of goop into it, so that it had the right kind of particles to move around. Once it can move. Once you can move atoms around, it doesn't matter if it's moving those atoms around to create a liver, or if it's moving those atoms around to create, you know, a wrench or integrated circuit or anything.
So I've got a really good trademark term for that. goop. God, goop, God, goop, goop TM.
Ben
Well, wouldn't you have to have some sort of hopper that has a bunch of atoms of different elements, you just have
every element? It's just let's just worry of just all the atoms.
It's just a hopper that looks like the periodic table.
Yeah. Yeah, and if you made a lot of, if you made a lot of a particular thing, then it would be like the stupid printer ink where your black is out. But your magenta for some reason is fine. Yep. Yep. So you know, when guys titanium cartridge would be empty, and, you know, is, neon one would be full. And he'd be swearing at us because we're charging them. You know, a million dollars for a new printer cartridge.
Ben
What actually causes two atoms of titanium to stick together to be a piece of solid titanium?
Well, it's, it's one of four known forces, the Electro. It's the strong force, the weak force. Gravity and electromagnetic. Electromagnetic Yeah.
Ben
So they would be electromagnetically connected because they're atoms with electrons.
Yeah, that's right. That's right, though. Okay, because they form bonds. Good. I'm not entirely sure. Specifically that material, but it would just be an electromagnetic bond between the two, right? I've we're probably stepping out into territory that we're all not. Exactly. Yes, did.
But I think it's all forces acting, because like the strong and weak forces are important too, in that scenario, because that also affects how atoms are bound together. But you're right, we're way out of our
way. Now, you're really talking about playing god?
Yeah, I know, I know, if you have like two really flat pieces of similar metal, like, let's say two pieces of steel, and they're very, let's say they're perfectly flat, and you stuck them together, they were actually cold weld together. And that's actually how they put together pieces, like in outer space sometimes is they've been experimenting with this cold welding kind of stuff.
Well, you can do that with gauge blocks, that's sort of one of the tests of a good gauge block, you ring them together, and they stick
three of them together. So whatever that force is, is what keeps most things together, I think. And, you
Ben
know, I think if you got to that scale, Chris, you would need some sort of procedural generation as well. Because think about how much data it would take to store all those atoms as attributes in a device list. an XY location
for each one, or XYZ. And
that's why that's why I go back to like the LUFA. Because or trees, or you know, you look at the roots of a tree you look at the branches of a tree and you see patterns. Well, some people call it the thumb of God, but it's like it's a fractal mathematics that can define those those complicated structures, right. So
Ben
like, let's say we're living in a simulated universe. And my monitor Stan, which is made of wood is fake right. Now, you wouldn't program in all of the atoms represent the inside of that unless I was to cut it in half, right? So you either have to repeat Didn't pattern like a texture and a video game or a procedurally generated pattern. And then a define of the outside of it, you know, you only define what is absolutely necessary to define the object. And that's where you get into fractals, the way things grow repeating patterns and loofah sponges. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like one of those things like, you know, you would actually you'd create an atomic printer. And then the things you learn along the way about it, you'd be like, Oh, we are living in a simulated universe. Where there there is a God, you know, you would actually learn, you'd actually figure that out in the process of doing this, you know, because if you're talking about like, atomic manipulation, like maybe the trick is just to hack the code of a simulated universe.
I don't know. I think if we're living in a simulated universe, then coders need to be fired because it's really buggy.
Is there is there a support ticket system that we can put some tickets in their thoughts and prayers? Thoughts in
Ben
Your call will be answered in the order that was received.
And they all get reply. They all get responded with, you know, not an issue working as designed. It's a feature.
Ben
Not a bug. Nice. It's like oh my God, why does water expand when it gets cold instead of contract? Ah, screw it.
Not a polar polar molecules is a bug in the system.
Ben
Like Bethesda design the universe. Earth 76 Hey, wait, Chris is one of the five people who liked that game. So we get we can't trigger him.
Oh, no, I under. It's a deeply flawed game, but I still enjoy playing with my friends.
Ben
So any other closing topics regarding 3d printers?
I don't think so. We've been rambling pretty good for the past hour. So if y'all want to sign this out, okay.
Ben
That was the macro fab engineering podcast. I was your guest Benjamin heckendorn
and I was another guest Chris Kraft.
And we are your hosts Parker Dolman
and Steven Gregg. See you later guys take it easy
Thank you. Yes, you are listener for downloading our show. You have a cool idea project topic or a loofa that you want Steven and I to know about. Tweet us at macro lab at Longhorn engineer with no O's or at analog E and G or emails at podcasts at Mack fab.com. Also, check out our Slack channel. If you're not subscribed to the podcast yet, click that subscribe button. That way you get the latest episode right when it releases and please review us wherever you listen as it helps the show stay visible and helps new listeners find us
Ben Heckendorn and Chris Kraft rejoin the podcast to discuss if Open Source Hardware has run its course or is the dream still alive in our souls.
Benjamin Heckendorn rejoins the podcast to discuss Pinball Hardware and Text Adventure Games.
