week of oct 1, 2018

week of sept 24, 2018

week of Sep 17, 2018

week of Sep 10, 2018

Heated Bed : https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BJ1WMltjScTuQ7paGLvs0HMpxtESkitffxhm0d8K4Sc/edit?usp=sharing

Control Panel: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bGoJ7T7Y26oi9NQTS1o30Oaw3tvnPTD7jWdnfiWRA2Q/edit#slide=id.p

Governance, marketing, personal support for personnel changes

Axis X, Y, Z: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AKgYVq1v1WCgCvUxsRGYh2Awzl4s1mI75tHxGzxw0zg/edit?usp=sharing

D3D

Printer Documentation

I think I am almost from the herding earthworms to the herding cats phase of this project.

Spent the last week investigating motors (for extruder as well as shredder) and coordinating our last steps before we start building. Tomorrow we will be printing our first part, and will have hopefully finished nesting so we can figure out what stock to buy for the shredder. Additionally on the shredder, we are going to take the precious plastic design and modify it to use non metric materials, that should be (unfortunately) easier to source in the US. Once this is done, I will create a freecad file for just the shredder assembly, and we will have a starting point for a shredder, for which we will design a universal power adapter system to use geared down stepper motors/overhead drive systems for multiple machines/used treadmill motors etc. I have spent most of my time trying to figure out the particulars of this and what motors/power supplies we can 'get away with' on the extruder, but don't have coherent findings yet. Unfortunately I have another school obligation during the meeting tomorrow, but should be able to watch it soon after.

I anticipate having a functioning extruder and shredder by December 15, and a freecad file for the shredder by new years, giving us a pretty good 3d printing plastic recycling infrastructure. Some students and faculty are quite interested in injection molding as well, so we may be able to contribute machine refinement in that form.

Grant is finished and getting turned in. Have been outlining the best way to break down the construction of these two machines, as well as investigating a few more changes that need to be made to make the shredder integrate into GVCS.

Met with Andrew Deceuster (USU faculty member) today about pricing materials for our shredder. We discussed some modifications which would make the shredder simpler to fabricate and potentially out of recycled parts (truck springs etc.) as well as more durable, and also a universal motor interface with a disconnect clutch in the case of jamming to protect the motor. Another student has managed to wrangle some ABS to start printing the filament maker, and the budget for the grant is now finalized and we will submit it shortly, and begin printing the filament maker parts for which we have plastic next week.

Also beginning talks about doing a demo of the CEB press at USU.

Did some more time trying to figure out fabrication drawings. I'm going to have to vokoscreen what I'm doing so someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong. USU Open Source Club did some estimates on filament extruder print volume (I am rounding it to 1250 cm3) which looks like it should take 1kg and a half of filament to print from most suppliers. We will see how that pans out. Our filament maker budget is coming out to just over $500, but this is including buying packs of 100 nuts etc. so I think we can shave it down more than that. Once we build our shredder we plan to make another iteration with mostly recycled ABS.

Spent some time two nights ago trying to get OSE Linux to connect to University internet. Something about Ubuntu seems to not want to allow me to sign in using their web based signin.

Ended up downloading parts to a USB drive, and got the shaft of the teeth done, but I can't seem to get other parts to populate the drawing bench even with different methods of selection. Hitting up other developers to try to figure this out.

Meeting, did some dev recruiting.

Installed newest build of OSE Linux finally, using LiLi Linux Live creator. No problems so far.

I also wanted to log my thoughts about my work trying to recruit OSE Developers from Utah State University students. I do not believe that University students are a good talent pool at large to draw from for the developers program as currently structured. This is because University students already have a lot of pressures coming from multiple directions. For example, I had several students who were very interested in the developers program, however they were unsure that their faculty advisors would allow them to use the program as an internship credit, and definitely couldn't devote time otherwise. By the time I organized a meeting, it was also too late in the semester to reorganize their schedule to accommodate this, so it also needs to be something that is planned ahead or offered on an ongoing basis. That said, the Outdoor Product Design and Development program also needs to provide internship opportunities, and this may be something fruitful to follow up with, since I used the developers program as an internship credit and they are also part of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences.

I do believe, however, that if students can be found whose career interests directly match with what OSEs mission is (for example, myself) that they could form teams to undertake design sprints and workshops towards the critical path that will fit into the schedules of students with more traditional career aspirations.

So, along these lines, I have a group of about 7 students who, while not able to commit to the developers program right now, are interested in open source and are forming an official club with me, which is focused on sustainability and resilience open source projects, but definitely has a distinct affection for OSE. Our faculty advisor is very excited about our club, but the condition of her singing on as our advisor was that we conduct peer reviewed research as at least a part of our activities. Nick, the student who was most interested in the developers program, is putting together a grant proposal to build a shredder and at least two Lyman filament extruders (which will net our club funding for a total of two shredders and at least three extruders) in order to test degradation of various properties in multiple re-extrusions of reclaimed plastic, and releasing his findings in an open source format. This is not related to the critical path development of blueprints, per se, but is very useful information for those interested in iterating distributive enterprises.

We are also in the very early stages developing some outreach materials and workshop curriculum to introduce the ideas of open source hardware, distributed enterprises, and other concepts to youth via the 4H program Cache Makers, as well as the community at large. In fact, the machines not related to Nicks grants are going to be built with grant money we hope to obtain with the express purpose of demoing these machines at fairs/University events etc. I am hopeful that the large amount of tech and engineering companies, as well as agricultural entities in Cache Valley and Northern Utah at large will result in professionals interested in volunteering becoming aware of the developers program as a result of our efforts.

I believe that these are the best methods for involving students in OSE, that is to say, replicating machines, documenting their effectiveness, and creating proof of concept distributive enterprises where the stakes are low (since a university is essentially a small experimental city that receives an inflow of money not dependent on economic return) rather than being involved in ongoing development. I, however, am hoping to spend less time meeting with so many people and get back to actually contributing to development instead of just networking, even though I seem to have a better knack for the latter. I will definitely be attempting to combine my hours with people I can assign tasks to though.

I will be at the CEB press demo at the University of Utah on Monday as well, and have been trying to get the word out there for that, but we will see if any faculty are able to make it down.

Met with USU Student Association. My time has been mostly similar meetings trying to get our group legit so that we can finalize our grants and get filament makers+shredders made. I don't really know if that is critical path relevant, so I'm unsure how much to log. I am definitely finding the same thing, that college students have pressures on them that won't make them ideal developers, so I am trying to discover ways to involve them in critical path work via design sprints, workshops etc.

I have been spending a lot of time coordinating with faculty to try and get funding to iterate the filament maker and try to find interested developers. I have only been able to spend about three hours on actually pricing the filament maker or anything directly related to building one.

I gave a presentation to SOSNR (Student Organization for Society and Natural Resources) on Monday which brought us two new people to our meeting yesterday. Also got one student interested in documentation from journalism. We obtained some parts for the filament maker (switches, relays, fans) from a faculty member, and Bengt did a filament volume estimate, soon to be a price estimate. We are finalizing our budget to apply for a BGG grant, and I am continuing to network, including with a member of a local conservation organization I met at the SOSNR meeting who really hates Russian Olives and enjoys seeing tractors destroy them, a possible candidate for a tractor customer.

Worked on pricing our filament maker build. Came up with 548.50 for full market price for the non printed parts. This will go down as we are able to find sources for specific parts (not buyin ga 100 pack of screws) and find donations for materials, so I expect a similar cost for the first build of this machine when filament for calibration and testing is included.

Ongoing tasks:Bengt calculating plastic volume, Veronica working on timeline for grant, Dixon investigating local sources for materials and coordinating with Amber to get us 4H certified.

I arranged and prepared for doing a short presentation at the SOSNR (Student Organization for Society and Natural Resources) meeting on Monday Oct 2nd to hopefully find developers.