Erik's blog Discussing open source innovation, personal fabrication and a new and better world

RepRap: time saving tools

These are some tools that saved me a lot of time and frustration building my RepRap. I should have bought some of these tools sooner though! Click image to enlarge. On the left is...

Building RepRaps in Utrecht, NL!

Nederlandse versie: zie onderaan At FabLab Utrecht, a.k.a. Protospace several RepRaps are going to be built (five to start with). I’m supporting the group with advise (and of course encouragement 🙂 ). It will...

RepRap: Acrylic extruder mods

The gears in my acrylic extruder were skipping where there was a moderate amount of resistance given by the drive shaft. Also, because of the distance between the two gears being too big, there...

RepRap: Rotary encoder

Something I almost forgot to share is the optical encoder disks. I made those when Chris made his achievement on the encoder. The encoder on the extruder is an important step towards better 3D...

RepRap = also a milling machine

I just visited a conference about the launch of GPLv3. There was a very nice ambience. People I talked with were very interested in the possibility of the RepRap, and about it being a...

(AVR-)Dude, Arduino crashes fixed!

In anticipation of new thermoplast extruder parts, I built a Dremel toolhead for my RepRap. It should be able to do light milling, such as PCB isolation routing! I was hoping to do some...

RepRap: Before nanotechnology

It’s always nice to hypothesize about the future. I think most will agree that nano-technology (as in nanomanufacturing) just isn’t there yet, not discounting ‘smart fabrics’ (nanomaterials) or chemistry for that matter. As you...

Printcrime

Printcrime (Originally published in Nature Magazine, January 2006) The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight. I remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da’s look of ferocious concentration as he...

Time lapse? ;)

I like my own time lapse video’s of the RepRap 3D printer build but that’s documentation. This guy makes a real art of it (well, actually he reversed some video’s, ahh well) and uses...

Creative Wii interfaces

I like new computer interfaces. It’s amazing that the Wii is allowing many people to make their own creative hacks that are actually quite powerful. Wii finger tracking 3D tracking I can imagine that...

RepRap: Darwin almost finished!

More progress, more videos! I had a lot of time on my hands this week, so I almost finished my RepRap! Here are some time lapse videos. Gaining height: part 1 (40 minutes of...

Actually building!

After receiving all those bits (from bytes) I had to postpone my build further because of an exam. That’s done now. I can finally start RepRapping!!! To document my build, it would be nice...

BitsFromBytes arrived!

The bits finally arived! Too bad I have an exam tomorrow. This kind of suspense is probably lethal. Anyway, here are some pictures and a small review. I’m really satisfied with the quality of...

Cool PCB setup

A while ago, while I was waiting for the BitsFromBytes stuff, I had to do something. So I decided to tidy the things I already had made. This is the result of the PIC...

End User Rapid Manufacturing

This is from a survey among industry leaders in Rapid Manufactoring: "Krailling near Munich, January 28th, 2008: Mass production in the Western world is on the brink of a silent revolution and e-Manufacturing is...

Started building a RepRap

Project RepRap I’ve started building a RepRap. Read more… Also take a look at the website: www.reprap.org What is the RepRap In short: It is a 3D printer capable of printing it’s own parts....

Bachelors’ Thesis finished!

Finally, I’ve finished the bachelors’ thesis! The subject was "BIOLOGICALLY INSPIRED COMPUTING: The emergence of intelligence through evolving Artificial Neural Networks" and it was awarded an 8 out of 10. Well deserved if I...

Dawkins and Schrödingers Cat

Watch this video, and notice the funny T-Shirt at 9.39s. If you don’t get it, and you don’t hate philosophical topics (I mean why this cat is alive…) just google for Schrödinger’s Cat.

David Deutsch – Het Multi Universum – Google Video

“David Deutsch is een van de pleitbezorgers van de zogenaamde Vele Werelden-interpretatie van de quantummechanica, een uitleg die stelt dat er meerdere universa tegelijkertijd bestaan, universa waarin bovendien nog verschillende kopieën van onszelf rondlopen....

Video Tip: Human Computation

Google Video Tip: Human Computation Two statistics: Billions of hours are spent playing solitaire in a year. By comparison: Digging the panama canal took only as much as work as an average day of...

*Video Tip* World Poverty: Myths debunked

The subject matters. That said, the form as well… I only wished our professors would do their lecture like this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4237353244338529080#10s It seems however, that the Swedish are able to repeat the trick: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7996617766640098677#10s

Lecture on science: Wet vs. dry Neural Networks

Google Video Tip: Panel Discussion: The Role and Future Prospects for Math/Computational Theories Source: Berkely University URL: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5154297266379993899&q=neural+network Why I liked it: I’m very much interested in both biological systems and computerized systems and...

New Blog!

Dear Readers, Welcome to my Blog. I’ll be writing about fun things I do, interesting things I learn about and anything else that may spring to my mind. If you share my interest in...