Hi Guys,
My apologies for removing some posts and comments during last 2 days. The main reason for that were some negative comments I received in my last post.
After thinking a lot, I realized that I will never be able to make everyone happy, which means a lot of people will complain and provide negative comments.
So I decided to do two things:
1) Leave everything open: posts and comments, and not remove any negative comment as people should be free to say whatever they want.
2) Write this post to make things crystal clear.
I spent almost 4 years and lot of money to reach at this point, I can tell you that I have better resolution than all 3d printers under 25K USD (before tax), for this reason I DO expect to make some money out of it. There is nothing wrong on it.
My plan is make most of components open source (90%) and sell just few components (10%) in a kit. But if you don't want to spend any money you can build the remaining 10% at your own as the main concepts will be shared. I have no problem with that.
I do expect to deposit a patent as I don’t want another company selling some components of the kit. But I don’t mind if you do it for your own at your home and share for free. Also this helps me in future in case any company sues me for patent infringement.
I have been working a lot past weeks to prepare things I can share with you but this will take sometime as it is not easy and I can't spend 100% of my time on it because I have my own daily work as I need to make money to live. For this reason I expect to finish this by end of 2011. (I need at least 6 months to finish the software)
I will focus my work on finishing the project so you may see less posts and answers for the comments; and NO answer for negative ones.
Why I need money from this project? It is not to cover my costs… It is to give me enough free time to implement some other cool projects and make them available for mass market. I already have another 3 nice projects that I would like to start but I don’t have time for it.
If you are not happy and think I should not make any penny out of it, you still can follow the blog and build your own 3d Printer. I will be happy with your success in building a 3D Printer on your own and making it open-source!!!
Cheers,
Junior
Sounds fair to me. Frankly I was surprised by the negative tone of some of the previous comments when Junior raised the prospect of selling something/protecting his ideas (rather than giving everything away.
ReplyDeleteIf Junior has a patentable innovation, then he should protect it, and it's entirely legitimate he should profit from it. If in the process he still gives away plans and/or sells components at a price that allows hobbyists to acquire a high-quality 3d printer cheaply, then kudos to him. If of course Junior's innovation isn't patentable (i.e. he has unwittingly or otherwise reinvented something that already exists), then he won't get a patent, and it's of no consequence. He definitely doesn't 'owe' anyone in the maker community anything - wanting to turn inventing/engineering/whatever you want to call it into a profitable endeavour is an entirely legitimate aim.
Luke
Haters gonna hate. Keep up the great work Junior!
ReplyDeleteMake all the money you want. Go for it. Just don't stand on the shoulders of others and then buy patent monopoly protection that legally prevents others from standing on yours for two decades. It's especially mean spirited when you ask for crowd funding.
ReplyDeleteYou also need to be realistic. Patents are defensive nuclear weapons. Only super powers can afford to defend with nuclear weapons. The small guy can not win. If you can't even afford to not have a job so you can work on this project then how in the world do you think you can lawyer up and battle the big boys to defend your patent?
Saying that.. I don't believe your patent is for protection. It is more likely to make an acquisition of your project/business from one of the super powers more lucrative. After that happens the patent goes in their portfolio for their nuclear weapons chess game and any promises made to the little guy being able to reproduce your work becomes legally questionable.
Sorry if I have offended you in this post or my previous one. You are doing great engineering and I truly want you to profit on it. I just find patent monopoly offensive to the spirit of not inventing in a vacuum.
Keep up the good work...
ReplyDeleteI'm really interested into this kind of 3D printer and would buy the kit without hesitation, and yeah there is no shame into making some money (we all need some to make a living)
Anyway thanks for the good work and sharing with us
Can you give an estimate on the resin cost? You said 'similar to the market' but I'm not sure what that would be.. can't lookup photoreactive resin on Amazon ;)
ReplyDeleteThe resin cost makes the difference on if this is a project that can be accessible to a hobbyist or not.
I have researched material cost and the cheapest cost is around $4.50 a cubic inch. Most material I have found is sold either in 1 kilos or 10 kilo amounts. I have found that on the cheap side, a kilo will run around $250 and is roughly 24 ounces of liquid resin. The prices only go up from there for more exotic resins. This resin I mentioned is fine for most rigid applications. Hope this gives you an idea.
ReplyDelete@Jon
ReplyDeleteDamn, that's a lot of money...
I'm not that good in complex DIY-stuff anyways.
So I guess I'm just gonna follow this blog for the next few months and see what happens.
Btw. I don't really see the problem in Junior wanting to make a bit money out of his work...
Hello,
ReplyDeleteIt is a pity that some people had bad comments to you. Damn, seems that you work hard and you MUST have all the credits for that. I hope that you can finally realize your projects and make a lot, lot of money! I've already my budged ready to be spent! I read that, in this blog, many people want a free-sharing of your knowledge. I don't think that is completely a correct behaviour. From my point of view (I'm not a technic-man), I'm impatient that you complete the 3D print to be sold, just to ask if you can create one complete for me ;-). All the money that you'll ask will be ok for me.
My best whishes for your amazing project.
Best regards,
Mattia
Well said Mattia.
ReplyDeleteI would like to clear one thing up as well. I don't think that any of the comments was targeted at Jr making money. Of course you should make money with this project.
ReplyDeleteWhat caused the trouble was the patent issue. Patents and OpenSource do not go together. Either you keep everything close to yourself, that's fine, and then you are commercial.
Or you go OpenSource, in which case you will have at least five people on this list who are capable and willing to actively help you. There is - for example - no reason the write a slicing program. There are plenty of OpenSource slicers out there that can be adapted to your needs. But I seriously doubt that any serious developer will lend you a hand if in the end he or she still has to pay for a commercial product.
Crowd sourcing is exactly that: you open up your knowledge and get money to implement something. If you go commercial, it's exactly the same, only then it is called corporation and what you will get is investors who want to have contracts. Promising not to sue individuals over a patent you hold, but only corporations? How's that going to work?
To finish this lengthy comment: many here are happy to help, but can't under the current circumstances. Nobody ever complained that Bree Pettis makes money with the MakerBot CupCake. And nobody complains that you want to make money. I hope you will end up with a nice machine.
Good job, stay on target.
ReplyDeleteI can offer you my developer skills!
ReplyDeleteWell said @Mathhias. I only started this dispute after reading about Jr filling for a patent. @billyzelsnack is right, patent is not for protection. As @gomishora points, finally 3DS after a settlement with Envisiontec, now both sell a common low end 3D printer.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I EXPECT ON JR MAKING MONEY, talking good money ! We all respect that.
Its just that if I knew from the beginning that he would not go open source, I would not spend that much time on his blog. So far only thing I learned from this blog, is repetition of existing state-of-the-art.
FYI: Jr, only thing we are all looking after, is a decent working system SOON. So decide first how to go, and focus. Keep a note though, that business and R&D is not an easy thing to do by one man show.
Take care and the advise of your loyal followers.
And well said @afroditi. I look forward to updates over the rest of this year!
ReplyDeleteDo you have any ball park ideas about how much a 3D printer would cost all together (or excluding the projector)? Also will there be a projector of choice or should any XGA projector do the job (already have one of those).
ReplyDeleteI really hope it's something I can afford since I have some other projects I'd really like to work on that would require some 3d parts that need prototyping. I couldn't justify paying a third party to build my prototype parts when I don't know if they'll work yet whereas a 3D printer of my own could let me experiment and if a project turns out to be a dud then it would just be ready for the next project!
Alas a PhD student's salary doesn't go too far so I'm hoping I don't have to raise $10k.
Well said Junior
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletesound fair
ReplyDeletebut i think more picture will be good in the future
"I do expect to deposit a patent as I don’t want another company selling some components of the kit. But I don’t mind if you do it for your own at your home and share for free. Also this helps me in future in case any company sues me for patent infringement."
ReplyDeleteall the ppl talking about opensource, should read this sentence over and over again....
junior: keep up your genius work! haters gonna hate!
Junior, will you be making the software cross-platform? Windows, Mac, Linux, or even Ubuntu?
ReplyDeleteAll the people who are freaking out about the idea of patents conflicting with open-source are lacking some basic background on what patents mean.
ReplyDeleteJust because something is patented doesn't mean the patent can't be licensed for free to anyone who asks. It doesn't mean the patent can't be placed in the public domain or open-sourced, or given a "Creative Commons Attribution" type licensing limitation.
It also doesn't prohibit crowdsourcing, as long as he is clear on which patents will be freely available to those who contribute.
What it means is that someone else CAN'T patent the same thing, and that whoever patented it first gets to set the rules.
He absolutely should apply for every possible patent before he shares the plans. This is to keep Zcorp or some other large company from patenting it first, making a machine that costs 10 times as much, then suing Junior out of existence for patent violation.
This is totaly normal that you sell something to pay a little bit your fantastic work.
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with this???
Can't wait to begin to build my 3d printer...
:0)
Best regards
Francesco
Here's the thing I don't understand though, Junior: you could be recouping your development costs /now/.
ReplyDeleteI don't want the printer to come with software. I really just want your hardware specs, chemical formulations, and maybe some notes on any experimentation you've done.
I then want to take this knowledge and tweak it here and there while developing my own software to integrate with the systems I have in mind. I would much rather be able to do this now than have to wait another 6 months for you tweaking software I don't really want anyways.
I, and I expect around 50 other people, would probably pay $100-$200USD for this knowledge. This would provide somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000USD to further support development of the project and would provide a wider breadth of technical knowledge for the open source community.
You could then use this money and the collective knowledge to launch a more finished and integrated product for less technical people. Perhaps even in a more commercial form in order to gather money for yourself to recoup the rest of your costs and provide money for future projects.
People are chomping at the bit to give you money for /exactly what you already have done/ and you won't let them. The chemical formulations and hardware specs, without any software would be great. Even your rough software would be a neat bonus.
That's why we're frustrated. Why won't you let us work with you?
Totally agree with @mathematicsinexperience.
ReplyDelete@Ean Moody: you are wrong. You can't file a patent on something that was already published. If Jr were to publish his formula, nobody could patent it (including himself). It would be public domain and free (unless someone patented it *earlier* than his publication).
ReplyDelete@mathematicsinexperience: yes.
Hello Junior,
ReplyDeleteLike mathematicsinexperience say, the software could be a bonus, I'm totaly agree for pay $100/$200 USD to enter in a private community to share experimentation and Knowlegde about the 3D DIY Printer. I would like to start the construction of my Own 3D printer this summer, waiting 6 more month after have followed your experiment and being so close for start it, make me sad :/
You should make money for congratulate your work and make possible your actual and futur project !
A "private" community of people agree to pay, could be a reflexion axis, it's an idea between other for open it faster and sharing other experiment between us before openning it :) like an exclusivity
I'm french ( excuse me for my ***** english) web develloper (front & end) and i could propose my abilities of coding/designing this private/independant knowledge plateform to answers the "money problem" and unfrustrate all people who are ok to pay to exchange on this subject ^^,
keep up ! it's more easy to count problems than try to propose and share solutions :)
Thanks for all you have done, does and will does in this adventure.
Ola junior.Voce é brasileiro?Estou louco para montar uma dessas.vou acompanhar seu blog.Abraços.
ReplyDeleteI love this quote...
ReplyDelete"I really just want your hardware specs, chemical formulations, and maybe some notes on any experimentation you've done."
This guy is a moron. All he wants is everything you've been doing on your own for the last couple years, and he's willing to pay you $200 for the effort.
Junior, you obviously have a plan. Don't worry what a bunch of ninnies write on your blog. The idea that some guy will pay you $100-200 dollars for all your work is just insulting. Maybe that guy thinks that all your time developing this idea is worth. Also, don't listen to the guys complaining about you patenting your idea. You'll work with a lawyer and figure out what you will and won't be able to do.
All the best.
If Junior gives out his hardware specs, chemical formulations, and development notes, why do we need Junior? In fact, why even pay $100-200 dollars? Just one person could pay, and then we'll spread the info around like wildfire for free! This will be wonderful for us! For Junior; not so much.
ReplyDeleteLet me know when your ready to disclose your years of research. I'm ready. $200 in hand ;)
Make them sign confidentiality agreements in disclosure of your "patient pending" 3d Printer in exchange for their $100 for documentation. That would solve the issue of someone going public with the information.
ReplyDeleteI see this hording of information un-productive; Junior doesn't have all the answers or knowledge, why not hire these people willing to help with the project yet you can still reap the rewards. Make that part of the disclosure; what is discovered in the forum is yours to patient; they are contract labor.
I doubt in 6 months Junior will be the only one with this technology. An open source solution will crop up during that time.
@Smiley, this problem could be the same for the kit, patent or not patent, just by subdivide the kit who will be sold in 3 or 4 mini-kit in place of one, and your patent crack. :/
ReplyDeletepersonnaly, when i talk to pay $100/$200 it's not for the kit than i will buy when it's finish, but to have a global idea of the process, doing a reverse engeneering, maybe do my personnal modification of this to answer my own problematic of 3D printing and, by the price of exchange participation, pay Junior for this long year of work to help it for this project and continue to sharing this.
20 maybe 40 people who pay is interesting to beta test process, maybe it will upgrade this for a better commercialisation of his future kit.
Like i said, it's just a idea to exchange on some shadow in the evolution's part of this project, like the final price and the possibilities of using it, mod it, like people in open source and open hardware do ...
So Stay cool, talk and exchange on the subject is better than "they are stupid, i'm in the true, just listen me, me and only me !!!" Only Junior could decide what he will do ;)
Low cost 3D printing is coming soon, i prefer to see Junior do it :)
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-05/worlds-smallest-3-d-printer-could-be-your-first-tabletop-fabricator
Hi! I don't know if it is ok to write this here. Today I asked some questions about the mikro-printer, and they showed me an impressive pic with 2 objects smaller than a 1 cent coin. The current working area of the mikro printer is about 20mm/30mm/50mm (x,y,z), I think Junior's is able to work in a larger scale with precision. Both have different target group, if I want to print out an animation figure, Junior's machine would be a better choice.
ReplyDeleteyou said make some of money...how much we're talking about, so I can understand if it's for my pocket? thx for the answer =)
ReplyDeleteLooks to me like that micro printer is basically a DLP projector with a build mechanism attached right on top of the lens. Seems like a very simple concept. The trick and most of the work is in the software. There are plenty of resins out there that would be compatible and at this size, you don't need much so resin price is not huge factor anymore. Myself, I would like a build size to be at least 5" x 5" in XY. My feeling is that this technology (DLP projector curing 3d printer) will be exploding here very soon. Especially after everyone realizes how simple the hardware part of it is. One moving axis, off the shelf projector and minimal fabrication. possibly easier than a Rep Rap to build. Again, software being the hard part here. These links really opened my eyes about how simple the whole process can be.
ReplyDeletehttps://nano-cemms.illinois.edu/materials/3d_printing_full
http://mrsec.wisc.edu/Edetc/nanolab/3D_print/index.html#Procedure
Yeah man.. no prob!! The more, the merrier, so better and faster we will get there!!!
ReplyDeleteHow is this printer different from makerbot or is it superior.
ReplyDelete@Sheldon - It's superior. This printer uses UV cured resin rather than a heated plastic extruder. This method gives the 3d print 50% if not 100% more detail.
ReplyDeletehi man do not worry about people say fuck that! they should to be pleased someone sharing the time and knowledge with us ,,,, and its nothing wrong to make some money on that ! i hope you wont give up because of them keep going !! is a lot of us willing to support and pay for kits,plans,materials,sources,etc and build own machines....i don`t have a problem with that! its fair for me and as you mentioned almost everything here will be open source i cant understand why some of us are still screaming heh......you doing well !!! all the best !
ReplyDeleteJunior Veloso, you sir are a champ. Personally I've been eagerly watching your progress waiting on details of the light sensitive polymers. Keep on doing what you do.
ReplyDeleteThe thing looks very interesting, but the main factor here would be the price for the resin. From what I know, these materials aren't cheap, 100 ml more than 100$. If you can provide a material for cheap prints, this would be great. But if a print in your plasics costs more than steel or silver on shapeways, this would not make much sense for most people.
ReplyDeleteMight I just say- you are amazing. I look forward to procuring a device like this a decade from now and spending my days/nights printing an army of (probably) useless objects for my own fascination. Presumably the device will be built into my robot butler by then.
ReplyDeleteThis printer can arrive at this details:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.moddler.com/index.php?p=model&id=4
it is a 2 inc statue
Hi All,
ReplyDeleteA concrete example to illustrate the type of Paying Feed than i'm talking upper :
http://labs.nortd.com/lasersaur/
Courage Junior, it is the end of projects that are more difficult, and all solutions can be find :)
Oh good. I saw that those posts were gone and was worried that you had abandoned this project.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to building my own as soon as you make this information available.
Best of luck and I hope the money rolls in fast.
Hi Junior,
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, I know how hard it´s to find enough free time to work on developing this stuff.
I think a better thing to do would be to sale plans and your version of the slicing software with it or white paper about it. this means to stop posting on the blog but people needs to understand that you have spent a lot of time and money developing it and you deserve to get some money back.
I´m filling a patente aplication for my super hyper cheaper linear guide ways so no one can mass produce it :-)and maybe that dental plaster too :-)))))
Good job, keep on going,hope you can get money back somehow.
@ Junior: Sounds fair to me!!! I agree with you!
ReplyDeleteACME :
ReplyDeleteA Cheap Manufacture Engine.
A little wink to the toons.
And a good name for that project.
Nice job Junior,
hope that project will be for the open community
early.
Have a nice day,
Man, go on ulule, youre will be happy, true story.
ReplyDeleteIf it is truly 100% yours...then by all means protect it best you can and any way you can.
ReplyDeleteThe ones that will bash you for it are the ones who would steal it if they could. Their just jealous. knock you down to bring themselves up.
If you don't mind me giving you *yet* another piece of advice.
ReplyDeleteDo the samething as arduino did, go open source come up with a nice name that is Trademarked and dont allow anyone else to market under that name. That way you can build market recognisabilty and maintain a good relationship with the developer community.
Oh and patents and open source go very well together, there are a few universities that have done biomedical research into medicines and have patented and then public domain:ed the patent in the effort to make sure that the medicine can be manufactured by anyone without huge licencing costs. Mutually beneficiary.
And if you dont think that the arduino model is an economically viable model, they have sold about 500 000 arduinos since it's conception. And thats with about 20+ other hardware copies.
Sounds like all the non critical parts are going to be open source. And all the critical parts required to make the printer work will be close source.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing wrong with making money on your invention.
Even if you patent your invention and make it as secretive as possible, people will still find ways to go around your patent. For example apple iphone was very secretive on their iphone, but once it was release, their competitors started to make imitations of their successful iphone. The most successful imitation is android out selling iphone, according to the news.
Again, I don't think there is anything wrong with making money on your invention and trying to protect it, but if you do, I don't think it's going to be open source.
Hope you become a millionaire with this then you can concentrate on working on things on your free time, on the things you enjoy doing with your life. That's just priceless.
ReplyDeleteYou worked on it for 4 years, you deserve it.
Keep working...
ReplyDeleteIts called America for a reason. You should make money on anything you work on. I'm just getting into 3D printers, and i have no problem paying for good products. Or paying for information that can help me save time. Great blog, and thanks for sharing !
ReplyDeleteHow can anyone be critical about what you are doing unless they are obviously jealous that they do not have the knowledge to do the same.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to the time when you share this technology with us, but in the mean time you go and make yourself a few bucks, you might even be able to give some others a job in the process.
Junior, make all the freakin' money you can, and protect yourself AND YOUR PROFITS as much as you can. Its your idea and your work, it belongs to you and that's it.
ReplyDeleteI think this thing rocks, and YOU rock for doing it. Carry on!
Junior, you should make all the money you possibly can. Patenting is an -excellent- idea, and you should carry on with it.
ReplyDeleteGiven the price of high precision printers is more than a $50k, I'm happy to wait for you and your kit. In the fullness of time you'll get it done, and not before.
Guys bugging you apparently just want something for nothing. Common problem in the Open Source community, takers outnumber givers 100-1.
You are doing good work here. This printer rocks, and YOU rock for doing it.