For some, releasing an open source version 1.0 is a strategy for a paid version later. For others, it is a way to ensure that in a world where the rate of change of technology is increasing at an exponential rate that the community spirit of innovation is maintained — a 20 year patent today eliminates the equivalent of 200 years of technological progress that could be made by others with the patented article of but a few decades ago.
As Stratasys begins the process of suing Afinia for patent infringement, the open source versus intellectual property battle is about to hot up in the 3D printing community and beyond.
In a world where the world’s largest economy in 2020 will have a high prevalence of ‘off the books open source’ – China has nowhere near the extant copyright culture that we have been accustomed to in a leading power. Excessive copyright will only hinder US economic growth. Copyright has many positives, from causing others to need to pursue innovation to achieve similar ends to protecting dangerous processes from being used by those who would not use them ethically. However, given that China is projected to have an economy fourty times the size of what it is now by 2050, the USA will have an economy half it’s size. Unless the USA pushes beyond merely seeking to reduce patent trolling, could it be possible that in time China evolves a more efficient economy?
In Europe, meanwhile, German RepRap maintains the spirit of the open source RepRap community with an inspiring consistency, its latest open source offering being the RAMPS 1.4.2 board.
The RAMPS 1.4.2 uses standard blade instead of thermal fuses to increase heat resilience. Most track sizes have been widened from 35 – 70 µm and rerouted more efficiently. Suppression capacitors have been added to the end-stops to avoid spurious signals.
Further enhancements have been made to the device’s Pololu driver sockets, now containing two connectors each to drive two stepper motors per socket. A new external reset connector available in case the board now resides in housing. Last but not least, all connectors for the heated bed, fans, motors, extruders etc. are more clearly labelled to simplify the cabling effort.
It can be applied to all RepRap 3D printers with RAMPS electronics, such as the PRotos V2, that run on RAMPS 1.3 and 1.4 firmware with no change , so it can easily replace existing RAMPS kit.
The following connections are provided:
2 * extruder heating
1 bed * Heating
3 * Temperature sensor for Extruder 2 and 1 bed (No more board longer necessary)
5 * for Pololu motor base
6 * opto end stop (3 * Min, Max 3 *)
1 * Connection option for SD card reader and LCD
1 * Connection for external reset
1 * Connection for FAN adapter.
1 * GRR Ramps v1.4.2
The open source designs are available over on GitHub here.
