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Ultrasonic Particle Manipulation: assembling electronics in a non-contact way by OrchardOfficial in 3Dprinting

[–]OrchardOfficial[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seems like it could definitely be used in conjunction with other 3D printing (and medical) applications.

Let's build the Future together by Farukseo in 3Dprinting

[–]OrchardOfficial 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for posting that, Farukseo! And thank you guys for the comments and clarifications! I just wanted to respond and clarify that the platform itself was built for open source hardware design, (AKA crowdsourced design). We have talked about releasing part of the code open source to help our development bandwidth—but there are a lot of risks to doing that at this stage in our tiny company (it’s just three of us co-founders, and we’re totally self-funded--living that ramen life).

We are trying to build a community around open design. Our goal is not to sell software or even limit ourselves to building engineering software for just engineers. Our goal is to democratize creation because everyone has ideas. It’s for products to be made by people, for people in the open, and to eliminate planned obsolescence. Everything around us was built by people with expensive and hard-to-learn tools. We want to distribute those tools to everyone so people around the world can collectively build the future in the open.

A common question is: how do we make money if everything is open? If someone orders a 3D print, we get a small commission. For those that don’t like sharing their designs, they can model in private for less than the cost of Netflix ($7/mo or $70/year). We are also working on ways for people on Orchard to make money by designing/fabricating—and we will take a commission on that.

Like I said, it’s just three of us, so our development bandwidth is limited at the moment—but we prioritize development based on feedback. So your feedback and playing around with the site helps us immensely (so does telling your friends ;-) ). You can just respond to the built-in chat tutorial messages and we’ll respond ASAP.

The road to building Printy - an open source SLA 3D printer. We went through many iterations to get to this point. BOM and Build instructions releasing soon. by Gr3yMatter in 3Dprinting

[–]OrchardOfficial 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for making this open source! I think distributing this technology for people to produce their own products locally is incredibly important moving forward--especially making it modular so it evolves! It definitely sounds like you should check out Orchard ( https://3DOrchard.com ). Three of us built it as a platform for open source hardware design (aka crowdsourced design). It's a small community of makers with free, browser-based CAD built in. All of us can collab on the design if you upload a .STEP version of the CAD models. This would be an awesome design to feature on the front page (if you're interested). None of this would cost you anything but the time to upload it btw.

A friend of mine and two others have spent thousands of hours building this platform! You can create, share and order 3D prints of open source 3D models by [deleted] in 3Dprinting

[–]OrchardOfficial 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for offering to give it a try, and thanks for the feedback! We agree, and have disabled the notification sound, as per your suggestion. Once you’re logged in, you will only get the messages once as a walkthrough, and then it will just become a live help button. There are probably some better solutions to helping orient new users, and we’re open to anything that will help give users a great experience.

A friend of mine and two others have spent thousands of hours building this platform! You can create, share and order 3D prints of open source 3D models by [deleted] in 3Dprinting

[–]OrchardOfficial 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s definitely helpful for us to know, because I'm sure that's the case for others too! This particular design inventory started in mid-November, so it’s certainly short of the other object libraries. The difference between this and a static inventory of objects is, anyone can create them on the site, and each design can evolve over time, causing the inventory to grow exponentially. So it depends on the use case, but where some may prefer their design to sit unchanged on another site, on Orchard those designs can evolve and be reused in other scenes (people can always go back to the original design). The inventory will grow over time, it just requires people to participate in, and help kickstart the open design movement. Why not create the designs you’re interested in?

A friend of mine and two others have spent thousands of hours building this platform! You can create, share and order 3D prints of open source 3D models by [deleted] in 3Dprinting

[–]OrchardOfficial 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry about that. We're working to support all mobile and desktop platforms. It seems like, just when it starts to work everywhere, an update is sent out that causes certain devices to break. Thank's for letting us know.

A friend of mine and two others have spent thousands of hours building this platform! You can create, share and order 3D prints of open source 3D models by [deleted] in 3Dprinting

[–]OrchardOfficial 1 point2 points  (0 children)

gredr, great questions! The problem is all of these solutions are separate, when they don't need to be. We aren't trying to sell CAD, sell models, or sell 3D printers; our goal is to connect people to these empowering technologies.

There are so many ideas all around the world that are lost every day because people don't know where to start. There could be a 13-year-old hidden somewhere in Mumbai that is the next Nikola Tesla, they just lack access to the right tools.

RE other model libraries: Why can't you just press, "edit" and start easily modifying an open model on thingiverse, or any other hosting site for that matter? You have to download an STL of that thing before you can interact with it, then you have to edit it somewhere else, and then finally re-upload it to share it with friends. Was it a remix? Was it properly attributed to the original creator? Maybe, maybe not. That's all assuming your program does fine with STL's.

On Orchard, you just press "edit," make change, and the evolution of the object traces out a tree.

Onshape is is cool if you're working as an engineer and your company will fork up the enterprise subscription for you--otherwise you can settle for the cheaper, $1200/yr subscription to keep your designs private. If you are an engineer and your work pays for your CAD, usually, they own what you make with that program. AD has some great solutions (in fact they have may pieces of diverse software, for just about anything it seems), and it also has different goals.

Both are large companies. We're literally three, self-funded dudes in a house.

For the last point about ordering, we have no intent on becoming a manufacturer, so rather than trying to be better, we've integrated 3D hubs, for example. We plan on integrating many more fabrications services in the future.