3D Printing Homestead Hoedown

8AM-1PM – 3D printer build
1:00 PM – Homestead Hoedown begins.
3 PM – 3D Printing session – how to design 3D Printers and Objects for 3D printing
4:30-5:15PM – Keynote Presentation, Marcin Jakubowski, Founder, Open Source Ecology. “Towards an Open Source Civilization: Democratizing Production and Regenerating the Environment”
5:15PM – Panel Discussion – with Catarina Mota, Founder, Open Building Institute, and Marcin Jakubowski: “How to Make Affordable, Ecological Housing Widely Accessible”
6:00 PM – Potluck Dinner + social and dance afterwards

You can build a 3D printer, with these specifications:

The printer has high quality components. The PEI heated surface is state of art for easy part removal, where parts almost pop off the surface once a print cools. We are using the Titan Aero extruder – which is one of the most advanced and flexible extruders. The extruder is designed for both standard filaments as well as rubber. The extruder can use both small nozzles – and large nozzles of 1.2mm size that allows for 10x faster printing. The LCD display has an SD card so you can use the 3D printer standalone without tying up your computer. The solid steel frame is robust for 3D printing and other applications. The interchangeable tool head is magnetically mounted, and it allows using other toolheads, such as a laser cutter or CNC circuit mill head – in the same motion system.

See a video from one of our last workshops at Open Source Ecology for what the build is like:

Most importantly – from the OSE perspective – the 3D printer is a construction set. It is made of the Universal Axis – and other building blocks – such that the printer could be enlarged or modified as need. In the afternoon session, we will participants how to design a 3D printer using the OSE 3D Printer Construction Set – and how to design parts for printing in FreeCAD – so bring your computer if you’d like to participate. We will use the FreeCAD open source CAD software.

Open Source Ecology has a much larger vision. See Marcin’s TED Talk:

This year, we are starting an immersion program so that we can accept many new developers – who can work with OSE full time. Hear more about the Immersion Training Program. The Open Source Microfactory Boot Camp is the first week of the OSE 5 Week Immersion Training Program:

3D printing and open source micromanufacturing, in its infancy, has great potential for distributing production. We start with a 3D printer, so we can set up an online printing service for producing parts. In order to expand our enterprise – and enable the printing of large objects at low cost – we diversify into producing 3D printing filament from scrap plastic. We grind down scrap plastic, extrude it into 3D printing filament with our filament maker, and then wind it onto spools with the filament winder. Produced at a cost of only 10 cents per lb – we have inexpensive 3D printing filament that is almost free. So we can run an online 3D printing service successfully.

Can we then develop high value products that are competitive with standard consumer goods? That is our goal. So we collaborate on the Open Source Everything Store, where we design a whole catalog of products that compete with Amazon and Walmart – but are designed and produced locally. Household consumer goods total a $20T global market – so the pie is large and there is plenty of room for collaboration. It turns out that with 3D printing, a CNC Circuit Mill, and a small laser cutter/engraver – and a bunch of readily available, off-the-shelf parts – we can produce a whole range of useful products, and thus begin to effect manufacturing in a substantial way.

We are excited, and want to spread the word. So we run public workshops teaching people to build these machines, and how to design products that can be made with these machines – using a completely open source toolchain. We take this to our local libraries, schools, events – and involve thousands of people in collaborative product design. We teach people about massive parallel swarm-based development techniques – and every child and grandmother begin designing their own products and publishing the plans on the internet for free. The depth of local manufacturing increases – and people begin making more of the parts that would normally be purchased – such as motors and power supplies. We democratize the face of manufacturing – converting consumers to producers…

That is the narrative we’d like to see happen, and the 1 week OSE Boot Camp is an introduction to how to do this in practice. We will learn to design and use the open source Level 1 Microfactory, consisting of important desktop manufacturing tools. These tools are: a 3D printer, CNC Circuit Mill, Laser Cutter, and Filament maker. Participants will build a 3D printer to take home with them.

Some may say that this is already happening – but 3D printing and distributed manufacturing has not taken much of a hold in terms of replacing consumer goods. The key is high quality, proven designs – not fringe things on 3D printing websites that in many cases cannot even be printed. The key is engaging enough cooperation – that all the possible products truly become best-in-class – while remaining fully open source. We not only show you that this new mindset is possible – but how to build the actual production tools – and how to leverage massive collaborative development processes – so that we democratize product development on the face of this earth.

Perhaps the greatest single impact is environmental – as people learn to build their products – they also know how to fix them – thereby putting an end to the throw-away society – with lifetime design that can be modified, improved, or recycled back into feed-stocks. Our aim in the OSE Boot Camp is to introduce people to the first steps in seizing democratic control of production.

Have questions? Drop us an email: info at opensourceecology dot org

• Marcin Jakubowski – Marcin was trained as a fusion physicist. He left academia right after finishing his Ph.D. to start a farm – in Missouri. For the last 7 years, he has been working on the Global Village Construction Set – a set of enabling tools and machines for building regenerative infrastructures. Marcin is passionate about creating the Open Source Economy – a new operating system for Earth. See Marcin’s bio.

• Catarina Mota – Catarina is co-founder of Open Materials (do-it-yourself smart materials), Everywhere Tech (open source technology transfer), and AltLab (Lisbon’s hackerspace). Catarina recently finished her PhD dissertation on open and collaborative practices for the development of physical goods and technologies. She is currently a Research Chair at the Open Source Hardware Association and a TED Fellow. Previously, she co-chaired the Open Hardware Summit 2012, served on the board of directors of the Open Source Hardware Association, taught as an adjunct faculty member at ITP-NYU, and was a fellow of the National Science and Technology Foundation of Portugal. Catarina’s new initiative is the Open Building Institute, with a mission to bring affordable, open source construction to the world. You can also see Catarina’s earlier work presented at TED:

Note: the registration below is for the 3D printer build only – for those who would like to build a 3D printer to take home with them. Otherwise, the event is free with a suggested donation of $8 to cover costs.

True Fans of OSE: As supporting members of OSE, True Fans who have been subscribed for 6 or more months receive a 25% discount on all of our workshops. This discount is only for the tuition part part of the registration fee, but not the 3D printer materials cost. Email us for details. You can sign up as a True Fan now to become eligible for the True Fans discount on future workshops.

Sponsor another participant or Donate to OSE: We are a nonprofit organization with 501(c)3 status, and you can make tax-deductible contributions to us. You can fund attendance of someone who is on the waiting list for financial assistance. We receive low-income assistance requests for all of our workshops. Sponsor by paying the quantity on the order form, or use the donate button below. Please email us at info@opensourceecology.org that you are sponsoring someone else. We can send you a tax deduction receipt.

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To register, you can use PayPal or eCheck options. We prefer that you use the eCheck option (bank routing + account number) so we can avoid the 3% PayPal fee. We can also accept Bitcoin, checks, and wire transfers.