Stealing an Obvious Idea

The GameKlip is a piece of plastic that lets you mount your bluetooth PS3 controller to your android phone for real game-like experiences. The Game Clip on Thingiverse, a a piece of plastic that lets you mount your bluetooth PS3 controller to your android phone. GameKlip has different versions that will work with different phones and tablets plus a universal version that you can just glue your android's case. So does the Game Clip on thingiverse. The only difference between the Klip and the Clip is that the Klip was invented by Ryan French which he manufactured and is selling and the Clip was copied and is free with your 3D printer.

Wow, what a multi-faceted and thorny discussion. To be fair bernabap's Clip is pretty well designed and maybe even improves on the design. But with things like GameKlip or SquareHelper it's not the piece of plastic you're paying for, it's the idea. Sometimes all it takes to steal an ideas is to see it and the only protection ideas have, patents, aren't really accessible to a simple inventor with a simple but revolutionary idea. Even if you had a patent you can't sue free for profits, not to mention internet anonymity preventing you from even knowing who to sue.

But if inventors can't profit from their ideas then what worth is ideas and why share them? The free flow of ideas is where brilliance comes from. Stopping that flow by taking away incentive to have them and everyone suffers. Then again, isn't bernapap's Clip exactly that, the evolution of Ryan's Klip idea? He does add to it somewhat.

Like I said, thorny.

Modibot, love child of Stikfas and Xevoz

If you've never heard of Stikfas, bad news, you're a bit late to the party. Stikfas were a super cool set of modular posable robot toys that sold for about $20 a set. But like all semi-great toys they had their run and now they're gone.

Reminds me of Scud

Only they're not all gone. Toy designer Wayne Losey is selling his own toys based on the idea. Only this time instead of traditional manufacture he's selling them through shapeways print-on-demand. They're called Modibot and they sell for about $20 a set. They don't come with fancy packaging or come on a store shelf, but they also don't come in batches of a thousand requiring significant investments with high risk. He can keep Modibots "active" for as long as there's the slightest demand because there's no "stock" except for a few electrons on a hard drive.

As much as I want to be in total support of this project, I have to temper my excitement with a bit of harsh reality. The reason, I feel, that Stikfas died is because, cool as they were, $20 is a lot to pay for a generic looking plastic toy. Take away the corporate sponsorship and fancy packaging but make the toy print-on-demand and $20 is still a lot to pay. In fact this new toy only manages that price point because it's full of holes. Literally. From a consumer perspective you're paying the same and getting less in many ways. Shapeways still needs their bank of cool but expensive reliable high-resolution 3D printers and someone is going to have to pay for it. So even little toy made of thin plastic walls or a novelty ring becomes a big expense.

The plus side of this new toy, however, is that more profits go to the creator, so there is that. Marx can be happy.

I myself experimented with putting the chessbot on Shapeways only to be told I'd need to charge $60 per side. Per side. That's not even a whole set. If I redesigned it so the pieces were hollow I might be able to bring that cost down, but it would still be way more than I'm charging. Then again, one little snafu and I'm out of production for a while. And snafus are not uncommon with cheap printers. This is why I don't offer sales on things that I haven't already printed. This is why no one has bought 20 Makerbots or Mojos and made a cheaper low-resolution Shapeways knockoff.

There's hope for the future. The tech is becoming more accessible and more reliable. Remember we're still on the cutting edge here.

Modibots aren't available for download on your personal 3D printer, Scratch that, you can buy them on 3DBurrito. And there's always Beco Blocks.

Filament by the foot

Friend of the blog and fellow 3D printer Joseph Chiu has decided to plunge into filament sales. If you've ever wanted a color but didn't want to commit to a full kilogram he's selling 100g bundles of ABS or PLA in many colors so you can test it out before you commit to the big buy. 100kg is plenty to print off a Pocket Tactics army. I've been using his filament for a while. It's a little thinner than the stuff you get from other places so make sure you have a spring loaded extruder and have set your filament diameter appropiately. But it's consistent and good quality.

For now he's selling on Tindie while he gets his storefront up and running, but feel free to buy him out of stock and try out those colors you've always wanted to. Go give Joseph your business and get some filament.

Figuring out lithophanes

When I tried out pp3dpNL's Mona Lisa Lithophane I printed it on its side and what I ended up with (on the left) was disappointing. Not only did it take forever to slice and cracked while printing (darn ABS) the final result just didn't look very good. The one on the right above was printed flat on the build surface using a STL with 1/10th the polygons and the result was much better. I'm still not sure what fixed it, the orientation or the polygon count, but I suspect it was the former since skenforge has some known problems with fill in sharp corners. Both were printed with 0 extra shells and 100% infill.

Keep in mind what you're seeing only looks the way it does because it has a bright light behind it. Without that light the lithophanes are recognizable but... wrong (see right).

Now that I know how, tho, I think I'll be able to reproduce this process for other pictures. Could be a new angle on the customized 3D things market.