The Beginng

I started to blog to keep track of a personal challenge when I set out to design and build an Open Source CNC Machine sponsored by MFG.com. What is an open source machine? Well, it’s a machine that anybody can build and all the pertinent information to build such a machine will be shared online, including drawings, BOM’s and how to instructions. My hope is that many people will contribute design improvements and variations so that over time these free designs becomes quite attractive over traditional-commercial machines. It’s the Linux equivalent of a CNC machine.

After a few months of research I came up with a game plan. I have surveyed all the technologies available to make a CNC machine. I looked around at how to reduce cost and decided to focus on design. Good design can allow me to use the lowest cost components and still achieve the required specifications. For some of the components I decided we could substitute with emerging technologies. We didn’t do enough substitution given the time constrain but there are still incredible opportunities.

I also needed a place to do this, I could set up a shop around Boston but leases and costs proved to high for this maverick project. Instead I chose to work with EAFIT University in Medellin Colombia. Medellin is my home town so it is easy for me to get around but it has many other advantages. The university provided the space and ample supply of students, technicians and professors. This was instrumental in finding good people to work on the project as well as locating resource around the city. I hire the work, provide the materials and directed the project. I also contracted with a local Design firm called "De Lapice a Cohete" which translates to From Pencil to Rockets. Two of it members where young university professor and provide the local know how and project management while I wasn’t around.

Taking the project to a developing country also placed added constrains on what was possible to build. This meant the design would be less complicated and more reproducible in other parts of the world.

For the first few months I reported on the project on Blogger, you can read the initial entrees at http://opensourcecnc.blogspot.com/

Figure 1. Rendering of the Machine Design in Solid Works

What is Open Source Hardware?

It’s an initiative led by MFG Labs to create low cost designs of useful production equipment for the machine shop or garage aimed at do it your-self enthusiast. The idea is that these designs are then enhance buy contributions of a user community in the same way software developers have contributed to Linux. Our first project is a Vertical Machining Center, an essential tool in the majority of machine shops. We are creating our own design from scratch; it’s a 5hp machine with 18x20x30in travel, and a #40 NMTB 9500rpm spindle. It’s currently being developed in Colombia with the collaboration of a local university, local designers and developers. The local constrains in the country have helped create a simple design that we hope is more universal, in other words is would be easy to build in almost any part of the world. We have also spent some considerable time making sure it’s low cost, easy to source and designed for do it your self assembly. In the future we plant to upload and share all the parts RFQ on MFG, so that would be users can easily order parts on download drawings. We have started to work on an open source portal concept to better do this.
We need a name for the Machine

This is your opportunity to weight in. We need a name and/or theme for the first prototype that lends it self to a future families of machines and designs. What are we going to call this? We are open to your ideas, be responsible for naming this potential world changing innovative movement. I encourage you to email me or submit your suggestion in the comments section .

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Other thoughts on Opens Source Hardware

Open Source Hardware has the potential to lower the barrier to access production machinery, by reducing cost and enhancing local availability. In its own way it similar to Linux, it doesn’t cost much and you can get it pretty much anywhere. With hardware the hope is that with the proper open design users can source components locally, make their own and assemble production machinery them selves.
Why is MFG doing this?

Various trains of thought have molded the idea; initially Mitch envisioned the possibility for MFG to be the catalysis that enables open source hardware to happen. Like any initiative of this kind it has to have an organizing body that sets the direction. Mitch also envisioned a day when trade school students, instead of making practice parts and discarding them would instead practice making parts that could be assemble into a working machine. We also see such a design as a gift to our customers and that it would also broaden manufacturing capabilities around the world creating a larger market for MFG to act as a sourcing tool.

Why is this important?

Personally, I share a vision where personal fabrication and mass customization could become a reality, and I see this as the first step. Think computer main frames and printers, initially large expensive complicated machines that later became household items. Well I envision a day when you buy a design or instruction sets for a personal or local machine to make something “custom” for you. In a way MFG is already doing that but we are not sharing designs. To go full circle we need not a one to many but a many to many relationship. Where a design embodied as an RFQ can be quoted by many suppliers and then purchased by many users. Today it’s one to many because of confidentiality agreements but under a creative common license we could do away with that restriction. At the very begging we have to prove that there is compelling opens source content to merit a business case and the infrastructure to deliver the information.

What are the challenges faced?

First we are trying to make this very low cost, initially 30-50% of retail value. And we want this to be something that a small, basically equipped shop can make. So we don’t have any economies of scale nor we use more complicated machines to make precision parts. In fact that challenge is two fold, it’s like buying a car by going to AutoZone, piece by piece it’s a lot more expensive, so we have to choose the components wisely. This has been hard especially on the controls areas, GE and other Taiwanese and German companies control this market and to buy a controller alone would blow our budget. So we are using Linux a PC and piecing together our electronics. And similar to a car that is designed to be put together in an assembly line, with special welding and assembly tools, most machines are made out of large castings and we have to do ways with that replacing castings with structures that 1-2 person crew can put together themselves.
We have found very innovative solutions to these challenges, many are our own inventions. We still have a few more challenges to solve but eventually sharing all this information and receiving the feedback is what I am the most worried about. Only when a critical number of users collaborate on the design, will it reach its full potential in cost, assembly and performance. Only then will open source machinery become a reality, right now we are trying to kick start it with an enticing project/proposition.

Where is the project today?
The project is currently under-way, we keep newest pictures on a facebook group that tracks our progress, feel free to join Open Source Machinery at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11911880588
This was original wiki posting at EAFIT http://www1.eafit.edu.co/wiki/index.php/Herramientas_de_Manufactura_Dise%C3%B1o_Abierto

Figure 2. (right) Jorge Barrera –Director of MFG Labs before the partially assemble prototype