RE: [rp-ml] Where are the Universities?

From: Bob Crangle (rcltd@nckcn.com)
Date: Fri Dec 30 2005 - 18:56:34 EET


Marshall, what is your vision of a curriculum that would result in an
accredited FabSci BS or MS? Second, what kind of faculty (and how many) and
facilities do you think would be present in a FabSci Department in a College
of Engineering? Or, in the alternative, what kind of faculty (and how many)
and facilities do you think would be present in a FabSci Center reporting to
a VP-Research?

Bob Crangle

Rose & Crangle, Ltd
117 N. 4th Street
PO Box 285
Lincoln, KS 67455-0285

785 524 5050 (fax -3130)

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi] On Behalf
Of Marshall Burns
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 8:13 AM
To: 'Adrian Bowyer'
Cc: 'RP-ML'
Subject: RE: [rp-ml] Where are the Universities?

Hey hey, Adrian,

Good to hear from you on this subject! Interesting that you talk about the
vendors being attached to their $25,000 machines because I've been thinking
that 3D and Stratasys are trying to cripple sales of their low-cost machines
to protect the market for their $500k and $800k machines.

In any case, your efforts to turn the whole thing to open source is
certainly interesting. I still don't really understand how open source works
in hardware, but I'm looking forward to learning from market observation
when you get things moving.

In the meantime, I wonder, what are you guys doing at Bath on the curriculum
side? Any comments on my call (rant) for a Fabricator Science program?

Best regards,
Marshall Burns
www.fabbers.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Bowyer [mailto:A.Bowyer@bath.ac.uk]
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 05:48
To: Marshall Burns
Cc: 'RP-ML'
Subject: RE: [rp-ml] Where are the Universities?

Quoting Marshall Burns <ListMail@fabbers.com>:

> That's great! Thanks for doing that. I taught a course on
> digital manufacturing for the last two semesters at USC (www.POOFF.com
> <http://www.pooff.com/> ) and would you believe that 3D Systems, Z, and
> Stratasys all turned me down to generate student designs for the class? I
> even offered to cough up some of the lab fees from the course, but they
just
> didn't want to mess with it. Talk about lacking vision! Can you imagine
> where the computer industry would be today if Apple hadn't launched the
Mac
> with aggressive promotion in schools? We'd probably still be kissing IBM's
> butt for behemoth mainframes.

That's very interesting, and is symptomatic of the RP (sorry) industry's
single
biggest problem: they are very heavily capitalized, they have to pay that
back,
and in a couple of years when their patents expire, no one will be paying
$25,000 for their machines because HP will be selling ones for $800 in Radio
Shack.

All they want to do is to keep selling $25,000 machines to Ford and GM for
as
long as possible, and the last thing they need is a load of clever students
thinking about alternatives. But people are beginning to drift out of the
cathedral and into the bazaar...

Yours

Adrian Bowyer

http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ensab
http://reprap.org



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