PrintABlok isn’t the first thing I’ve made that people have told me I should patent, but it is the first thing that I seriously considered patenting it. Ultimately I had to weigh what I thought I would make, or more accurately what I would stand to lose, versus what it would cost to go through the patent process. Patents are costly, and I’m not sure 3D print files, for anyone, is at the level that it needs that sort of protection. But I could be wrong, and if I am… honestly, I’ll be a little impressed. Disappointed to have lost out big time? Sure. But it’s not like PrintABlok is the only idea I have had or will ever have.
And you know me. I will always err on the side of openness and sharing.
I did fail to mention that regardless of the functional and patent-able elements of PrintABlok, the decurative elements of PrintABlok:Mech are covered by Copyright. So I’ve got that going for me. They can take my connectors, but they can never have my skull blok panel.
I said in the video that I didn’t want to try breaking the tabs, but after the video I decided to just go for it. It was educational. Here’s the results from most brittle to least:
- Accura ClearVue SLA – Snapped instantly
- PC FDM – Snapped with some effort
- Rigid Polyurethane DLS -Broke with much effort
- ABS FDM – Broke with considerable effort
- Nylon 12 SLS – Broke only after much effort and a few days of messing with it
- Nylon 12 HP Multi Jet Fusion – Still hasn’t broke. I’ve bent this thing 180 degrees for days and it won’t break
So there you go. Maybe that’s why Greg suggested this stuff.
I learned a lot making this video. Not only the cost and value of professional 3D prints (dat accuracy). But I also mean I made a lot of technical mistakes when I was recording that I’m just going to have to live with. For one, I learned when I plug a microphone into the Canon A6300 camera I use for shooting, it needs about 10 seconds to cancel out the background noise. If I just jump in and start talking, I’m gonna have 10 seconds of audio I have to clean up, mostly unsuccessfully.
I also learned Photoshop can do some weird scaling when importing a picture, like a head shot to put on the wax figure of Shakespear for the thumbnail, but if you open the picture in a separate window and just copy-paste in the part you want you don’t run into that issue.
Since my beard is now in and going to stick around for a bit, I decided to shoot some face picts for my thumbnails. It’s one of those things I do to make video production easier. I grabbed the “How do I feel today” magnet from the refrigerator and recreated the faces shown. Many of them had to be thrown out because the light reflecting on my glasses obscured my eyes, but I’ve got a stock of a bunch of emotion faces with beard I can just drop into a video thumbnail.
I’ve actually gotten a little ahead on my videos right now, which is good because my day job has made it even harder to get videos out right now. Which is kind of a bummer, because all i want to do is get together with my friends and play minecraft on stream. Minecraft and Makers. Wow, that sounds great.
