Clanking Replicator Project

 

Frequently asked Questions about Tommelise

 

What is Tommelise?

Tommelise is a spinoff from the RepRap project.

The RepRap (Rapid Replicator) project was conceived and begun in the Spring of 2005 by Dr. Adrian Bowyer at the University of Bath to create an open source 3D printer capable of making solid objects from plastic. The exciting part of Dr. Bowyer's is that the RepRap machine is designed to be able to produce a majority of its own parts, that is to say, to reproduce itself, more or less.

The project's goal is to create a working RepRap machine that can be built for a budget of just over US$400.

Dr. Bowyer's RepRap project has attracted a global research and development team.

Tommelise is a bootstrap 3D printer that can make you pretty much anything that can be made from plastic, for example,

    • a tricky custom gear train for your latest battlebot design that would cost you hundreds of dollars to have made up in a machine shop or thousands of dollars to buy the machines for you own shop to make it
    • a replacement cap for the windshield washer liquid tank under the hood of your car that would otherwise cost you a trip to an auto supplies store and $5 for the part that contains maybe a penny's worth of plastic
    • a simple fitted coat hanger for a new jacket that you've bought
    • a sealable plastic storage container for your fridge

 

Basically, Tommelise can make for you on the spot hundreds of both unusual and everyday items that would otherwise be too expensive to have made for you or so commonplace that you would spend more buying gasoline for the trip to the shops than the item was worth.

Tommelise is designed to be built with inexpensive handtools by pretty much anybody who has worked with wood, however crudely, and is willing to learn a few new skills, like braising copper (which takes a big 10 minutes to learn) and soldering a few components onto a printed circuit board. Right now I estimate that the parts for Tommelise, for someone who already has the hand tools, will cost about $125-175.

Don't kid yourself around, though. If you have no tools at all, which was my situation when I began the project, building a Tommelise will cost you several times that. Mind, it's not like there are a bunch of expensive tools that want buying. Spending $20 for a cheap propane torch here and $3 for a drill bit there, however, adds up fairly quickly.

What does Tommelise mean?

Tommelise was the name that the beloved Danish writer of fairy tales, Hans Christian Anderson, gave to the tiny girl in a fairy tale that Americans know as Thumbelina. Having spent a number of years in my youth in Sweden in my youth I read Swedish and Danish well enough to enjoy reading such stories in those languages rather than depending on English translations, thus Tommelise rather than Thumbelina.

As to why I should pick such a name, Tommelise is not the first attempt I've made to design an open-source 3D replicator. I originally built quite a large one that occupied most of my dining room table which I named Godzilla, or Gojira as my Japanese-fluent son insists it ought to have be pronounced. Tommelise has a much smaller footprint (32x24 inches) than Godzilla did and was made of wood recycled from Godzilla.

How can I design things to make with Tommelise?

The Tommelise project uses the same open-source 3D modelling program used by the RepRap project, viz, Art of Illusion (AoI).

AoI has an rather user-friendly graphics user interface (GUI) and a comfortably short learning curve. Really though, people building Tommelise 3D replicators should use the 3D modeling program they are most comfortable with.

Actually, though, virtually any 3D modeling program can be used to design object that can be made by Tommelise. The only restriction is that the control program for Tommelise requires that 3D files be in the ubiquitous ASCII STL format. Off hand, I know that...

    • AutoDesk Inventor (commercial and rather expensive though very good)
    • Blender (open source)
    • Cosmic Blobs (a very low cost 3D modelling package for kids built around the awesomely powerful Dassault CAD software)
    • Autodesk Maya (commercial)
    • Autodesk 3D Studio Max (commercial)

 

...all have this capability. If you have one of these and are already comfortable using it you need not bother with AoI unless some of the scripts that I've written for AoI for gear design can not be had in what you already have. In the mid-term I plan to shift these scripts over to web-delivered services that you can access through your browser. That should give us all a lot more flexibility.

Why Tommelise?

Given that there is a RepRap project underway and showing every prospect of being a success in coming months it is reasonable to ask why anyone would want to to begin a separate project to create a 3D printer capable of replicating itself like Tommelise?

While there are a number of reasons, the most important one has to do with how the RepRap project has defined itself. Two principles define RepRap; first, RepRap uses open source or near open source development tools wherever possible and second, RepRap is metric.

Insofar as open source goes this means that RepRap is focussed on the...

 

The notion, which is a good one, is to keep the RepRap project as international and low cost as possible. While the standard is a good one, in practice, I found that if you weren't already quite familiar with Linux and Java it was very difficult to get up to speed to participate on an even footing in the development effort.

The general philosophy of the RepRap project is that you want to create a 3D replicator that can be successfully built and used pretty much anywhere in the world. That says metric and open source. Adopting American standards of any sort simply favours 300 million people in the United States over the the remaining 6 billion worldwide.

What I've noticed is that while the US only comprises 5% of the world's population over half of the interest in the project originates in the US. As well, while Linux may eventually be a world standard PC operating system nearly 80% of the PC's accessing the RepRap project site run Windows.

Similarly, while Java has captured, by various accounts, somewhere between 30 and 45% of the market for programming languages its use is largely restricted to professional programmers. Gifted amateurs of the sort likely to be early adopters of open source technologies tend to use Visual Basic and similar languages with simple grammars and short learning curves.

Finally, the dogged insistance by the RepRap project of what is not only of a very primitive open source firmware compiler, never mind that it is C, but one that successfully addresses only a few of the many PIC microcontrollers is a disaster both for early adopters and for design flexibility.

Tommelise is a bootstrap 3D replicator that can be built pedominately of materials that you can buy in your local hardware store with a few inexpensive hand tools in a modest apartment. I know that because that's the environment I'm developing it in. It draws less than 40 watts of electricity and is quiet enough to be left running while you sleep.

Tommelise has been created for people who aren't particularly clever and may be living in modest circumstances without access to a formal workshop but who would like, all the same, to design and make things for themselves. It is made of wood because wood is cheaper and more forgiving of mistakes than metal or plastic. Woodworking skills in American society also tend to also be far more widespread than metalworking skills. Another advantage to the Tommelise design is that no particular part of it costs very much and the total budget for the parts for one is less than $150 as opposed to RepRap's $400.

Tommelise is not as flexible a design as RepRap, nor is it as elegant. It does work, though and it will get you into the game of making things for yourself.