Fab12 @ Shenzhen- Tech Guru and Graduate 2016 :)

Fab12 conference was when I went abroad for the first time in my life and it was a roller coaster ride. There was a delay in processing of my passport which trickled down to the issue of my visa. It was all Amidst the fear about the problems that might occur in visa processing, passport issuance and status of my graduation. My passport was issued 2 weeks before the start of the conference and my passport issued a week before the conference.

Tech Guru

I wrote mail to fab foundation asking if I could be of any help and volunteer in the event similar to what I had done for the setting up of fab labs in Kerala and I was happy to find that they did have a spot for me as a tech-guru. It also helped me reduce financial burden of abroad travel and stay a little.

I arrived in Shenzhen on 8th August Via Hongkong, and was happy to team up with Pradnya from Vigyan ashram who was also to be in tech guru for today. I think the first two days of setting up things were critical and we managed to set things up just fine.


The following were the machines we setup.

Sindoh 3d printer -1
GCC laser engraver - 2
Roland Modela MDX 20 - 2
Epilog laser engraver - 4

We were given a lenovo thinkpad with windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 for each machine. The windows 7 seemed laggy and tested our patience sometimes. 
I did not have time to setup the machines using Ubuntu and fab modules, but thats something I wanted to try and do.

Workshops

I was keen in attending workshop with business model for fab labs and related to management of fablab. And when I found time I found the workshop taken by the people from Danish technical institute which I found was superb workshop. It was for 2 hrs but our interactions extended up to 3 hours.

They spoke about an advisory model of services. This was a service which applied to any inventor and person with an idea. They provide advices to any common citizen with an idea and empower him to make a product good enough that a private sector company can buy it from them in return of a royalty. The Advisory council acts as a liaison between the private sector and inventors and negotiate deals so that it can benefit both.

This kind of a model provides an alternate approach to starting up. Usually 9 in 10 startups fail. A startup takes a lot of effort and luck and money to be successful alternatively if we could use the already existing manufacturing, marketing and distribution and stability of an established private sector and make it work with innovation of a common citizen this results in a sustainable economic output with minimal loss to everyone involved, greater overall benefit to the society, and a lot less stress for the inventor.

This concept will be with me for a while and I want to see how this can apply to my situation and situation in India.

Graduation

To be updated

Shenzhen 

To be updated

 

The Awesome Fab Academy

Local Assistance

 
Pre academy was exciting and it excited me more about the Fab academy. I took the responsibility of being the Local assistant of the fab lab Trivandrum. Initially I communicated between all the participants of the fab academy and conveyed  important information from our remote guru Francisco, every time after having a chat over the MIT video conferencing unit.

I wrote a piece of introductory note to benefit people taking fab academy and had little idea about it. Most of us had done prefab but we were taking a couple of participants from outside the prefab participant circle. This note was based on the talks I had with my remote guru and based on his recommendation. Eventually Franc put it as an official note in his supernode site here. Other notes from Franc which are useful throughout the course can be found here. All these notes were accumulated and created by Franc and it was very handy during the course.
I also arranged for hangouts on air every week with Franc. The archive of our interactions can be found here. The most chatty person other than Franc would be me.

Lab Setup and video conferencing. 

I set up the lab and made arrangements for video conferencing and for accommodating the 14 participants in the lab. This included setting up the lightings, audio and arranging furniture and their seating arrangements for the participants, Wifi and LAN .

For setting up the system for the video conferencing I refereed this page on the supernode site. The quality of the MCU(multi-point conferencing unit) depends on the bandwidth of the Internet used. 1MBPS is minimum and 10MBPS is a decent speed to have. It is recommended to have connection through fiber optic cable. Through out the fab academy we faced minor issue including not being able to mute properly or mic functionality malfunctioning and the most irritating of all linphone crashing. The most stable configuration(which is really not that stable) was found to be in a clean install of Ubuntu 14.04 and linphone installed, no other system connected to that line while the MCU is running through either LAN or Wifi and using the recommended settings mentioned in the supernode site. The settings might also need some tweaking depending on the Internet connection you have. The linphone available by default in the software center of the Ubuntu wont be sufficient for the job, you will have to follow the exact instructions on installation on the supernode site mentioned earlier, involving adding the ppa repository link to get the latest release of the linphone. Linphone also worked well in windows 7. A common issue with linphone is getting the multimedia settings right and remembering the settings. We used the logitech speaker phone and camera recommended by Neil for video conferencing which also had come together with other equipment to setup the fablab. It takes a little bit of effort to figure out proper settings. Linphone crashes I think when it tries to send data at larger bandwidth than the connection can provide and it gets overloaded and goes out. We had problems even when using windows. We had a stabler connection when lesser people are joining the MCU(when our final project reviews were going on). Ekiga doesn't crash as much but there's a lag of few seconds if we tried to communicate over the MCU.

Material Management.

Throughout the course you would also require some special materials relevant to some processes of each week. I managed to source them from from local sources and Indian e commerce website the following are the materials and the useful links where to get them.

1. Epoxy resin- http://www.amazon.in/MurtiSil-Transparent-Epoxy-Resin-911133000750/dp/B018TRE1K0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=A3EK6JTDAYRF6J

This epoxy resin had issued with setting hard. The recommended proportions were mentioned as 2:1 of part A and B respectively. It always set to rubbery consistency. It set hard when it was heated to 150 celsius which is not viable for fablab processes. The proper proportion has to be figured out.

It came with no material and safety datasheet which was a cause of concern to me. However I didn't find any toxic pungent fumes when we worked with it and the supplier too told us that it was safe to use and doesn't require professional protection gear.

2. Silicone rubber- http://www.amazon.in/MurtiSil-1010-Silicone-Rubber-911110100001/dp/B012GGYKCY/ref=pd_bxgy_236_img_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=1VN9464A5K1T2GK5NR5X

We had enough silicone rubber with us from the time we setup fablab but it wasn't at its best. We make the purchase of this product but another lab in Vigyan Ashram employed it in their projects and results were good.

Smooth-on Sorta clear-37 was still active and set fine but we had a feeling it had grown in viscosity.
All our OOMOO-25 was had become useless and as they didn't set properly.
Sorta clear 37 and Omero 25 had shelf life of about 4 months and 6 months. But Sorta clear remain active even after the shelf life period had expired.

3.Header pins
http://www.amazon.in/REES52-Single-Breakable-Connector-Arduino/dp/B018K9981E?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00

We had run out of header pins at the time of prefab. We had more need of the single row header pins, unfortunately the SMD mountable version of these aren't commonly available. This is a link to through hole mounting component which can be SMD soldered too with a little effort.

4. Female header pins
http://www.amazon.in/Header-Female-10mm-Relimate-Connector/dp/B00RUNYE66?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00

I figured these also would be immensely useful.

5. ESP8266 ESP-12E  transceiver module SMD.

http://www.amazon.in/Transceiver-ESP8266-ESP-12E-Serial-Wireless/dp/B00RJJHWLA?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

more for project specific and personal use

6. FTDI breakout
http://www.amazon.in/FT232RL-Download-Serial-Adapter-Arduino/dp/B00M1K412U?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00
A must have if you want to work on electronics communication using ftdi at home also. Its cheaper than the cable and offers more functionality by trading user friendliness and also you need USB to mini usb type B cable to connect to the computer. The USB to FTDI cable is also available but is way more expensive.

7. USB 2.0 Cable - A-Male to Mini-B

http://www.amazon.in/Storite-Cable-External-Camera-Readers/dp/B00GGGOYEK?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00

A good deal available on this one

8. Vacuum bag for Composite week

http://www.amazon.in/Real-Space-Bag-Storage-Clothes/dp/B00MA6Q5WY?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00

In Trivandrum lab we had somehow received a humongous Quincy 200 compressor with the fablab setup instead of the standard Dewalt compressor. It also had some issues in internal wiring which made its fuses fail and it became useless for us. 

We had to make alternate arrangements. I have documented the use of this in my composites week. I made special attachment through which a Shopvac can be used to for vacuuming process. This didn't fare well and failed to hold the vacuum for long, so I don't recommend it

9. Smooth Rods

http://stores.ebay.in/ASHAPURA-HANDLOOM-AHMEDABAD/M8-SMOOTH-ROD-/_i.html?_fsub=10136704016

 Cheapest available, the quality was also great.

10. GT2 Timing belts

 http://www.ebay.in/itm/3d-Printer-GT2-open-Timing-Belt-6mm-width-2-meter-/112006572386?hash=item1a141ca962:g:p-4AAOSw~gRV6tAr

11. Bearings (8mm ID)

http://www.amazon.in/Roller-Bearings-Skateboard-Scooter-Wheels/dp/B01FWB3RS8?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00

Not sure of the quality because I am yet to use these, but these have a decent price.

12. PCB milling bits.
-60 deg V grove router (G846) http://indsphinx.com/product/v-grove-router-60-g846/
-PCB 2 Flute Router_P820 ø 0.80mm  http://indsphinx.com/product/pcb-2-flute-router-p826-0-80mm-1-00mm/

Indspinx is an Indian vendor I found when right at the last moment when in the last few weeks we ran out of PCB endmills.

Though Ideally we would require 

0.4mm(1/64inch) pcb router for trace isolation and

0.8mm(1/32 inch) endmill for cutout of the PCB we had to stick with 60degree V groove or since this particular vendor manufactures the bits according to our requiremnt and manufactures them based on order. It would take 3 months for the manufacturing. But the 30degree V groove was in stock so we immediately took. I contacted the sellers and convinced them to wave the minimum quantity of 10 pieces order and made sure the bits arrived to us as soon as possible. The V groove gave us an excellent quality of trace isolation.

This is a useful page which gives us the feedrates for endmill which I found going through the Indspinx website and their catalog. For long term relation this vendor seemed ideal and I was impressed with the quality of the produce.

Fab Academy Graduation.

I submitted my final works, my fab academy documentation website, for evaluation on July 8 and after an eager wait for a week the results slowly started pouring in, Vishnu was the first one to graduate from our batch and I soon followed.

Helping out on reviewing.

 
After I was done submitting my works for evaluation I also helped out my friends at Vigyan ashram by reviewing their works. This was a busy time in Vigyan ashram instructors could spare little time with the students for reviewing.

From July 12h onwards I closely worked with Pradnya one of the local instructors and the students Akshay, Supriya and Yogesh, reviewed their works and suggested improvements so that it they are don't face any trouble with the evaluation. I read their works in detail and notified each of them where the did not meet the criteria of evaluation as listed on the assignment and assessment document. These included, missing files, broken links, assignment work not meeting the requirements etc

At the end of the evaluation week thankfully everyone from Vigyan ashram and the Trivandrum and Kochi Labs who had submitted for evaluation had graduated. And we had 11 graduates from Trivandrum, 5 from Kochi, 3 from Vigyan ashram taking the total number of graduated from India to 19.

Further

 

For me The Fab Academy was a great learning experience. It taught me not only technical knowledge which I totally loved and want more of everyday but also gave me a good introduction to looking at looking at life from a startup perspective and the skills it would need.

For me I feel it awesome to be able come across innovation of any kind on daily basis and to be able to help these ideas foster gives me a great feeling. So being a manager of Lab, as instructor or fab guru or in some kind of advisory board for entrepreneurs all these job profiles would be godsend opportunity for me.

The incredible Fablab of Trivandrum and Kochi

I was fortunate enough to be a part of the installation of very first MIT fab labs in Kerala. A team from MIT including, Prashanth, Matt, Sam Calish and the Director of the fab foundation, Sherry Lassiter  came to Kerala to setup the lab and it was exiting to work with them and see the whole lab setup in no time. Prashanth, Matt and Sam were the research scholars under Neil, working in varied and very interesting field of research.

Usually Fab Labs take a while to setup but in our case each of the labs were to be prepared in a span of 2-3 days. Couple of big events were in order, Neil was to visit Kerala in person and inaugurate the opening of the Fab labs and Chief Minister of the state of Kerala was to be present etc.

The way things unfolded quickly and efficiently with the help of the MIT team was a sight to see.

I was mostly involved in setting up Shopbot and the computers. Anybody who has attempted to setup a shopbot would usually have a tale to tell, getting the shopbot square is a big deal. At the first installation which happened at Trivandrum, Sam and me started assembling the shopbot based on the instruction booklet. Getting the T nuts mounted in the holes and slide through the T slots frustrated us a couple of times. Too many threads engaged and the nuts wont pass through and too little engaged the nuts would come of in the the t slot and it another story to get them to align with the nut again and engage with the thread while inside the T slot. We went through the tedious and heavy process of assembling the shopbot and finally the shopbot was setup square and perfectly fine. I saw Sam very and wondered was that that big of a deal. Apparently Sam got it right with a relative ease and at the first attempt. I understood better why Sam was so happy and whats the big deal about getting the square when I started assembling the shopbot again in Cochin with Matt. All I ever heard about Shopbot was square.

I began the same process of assembling the shopbot with Matt. Matt's strategy was a little different from Sam's. Matt believed that the nuts and bolts should be tightened the hell out right from the beginning, while Sam didnt bother about tightness of the nuts bolts much and tightened everything later after getting everything square. Matt Insisted on how tight the nuts and bolts should be, actually I found myself lacking in power to tighten the nuts as compared to Matt. Finally while mounting the Gantry on top the bed we faced a lot of problem. There were 4 freewheel/rolling bearing, 2 in each side which roll over the two linear V slide on either side of the structure. We found that at least one of the wheel dint perfectly mate with the V slide at one point. We had to loosen the nuts again jiggle the entire structure slightly at different points so that we could get things right, but none worked to satisfactory degree. Continuing with installation we further ran into problems, I wasn't present for the electrical connections part and apparently the machine ran into some problem. Matt was visibly angry, It was his first installation and things were looking bad and he really got stressed out. Matt stayed whole night and with solitude worked on the machine but couldn't get it working properly. We came back in the morning to hear that he had worked further on squaring the machine and recheck electrical connections but it wasnt working still. But to our surprise Prashant ran the machine and it ran just fine. We figured Matt had missed something about the software.

I was at Cochin lab when Neil coolly ran a job on the Shopbot.

Later Prashanth took a bunch of us through using some equipments at the fab lab. It was a very quick demo, I was able to do SMD soldering for the first time, and saw the the working of shopbot and some molding and casting magic.


Couple of memorable pics

Sherry jumping into the assembling dust collector for the shopbot.

Sherry and Matt at Cochin.

 

Sherry and Me before saying bye. 

 

  

Technology Innovation Fellowship- KSUM, Fablab related activities

While I was working with Biotz with their 3D printer Mr. Jayshankar KSUM expressed interest in taking me as a fellow to promote and engage in fab lab related activities. I was very interested in enhancing my skill as a product designer, from just mechanical area to electronics and overall product design. I join KSUM as a fellow from October 2015. My area of focus was management and projects related to Fab Lab, including workshops, material management, managing visits to the fablab from corporates and the students of engineering colleges and government officials also.

I was the local assistant for the Fab Academy from the Trivandrum lab. I was responsible for setting up the lab for video conferencing with MIT MCU and session with remote guru, managing materials required for each week and acting as a liaison between the academy and the KSUM when required.

KSUM(Kerala startup Mission) is an Business incubator backed up by the  government of Kerala and Directorate of Science and technology of India, and is located in the Technopark campus in Trivandrum, Kerala. KSUM is responsible for promoting and supporting entrepreneurial activities all over Kerala. KSUM identifies and employs exceptional people who are able to enhance and contribute to the startup ecosystem of the state and provide support in promotion of entrepreneurship related activities of KSUM, for a period of one year. Through the support of KSUM, fellows get exposure to people and opportunities they wouldn't normally have access to and helps them spread their wings farther in the space of startups.

In order to boost innovation in hardware related sector, IOT related products and to work on and create more socially relevant digital fabricated tools KSUM and Kerala Government is betting big on the maker movement and personal fabrication concepts. Kerala now has plans to setup more than 100 fablabs all over Kerala in different educational institutes and open spaces to achieve its vision.

KSUM had setup two Fab labs through an arrangement with the MIT and Fab Foundation. The  fab labs were setup in Trivandrum at IIITMK university in Technopark campus and in a business incubator under KSUM called the Startup Village in the Kinfra Hightech park in Cohin. I was also involved in setting up both the labs. Now we needed instructors in Kerala who are educated in the ways of the Fab lab, know its processes and exploit them to make projects and be able to collaborate and spread the learnings. For this we needed the fellows to take Fab Academy. KSUM allowed me to take up Fab Academy through the Trivandrum Fab lab.

Pre academy / Prefab

For taking up Fab Academy it is extremely important that a local instructor be present so that he could support us with using the machine and equipments of the fablab and help us throughout the course. To bridge this gap KSUM in a special arrangement with Fab Foundation arranged for a precursor course before Fab Academy which would enable the people planning to take the Fab Academy to get familiar with the processes and equipments and be self sufficient throughout the Fab Academy.

The pre academy was taken by two excellent gurus Francisco Sanchez and Luciano Betoldi who came to Kerala and engaged us in the Pre academy/ Prefab program spanning 4 weeks of intensive training in the two labs.

22 of us enrolled into the program of which 11 passed. You can find all the information about the people who took the pre academy in http://thebeachlab.github.io/.

Documentation of my experiences during the pre academy can be found at http://puneethrj.github.io/

The prefab allowed the participants to be qualified enough to take up the role of manager of the fablab partly. I routinely helped and advised the fab lab clients in their projects and use of fablab equipments. The clients included architects, students and engineers.

BIotz 3D printers

After working at SVP Laser for 2 years I embarked on a much challenging journey at a startup in Trivandrum called Biotz intelligent solutions. I joined as the CTO in the company.
At the point I joined we were trying to create a 3D printer. The vision was to create a feature rich and visually appealing world class machine.

My responsibilities included innovation, research and development, design for manufacturing and assembly.

I made plans for the shell of the 3d Printer, extrution system that can extrude a mix of 4 different filaments at a time to create different colored output.

Due to lack of funds we were not able to go forth with many of our plans. Instead of a sheet metal curvy body we switched to box shaped jigsaw fitted 3d printer. Our business goals changed to meet the arising and the immediate demand. The Kerala government was interested in setting up huge number of fablabs and a local made 3d printer could turn the favor in our way. We looked out for a solution that can be immediately implemented and proves reliable, user-friendly and sturdy.

To answer the demand I took inspiration from the ultimaker press fit construction kind of a model and  after initial design we began prototyping the body of the printer.

My stay in the company was short and only about 6 months, after which I joined KSUM( Kerala startup mission) as a fellow. The government was taking special interest in setting up fablabs and I was offered fellowship in order to help them out in their vision. I worked in parallel with biotz until I could bring the mechanical design to a decent level before taking up Fab Academy full time.

SVP Laser- My first job

My First Job

I joined SVP Laser Technologies on may 2013 and worked for 2 years. The SVP Laser is an OEM for CNC(Computerized numerical control) and CMM(Coordinate measuring machine) and custom machines. There were a couple of interesting things that I did and learned from the firm.

My major responsibility was to develop the firmware of for CNC in-house which would go along with the multi-cnc software which was a GUI for the functions CNC could do. The Firmware was developed on FP0r PLCs from Pananasonic company. It was an unusual application for a PLC, but developing on PLC cut our development time significantly. The entire firmware fit into 10000 lines of code. Fpwinpro was the software in which the firmware was coded in. The language used for coding was ladder logic. It as really easy to program in the ladder logic. Fpwinpro v7 allowed us to program 20000 lines of code for free. this proved to economical for us and since we deal with custom machines the reduction in the development time was really helpful.

The MultiCNC did the parsing of gcode and sequential sending of the moves to the PLC. The MultiCNC was developed and maintained my another engineer. I used to test the software and provide my feedback and suggestions. I also helped in developing the logic in firmware and the software.

Anybody developing a cnc software or a firmware would be well aware of the challenges to achieve a coordinated, continuous and smooth motion of a cnc. We were dealing with open loop control of stepper motor most of the time. I developed strategies to achieve this effect with varying degree of success.

Other than the above I also took workshops on product development and digital fabrication, where I taught about 2D and 3D design and other tools and operation of 3d printers and CNC router.

I also trained the users on CNC and CMM operations and maintenance where they were installed and helped them with troubleshooting.

I was able retro fit old and defunct CNC with controllers provided by SVP laser to work with the Multicnc software and give new life to the machines. Often for educational institutes like the SLV polytechnic college that have old inc or acquired CNC second hand retro fitting proves to be an economical option. Usually the electronic components or the mechanical component will be intact in an old machine, through retro fitting we try to replace the old damaged electronic or add electronics and make the system operational with our equipments.

Throughout the job I was able to learn various aspect of CNC design and assembly, firmware programming using PLC and ladder logic, GUI programming using VB.Net, conducting workshops and training interns and recruits and managing them. I was able to get an overall picture of the operation and building of machines with human interface.

I worked with vendors and manufactures to get the parts for the CNC, travelled different parts of the country for machine installation and training or troubleshooting. I also looked out for potential business opportunities the company could invest in.

Working on R&D was interesting as I worked with and guided many bright students from IIT Madras.

Overall I had a good hands on experience in the business of CNC machines.

Summary:
PLC programming- Panasonic PLC, Fpwinpro, Ladder logic in Fpwinpro
HMI(Human machine interface) programming- Panasonic GT02 device, Gtwin software.
Product development- CNC design, CNC accessory design, PLC programming learning kit, grinding wheel dressing machine.
Programming- VB.Net.
Training and workshops- Product development using CNC and 3d printers, Internship training.
Installations and training- various college in Hassan, Chamrajnagar, Belgaum, Tumkur, Trichy, Chennai.
Retrofitting- lathes, CNC Milling machines.