Hacker Perspective: Bre Pettis

We live in a time where there are no limits to creativity.

If you can imagine it, you can make it.  The technology of rapidly prototyping is now at a stage where any object or project is in the realm of the possible.  The hardware, machines, and robots that will do our bidding are waiting for people to put them to work in workshops and living rooms.

The software for designing what you see in your head has never been easier to acquire and learn.  We are truly in a renaissance of wonderful opportunities for people with an imagination.  When I was a kid, rapid prototyping tools only existed on science fiction TV shows like The Jetsons and Star Trek.  Things have changed since then.

I got hooked on repurposing technology and making things back when I was seven.  My uncle, who made a living getting up early and prowling the trash of Boston looking for treasures to sell at weekend flea markets, taught me how to put together a working bike out of a bunch of broken bikes.

Once I realized that I could take apart a bike and get it back together, I was obsessed with figuring out how things worked.  At the library, I would settle into the 700 section and just read any books about how to make things.  I daydreamed about growing up to be a mechanic with all the tools in my shop that I could ever want.

A few years later in the early-1980s, my parents had a software company producing children's software for the Apple II+ and the Commodore 64.  I idolized the programmer as magicians controlling computing machines!

As an adult I've been making a living in one way or another by learning how to make something and teaching people what I've learned.  I was an art teacher in Seattle Public Schools and my goal was to give young people as many different opportunities to get hooked on different artistic mediums of self expression.

In the summers when I wasn't teaching I would set myself artistic challenges.  My summertime rule was that if I couldn't get started making a project within a few days of having the idea, then I would abandon the idea.  I learned drawing, painting, and ceramics skills by challenging myself this way.

Then one summer, I got obsessed with video blogging and started creating tutorial videos for my students and sharing videos online.  This eventually turned into a job making tutorial videos for Make Magazine and Etsy.  At the beginning of the week, I would set myself a task and have a tutorial video up by the end of the week.

Some weeks had straightforward goals such as making a secret compartment book or a duct tape wallet while other more ambitious projects required collaboration with the folks at the Seattle hacker space, Hackerbot Labs.  Working with friends to create hovercrafts, drawing robots, and near space payloads were some of the best times of my life.

My web videos got the attention of mainstream media and I now have a TV show in the works called History Hacker.  (The pilot aired in September on the History Channel.)  On the show, I explore the lives of inventors from history and remake their inventions in a way that's accessible to parents and kids.  Until that goes into production, I've created a web series called Things and in it, I interview people about things that they have made.

Working on projects collaboratively is very satisfying.

When I moved from Seattle to New York City in 2007, I needed a hacker space.  I visited hacker spaces across Europe on the "Hackers on a Plane" tour and, shortly after, some friends and I founded NYC Resistor, a hacker space in Brooklyn.

Our hacker collective's focus is to learn, share, and make things.  Having a group of friends to work with on projects is the thing I'm most proud of.  If you daydream of having a space to hack on projects with friends, you really should start a hacker space.  There is a great document titled "hacker space design patterns" that is a must read for anyone thinking about starting up a hacker space.  Having a hacker space is a great way to collaboratively obtain new tools and rapid prototyping equipment.

But rapid prototyping doesn't require rooms full of expensive machinery; you don't have to spend a lot of money to rapidly prototype objects.  With a little elbow grease and creativity, you can rapidly prototype objects on the cheap.

You can even rapid prototype objects with paper!

Allison Kudla and I rapid prototyped a paper turkey for Thanksgiving.  We designed it in Blender, the open-source 3D modeler, and then imported the DXF file into Pepakura.

Pepakura is a program that unfolds 3D object files.  Flaps, fold lines, and tabs for glue are created and the virtual 3D object is transformed into a 2D PDF file to print out.  After printing out the PDF of our turkey, we folded it, glued it together, and painted it to make it look just like a turkey might look if it were in World of Warcraft or a really low resolution animation movie.

If you've already got an ordinary printer, the Blender/Pepakura rapid prototyping process is free.  This is a great place to start making the 3D designs you see in your imagination into physical objects.  Artists like Aram Bartholl and Linda Kostowski are pushing the frontier of art using Pepakura to rapid prototype their artwork.

If you get obsessed with paper cutting and folding, another inexpensive way to rapid prototype objects is by getting an inexpensive cutting plotter like the CraftROBO.  Jeff Rutzky inspired me to play with this technology for making boxes, pop up greeting cards, and crazy origami sculptures.  It uses a printer sized machine but instead of an ink-jet printer head, it's got a knife that cuts at your command.

If you want to make your own machines to do your bidding, there are a bunch of DIY solutions for making your own rapid prototyping machine.  If you are into the subtractive process, there are plans for homemade computer controlled mills and lathes online.

My friend Devon is just finishing up his CNC mill made of MDF.  If you have a passion for the additive process, a great place to start is by building a RepRap to create your own self-replicating, rapid prototyping robot.  It's a 3D printer that extrudes plastic to create 3D things.  Metalab, the hackerspace in Vienna, is rocking their RepRap and printing out parts for their robot as well as all sorts of sculptures and even miniature car models.

Some tools are harder to build yourself.

My favorite commercial rapid prototyping machinery is a laser cutter.  My friends and I at NYC Resistor collectively shared the expense and bought an Epilog 35 watt laser cutter.  It's the Swiss Army knife of rapid prototyping.

Our 35W Epilog laser can cut up to 1/4" wood and acrylic and can etch metal.  Besides box enclosures and parts for robot arms, it can be useful for just manifesting things that you need at the moment.

My buddy Eric Michaud needed a fork to eat his Ramen and there was no cutlery at the hacker space, so he just drew one up in QCAD, exported it as a DXF file, imported it into CorelDRAW, and laser cut it.  By the time the Ramen was ready, he had a created a fork of his own design and had a tasty meal.

If you want to work with metal, there are only a few options.

You can use a subtractive tool like a water jet or a plasma cutter.  I haven't played with these much, but I'm itching to make some sunglasses out of aluminum, so I'll have to find one to rent time on fairly soon.  A water jet uses high pressure water and abrasive particles to cut through pretty much anything.

Plasma cutters also cut metals and can be mounted on robotic arms.  If you want to use an additive process for creating an object out of metal, you can follow the lead of Bathsheba Grossman, who creates designs that are 3D printed using a resin/ metal mixture and then fired to become beautiful solid metal 3D art objects.

If you have a project that needs to be rapid prototyped but you don't want to invest the time in building your machine from scratch or the money to acquire one, be on the lookout for folks in your town who have the tools and see if you can rent time on them.  In New York City there are a few places to rent time on machines and I know that there are tech shops opening up all over the place where you can pay a membership fee to have access to rapid prototype machinery.

The frontier of rapid prototyping is filled with all sorts of wild, wonderful, and amazing machines.  Earlier this year, I picked up a knitting machine on eBay and I just learned how to use it to make custom scarves.

Embroidery machines are commercially available for putting your custom designs on clothing.  You can even rapid prototype with sugar!  The Evil Mad Scientists - Windell, Lenore, and Chris - have created a candyfabber that will rapid prototype designs made out of sugar.  If you're a rapid prototyper with a sweet tooth, I've seen a few computer controlled cake icing machines.

If you choose to get into rapid prototyping, no matter what kind of machine you build or buy, you're going to have to use software to get your idea out of your head and into a digital file format for the machinery to understand your vision.

There are a lot of options, both open-source and commercial and no matter how awkward they are to learn, there are folks who will swear by each one.

For creating flat things, I like to use Inkscape, a vector imaging program.

For 3D modeling I use Blender.

Both are open-source and have lots of tutorials online.  Be prepared to spend a solid week learning how to use whichever software you choose.  When I make a design file, I like to share it.

Since there wasn't a centralized place to share the design files for making things, my friend Zach Hoeken Smith and I created Thingiverse, a fresh website for sharing designs for things with the universe.

It's like YouTube, but instead of sharing videos, you can share the design files you create.  Recently, I made a laser cut flatpack monkey action figure and published the file before going to bed.  When I woke up, my friend Martin Bauer, who has a laser cutter in Berlin, had seen my design, improved it, and put together his own version of my action figure and taken awesome pictures!

Sharing files is really satisfying and being able to create objects from other people's tried and true design files will make it easier for folks who are just getting interested in rapid prototyping to get started.  Sharing is something that makes the world a better place.

As cheap rapid prototype tools, software, and machinery spreads, more and more people will become obsessed with creating their own objects.  If you've been waiting to jump in and bring your virtual objects into the physical world, now is the time.

Join the rapid prototyping revolution, and design the objects of future!

Bre Pettis is obsessed with making things and is a founding member of NYC Resistor.  You can find his blog and videos at brepettis.com.