
How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware - dvfjsdhgfv
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/12/how-to-make-everything-ourselves-open-modular-hardware.html
======
Animats
Nobody actually builds stuff that way, except for prototypes. But people do
build things from T-slotted aluminum extrusions.[1]

Their heating appliance designs are not too good. The one that heats a water
vessel has liquids above a non-sealed box with electrical wiring. The toaster
uses parts from another toaster, plus CNC milled plates and 3D printed parts.
More expensive than a standard toaster, and looks iffy on electrical safety.

[1] [https://www.walmart.com/ip/80-20-1010-72-T-Slotted-
Extrusion...](https://www.walmart.com/ip/80-20-1010-72-T-Slotted-
Extrusion-10S-72-Lx1-In-H/41021210)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Walmart? Would not have guessed they sold 80/20\. Here's a more typical site
that thousands of engineers will use today to purchase extrusion for all kinds
of industrial projects:

[https://www.mcmaster.com/#structural-
framing/=1dhfwat](https://www.mcmaster.com/#structural-framing/=1dhfwat)

Or, if you're a makerspace in the market for larger quantities and want to
standardize, find a local vendor of extrusion (80/20, Misumi, Futura, MB Kit,
etc) that will have the oddball fittings you may need on hand locally.

It's true that 80/20 will not sell you their dies, but they are happy to give
away free CAD libraries of all their parts. There are subtle differences
between different manufacturers, but everyone makes parts that are compatible
with it and you probably shouldn't depend on the tiny features that won't
match. It looks like OpenGrid saw a proliferation of too many 'standards' that
were not open-source, and thought "We'll make a new standard that will be
better than the others because it's open", and ended up adding a worse (less
strong, less adjustable) standard product with limited adoption.

On the electrical boxes, they seem to be proud of their homemade enclosures.
What they probably don't realize is that you can buy an IP67, hinged, IEC-
rated enclosure with continuously welded seams from Saginaw or Hoffman with
built-in grounding lugs, backplane, and latches for $80.

~~~
sigstoat
> Walmart? Would not have guessed they sold 80/20.

they don't, their website is a marketplace just like amazon's, these days.

~~~
ensignavenger
Walmart is a bit more picky about what sellers they accept, from what I've
heard.

------
2dollars27cents
This reminds me of the MIT course "How to make (Almost) Anything"

[http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/4.140/](http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/4.140/)

... as well as the follow on course "How to make something that makes (almost)
anything".

[http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/865.15/index.html](http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/865.15/index.html)

------
cellularmitosis
See also Marcin Jakubowsky's work in this vein.

[https://www.opensourceecology.org/](https://www.opensourceecology.org/)

~~~
tomjakubowski
I am compelled to say it is spelled Jakubowski.

~~~
dredmorbius
Relation?

~~~
tomjakubowski
Not that I know of, it's a relatively common Polish surname.

------
iafisher
One thing that Lego does very well despite (or perhaps because of) being a
closed system is ensuring the consistent quality of all its bricks. In the
years I played with Legos as a child I never encountered two bricks that
didn't fit together perfectly. I wonder if an open standard would be able to
achieve the same consistency.

~~~
TomMarius
How long ago was that? Lego from the 80's sometimes got stuck together. I even
remember two (2-brick) sets of bricks that stayed together to this day.

~~~
kraftman
You could tell the sticky pieces by the teethmarks from pulling them apart :D

~~~
adrianratnapala
By that standard, nearly all of my pieces must have been sticky.

(And yes, I did grow up in the '80s).

------
beardicus
I really love the aesthetic of all the demo pieces for OpenStructures
(mentioned in the article). Unfortunately it seems it didn't really catch on,
and is not an active project. Also, I've found that many standard metric parts
that could fit in the system are hard to get or expensive here in the US,
alas.

~~~
TOGoS
In the US it probably makes more sense to go with an inch-based standard,
since it's easier to find materials in those sizes. I've been making up my own
'standard' for rack-mount electronics with an eye towards making it work
nicely with as many other defacto standards as possible (19" racks, standard
lumber sizes, pegboard, unistrut, erector sets):
[http://www.nuke24.net/docs/2018/TOGRack.html](http://www.nuke24.net/docs/2018/TOGRack.html)

~~~
Qwertie
You can just buy the closest match and cut off a bit of the end. In the end
it's much better for everyone to standardize on the superior units

~~~
TOGoS
Indeed. Which is why I standardized on inches, which match the hardware at
Home Depot and whose rulers make it easy to divide by powers of 2. :P

~~~
TOGoS
Aw shucks. Downvoted for disagreeing with the HN groupthink.

~~~
TOGoS
First rule of HN groupthink is don't acknowledge HN groupthink. Just downvote
anyone who's different.

------
Hasz
I get it, but the execution is going in the wrong direction.

I want good documentation for everything in current consumer products. Good
documentation makes things modular, not pre-drilling a bunch of holes in steel
beam. If every printer came with a good BOM and links to datasheets, it would
be much easier to reuse those parts, both for consumers and other
manufacturers.

Such standardization makes it easier to design and cheaper to manufacture, all
without artificially setting a standard. I hope with new "right to repair"
legislation, we will start to see a bit more light shed by OEMs as to what
parts their products use and datasheets for them.

------
hugs
Oh heh, my project (Bitbeam) is listed there. I use it as the foundational
building block for the robots I make at my company.

~~~
TOGoS
I googled for 'bitbeam' and found a blog but no description of what it is.

~~~
hugs
Try clicking the "About" link on the blog?
[https://bitbeam.org/about/](https://bitbeam.org/about/)

Basically, Bitbeam is 3D printable, CNC millable, or lasercutable parts for
making things like small robots. The geometry of the parts are compatible with
Lego Technic beams.

~~~
jacquesm
Some of the links to other sites on that page no longer work.

Nice project! I particularly like your factory, that looks like a fun setup
that you have.

~~~
hugs
Thanks. Yeah, I'm _years_ overdue in updating the Bitbeam site. But I do use
Bitbeam all the time in my work.

------
vortico
Modularity in every industry is 3-10 times more expensive than monolithic
commercial products, and this is no exception. I can buy a metal bed frame for
$40 at Walmart, or buy ~10 $40 pieces to make my own. It's the price you pay
for having flexible parts.

The synthesizer world knows this well, where a $3000 modular synthesizer is
required to build a patch for a $300 portable synthesizer, although you gain
flexibility with the modular version.

~~~
kennywinker
Pretty sure that’s an economies of scale issue. If the demand for modular was
as large as the demand for complete synths, they’d be dirt cheap - but they
are essential different products. Though we’ll see how that plays out if
behringer ever makes good on their threat to get into modular...

~~~
vortico
I think it has more to do with baseline product overhead. The cost of bringing
a single electronic product to market is $50-100/unit + variable amount based
on the scale. The solution to make the product cheaper is to offer monolithic
functionality in a single unit, with the same baseline overhead. The same is
true for assembled "monolithic" bed frames vs. modular aluminum beams, just
with different numbers.

~~~
RossBencina
> The cost of bringing a single electronic product to market is $50-100/unit.
> The solution to make the product cheaper is to offer monolithic
> functionality in a single unit

Another solution is to reduce the baseline overhead.

~~~
vortico
Can't. People require a particular amount of support, your marketing costs
scale with product sold, and international shipping costs can't get any
cheaper. The baseline is not much less for Behringer as it is any reputable
modular manufacturer. What they do instead is reduce the parts, manufacturing,
and R&D/unit cost, but they're still restricted from going below $50-100/unit
even if they could magically clone modules.

~~~
RossBencina
The point of this article is "making everything ourselves." What you're
describing only applies if the traditional manufacturer/sales channel/consumer
paradigm is maintained. I'm proposing to think further outside the box than
that.

For an example of what is possible: you can buy Arduino clone hardware on eBay
direct from China much cheaper than anything from authorised suppliers.

Any successful "making things ourselves" community (consider Pure Data as an
example) is self-supporting and doesn't expect support from
manufacturers/creators. Similarly, such a community spreads awareness without
marketing investment.

~~~
vortico
You have to buy the aluminum bars, screws, brackets from somewhere. It will
always be cheaper for a manufacturer to buy them in bulk at a price much
cheaper than you could get them and sell it to you for cheaper than the sum of
the parts (at your price).

------
Qwertie
I'm liking the idea but I just can't see how we can get anywhere close to the
current size and aesthetics of the current stuff we have. Being modular and
standard leaves you much less ability to optimistic to the most compact and
cheap design. Desktops have this kind of modular design and they are huge and
mostly full of empty space. I think it would be very hard to design a laptop
using standard modules without everyone just building the exact same laptop.

~~~
jecxjo
The issue with Desktops is that motherboard layouts suck. 2' x 2' square with
video cards nearly a foot long. Not much room to kill area unless you want
fill the random gaps around your video card.

The real place to make things more custom is when you can do small and stick
the computer in places it would not normally go. Raspberry pi or a micro atx
in the glove box of your car kind of thing.

------
codazoda
I like the idea of GridBeam for furniture. Break a chair leg, just throw a new
one on. Build a crib, convert it to a toddler beb then to twin. Later reformat
it into the first chair for the child's new apartment.

~~~
hugs
I used Gridbeam to make the fume hood for my 3D printers:
[https://twitter.com/hugs/status/824090649540562946](https://twitter.com/hugs/status/824090649540562946)

------
delbel
This stuff is cool, but it is also ridiculous over designed and over thought
out. Anybody with a welder, angle grinder, plasma cutter, can do all of these
things in seconds, from scrap on the side of the road. I guess what this is
proposing is having a bunch of pre-fabricated metaL with holes cut. So, 95% of
your holes won't be used -- which is a massive overhead for nothing. I can
drive in any neighborhood on a Saturday, find a broken threadmil, and cut it
up with my plasma cutter to whatever size I need and weld it. If I make a
mistake, I can grind the weld off and re-do it. Also I would never trust that
bed frame that looks like a deathwish.

~~~
jacquesm
I see your point, there are a lot of tools required for that approach though
and those tools are expensive and will see - at best - part time use making
each of those welds and cuts a relatively expensive affair.

If you're doing production work then sure, you will need that kind of
optimization to stay in business.

But if instead you are looking to produce one-offs with relatively low skill
and a limited amount of money to spend on tooling then I totally see the point
in making things from re-usable and easy to size components.

And then there is the garbage disposal element: almost none of this is waste,
even at the end of life of the original object. The same goes for Lego, all it
is is parts, and parts have a life of their own (in the decades!) that is
totally different from the life of the objects made from them (minutes to
several years).

So the over-design and the over-thinking go towards doing that work once so
that the users of the system won't need a tools budget in the 10's of
thousands of dollars (welder, plasmacutter, grinder, machine shop to go with
it) and still build functional equipment that is not readily available.

As for how sturdy the bed frame looks: that's mostly a function of the design
of the frame, not of the parts that went into it (Ikea sells kids bedframes
that look quite close to what is shown in the article), you could do a much
better job if you wanted to with the same parts.

I also note a lot of 'cheating' where the system doesn't work anymore (for
instance: the stays to stabilize the bed and the legs under the sled).

~~~
delbel
I buy the cheapest tools I think if I remember right, here's what I got

170 AMP harbor freight welder -- $125 160 AMP Arc welder, amazon $199 CUT-50
Plasma $225 Pizza style air compressor, on sale HF $49 this weekend Angle
grinders - I have a bunch $39-59

Anyway I need these tools because I am constantly breaking my farm equipment.
Also, instead of diddling around with things I just tack weld things, like my
plow blade broke off I couldn't find the bolt so I just welded it in a few
spots.

The CUT-50 and the cheap AC/DC arc welder are the best tools, but I use the
MIG welder as my first go-to

I "modified" the arc welder to make small metal molds in a carbon crucible. I
use aluminum, but it will melt steel. I can lathe/mill that to what I need. I
also have the cheapest HF mini lathe and a nicer mill. So yeah all this stuff
cost me $2000-$3000 but I use it. I also have a completely different CNC
setup.

They made a kit called the Elektor set in the 1940s-50s, my dad gave me, it is
the same concept as this post.

~~~
kennywinker
That sounds like a very useful skill to have. I’d love to learn, but like so
many people I live in small apartment - so this kind of garage workshop stuff
doesn’t work well for me. I do occasional small woodworking projects on my
balcony, but it requires a lot of forethought and planning... e.g. mostly hand
tools, and i can’t just buy an extra sheet of plywood in case I need it.

~~~
delbel
First thing I do whenever I move is change my Dryer to a NEMA welder plug and
outlet. You can sort of use your dryer as a work bench. They make this mini
arc welder that is really small for $140, I've been trying to justify owning
two arc welder to just try it. But they all use the same NEMA plug, you just
need to switch your dryer over to it and you're good.

------
agumonkey
I think about this all the time, i'm not sure how far it could go but it'd
nice to witness

------
ape4
Could be a nice approach on Mars

~~~
Koshkin
I am sure they have thought about it already.

