18. Invention, intellectual property and income¶
Create a dissemination plan for your final project¶
“A dissemination plan is a plan for disseminating products… to those who will use the information in practice… Reference CDC Coffee Break: Creating an Effective Dissemination Plan
- I plan on having a complete 3D parametric assembly model of all actual parts of the machine including motion and limits.
- All CAD and EDA data to build the Foam Crawler will be on my final project documentation page.
- I plan on posting details of most steps of the machine build.
This complete 3D CAD data and BOM will allow a person to build Foam Crawler CNC Machine themselves.
I also plan on leading, in person, guided builds of Foam Crawler machines for makers at local Fab Labs and Hacker Spaces. This will allow builders to get help from me while building their machines.
Outline future possibilities and describe them as probabilities¶
The foam crawler will be part of a series of DIY machine builds that will combine to create your own Fab Shop: Personal Digital Fabrication Lab (a mini Fab Lab) in yor apartment, garage or neighborhood space. See my Fab Shop Project for possibilities and probabilities of the Fab Shop.
The Foam Crawler is a core machine of the Fab Shop.
I also plan on updating the foam crawler with a tank drive. A Tank drive is a 3D printed or milled rack that is screwed or pinned to the sheet material you are cutting. This would allow for softer and stiffer materials to be driven between the rollers of the Foam Crawler without slippage or skew.
The tank drive could also allow for a rigid platen to be added between the rollers to hold FR1 circuit board blanks for milling circuits.
A reciprocating blade could be added to replace the foam crawlers DC spindle and end mill. This blade could be used to cut cardboard of various thicknesses. The tank drive may also help improve the cardboard cutting process.
I plan on making some sand casting patterns built up from 2D foam sheet profiles on the Foam Crawler. These patterns will be for metal parts of the CNC Lathe Mill that is another of the core machines in the Fab Shop.
Prepare a draft summary side and video¶
Income¶
I may consider selling short (boards and small box shippable parts only) and full kits for some of my assignments and projects here on my Fab Academy site. This would generate revenue so I can continue to fund my own future projects out side of my full time job.
License¶
Everything on my Fab Academy site is licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. To see what this means click this link: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
One exception are a few projects that I specifically labled as released into the public domain. These are projects that benfit society directly, especailly during the COVID-19 pandemic.