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Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

#31

Post by MKRhere »

User23 wrote: post #29
atrettel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem, I'll give you a serious answer. First of all, I'm not a lawyer. I'm a mechanical engineer. And to answer your question, yes, many attorneys are in fact worried about giving legal advice online [1], especially the fact that it may imply some sort of legal representation being extended. This is why I added the disclaimer at the top and why I emphasized that this is not the right forum for this and that the…

If you were a lawyer then you'd be bound by bar standards and such. But you're not, so why the disclaimer? Is there some legal jeopardy a non-lawyer places themselves in by talking about the law? If so that sounds positively dystopian. More generally I am entirely supportive of not giving unsolicited advice of any sort. Not for legal reasons, but because it's presumptuous, rude, and often even pompous.

I believe atrettel wanted to be transparent about the nature of their reply more than protecting themselves from jeopardy. Also, this is not unsolicited as OP has asked a specific question to the community.

Re: Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

#32

Post by iancmceachern »

User23 wrote: post #29
atrettel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem, I'll give you a serious answer. First of all, I'm not a lawyer. I'm a mechanical engineer. And to answer your question, yes, many attorneys are in fact worried about giving legal advice online [1], especially the fact that it may imply some sort of legal representation being extended. This is why I added the disclaimer at the top and why I emphasized that this is not the right forum for this and that the…

If you were a lawyer then you'd be bound by bar standards and such. But you're not, so why the disclaimer? Is there some legal jeopardy a non-lawyer places themselves in by talking about the law? If so that sounds positively dystopian. More generally I am entirely supportive of not giving unsolicited advice of any sort. Not for legal reasons, but because it's presumptuous, rude, and often even pompous.

Engineers are often bound by similar standards and organizations. Depending on the situation they may be licensed and PE, etc. We are often held accountable for our actions and statements in exactly the same fashion as lawyers are. Therefore we are trained, and it's good form to, be very clear about the circumstances around any advice we give.

Re: Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

#33

Post by LordHeini »

Apart from the patent issues.

There has been some tinkering with this technique in the community.

From what I could gather this sort of bricklayer interlocking does basically nothing to help part strength.

And you can not do it on the outside walls because they would not be smooth.

Which means you would need to transition half way in the wall from stacked to interlocked which is possible but needs a very well tuned printer laying lines a fraction of the nozzle diameter.

All in all does not look like it's worth the effort.

Re: Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

#35

Post by tostr »

Since you wrote

> [...] is a significant limiting factor for the structural integrity of 3d printed parts

I went and checked. There is a youtube called MyTechFun[0] who does proper material testing, and being a patreon I have access to the entire table of his results. The comparison I made is tensile strength vs layer adhesion, which is the same test (basically pull until it breaks), but the sample is printed lying down or standing up. I expressed layer adhesion as a percentage of tensile strength, and sorted by this.

The best three I will show here (tensile and adhesion are in kg):

  Name, Tensile, Adhesion, Percentage
  YXPolyer Nylon[1], 63.1, 66.4, 105
  PolyMaker PLA Pro[2], 56.55, 50.6, 89
  PolyMaker CoPA[3], 66.3, 56.6, 85
While the tensile strength is higher for all (except one), it does not seem to be quite as limiting a factor as your claim makes it out to be. We can find percentages of >70% for all major filament types. But to be fair, most of them seem to cluster around 40-50%. While this is not great, given the choice of materials I think it can be worked around quite easily.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@MyTechFun/videos

[1] https://youtu.be/Q6v4xYrkOnU

[2] https://youtu.be/2dgzwCvSO2k

[3] https://youtu.be/cQb-hbr1KYY

Re: Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

#36

Post by wyan »

User23 wrote: post #29
atrettel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem, I'll give you a serious answer. First of all, I'm not a lawyer. I'm a mechanical engineer. And to answer your question, yes, many attorneys are in fact worried about giving legal advice online [1], especially the fact that it may imply some sort of legal representation being extended. This is why I added the disclaimer at the top and why I emphasized that this is not the right forum for this and that the…

If you were a lawyer then you'd be bound by bar standards and such. But you're not, so why the disclaimer? Is there some legal jeopardy a non-lawyer places themselves in by talking about the law? If so that sounds positively dystopian. More generally I am entirely supportive of not giving unsolicited advice of any sort. Not for legal reasons, but because it's presumptuous, rude, and often even pompous.

It is usually illegal to give legal advice or represent someone without being a lawyer, so this disclaimer is meant to protect yourself against claims that you're doing so. I think.

Re: Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

#37

Post by pessimizer »

wyan wrote: post #36
User23 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were a lawyer then you'd be bound by bar standards and such. But you're not, so why the disclaimer? Is there some legal jeopardy a non-lawyer places themselves in by talking about the law? If so that sounds positively dystopian. More generally I am entirely supportive of not giving unsolicited advice of any sort. Not for legal reasons, but because it's presumptuous, rude, and often even pompous.

It is usually illegal to give legal advice or represent someone without being a lawyer, so this disclaimer is meant to protect yourself against claims that you're doing so. I think.

> It is usually illegal to give legal advice or represent someone without being a lawyer

This is not true. It is usually illegal to give someone the impression that you are a lawyer when you are giving legal advice (it is fraud.) So careful people lead by making sure that no one has the impression that they are a lawyer when they are giving legal advice, and lawyers who are just talking off the top of their head and not being paid warn you that they are not giving you advice as a lawyer (i.e. they are not working at this moment as a lawyer.)

People who are not lawyers give each other legal advice all the time. It's a good thing if the advice is good, and a bad thing if the advice is bad, but not a crime.

Re: Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

#38

Post by npsomaratna »

FL410 wrote: post #26
atrettel wrote: post #10

This comment is not legal advice. This comment is merely for educational purposes. The quote that you have about the 1997 patent, namely "U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,925 teaches a process for adjusting the deposition rate..." is from the specification. That is written by either the inventors or more likely the attorneys filing the application. The specification is not legally enforceable or binding. It is supposed to disclos…

> This comment is not legal advice. Serious question, why do lawyers always do this? No other profession seems to feel the need to disclaim their dialog. Is there some precedent for attorneys discussing their area of expertise and unwittingly becoming someone’s counsel?

Risk.

Whenever you provide legal advice, you take on risk. And big or small, there is always the possibility that that risk might end your career and cause years of training to go up in smoke.

Lawyers are experts in risk management, which is why you see them trying to minimize risk and exposure in every way possible.

(Lawyer here.)

Re: Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent?

#39

Post by Aerroon »

npsomaratna wrote: post #38
FL410 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This comment is not legal advice. Serious question, why do lawyers always do this? No other profession seems to feel the need to disclaim their dialog. Is there some precedent for attorneys discussing their area of expertise and unwittingly becoming someone’s counsel?

Risk. Whenever you provide legal advice, you take on risk. And big or small, there is always the possibility that that risk might end your career and cause years of training to go up in smoke. Lawyers are experts in risk management, which is why you see them trying to minimize risk and exposure in every way possible. (Lawyer here.)

Have you ever considered wearing a helmet in day-to-day life? I'm just curious how far flights of fancy might go for people dealing with risk management constantly.
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