MakerBot Industries

The past month has been a flurry of activity over here at MakerBot. Since we launched the prototype design we spend about 2 weeks working day and night to perfect the CupCake CNC design. Then we had to transition to production, as well as document the whole thing in its entirety. That whole process is very involved, and to be honest a bit boring. Creating detailed parts lists down to the last nut and bolt, writing docs, re-writing docs, taking pictures, re-taking pictures to get a better shot and all that stuff really pales in comparison to actually sitting down and printing stuff out.

Luckily we’ve managed to find time to chill out and print some stuff under the guise of ‘fine tuning the print parameters’ and ‘debugging the code’. The happy folks over at Thingiverse have been very productive lately and have been cranking out cool designs for us (and you!) to print. These are some gears that we printed. We’ve also been working on a secret model that we’re printing. We’ll be blowing your minds soon with that, don’t worry. Anyway, I’ll stop blabbing for now. Here are the gears!

These gears were made by by a Blender script that generates gears. You can check out some of its models in Thingiverse. This awesome script allows you to generate all sorts of gears, including gear racks and such. really rad! We printed a few of them and they mesh very nicely, and the ABS they are printed on is very strong. I like them alot.

Interesting side note: once you have solid 3D positioning hardware and a solid extruder, then its all about the software. If you look closely these gears are both pretty much exactly the same. They even have the same defects, which means that if we improve the software to not cause those defects then the printing quality is improved. Ya gotta love being able to download improved software to improve a physical device.

Oh, and if you’re wondering: the CupCake CNC kit will be shipping this Wednesday the 15th. We have 5 presale kits left. As a special bonus to people who order the presale, we’re including the bonus toolkit with all the tools you need to build it (stuff like solder paste, an avr programmer, hex keys, PSU, plastic, etc, etc.)

Some say that necessity is the mother of all invention, and I’d have to agree with them. When we decided to start MakerBot and launch a complete 3D printer kit for under a grand I knew we had a lot of work cut out for us. Transitioning the RepRap technology from a research project to something that is more of a product presents many challenges. One of my main tasks was preparing the Plastruder MK3 for production.

I had been developing the 3rd generation extruder as part of RepRap for a while and it worked great. However, there were parts of the process that just weren’t suited for a DIY kit at all. The main problem was attaching the nichrome wire and thermistor to the heater barrel so you can accurately control the temperature. For years (literally) we’ve been attaching the nichrome wire to the heater barrel with some form of high temperature cement: first JBweld, then with fire cement and stove cement. The latest revisions for doing this all work, but I didn’t like them.

Why? Because they are horribly messy. Stove cement is an awful, black compound that stains and is probably toxic as hell. Fire cement only comes in 55lb bags. Stove cement only comes in giant 5 oz tubes. All you need is a tiny amount of this stuff to insulate and bond the nichrome. Plus, it is a very delicate process to wrap the nichrome and then apply the goop the whole time hoping that you don’t jiggle it the wrong way and have everything fall apart. If some of it gets in your extruder nozzle? Game over. Oh, did I mention that you have to let it sit OVERNIGHT to fully cure? You’re all fired up to build your extruder and WHAM! Instant timeout.

So, what did I do? Well, aside from the intial panic, I decided to try about 10 different techniques and go with the best one. I tried all the various forms and techniques for dealing with high temperature cement when I stumbled upon this blog entry by Limor Fried of Adafruit fame. Something there sparked my eye: it was here use of the Kapton tape. Up until now I had not even heard of it, and maybe its the same for you as well.

After doing a few hours of research on it and realizing it was PERFECT for what I wanted, I quickly ordered a tiny little roll from McMaster for $4. As soon as I got it, I built a heater barrel assembly from it. It took me 15 minutes and I was able to use it right away. It was the fastest and easiest extruder build I had ever done. Usually when I built extruder barrels, I had to use some sort of tape to hold down the leads while I build it anyway. With Kapton tape, I didn’t have to remove them and they simply became an integral part of the extruder itself.

Wow, that turned out to be longer than I thought. I managed to find a good supplier of Kapton tape so you can get it from the MakerBot store, and it will be a part of our upcoming Plastruder MK3 Kit which will start shipping Monday.

3d printed ceramics!

Some talented mechanical engineers at the University of Washington have shared the home-brew recipes for the ceramic slip and binder that they use in their 3d inkjet printer. This is a different sort of printing than the fused deposition that Cupcake and its siblings (currently!) do; instead of extruding a bead of warm thermoplastic, these machines lay down successive layers of powder and then use an inkjet head filled with an adhesive binder to create solid zones in each layer.  Finally, the loose powder is cleared away to leave the solid object.  You can use a wide variety of materials with this technique– plastic, ceramics, or even sugar!

MakerBot has been featured in the Public Radio International video about NYCResistor!

We’ve had some good press lately. Check it out!

We’ve been on Rocketboom. (see above)

We’ve been on Boingboing Gadgets. Awesome!

This new board has been in development by the RRRF for quite a while as we’ve been trying to get it just right. The v2.3 design has homed in on the excellent A3982 stepper motor driver chip from Allegro. This chip is cheap, reliable, and excellent. This new board actually drops the price of EACH stepper driver by about $10 and makes it easier to build. Its surface mount, but using the hot-plate soldering method, you get a much nicer board and I’ve actually found it to be much easier than soldering up a million through hole components.

This board has the same pinouts as the previous Stepper Motor Driver v1.2 board, so will be a very simple upgrade if you’re so inclined. The pinouts for the stepper connector, opto endstops, IDC connector, and power connector are all the same. Yay for standard interfaces!

Thanks to Lou Amadio, and the RepRap team for help in refining this board.

Anyway, you can get kits and pcbs from MakerBot Industries. We’ll have fully assembled boards in a few months as well if you’re too stubborn to learn SMD soldering and DIY.

Oh, and if the new hotness of the board isn’t enough, check out this video of the new stepper tester code I wrote to go along with it. Tell me that doesn’t make you smile and I’ll frost you a cupcake.

Test Pattern 8 from MakerBot Industries on Vimeo.