MakerBot in the Daily News
MakerBot was in the Daily News yesterday! The Daily news is the 5th most read newspaper in the US!
INVENTION: The MakerBot 3D Printer, $750, www.MakerBot.com
How did you start putting robots together?
When I was a kid, I was really interested in how bicycles worked. Eventually, that morphed into how other things worked and hacking, which is really about how things work and being able to do what you want with them. A toaster doesn’t have to be just a toaster. There is not much of a difference between fixing bicycles and being obsessed by how everything works. If you’ve ever fixed anything, there’s a rush you get at the end when you have fixed it and it works. It makes you feel like the object really is yours and you can understand it.
What is the MakerBot?
It’s a 3D printer that takes a digital three-dimensional design — maybe it is a character that you thought up in your head or a part for your car — and prints it out in plastic. The plastic is like spaghetti, and it feeds into an extruder that heats it up to 200 degrees Celsius and squeezes it out. The machine then moves around to build the object you designed. The plastic is real-ly strong, like the stuff Legos are made out of. Basically, the MakerBot can make anything you can imagine.
Why is the MakerBot so special?
Before the MakerBot, for a decent 3D printer, companies have to spend anywhere from 25K to a quarter of a million dollars. We basically figured out a way to do it for 750 bucks. It’s a kit that you put together yourself, and you can make pretty much anything that you can imagine up to 100 millimeters by 100 millimeters by 100 millimeters.
What’s the craziest thing MakerBot has created?
Beside plastic, people have made it extrude frosting to decorate cupcakes. People can do amazing things with it, and that just inspires more people.
Now to be totally clear, the MakerBot isn’t just my invention. Zach Smith and Adam Mayer designed it with me and it builds on a lot of the research that the RepRap community has created.
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