MakerBot Industries

We got word through Dave Menninger’s blog that the MakerBot over at Hive 13 is alive and kicking! You’ll notice that the letters are mirrored in the above photo. In ReplicatorG you can flip that in the settings or you can manually flip the stepper motor cable and plug it in backwards and that’ll work too. You’ll also notice that they are using painter’s tape which seems to be working pretty well for them!

Last night, after the Hive13 meeting Craig presented a quick tutorial on the basics of Blender and showed us how to make simple objects. This was incredibly useful because it got a number of us over that initial hump of not knowing anything at all about Blender. Blender can be tricky to understand, but I definitely felt like I was ready to start making useful models after tonight’s short lesson.

Nice work! Check out the Hive13 MakerBot wiki page of their progress. Very impressive!

The Maker Beam Team has daydreamed up Mini-T which is a modular system for putting things together. They’ve designed it up and are starting to get microfunding support.

We’ve always loved modeling toys and building things. When Sam came across full size T-Slot his first thought was, “I want a mini one to play with!”. Sketches turned to 3-d models and it became clear that not only would this be fun, it was feasible, and that the implications went beyond fun into SERIOUS fun.

It’s great to see more open hardware options emerging. Check them out and if you like what they’re doing, give them a hand!