MakerBot Industries

Next week from Wednesday through Saturday Gizmodo is going to be having it’s yearly gallery of awesome tech and MakerBot will be there! I’m planning on being there every day it’s open except Friday! Swing by and say hi, I’ll be printing out objects and giving them away hot off the bot.

Gallery Hours and Special Events Open to the Public:

Wednesday, September 23 through Friday, September 25
12noon – 8pm
- Main Gallery
- Opening Day features Laser Etching ($25 a laptop, $5 a gadget)

Friday, September 25
8pm-10pm
- Public Party, with prizes

Saturday, September 26
11am – 8pm
- Main Gallery

Saturday, September 26
9pm – Live DJ set by Music Director Jason Bentley, KCRW, 100% independently funded radio station

Sunday, September 27
11am – 6pm
- Main Gallery

Location:
267 Elizabeth Street
New York, NY 10012

How should we decorate our booth at CES? All suggestions welcome in the comments!

Check out this very impressive 3D Printer built fron scratch and using shelf sliders! She’s sporting electronics, motors and the plastruder from Makerbot.

IMG_0342 on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Imagine that burglars breaks into your house while you’re asleep and at gunpoint they handcuff you to a chair and then proceed to steal all your precious belongings including Aunt Betty’s antique wedding ring.

They weren’t such smart burglars and they’ve handcuffed you to the table with your MakerBot on it. With a few taps of the keys with your tongue you load up ReplicatorG and your MakerBot begins printing… that sound of the stepper motors purring is the sound of freedom.

The sound of the motors is a risk your willing to take and it’s only a few minutes before your print is complete and you’ve printed out your own handcuff key! Quickly you uncuff yourself and call the police and hide in the closet on the phone with 911 until they arrive to save the day!

If this story were to actually happen you can now be prepared! The STL file has been published and you can read more over on the Black Bag Blog.

“*Warning* Before you print out your keys please check your local law! In some places it is not quite healthy to run around wearing police handcuffs.”

The folks over at FAbbaloo have responded to the call of Jon Kalish.

Fabbaloo reader (and freelance newspaper writer, radio reporter and podcast producer) Jon Kalish writes:

I have a pair of orthotic shoe inserts that are maybe a foot long and 4 inches wide. They are made out of a hard plastic. Do you think they can be scanned and “printed” in a softer, more rubbery plastic? … I switched health insurance companies and my new provider doesn’t cover orthotics. Podiatrist says it costs $550!

Our immediate thoughts were:

• You’d need access to a 3D scanner, 3D modeling software and 3D printer. For a one-time consumer like Jon, a service would be a far better option than purchasing
• The printer must have a fairly large build chamber, due to the size of the object and because it should be in one piece rather than assembled from multiple pieces
  
• The 3D printer must be able to print a “soft rubbery material”
• The print resolution would not have to be terribly precise, because the object is going to be hidden in Jon’s shoe. It just has to be smoothish
• The “soft material” would have to be fairly robust, as it’s going to be trodden upon by Jon every day

Now what? We issue a challenge to Fabbaloo readers: what is the best combination of services (scan, tweak and print) that can do the job for Jon? Is this possible to do at all (we’re wondering most about the rubbery material)? Or is it possible but not for less than US$550?

Make sure to click through to read the comments! Fabbaloo: Jon Seeks a Service.

ReplicatorG 0008 and the generation 3 firmware v1.4 are now available!  If you’ve been using an old version, now is the time to upgrade.  The highlights of this release are:

• Named SD card builds.   You can now create a library of build files on a single SD card and build them as needed.  No more overwriting your teapots with dodecahedrons!
• ReplicatorG now ships with precompiled firmware images and an integrated firmware uploader.  You no longer need to jump through all the hoops of installing the firmware libraries, the Sanguino patches, or even Arduino at all– just click on “Upload new firmware” in the Machine menu and you can update the firmware on your motherboard or extruder controller!
• The firmware now includes a remote reset command, as well as several small bugfixes that may address some of the in-build hangs some users have been experiencing.

More details, and download links, below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Did not do much for modding, but did add some 5mm neoprene between (X/Y) steppers and housing, and on the rod covers/caps to reduce the ratlle, noise and vibrations. That did help quit a bit. No upgrade done to prevent some of the extruder issues/squeeking, but that is planned. Running ReplicatorG 0005, shipped firmware on an Ubuntu AMD64 machine.

Wow, awesome color scheme on Makerbot 133.

Update: Here’s the statue of liberty model!

If you are a regular of the makerbot soup or the flickr group, you may have seen the MakerBot Liberty Prototypes hiding in the background of photos.

Folks had been asking about a bigger machine and so I mocked up the Liberty to extend the build area to 100x100x300mm, which makes for a pretty tall machine.

The good news: it works.
The bad news: it needs a lot more improvement to work well.

My first print of this ended at 150mm because it fell off the XY stage. In the second print, as soon as it got above 150mm in hight, the weight of the liberty made the platform start shifting. There is a little tolerance in the bearings and with all that weight pushed around on the platform, it started rocking the platform back and forth. This resulted in very wobbly lines which isn’t super awesome. Total build time was almost 6 hours.

In future prototypes I’m going to address this by making a wider XY stage and finding an alternative to magnets that will hold the build platform to the base with more strength.

I had hoped that I could just put out an upgrade kit with a new front, back, sides, and long z-stage rods, but I’ve got to go back to the drawing board with the xy stage. My hope is to have this out as an option in 2010. Stay tuned!

Want to see the designs? Here they are. This DXF is best viewed in QCAD.

This Saturday, Bre will be giving a MakerBot lightening talk for Software Freedom Day. I feel very strong that the free culture movement is one of the most powerful forces in the world today. If you have one of these events happening in your neighborhood, I highly recommend showing up.

Even though MakerBot is both a hardware and software solution, the ideals and infrastructure that the free software movement has pushed forward has given us the scaffolding to build the 3D printing hardware we share with our community and the world using the GPL license.

More details – Link
When: Saturday, Sept. 19th from 6pm to 10pm.
Where: Please note the new location! 148 Lafayette St, 12th Floor.
RSVP required to joshlevy.ny AT gmail

CNN interviewed me about MakerBot at Gnomedex in Seattle. Link