MakerBot Industries

Unrepentantgeek made a sketchup model of a MakerBot. It looks great! Check it out on Thingiverse!

If, 10 years ago, someone from the future told me that you’d be able to download videos, music, and objects but not books I’d have called them crazy! James Vasile is changing all that with his Book Liberator.

The Book Liberator need your help liberating books! We designed a machine for scanning physical volumes. This machine is cheap and simple to build (you could do it with a hacksaw and a screwdriver), uses off-the-shelf parts, and gobbles books at a rate of 600 to 900 pages an hour. Freely licensed plans and post-processing software are avaiable!

Our next step is dead-simple kits and a refined design. I drew a 3D-printed camera mount in openscad that clamps to the machine and holds your digicam to take nice, consistent shots of your book. I need some help refining the design from somebody willing to print prototypes so we can tweak/print/test until the thing is perfect.

The mount is on thingiverse. If anybody with a MakerBot or RepRap is interested in jumping in, we’re eager to collaborate.

If anyone can help this project out, it would be great!

Nancy Kleinrock put together her notes from the most recent TTI Vanguard Conference. Here’s what she said about Bre’s MakerBot Presentation:

The Robot that Sharing Built—Mr. Bre Prettis, Makerbot
• The low-cost MakerBot 3-D printer (kits range $750–$950) generates user-designed physical objects
that are built up in successive layers as the machine lays down heated plastic extruded from a nozzle
that functions like a hot glue gun.
• Beginning with a model created in 3-D graphics software (e.g., Blender), the MakerBot software
analyzes the model by taking cross-sections and determining the proper distribution of solid and
open space in each layer; the hardware then executes the design, building it up layer by layer.
• “It’s kind of magic—you start with nothing and end up with something.”
• An unabashed outgrowth of hacker culture, MakerBot is only available in kit form; Pettis maintains that it
is “a little harder to put together than Ikea furniture.”
• The MakerBot community is indeed a community, with participants freely sharing designs at
www.thingiverse.com, making components for one another, and gathering in hackerspaces to learn,
teach, and share with one another.
• Not only object designs, but the complete design of the MakerBot 3-D printer and all its component
parts are released under the Gnu Public License (GPL), making them forever available for others to
use, copy, and modify; all modifications must be GPL licensed.
• The best way to get started is to download someone else’s design, print it, tweak the design,
and print again; or attend a hackerspace and gain experience face to face.
• Demand for the MakerBot has shot up it was since first released in early 2009, and the user
community is teaming up to supply MakerBot-made parts for new units.
• The company gives back by providing physical upgrades for an initially brittle component by sending
the upgraded design code to owners by email.
• A user-submitted improvement to the plastic extruder (Plastruder) will be included in new units; user-
improved temperature control software was distributed to MakerBot community members.
• “Hackers make great alpha testers.”
• The MakerBot business model: “Bits should be free; atoms you should pay for.”
• “Objects over IP is about as close to teleportation as it gets.”
• Pettis envisions a day soon that, when people need a new object (e.g., a doorknob or a 13/16″
measuring spoon or a whistle or an engagement ring), they won’t think of going to the store to buy
it, but rather will amble to the desk, fire up the MakerBot, and make it themselves.
• Whether this dream is realistic in a culture full of people who no longer cook their own dinner nightly
is questionable, but the dream is part of the journey.
• In the meantime, Pettis and his friends are designing a 3-D scanner to collect dimensions from
already-made objects.
• “Next year you can get the washer/dryer combo.”
• Pettis’s bottom line: “If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.”

Having recently been contacted by someone interested in testing a few samples of makerbot-made braille, I polished up my previous design and shipped a few pieces off earlier this week. Now, the results are in…. and it seems to be a resounding YES!

He writes: “I am enormously impressed. With my fingernail I can feel where the filaments laid down. With my fingertips though, the dots are correct sized, smooth feeling and comfortable to read. I really think this is professional quality stuff.”

I’ll be talking with him about where to take it from here and about what implications/possibilities this may have (and I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop).

Check it out on Thingiverse for the details.

Wow, just wow. Check out this Sarrus Linkage by fdavies on Thingiverse.

He says,

I printed all this on a ‘repstrap’ that I built mostly from old printers (old dot matrix printers had really great hardware). It uses a pinchwheel extruder heavily inspired by the work of Nophead on reprap.org.

I did design all these parts to print in a 100 mm cube, both so that they would not be too big for a Cupcake, and so that it could print itself.

Why three units? Well, ABS plastic is only so strong, and not very stiff. With just two units at right angles, the bottom one would have to withstand significant torque (twisting) from the weight of the extruder (when I put one on), and would let the top axis tilt out of the horizontal,

Why did i make it as three (mostly) identical subassemblies, rather than as a monolithic entity?

1. I am still not 100% sure that this will be the final configuration, so I want to be able to reconfigure if necessary.
2. The warping of large objects that is plaguing the reprap community means that it is better to make several small pieces that you connect together rather than one big piece. This is why the spine and armature are broken up.

What is a Sarrus Linkage?

The Sarrus linkage, invented in 1853 by Pierre Frédéric Sarrus, is a mechanical linkage to convert a limited circular motion to a linear motion without reference guideways. The linkage uses two perpendicular hinged rectangular plates positioned parallel over each other. The Sarrus linkage is of a three-dimensional class sometimes known as a “space crank”, unlike the Peaucellier-Lipkin linkage which is a planar mechanism.

Wikipedia Link

Last week I gave a presentation and demo of a MakerBot and I spent a few hours just doing snowflake prints over and over and tweeking the settings in Skeinforge until I got the optimum settings set up for this snowflake on that machine. For those that don’t have a MakerBot, Skeinforge is a program that slices an object and there are a lot of parameters, like infill and layer height and extrusion speed, to mess with in the battle to make a perfect print.

If you haven’t done lots of multiple prints with 1 Skeinforge change in between prints, I recommend it as a great way to mess about with skeinforge. The cool thing about the snowflake is that it prints in 3-9 minutes depending on infill and so it’s fast and that makes it easy to iterate. Also it skeinforges in just a minute or so, which makes for quick iteration as well. With such a quick turnaround that also means that I only change one parameter at a time since I know It will only take a few minutes. In the past I’ve just gone in and been like “I’ll change them all!” thinking that if it doesn’t work now, that changing more settings would help. (It doesn’t)

In retrospect I wish I’d documented the things that I’d changed as I did it, since now I have good settings but I’ve forgotten everything.

And so I present to you: Skeinforge Battle!!!! A Skeinforge Battle!!!!is when you print something out on your MakerBot and then change 1 setting and print it again. Take pictures of both objects and upload your pics to the MakerBot Flickr Group at and tag them “skeinforgebattle” to document the change. Can you resist the temptation to change all the skeinforge settings? Do you have what it takes to face skeinforge and only change 1 parameter, reprint an object and share pictures?

I’ll do this next time I do prints, but don’t wait for me. Go forth and battle with skeinforge! (And don’t forget the documenting part!) Skeinforge Battle!!!!

The gang who does the Radar series over at Babelgum came by the BotCave and made this video. They used Nikon d90′s and it turned out beautiful! Go to their site and check it out big.

It’s a open source affordable and fashionable watch that is can run the arduino platform. Win!

I’ve wanted to have an arduino style watch in my pocket and I got my friend Raphael to teach me how to use Eagle CAD and I did it! I also got lots of help from Adam and Zach and Charles and Liz and Ryan and the NYCResistor community to pull this together!

I ordered a bunch of prototype boards and I’ve made them into 18 kits to just get them out there in the world and get friends playing with them. This is for alpha users because it is realllllly hard! I have soldered up 4 of them and 3 of them had major solder bridges that made me swear a lot. Be prepared for a serious smd challenge! They are super cheap at $30 which is basically cost of parts because I know they are hard to make and I just want to get them out to the smd ninjas out there. The assembled watch is going to cost significantly more!

Here’s the google group for it. If you get one, you really really really need to join!
Here’s the wiki documentation. Please add and modify!
Here’s the link to the MakerBot Store.
Thingiverse URL

I made a lasercut housing for fun and the design is up on Thingiverse. The kit does not include that! Also cr2032 battery not included! There isn’t much code written for it yet!

Nick Starno is working on a MakerBottable pocketwatch housing which he’ll publish soon.

We’re going to go into production on these, so if you don’t want to do smd soldering, don’t worry, just be patient and you can order one assembled in the new year.

Chris Anderson gave a great talk about the future of personal manufacturing. It starts about 11 minutes in and Makerbot is mentioned the around 15 minute mark. Check it.

December is upon us and the last minute decorations and planning are on the horizon. If you’re snowed in or just have an aversion to consumer driven celebrations, you can make your own holiday decorations with your MakerBot!

Get on over to Thingiverse. These things are all in the first couple pages of newest things!