MakerBot Industries

Microlathe is a Makerbot printable Lathe that uses a Dremel for rotary power. Cathal Garvey made it and it’s his second brush with the power of high speed rotoational power tools after his Dremelfuge!

I spent a day and a half designing the first draft of it in OpenSCAD, another evening printing the parts, and the minutes I could grab over the last few evenings testing it. The result? It’s fairly hazardous, requires careful balancing, and it works just fine on wood dowelling. So on the whole, a big success!

One of the reasons I designed and made Microlathe was because I wanted a free lathe. Another reason was to contribute to a pattern of accelerating returns I’ve become aware of and excited about recently, in the sphere of rapid prototyping.

Via Microlathe and Accelerating Returns in Rapid Prototyping