MakerBot Industries

Colored ABS is here! You can now have green, yellow, blue, and red ABS to print on your MakerBot! Go forth and buy them and make things IN COLOR!

Note: We’ve also got black and clear PLA in stock. Natural (white) ABS is on the way and will be in stock the next week or so! Go colors!!!!

The latest version of ReplicatorG, 0013, is now available for download. This release adds a bit of functionality to the firmware uploader:

• The uploader now contacts our servers to see if new firmware releases are available at startup. If they are, it will download them and give you a reminder that a new firmware version is available for your board.
• The uploader now autoresets your extruder board, so you’ll no longer have to hit the reset button manually when you update your extruder controller’s firmware. (It can also autoreset your motherboard, too, but you’ll need to make a simple modification. See our wiki page on enabling auto-reset on the motherboard for details.

If you’re new to the firmware updater, don’t worry; we’ve written all-new documentation describing how to get firmware on to your boards from ReplicatorG.

• Installing new firmware on your motherboard
• Installing new firmware on your extruder controller

Hopefully this functionality allow us to get firmware fixes to you as quickly as possible, and make it easier than ever for you to get the latest firmware on your bots. Happy hacking!

Check out MakerBlock’s process to unclog an extruder barrel and nozzle without a lot of extra equipment.

via How to unclog your extruder barrel and nozzle | MakerBlock.

Nick Ames put a great photo on Flickr that really lays out the law with good rafting!

The left and right edges of the raft are good and will form a strong but easy to remove bond between the object and the build platform. The section in the middle is squished and will stick securely to the platform when nothing else will.

Skeinforge Tutorial: Good & Squished Rafts on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

This is the first heated build stage design that started them all, designed and built by Jordan Miller of Hive76 in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania. We bought them and are selling them to you!

Keep in mind this is for those that like to be on the bleeding edge. You can read more about it on the MakerBot wiki and it’s for sale for $75 in the MakerBot store.

Wow, check out this great MakerBottable robot with the perfect human dimensions! Nice work Jrombousky!

This is the Leonardo Robot. I based his measurements off the ideal measurements of a human to try and give him realistic proportions. Enjoy printing.

Download and print at Thingiverse!

Last night, MakerBot put the call out for a printable ocarina. In less than 12 hours, Thingiverse citizen Pattywac responded with a design! Check it out! Pattywac promises to make it more printable and we can’t wait to see the first print and hear the first mp3 of this thing screaching. Zelda doesn’t have anything on Thingiverse!

This kind of call and response on Thingiverse is very exciting. It reminds me of a neighborhood feeling where you can fix my plumbing and I can bake you cakes!

PLA is a material that we sell that is made of corn. It’s in the experimental stage, meaning that we did a bunch of tests and found it to be the best, but we haven’t found the best settings for it yet. One problem folks have been having is keeping it flowing!

Nick McCoy has solved one problem by coating the PLA with oil as it goes into the extruder. He’s put a piece of cotton and soaked it with oil so that it coats it as the filament goes into the extruder. Cool! We haven’t tried this out at the Botcave yet, but it’s refreshing to hear a cool solution! Learn more about PLA on the MakerBot wiki.

I am using engine oil, 10W-30, I believe. I bought the wrong stuff for my car once and so I have a quart of it lying around. I thought about using vegtable oil, but I think it would smoke at my working temperatures and I don’t need my reprap smelling more like waffles than it does just running PLA.

via A little oil makes PLA move. « Code Errors.

Ok, so a little bit of background: I was a school teacher for a long time. I taught in the arts, one of the last subjects that hasn’t had it’s creativity smothered by the testing trend of the past 10 years. I was lucky, I had the best job at the time. This student, writing for his High School newspaper, Garfield High School in Seattle Public Schools, describes an even better job! I have to say that if I could go back in time, I would have begged, borrowed and stolen to find a way to get a laser cutter and 3D printer for my class!

Three-dimensional printer: $18,900. Laser engraver: $24,000. The irony that they’re both locked up and collecting dust at Garfield: priceless.Originally, both pieces of equipment were supposed to be part of a new pre-engineering class at Garfield: Project Lead the Way PLTW. Theoretically, the class would offer Garfield students a uniquely engaging, hands-on introduction to engineering.“The district picks and chooses what programs it wants to invest in,” says Principal Ted Howard II. “When the building was renovated, it was decided that Garfield would implement Project Lead the Way, so [the district] went out and bought all the materials.”In addition to purchasing the 3D printer and the laser engraver, the district also invested in a robotic arm, nearly 30 robots, and other costly technology.“We have a whole bunch of equipment that’s ostensibly to teach students about beginning engineering concepts,” says Helene Martin, who teaches the new creative computing and computer science classes at Garfield.According to Martin’s estimates, the total value of the equipment may exceed $200,000.Unfortunately, PLTW never became fully operational at Garfield. The curriculum demands a teacher with a strong engineering background.“We couldn’t find anyone that would actually teach PLTW,” says Howard. “We ended up going through five or six teachers.”

I know how schools work. There isn’t enough money to cover the needs of teachers and students and every year the money gets shifted in the hopes that it will be a better balance. Still, I hope that these machines get to be used and abused by young people before they are sold off by the school district at auction.

Is there something that could be done? Yes! Find a teacher who teaches engineering who wouldn’t mind having access and get them to teach an after school class could be put in place to use the tools. Only students with an interest would go and they would learn to build the future!

via Project Lead The Way – The Garfield Messenger.

Laser, 3D printer, and an onion, OH MY!

I found this about a year ago and then lost the link before I could blog about it. Thankfully, the gentleman Douglas Repetto sent a link today to the Thingiverse group and now I can share this project’s beauty with you!

It’s a glorious machine that runs on very old-skool early reprap technology. Zach designed and shipped those boards two years ago. If I was an art collector or MOMA, I would buy this. It’s awesome!

This system uses lasers to scan an onion plant from one of three angles. As the plant is scanned a fuse deposition modeler in real-time creates a plastic model based on the information collected. The device repeats this process every twenty-four hours scanning from a different angle. After a new model is produced the system advances a conveyor approximately 17 inches so the cycle can repeat. The result is a series of models illustrating the growth of the plant from varying angles.

via david bowen growth modeling device movie.