MakerBot Industries

Joel Miller created the amazing MakerBot Transformer and will be the proud new owner of a MakerBot! I asked him some interview questions to learn more about the man behind the STL files!

It looks like you are an industrial designer or mechanical engineer. Can you tell a little about yourself, what you do for a living and what you do for fun? Yes, I’m an industrial designer for a high-end consumer electronics manufacturer in Framingham, MA. I went to Pratt Institute for industrial design and spent most of the last 10 years doing ID consulting in and around NYC. As a designer I’ve gotten to work with some very sophisticated prototyping tools (and extremely talented makers), and see my creations come to life.
Taking a corporate job in the suburbs meant finally getting my two-car garage workshop and having time for personal projects. I’ve gotten into a lot of different stuff, from welding and woodworking to electronics and programming. Whenever possible I try to combine these interests into fun projects, like the Arduino-powered, Tom Selleck-themed hi-striker with light-up eyes and fireballs for our annual mustache-themed keg party.

What is the story behind this transformer design? Seriously, what’s cooler than a transformer? It’s mechanical, it’s part puzzle, part robot, and it evokes an emotional reaction (I still giggle out loud when I watch that animated gif). Plus I thought it would be a fun design challenge that would push the limits of the Cupcake CNC.

Can you tell me a little about your workflow with making this piece? I started by sketching out the basic functionality on paper — how the arms and legs would fold up into the cube shape and how the joints might work within the limitations of the MakerBot’s capabilities. I then started roughing out the design in CAD, but as the assembly took shape I went back to sketching frequently to work out the details. I built the model in the closed position, but broke the parts out into separate part files, then re-assembled them into a new assembly, hinged to each other so I could move the limbs around. Switching back and forth between these two assemblies, I could design the transformer in both the open and closed positions at the same time.

What kind of software and hardware do you use for designing things? I always start out sketching, either on paper or digitally on a Cintiq. For modeling I mostly use Pro/E or UG NX6, but for simple things I want to share I sometimes use Sketchup. For rendering color and material options I use Luxology Modo, and for 2D work I use Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, etc.). Physical models are invaluable to the 3D design process, even simple foam or paper mock-ups for scale & proportions. More and more we are using rapid prototyping for this, but I still like to get into the shop and get dirty/dusty/sweaty whenever I can.

What are you looking forward to designing and making on your MakerBot? As an industrial designer I’m used to using RP technologies as part of a prototyping effort, where RP parts are finished to simulate mass-production processes like injection molding. But I’m interested in exploring this as an end-product process, where the consumer downloads and prints products at home. I can foresee the nature of product development changing in big ways as a result of this. Without the high capital costs of tooling and manufacturing, products can be designed into dozens of variations, even parametrically custom-tailored by consumers themselves. If this is to be the future of manufacturing, then I suspect that industrial designers (who currently design around high-finish processes like injection molding, painted parts, etc.) will need to re-calibrate themselves to the strengths and weaknesses of these processes. At the same time these new technologies will need to improve dramatically, as even the highest-end RP parts are of significantly lesser aesthetic (and often functional) quality than even the low end of injection molded parts. I’m excited about the open-source nature of the MakerBot, and I hope to start contributing to the improvement of the technology.

For right now though, I think I’ll start working on another transformer…

Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer, and Ilya Zhitomirskiy are four NYU computer science students who bonded over many late nights building a Makerbot at ACM meetings. After being inspired by a talk by Eben Moglen about freedom and ownership online, they started discussing what a distributed social network would look like and started building it.

These guys are building something the internet has needed for years. Check out their kickstarter page and consider supporting their project! These guys show you that when you get a MakerBot, you might just make some good friends and make wonderful things happen!

We are a runner up in the Next Gen 2010 Metropolis Competition:

CUPCAKE CNCMakerBot IndustriesBrooklynThey call it “the cutest rapid-prototyping machine ever.” It also happens to be the cheapest. The Cupcake CNC, by the Brooklyn tech collective MakerBot Industries, lets architects, designers, and DIY enthusiasts manufacture their own 3-D curios on a desktop printer vaguely reminiscent of a robot-armed teddy-bear picker—for less than $1,000. Standard 3-D printers run around $10,000 and up. The key: build it yourself. The Cupcake CNC comes as a kit that can be assembled with household tools in about four days. Then it’s ready to print models dreamed up in CAD or downloaded from www.thingiverse.com, a resource of free digital-design ideas that includes a Gothic cathedral and—upping the nerd quotient here—a trophy from Settlers of Catan. Objects print in ABS or PLA, a biodegradable plastic made of Nebraska corn. Soon, an extrude feature will make it possible to squeeze out almost any imaginable material: silicon, clay, frosting. “Everyone should be able to create things inexpensively and on their desktop,” says MakerBot’s Bre Pettis. “It lets ordinary people become innovators.” All-frosting cupcakes, here we come!

( Will Langford, an intern at MakerBot Industries, printed out this three-by-five-inch logo, made of ABS plastic, on a MakerBot 3-D printer.)

via Next Gen 2010: The Runners-Up | Metropolis Magazine.

Hooray, pretty pictures!

ReplicatorG 0016 is now available for your downloading, installing, and printing pleasure.  There are just two small changes this time around: the control panel has been reorganized to be more useful for those using netbooks and other devices with small displays, and we’ve added a graphical temperature vs. time display to the extruder control panel.  This should be a big help to those who are trying to tweak their extruder parameters to get things just right.

Download it from the usual place, and let us know how it goes!