MakerBot Industries

We’ve taken the MakerBot Cupcake CNC Basic and Deluxe kits out of inventory until Wednesday. Then there will be a special cupcake SALE in preparation for a big announcement we have coming up soon!

PS. Besides the big announcement we have large, medium, and small sized announcements coming this week too!

Well, there's your problem...

I think of blogging in the most literal sense – a web log.  A log of events, both positive and negative.  That means I feel obligated to post the embarrassing stuff along with the stuff of which I’m proud. ¹

This was just equal parts sheer arrogance, ignorance, lack of respect for robots, and stupidity on my part. ²  I’ve become so comfortable with my MakerBot that I don’t didn’t feel any compunction about hotswapping anything on the robot.  Well, I’m here to tell you that’s just not a good idea at all.

I pulled the motor out of my new MK5 plastruder to fiddle with it a bit and tried to plug it back in – when I heard a little black thingie on the extruder board pop, emit a small white mushroom cloud, bubble, grow an orange firey ring which dimmed to red, cool and bubble.  It’s not anywhere on the wiki, but this is NOT a good sign.

It’s a sign you just fried some tiny fiddley bit on your extruder board and you cannot print anything until you get and install a new fiddley bit or a new extruder board.  If you’re going to pull wires out and put wires back in, definitely shut off power to the robot using the switch on the power supply unit.

Let’s just say the design of the MakerBot Cupcake CNC is really great, just not foolproof.  Exhibit A:  MakerBlock. ³

The only “silver lining” to this is that I tend to jot down more ideas and design more things when my ‘bot is out of commission.

1. God knows I’m not afraid to make myself look extra stupid. [↩]
2. Well, perhaps a little more on the stupidity side. [↩]
3. You see, I’m implying I’m a fool against which no amount of incredible designs are proof. [↩]

We’re furiously prepping for a legendary Maker Faire here in New York in less than a week. Once we get the Bot-farm up and running, we’ll have a small army of MakerBots printing things out all day long.

Submit your charm designs by Wednesday, September 22nd, and we will consider printing them at Maker Faire! We’re looking for things that are quick to print that we can awe visitors with.

At the BotCave MakerBots are already hard at work printing things like this butterfly ornament designed by bpijls to give away at Maker Faire this weekend.

So get to work on a cool design for Maker Faire, and your creation could be given away at our booth!

Modular designs rule

The other day I was chatting with a friend about printing toys on my MakerBot. ¹  My favorite kind of toy are multi-part toys that snap-fit together.  There are a lot of benefits to designing and printing toys as modular parts.

• Handing a pile of parts to a kid is a pretty magical thing. ²  They may put them together in a way that may surprise you.  And, once they assemble the toy, they have a real sense of accomplishment.  It also teaches them how parts can fit together – and gets them thinking about how to improve on your designs.
• Taking a toy apart is almost as natural as playing with them.  There’s really nothing like taking something apart and reassembling it to teach you why certain design choices were made.  It also gives confidence that they might just be able to reassemble something once they’ve taken the time to pull it apart.
• It allows you to print up a replacement part if something breaks.  If you are making something cool, you’re going to be using small, delicate, or intricate parts. ³  Your kid is going to break their toys – but if you designed them in a modular fashion, they’re going to be easy to repair. ⁴
• It leaves room for improvement and upgrades.  You never know how your kid will actually play with a toy.  Maybe the boat will be a robot or microphone.  Or, maybe they’ll demand a third arm, tail, or wings.

1. Photo courtesy of fdecomite. [↩]
2. Do you remember the first time you saw a Lego set? [↩]
3. Also known as breakable parts or points of failure. [↩]
4. My Leonardo Robot has two broken hips and a bad elbow. [↩]