MakerBot Industries

Today was an awesome day. We arrived early, got set up, set the MakerBots to go and talked to A LOT of awesome people. We announced the latest in our line of 3D printers, the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic with great reception. Thanks to everyone who stopped by today and asked questions and cheered us on!

I think we had 18 or 19 MakerBots-a-MakerBotting at the faire! (I’ll count them tomorrow)

If you didn’t make it, you can still come tomorrow. If you do, we’d love to see you. Also be sure to check out the 3D printer village next door where there are even more MakerBots, Fab@Homes, RepRaps, and other wonderful contraptions!

Hope to see you there!

Entries were due September 9th for the (Un)limited Design Contest, and preparations have begun for the awards ceremony this weekend at the Picnic design festival in Amsterdam. The lucky and talented winners will take home their very own MakerBot build kit!

The contest is completely open source, so every design that was submitted is fully documented and available for re-use under a Creative Commons license. Entrants were encouraged to modify other participant’s designs and submit them as their own, with proper attribution, of course.

The project is a collaboration between the Waag Society, Premsela, Creative Commons and Fablab.

The box creator (pictured above) is a perfect project for folks with a lasercutter. You could even take the files and turn them into 3D models and make them on your MakerBot. The program allows you to customize the code to change the size of the box. The design was submitted by David Sjunneson.

Try adapting the design, and be sure to tell us about it if you do!

Announcing the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer. A breakthrough in 3D printing technology! We’ve named it the Thing-O-Matic because it is an automatic 3D printer. All other 3D printers can only do one thing at a time and then requires human intervention while the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer prints thing after thing! Buy it, put it together and enjoy being the first on your block to live in the cutting-edge personal manufacturing future of tomorrow! Here at MakerBot our mission is to democratize manufacturing and this machine is one great step for personal fabrication!

Fully Automatic

The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer comes with a new larger MakerBot Automated Build Platform v2.0 that will keep printing and printing… Automatically!

The MakerBot Automated Build Platform is truly a revolution in 3D printing. Updated to v2.0 to be larger for the Thing-O-Matic, it allows you to have a print queue where your machine will clear the build surface between builds by printing, then ejecting. It prints objects one after another. This turns your MakerBot into a little factory that sits on your desktop. Best of all, this is completely automated: you hit print, and the machine does all the work. Want to print 100 butterflies? Easy. Want to print an entire chess set? No problem. Want to start a business selling printed things that you’ve designed? Awesome. Have the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer do all the work while you design new things.

Extremely Reliable

The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer comes with the MakerBot MK5 plastruder which will give you thousands of hours of trouble-free printing.

We’ve invested many hours into designing, testing, and tweaking the MK5 plastruder. The result is an extruder that is extremely reliable, and very simple to maintain. The hot end on this extruder is essentially unbreakable and the filament drive system is one of the strongest on the market. We’ve run this thing for more than a thousand hours with minimal maintenance. Changing the filament is a breeze with the filament pressure thumb screw. You can even hot-swap the filament mid print!

Higher Quality

The layer alignment is much better which results in nicer prints and higher resolution.

We’ve completely overhauled the drive system of this fresh machine to offer optimum positioning accuracy. The entire system has been upgraded to sturdy 3/8″ diameter linear shafting. This is overkill, but you can trust that the axes will be sturdy and straight. We’ve also switched to self-aligning, sintered brass bearings. These are very forgiving to DIY assembly and provide a nice, smooth motion on the steel shafts. Last, but not least we’ve completely replaced the Z axis with a stepper driven, cantilevered stage. Guided by two of the linear shafts, this completely eliminates any Z wobble and results in nicely aligned layers. Using a high-angle lead screw, we were able to increase the speed of the Z axis from 150mm/minute to 1000mm/minute. That’s more than 6 times the speed! This means the layer changes are almost completely imperceptible and blobbing is significantly reduced for smoother prints.

Easier to Use

Connect to the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer over USB and hit print – the machine will detect its position and start printing.

The new MakerBot Gen4 Electronics are designed to make the printing experience even easier than ever. The motherboard now sports an integrated USB port, so you simply plug the MakerBot in with a standard USB cable. We’ve also added full endstop support so that you never need to touch the XYZ axes ever again. When you hit print, the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer will automatically home itself, heat up, and begin printing. All you have to do is sit back and relax while your MakerBot does all the work. Living in the future is awesome. Oh yeah, and the electronics are all inside, so you don’t have wires dangling everywhere. This also makes travelling on the subway with your MakerBot stress-free.

The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer kit is available for $1225 and has a 7 week lead time. Order a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer and get the latest in personal manufacturing technology.