MakerBot Industries

We’ve been big fans of Inventables for a while. They basically aggregate a ton of really cool, cutting edge materials and technologies. They simplify it without dumbing it down, and make it easy to see what is available in a straight-forward way. It is refreshing to see a service like this designed for inventors. Well, it just got better. They just relaunched their site, and now you can actually purchase the items they write about instead of just reading (and drooling) over them.

Oh, and you can even embed the item in your own site, which is pretty cool:

Who needs a dual head extruder anyhow?

This 2 color MakerBot Coin by wulfdesign may be the first thing uploaded to Thingiverse that is designed to be printed in two colors.  I am, of course, excepting the various chess sets.

I like the multi-part snap-together assembly and the contrast between the colors Wulfdesign used.  I think it really shows how multiple colors of plastics can be used effectively with minimal finishing and would make a great example of what you can do with a 3D printer.  Plus, I like the idea that you could have two ‘bots churning out parts – one set in black, one set in white – ready to be assembled.

You can see just how dirty the MakerBots got at Maker Faire from this photo of the top of Adam’s machine. The clean square there is the outline of a MakerBot sticker he had placed there.

Despite the dust and grime, the MakerBots kept printing away for two straight days. It was amazing to go down the line of ‘Bots and see MakerBot after MakerBot after MakerBot printing and printing and printing.

This wasn’t the first time that MakerBots survived – and kept printing – in extreme environments. Last year some MakerBots underwent impromptu environmental testing in the deserts of eastern Washington state, where the hacker’s convention Toorcamp was held.

Yep. MakerBots = desert proof. Of course, after a good dusting it’s probably a good idea to clean and lubricate your MakerBot’s metal bits (proper MakerBot maintenance is always a good idea). Technically, they are not really desert proof, but last weekend at Maker Faire we definitely saw the MakerBot Botfarm take some dirt, and keep printing through the dust.

Did you ever print something on your MakerBot and love it so much that you wanted to cast it in bronze?

That’s exactly what Livejournal user and designer jarkman did recently.

Lost-wax casting is a 5,000 year-old process. Back in the day, it was used used to turn hand-made sculptures into permanent bronze or brass pieces. It gets its name from the part of the process where a hollow wax cast is burned out from a fire-proof mold, or “lost” during the casting.

In this case, jarkman printed his design with the standard MakerBot ABS plastic, instead of shaping it from wax. The plastic seemed to burn out just fine. Check out this step-by-step picture gallery to see how to transform your latest MakerBot print into metal!

What would you cast in bronze from your MakerBot? Tell us in the comments below!

An automated build platform so cool, it makes me want to misspell the word fierce

Chooch has been hard at work on another printable automated build platform.  What I like about this version over his prior, is that it incorporates a few design changes that give it a lower profile to preserve Z axis printing space, slightly more width by switching the nozzle brush to the other size, and, of course it is printable.  Oh, did I forget it mention it has teeth too? ¹

This is a great addition to the long list of printable upgrades MakerBot owners can use to improve their ‘bots.

Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but Chooch, where’s my Pfierce Z-axis extender kit???

1. I kinda wish we could figure out a way to actually use those teeth in normal operation. [↩]

Adam, George (wearing the torzle) and Charles Pax at Maker Faire

What a weekend! It was incredible to meet so many creative people at Maker Faire. Veteran MakerBot operators and those who had never seen an at-home 3D printing machine cycled through the MakerBot tent relentlessly for two full days. It was non-stop Botfarm action all weekend with a record sixteen MakerBots printing, drawing, and even making music at our tent, and about five next door at the 3D printing village – including a MakerBot Frostruder printing delicious liquid sweets such as Nutella onto bread.

On Saturday we caught up with George Hart, an engineer/educator/computer scientist/sculptor/mathematical magician and designer of the pieces used to make what he calls a “torzle.” Art historian Bret Rothstein saw the 16th century original at the Schloss Ambras Musuem in Austria. He took a picture and sent it to George, asking, “What the heck is this?”

George made a 3D model of the torus – which is made out of 75 identical interlocking components – on his computer. He and Bret made reproductions out of wood and nylon, and captured the attention of Boing Boing. It wasn’t long before the torzle made its way to Thingiverse, thanks to Adam. Charles Pax printed it out with a MakerBot soon after. The torzle has since been living at the Botcave, but Adam and Charles thought it only fitting to gift it to George when they saw him at Maker Faire.

This twisted torus is the perfect item to print out using your new MakerBot Automated Build Platform or with the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic, since you can hit “Print” and kick back while it spits out part after part after part.

George has since found out that the Danish called the torzle a “Gærkrans,” and used it for storing yeast to make beer.

Nick Starno did some math here at the Botcave:

A very common question I hear is the cost of material, and how much a 5lb reel of plastic will actually make. Here is an interesting perspective of how to envision it. Based on our current MK5 setup (MK5 drive gear + MK5 hot end), and assuming a stock 0.5mm nozzle, the DC motor running at 2RPM with a 3mm filament, and specific weight of ABS being 0.00104 g/mm^3]:

- It takes almost exactly 2min to extrude 1 gram of ABS.
453grams/pound means

- it takes over 15 hours of continuous extrusion to go through 1 lb. of ABS
and

- it takes over 75 hours (3+ days) of continuous extrusion to go through 5 lbs. of ABS

At some point we’ll print out an entire 5 pound roll. Needless to say, that’s a lot of printed things!

As in a 20 minutes of video tutorials.  MakerBot’s summer engineer and the creator of the Makerbot 3D Scanner v1.0 Kit, Taylor Goodman, has put together another great video explaining how to turn a point cloud into a mesh using Blender (11:37) and another video on how to turn a mesh into a 3D printable object, also using Blender (8:43). ¹  Tyler has also incorporated these instructions into his “Blender Tips” page on the MakerBot wiki.

Cloud to Mesh with Blender

Mesh to 3D object with Blender

1. I know when clothbot watches that video, he will wish it were just two minutes longer… [↩]

PENG Podcast #11 – Makerbot Finetuning from PENG Mainz on Vimeo.

Check out this very well made video that the peng crew sent in! I love the oohs and aaaahs from the crew as the machine shows signs of life!

Der auf der Vollversammlung beschlossene Kauf eines Makerbots ist hiermit abgeschlossen und gekauftes Gerät zusammengebaut und bereit zum Druck von Dingen. Während wir weiter feintunen, seid ihr eingeladen mitzumachen: Mehr Infos unter pengland.de/​makerbot und wenn ihr etwas Drucken wollt, wendet Euch vertrauensvoll an makerbot@pengland.de

Thanks peng friends!

MakerBot’s summer engineer and the creator of the MakerBot 3D Scanner, Taylor Goodman, has put together a video explaining how to download, setup, and install all the software necessary to get your Makerbot 3D Scanner running.  Taylor has also updated the MakerBot wiki to include this information for those of you who are into the whole “reading” thing.

Learn!  Scan!  Duplicate!