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.

A few months ago, Armando Mendez had never heard of a MakerBot. As soon as he did, he bought one, and has been an avid MakerBot Operator ever since. He even started a lab automation consultation business, with help from his MakerBot. As a field support engineer for a pharmaceuticals research company, he is an expert in robotic machines that do things like handle liquids. Now that he has a MakerBot he can build broken or missing robot parts for his clients.

Armando has generously donated his time (he’s in-between jobs) to help prepare the Botfarm for the upcoming NYC Maker Faire. He has learned a ton since getting his own MakerBot, and is happy to be volunteering at the Botcave. “I believe in what’s going on here,” he told me.

This afternoon Armando was troubleshooting the temperature control system on one of the MakerBots. He’ll be volunteering a few days this week and at Maker Faire on Saturday. Thanks, Armando!

MakerBots are multiplying at the Botcave daily as the MakerBot Industries team – with help from a few volunteers – furiously build MakerBots for the MakerBot Botfarm™ at Maker Faire.

Every MakerBot will be equipped with the newly announced MakerBot Automated Build Platform, enabling continuous printing all day long. As Zach Hoeken explained, after the MakerBot Botfarm is set-up, the plan is to “just kick back and let the robots do the work.”

There are already about 19 MakerBots roaming around the Botcave, in various states of completion. We’re planning to have 16 MakerBots at Maker Faire, but if more are ready to go then we’ll just have to make room.

Each machine will churn out parts all day – key chains, monkeys, violins, aliens, bottle openers, rings, bracelets and butterfly ornaments.

Come visit our booth at Maker Faire and watch the Botfarm in action!

On Wednesday Bre revealed MakerBot has a new printer in the works. ¹  Frankly, I have a tough time imagining what a new printer would be like. ²  With an Automated Build Platform, which incorporates a heated build surface, and a MK5 Plastruder you’ve got just about everything you could want out of a 3D printer.

I’ve been really impressed with my MK5 Plastruder.  I’ve been pretty lucky and rarely have filament jams, so I haven’t seen any improvements going from a MK4 to the MK5.  However, it’s given me a really smooth, even extrusion.  With my MK4 I noticed very slight imperfections in the ABS rafts and layers – like small bubbles and imperfections in the extrusion every few millimeters.  With my MK5, these have been almost eliminated.  I’ve also noticed that the minor blobs that used to occur when the Cupcake raised the Z platform have gotten smaller.  I haven’t made many changes to the Skeinforge profile, so I tempted to attribute this improvement to the new plastruder.  Perhaps one of the coolest improvements is the ease with which I can now swap filament.  The MK4 system for pulling out a filament required me to slowly back the filament out using ReplicatorG.  The Paxtruder-inspired Delrin plug can be loosened, filament yanked out of a warm plastruder, new filament jammed in, and the plug tightened back up in 10-15 seconds.  I can definitely tell you this makes me far more likely to swap out colors.  In fact, I’m tempted to try swapping out colors part way through a build, just to see what happens.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to fire up my heated or automated build platforms yet, so I can’t comment on their utility.  However, I’m keenly aware of just how much even a minor temperature increase can improve a build’s quality.  I’ve noticed that after about two print jobs my acrylic build platform is slightly warm to the touch.  This might be due to having a few warm layers of plastic on it – or might just be due to the slightly increased ambient temperature inside the Cupcake caused by the warm plastic, power supply, and from the plastruder.  In any case, even this slight temperature increase has been enough to cause a second and especially a third print job to noticeably more flat than preceding print jobs.  Having a print bed that gets more than just slightly warm must be pretty great.

I’ve never wanted or needed to print anything larger than my current build size.  Besides, that would also increase the build time.  I’m just not that patient. 

So, just what the heck could a new printer possibly bring to the table?  Or, more importantly, what would you want to see in a new printer?

1. Photo courtesy of jmtimages [↩]
2. I guess that’s why I just blog about their developments and they’re the ones who actually dream up new robots! [↩]

It's not easy getting that monkey off your back

I busted my extruder board over the weekend and am going through withdrawal symptoms. ¹²  The new parts won’t arrive for about a week yet and the shakes have started already.  However, I probably have the most ideas for designing printable things when it’s out of commission.  Here a few things I’d like to design and print:

• A travel tea set – with plates, tea cups, saucers, little spoons, sugar cup, sugar tongs,³ – hopefully designed in a way so that they all nest within one another or stack or can otherwise be connected in a compact portable fashion
• A travel pirate set – a little ship, cannons, pirate figurines, sharks, rowboats, treasure chests, anchors, sails
• Crayon molds – triangular crayon molds, molds in the shape of animals, fruit, or lego bricks
• Modular castle set – perhaps based on the modular dungeon set?

It seems like just about every day there’s something new being invented, designed, or uploaded to Thingiverse that I just can’t live without.  So, most of the time when I’m printing, I’m busy printing the truly amazing things other people are designing. ⁴

1. Photo courtesy of madaboutasia [↩]
2. Fear not gentle reader, if I broke it, I can probably fix it. [↩]
3. sugar cubes? [↩]
4. So, really, it’s your fault I’m not more productive… [↩]

A few weeks ago, we had a live broadcast of Widget building the 2000th MakerBot Cupcake CNC. We invited you to participate in this historic event by helping to name it. Thanks to all who submitted ideas.

We have a name! Introducing Gidget, the 2000th MakerBot Cupcake CNC. Come see Gidget at the NYC Maker Faire this weekend, printing alongside other MakerBots in our fully rocking Botfarm.

Come meet Gidget at our booth at Maker Faire, pick up a freshly printed charm from our Botfarm, check out the new MakerBot Automated Build Platform and Makerbot 3D Scanner, and prepare yourself for yet another exciting announcement!

Come see Gidget, our 2000th Cupcake CNC, at Maker Faire

Printable Turtles

I’ve noticed a trend at my neighborhood grocery store – cupcakes.  No pun or joke intended, they’ve really been carrying more and more cupcakes and of an increasing variety for the last year or so.  I like delicious baked treats as much as the next man, but really only used to seeing cupcakes in the bakery in time for holidays.

The most interesting thing I’ve noticed about the proliferation of cupcakes is cupcake toppers.  Little plastic designs, sometimes as recognizable cartoon characters but usually as animals or flowers.  What I like about twotimes Turtle cupcake topper is that it was designed as a cupcake topper to be made out of frosting and printed with a frostruder.

Why put a piece of plastic on a cupcake?  Why not just put the object itself directly on the cupcake, in frosting form?  No choking hazards, no wasted plastic, no rafts, and… edible turtles!¹

Edit: Twotimes’ photo of the fully printed Chocolate Turtle Cupcake Topper is TOO awesome not to include here:

Sweet sweet turtles

Okay, who is going to be the first to print a Harry Potter chocolate frog?

1. Actually, I like having a printable plastic turtle design too! [↩]

The MakerBot Cupcake CNC is our flagship product. We’re getting ready to launch a new 3D printer and so we’re putting the Cupcake on sale. These are great kits and a great way to get into 3D printing. A MakerBot has never been this cheap!

MakerBot Cupcake Ultimate Kit: Over the last year we’ve released a number of additional upgrades to the kit and the Cupcake Ultimate kit contains the best. It comes with the MK5 Plastruder and the Automated Build Platform. If you want to explore 3D printing, this is a rock solid kit with all the reliability of the latest upgrades.

MakerBot Cupcake Starter Kit: This is a kit that has what you need to get started in 3D printing and nothing more. It comes with an XYZ positioning system, an acrylic build platform. This is a great building block of 3D printing to get you started and it’s now super cheap at $649!

Neither of these kits comes with the Filament Spindle Box Kit. If you’re going to get into 3D printing you’re going to eventually want one of these. We suggest you add one to your order no matter which kit you get.

These kits come as-is and because we’ve slashed prices, there are no returns, exchanges, or guarantees.