MakerBot Industries

American Robotic

Have you checked out eBay lately?  MakerBot Cupcakes have been popping up recently.  One went for $520 on 10/4/2010, another for $605 (# 001861 Batch XV, no upgrades) on 10/3/2010, an acrylic case Cupcake sold for $1649 on 9/28/2010, and a Batch XIV ‘bot for $810 on 9/24/2010.  At least one of those owners said in their eBay listing that the reason they were selling their Cupcake was to upgrade their equipment.  I would guess this means pre-ordering a Thing-O-Matic. ¹

I’m sure these ‘bots could use some upgrades, automated build platforms or MK5′s, and maybe a little a little care and attention² .  However, with some of these fully assembled robots selling for less than the cost of a kit, strange things can happen.

A fully assembled robot selling for less than the price of a kit might just put a 3D printer in the hands of someone who couldn’t otherwise afford one.  And perhaps more interestingly, it could enable existing Cupcake owners to become ‘Botfarmers.  Manufacturing systems don’t get much more modular than a Cupcake Botfarm. ³

Holiday season?  Need more production capacity?  Drop a new ‘bot in the array.⁴

1. That’s rough though, I’ve had a hard enough time without an extruder board for the last two weeks – I can’t imagine waiting months between selling off my beloved Bender and waiting for a Thing-O-Matic to arrive. [↩]
2. Oiling the rods, flossing the extruder, tightening the bolts, you know – TLC for CNC’s [↩]
3. Image above from Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Cybermen courtesy of Johnson Cameraface, sweet sweet photo editing from yours truly [↩]
4. See, the reason I sneer at Gold Farmers is because they’re nothing compared to robot farmers – hence the post about Botfarms and the American Robotic montage above.  Does explaining it kill the joke? [↩]

Photo: KurtCircuit / Flikr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurtcircuit/4996842196/

A lot of people ask, “What’s the biggest thing I can make with a DIY 3D printer?”

Well, someone known as “Kurt Circuit” is hoping to push the limits of the print envelop for a rep strap beyond anything any of us has ever seen by leaps and bounds. If he succeeds, this will be the biggest open source 3D printer…ever. It’s designed to accommodate prints up to a cubic meter – 35.3 cubic feet- meaning you could build a chair or table or cradle, or…or…

According to Mr. Circuit’s blog:

The build-envelope will be big enough (1 cubic meter) for printing a chair, a table, prosthetics, parts for humanoid robots or spaceships and such.”

I assumed that this was one of the biggest – if not the biggest –  3D printer out there. But then Marty told me about the D-Shape, which can print one or two story buildings. It’s definitely not open source, though, so Le Big Rep will undoubtedly hold the record for biggest DIY printer when it’s complete.

Wow!

The MakerBot Plastruder MK5 Nozzle was one of the most design-intense creations of the Plastruder MK5 research and development mission. We went through multiple iterations and revisions and worked closely with our manufacturer to create a unique and distinctly long lasting part.

We’ve upgraded our nozzles by coating them with Teflon. It’s a great enhancement that prevents melted plastic from sticking to the tip and makes cleaning the nozzle really easy. In the same way a non-stick pan is easy to clean, a hot Teflon nozzle sheds plastic with ease. It also reduces bits of plastic sticking to the head and messing up prints. The coating is a flat green color and is smooth and clean.

The MK5′s custom machined nozzle and components are all tapped to 3/8″-24 thread pitch. The bore hole and extruded width is .50mm. The new MakerBot MK5 Teflon Coated Nozzle design is custom made for us from precision-machined stainless steel.

If your current nozzle is covered in black charred plastic, you’re going to be particularly happy with this nozzle. Less failures and cleaner prints means using The MK5 really makes your life as a MakerBot Operator better.

Starting with any order made today, all MakerBot Plastruder MK5 kits, MakerBot Cupcake Ultimate kits will come with this nozzle as a standard component. This will also come standard on all MakerBot Thing-O-Matics.

Note: If using this with an Automated Build Platform, you’ll want to trim the wire brush and just use the rubber around the brush to remove ABS boogers. (If you don’t trim the wire brush, it will eventually wear away the teflon… also don’t use metal spatulas on your teflon coated pans!)

Tesla893 shows off his simple trick for printing quality small parts. When printing very small or narrow parts, the lower layers don’t get enough time to cool and solidify before the next layer is placed down. This causes squishing and sliding of layers. One effective method of reducing this problem is through the use of Skeinforge’s “Cool” setting. The Cool setting allows you to specify a minimum time the printer will spend working on a given layer – ensuring that your small parts have enough time to cool before the next layer is put down.

Tesla893′s trick is to print multiple small parts at once. Sure, you might have a little more stringing between parts to account for, but the printer is forced to spend more time between each individual small area given them all time to cool.

Update: The video appears to be removed for some reason.  It would have just shown you that Tesla893 was printing multiple copies at once.