MakerBot Industries

Andrew and Ezra in the dome via http://fabricating.tumblr.com/

The geodesic dome is complete! The goal of the folks at spaceframe was “an experimental investigation into spaceframe systems from a fabricate-it-yourself perspective.” They invited people from all over the world to print connectors for this 3 meter tall dome. Now they have the first-ever geodesic dome fabricated collaboratively.

Of course, this was all before we released the Automated Build Platform. It launched MakerBots into the future of do-it-yourself automated 3D printing. Whether you upgrade your Cupcake CNC with one, or get get a Thing-o-matic, you can now print dozens of dome connectors without having to fiddle with your machine. Admittedly, constructing a dome collaboratively lets you meet more friends than doing it all on your own. Maybe the Automated Build Platform could enable construction of an even bigger dome. Instead of sending in one geodesic dome connector, MakerBot operators with Automated Build Platforms could send in a dozen. Then they could build a mega geodesic dome. Just a thought.

For those of you who just got a Thing-o-matic or Automated Build Platform, all that 3D printer power may be daunting at first. Now that you can print anything you want all day long, what should you print?

Check out our Top 10 List of things to print with your automated build platform. Keep your MakerBot busy printing a chess set, jewelry, a city or my favorite: a barrel of primates. Or print some Halloween-themed objects to decorate for your upcoming costume party.

PLA Pawn temperature tests

Above are twelve nearly-consecutive print-tests of Cliff Biffle’s pawn.  Once I pulled the black ABS filament out, I inserted the clear PLA, and ran it until it looked reasonably clear.  However, you can see how the plastruder was still clearing out the remaining black ABS for the first three prints.  Here are the relevant Skeinforge settings for the above pawn prints:

• The entire top row was printed way too hot – at 230 degrees Celsius.  Each print looks essentially identical, except for the variation in their coloring.  The bases are very well defined – but the “stem” of  each is slightly warped.  This is likely the result of the layers not having sufficient time too cool before the next layer is deposited.  Molten PLA holds its heat longer and stays gooier longer than ABS, so it is more prone to having layers pushed around slightly when a layer is put on top of it.  The little globe at the top of the pawn is droopy and doesn’t look very spherical.  Overall, these pieces could be acceptable as playing pieces, but I’ve seen some amazing prints in PLA and I want better for my 3D printer.
• For the middle row I tried lowering the temperature and experimented with Skeinforge’s “Cool” feature.  Notes on these prints, left to right, follow.
  • The far left pawn printed at 190 degrees Celsius and with the “Cool” feature set to 20 seconds.  The “Cool” setting made the extruder trace over the perimeter of the layer until it had spent a total of 20 seconds at that layer.  If you look closely at the picture, you’ll notice there appears to be a slight gouge out of the spherical part of the pawn.  I believe the gouge was created as the extruder essentially tore bits of plastic off the layer.  That said, this print has two other interesting qualities.  First, this pawn is significantly whiter than all other prints.  I believe this was caused by the “Cool” feature being set so high.  Secondly, aside from the gouge this pawn turned out better than any other print.
  • The next pawn over was printed at 190 degrees Celsius with “Cool” set to 10 seconds.  This print is slightly less opaque than the prior and has much larger gouges throughout the model.  This was one of the most unsuccessful prints.
  • The next pawn over to the right was printed at 190 degrees Celsius with “Cool” set to 5 seconds.  I canceled this print part way through because it was evident the stem of the print was badly mangled.  However, it was slightly more clear than the prior prints.
  • The last pawn to the right in the middle row was printed at 195 degrees Celsius with “Cool” set to 5 seconds.  This pawn’s stem was also mangled and the entire model deformed.
• The bottom row contains three prints with the “Cool” feature set to 1 second.  I’m not sure this helped at all.
  • The far left pawn was printed at 195 degrees Celsius.  I didn’t see much of an appreciable difference between this model and the ones printed at 220 degrees Celsius.
  • The middle pawn was printed at 187 degrees Celsius.  I didn’t see an appreciable difference from the prior print.
  • The far right pawn was printed at 210 degrees Celsius.  I didn’t see any appreciable difference from the prior two prints or any of the prints at 230 degrees.

I’m not sure how to proceed with testing.  The one print that looked the best, except for gouges, was the one printed at 190 degrees Celsius with “Cool” set to 20 degrees.  One potential issue with Cool set so high is that this print took more than 27 minutes versus about 7 minutes when Cool was set to 1 second.  I suspect any of these print settings might be acceptable for larger objects, allowing the rest of the layer to cool sufficiently to support the next layer.  However, I’m more concerned with dialing in the quality for smaller objects – if I can print those I should be able to print nearly anything.

Do you print successfully with PLA on your Cupcake?  What settings do you think are the most important?  What suggestions could you offer to help others?

Also, one additional photo of the same pawns as above, but with the flash on my phone turned off.  This might help seeing some of the details.

PLA pawn tests - no flash

The winner: twotimes' Mendel-inspired x and y carriage lowrider

Thingiverse user twotimes won pattywac‘s contest a few weeks ago on the best 3D printed object requiring bearings. Users submitted more than a dozen proposals on how to get 3D printed objects moving with bearings!

These were the guidelines:

1. Needs to be printable on a MakerBot
2. Needs to use bearings in some way
3. Post submissions on Thingiverse by 5pm cst Sunday, Oct 3
4. Post a comment to this thing with a link to your submission
5. Seriously anything that uses bearings in some way…..

Congratulations, twotimes! According to pattywac:

He didn’t win my vote because it was a replacement and improvement part for the Makerbot, but because he made something that people really liked (average rating is 5/5) and because of the dedication he showed in revising the design so many times to make sure it was 100% usable.”

Check out all the incredible designs users submitted, and print them out yourself on your Cupcake CNC or Thing-o-matic.

PLA jam!!!

My MK4 Plastruder is made of entirely stock parts, except for a printed insulator retainer, and worked great with ABS.  My first attempts with PLA about six months ago were alternately wondrous and horrific.  While trying to dial in the proper temperatures for my Plastruder for use with PLA I cranked it too high, the PLA tried to expand inside the insulator retainer, and liquid PLA was forced around the threads of the extruder barrel.  As I said, it was a horrific mess.

How horrific you ask?  Just take a look at this picture of my MK4 plastruder after I tried to extrude PLA:

BLOCKED

Yeah.  It was that bad.  Well, this weekend I gave PLA another shot with my MK5 Plastruder.  At one point I realized I was trying to print while still using the ABS profiles – and heating the PLA up to 230 degrees Celsius.  This was also happening while I left the area to put my daughter to bed.  The result was the extruder was operating way way too hot for way way too long.  These are not good things.

The result is the extruder kept the heat at 230 degrees Celsius, the PLA formed a blockage, and extruder motor kept forcing new PLA down into the extruder barrel.  However, due to the way in which the MK5 is designed, there was no place for the PLA to create a mess.

When I realized what was going on I shut down the extruder and pulled out the filament, pictured at the top of this post.  What you’ll notice is the area of the filament to the right is still clear/translucent while the filament to the left, which was down inside the extruder barrel, is a milky color.  Interestingly, the clear area of filament is still just as flexible as a normal piece of filament while the milky white section is extremely rigid.

This situation, running the extruder too hot for too long, would have been catastrophic for my MK4 plastruder and was basically shrugged off by my MK5.  All I had to do was loosen the thumbscrew for the Delrin plug, yank out the filament and blockage, cut that section out, shove newly cut piece of filament back in, and tighten the thumbscrew again.  This was the difference between a 30 second fix with my MK5 as compared to a problem that actually ruined my MK4 insulating barrier and kept me from printing until I got a replacement.

I’m still dialing in my temperature settings for PLA and will be posting some of my results later today.