MakerBot Industries

3D printed blender fix

When Laszlo’s blender stopped working, he did what any self-respecting owner of a 3D printer would do – he took it apart.

A quick look at the broken part, 15 minutes with OpenSCAD, and he was ready to print the replacement part!  Perhaps best of all, he’s uploaded his designs to Thingiverse for anyone else who needs to fix their blender.

First ever Botacon!

A Botacon is an exciting get together of robots and the people who are creative near them.  Already we’ve got several hundred people interested in this all-day event.  (Don’t worry – I’m saving a spot just for you.)  It will be at the Brooklyn Lyceum from about 10am until 6pm on December 11, 2010.  Right now we’re still taking suggestions for ideas and topics, but the rough outline is:

• A keynote speaker in the morning
• A bunch of small talks and discussions (anywhere from 5-20 minutes each)
• About 2 hours for lunch
• A workshop project
• Some more talks and discussions (also 5-20 minutes each)
• Time for people to get dinner
• A bar drinkup¹

However, since we’re still putting together the program for the Botacon we need your input.  Please take the time to fill out a super short survey, drop us a line, or leave a comment.  We’d love to know:

• Who do you want to hear from as the keynote speaker?
• Who would you like to hear from?
• What kinds of talks would you be interested in?
• What kinds of things would you like to hear about?
• What would you like to see?

And, don’t forget to submit your talk!

I hope you decide to come out.  It just wouldn’t be the future without you! 

1. Because even roboticists need libation.  Hint: If you have a robot, like robots, can spell robots, or have an evil laugh – you count as a roboticist in my book. [↩]

Check out Matt Griffin's Poe Portrait on Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/image:23744

Getting in the spirit of the season is so much fun with open source robots! If you need some help, take some inspiration from Edgar Allen Poe. Get yourself a Unicorn and print yourself your own Poe. The design was uploaded to Thingiverse by Matt Griffin. Nobody sends Halloween cards. Why is that? I would love to get one. My suggestion: hand print your own Halloween cards. Put Mr. Poe on the front, and put this quote inside:

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” -Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

Tape for sad people

Blue painter’s tape is a lot more useful than it first appears. ¹  When you think about tape, it’s tempting to assume something like duct tape is the most useful kind – because it is super sticky and super strong.  However, these aren’t always desirable characteristics.  Suppose you need tape that will stand out against a drab background?  Or that will come off cleanly?  Or won’t be too sticky?

Or you’ve got a 3D printer.  Blue tape is a great surface for printing with PLA and can be very useful when printing on an automated build platform with ABS.  It is cheap, easily replaced, and has a slight texture that lets hot sticky plastic grip well.  If you’re having problems getting a raft or print to stick, definitely give it a shot!

1. Photo courtesy of photonburst [↩]

At the New York Maker Faire a few weeks ago we announced the launch of our newest addition to the MakerBot family: the Thing-o-matic. It is, quite simply, THE top-of-the-line, do-it-yourself, open source 3D printer. The kit comes with all the latest hardware we’ve worked so hard to develop, such as the MK5 Plastruder and Automated Build Platform, which allows you to continuously print as many parts as you have plastic with one stroke of the “Enter” key.

This is what’s included in the Thing-o-matic parts kit:

• The lasercut parts to assemble a Thing-O-Matic CNC machine.
• 3 x NEMA 17 motors
• The hardware to assemble it.
• Belts and pulleys
• Smooth Rods and Drive system components
• Pre-assembled 4th Generation Electronics
• a USB cable to talk to it
• cat5e and rainbow cables to wire things up
• a standard ATX power supply
• a tools kit with all the hex keys, wrenches, and other bits you need to construct it.
• SD card to buffer your prints
• 1lb of MakerBot ABS Plastic to print with

Less than a day after we launched the Thing-o-matic, it was already winning awards. Those three blue ribbons adorning it in the photograph are the Maker Faire Editor’s Choice awards. It got a record three. We’re so proud!

Matthew LaBarge printed the Iris Box by msruggles and was kind enough to upload a short video of it in action!

High resolution print of Venus' head

There are a surprising number of DIY 3D printer projects out there that have nothing to do with MakerBot or RepRap developments.  The coolest one I’ve seen in months is Junior Veloso‘s DIY homemade high resolution 3D printer.  Junior’s system builds the object upside down by projecting light from a DLP projector into a thin layer of UV resin.  Each layer takes about 8 seconds to cure and the layers are about 0.1 mm thick.¹  Between the high resolution from the DLP projector and the 0.1 mm vertical layer thickness, Junior is able to get some pretty incredible results as you can see above.

Building upside down

High resolution is obviously one of the biggest benefits to Junior’s system.  With thin Z layers and a super high resolution DLP is what makes the high resolution possible.  With a cure time of about 8 seconds per layer, even the largest layer is going to be cured far faster than a layer of plastic put down by a Cupcake.

This system isn’t without it’s downsides, however.  First, the UV resin comes to about $90 per pound – significantly higher than the cost of ABS.  Secondly, the amount of time it takes to put down a layer depends entirely upon the area being placed – which means some layers could be faster than 8 seconds.²

1. Which is about 1/3 the typical vertical resolution of a MakerBot Cupcake.  That is, unless you’re talking to Dave Durant. [↩]
2. There aren’t many paths that would take less than 8 seconds. [↩]

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.