MakerBot Industries

In September and October 2010 MakerBot Industries received a number of support requests relating to our 37 mm extruder motors. While we have always been ordering the exact same part number from our supplier, It has come to our attention that we have been receiving two distinctly different motors.

In an effort to determine the cause of these issues and respond accordingly we are asking the community to help us do some science. Please complete this form once for each motor you have purchased from us. This will help us determine the quantity and failure rate for each type of motor. Even if your motor has never given you problems, it is important for you to provide feedback.

After removing the white plastic cover from each type of motor the difference is clear. One has a circuit board while the other does not.

The two types of motors we have in stock look different on the outside. The motor with the circuit board has a dull body with a shiny ring near the plastic while the other motor is completely shiny. This is true for the motors we have in stock, but we don’t know if the motors with shiny rings have always had the circuit board.

For more photos view the Motor Issue photo set.

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[Photo Credit: oskay's Flikr photo stream

To celebrate the season, and our glow-in-the-dark ABS, we want you to submit things we can make for H-A-LL-O-W-EE-N with our MakerBots! Monday, October 18th at 11:11 p.m. is the deadline to get your designs in for our Halloween design challenge!

We already have a bunch of new Halloween-themed designs up on Thingiverse. Keep ‘em coming for an opportunity to get some free glow-in-the-dark ABS!

A reminder of some guidelines:

1. Must be .stl file uploaded to Thingiverse and tagged with “Halloween”
2. Must be a new design as of 8 October, 2010
3. Deadline is Monday, October 18th at 11:11 p.m.
4. Must be innovative, spooky, and and printable with a MakerBot
5. Bonus points for requiring the Makerbot 3D Scanner v1.0 Kit , Unicorn, or Automated Build Platform

We will announce our favorite next week!

Also, if you’re looking for things to print for Halloween with your glow-in-the-dark ABS, check out MakerBlock’s Top 10 list.

ReplicatorG 0020 is ready to roll, as are new versions of the firmware for the plastruder and the motherboard!  Download it here. You’ll also see new versions of the motherboard and extruder firmware are available; use ReplicatorG’s built-in uploader to update your boards!

This is the first release to feature multiple slicing engines– in this case two separate editions of Skeinforge.  By default, ReplicatorG will still use the version of Skeinforge we’ve had integrated since 0006, but if you want to play with the latest and greatest, we’ve also integrated the most recent Skeinforge release for your slicing and toolpath-generating pleasure.  Just select the slicing engine you want to use from the “gcode” menu, like so:

You can create and edit profiles for the new Skeinforge just as you would for the old version.  (Well, almost; we’ve added the create and edit buttons directly to the profile selection dialog.)

You’ll also notice that you can now launch either the extruder or the motherboard onboard preferences dialog directly from the machine menu, rather than having to open the motherboard preferences and then click on the extruder preferences button.  Which is handy, because we’ve got a few new extruder preferences for you to play with in the new v2.5 extruder firmware!

The new extruder firmware lets you remap mosfet channels and switch motor controllers, so if you’ve managed to burn out a chip or two, you can just change your configuration and keep going.

You’ll also notice that we’ve removed the automatic backoff feature from v2.5; we made this change to reduce stress on the motors.  If you miss this functionality, we recommend investigating the oozebane module in Skeinforge.

The v2.3 firmware for the motherboard doesn’t include any new features, but does increase the retry count on the extruder communications, which should help if you’ve been having trouble with longer builds.

As always, ReplicatorG doesn’t happen without you!  We have a bunch of contributors for this release:

• chlunde: Edge mode on ‘e’ keypress re-enabled
• Miles Lightwood, Eberhard Rensch, koenkooi: created/backported raftless to skeinforge
• Charles Pax: new profiles, machines.xml entry for thingomatic
• justjoheinz: about box fix

Apologies to anyone I’ve left out; drop me a line or let me know in the comments if I missed you.

Thanks, and have fun!

Or, transmuting a digital object into a real 3D object embedded with a 2D representation of its “DNA.”

Digital DNA

A little over a month ago I had pondered how cool it would be to have things on Thingiverse embedded with QR codes – so you could show the bottom of the object to a friend, they could grab the digital file, and print off a duplicate.  Well, l0b0 has done just that with his parametric box!

Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh... bat mobile!

Give up?  A bat mobile.

Pasutx designed this super-cool bat mobile by using Unicorn style 2D design in green PLA with his homebrew 3D printer rocking some MakerBot electronics.

More?  You must have more???  How about a video of the bat mobile in action!

Pow!  Zam!  Blam!

More than a year since Episode 1, Zaggo, caretaker for MakerBot 127, has just released Episode 2!  In Episode 1 our intrepid hero quickly and efficiently designed, printed, and replaced an under-cabinet kitchen lamp bracket in less time than you could have driven to your local hardware store, found the part, and driven back home, and replaced it. ¹   In the long-anticipated sequel he designs a wall socket cover!

Better Living with MakerBot – Episode 2: The Wall Socket

Better Living With MakerBot – Episode 1: Kitchen Lamp

1. Ask yourself – can you afford to NOT have a 3D printer in your home? [↩]

The guys over at Electromagnate have put together a teaser video for their upcoming documentary about the maker and hackerspace movement. ¹ They looking to explain why everyday people are compelled to make thing, invent things, and collaborate with others to give away their ideas for free – and maybe even change the world in the process.

We are currently filming a documentary that explores the state and direction of the Maker and Hackerspace movement in America. We’re visiting hackerspace and makerspaces across the nation in an attempt to show the incredible innovation, creativity, struggles and triumphs that exemplify these spaces. Our goal is to help everyone understand what hackerspaces and makerspaces are doing, how they are doing it and how the Maker Movement is changing the world.

Check out Electromagnate’s website for more information about their project!

1. You might even see some familiar faces… [↩]

If you’ve got some design and coding chops but no 3D printer to convert all those spare zeros and ones to a physical object, why not enter the Bit.ly API contest?  Bit.ly allows its users to easily share, shorten, and track URLs or “links.” ¹  Check out the Bit.ly blog for details about the contest and ideas for cool plugins, widgets, and mobile apps that use their API in new, creative, and useful ways.

First prize?  A MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D Printer!

1. Air quotes [↩]

Nikolai Tesla

Dnewman has posted some fantastic line-drawing art of very recognizable figures. So far he has posted a picture of Thomas Edison, Nikiolai Tesla¹² , and the Mona Lisa.  It looks like Dnewman intended these to be printed on an Eggbot, but I don’t see why they couldn’t be adapted for printing with a Unicorn pen plotter.

I love the idea that I could miniaturize fine works of art to a sticky-note and leave them around my office work area. 

Mona Lisa

Thomas Edison

1. Who is not to be outdone by Edison [↩]
2. Seriously, have you seen The Prestige? [↩]

Nearly every printable thing on Thingiverse adheres to the “45 degree rule” for MakerBotting.  There are some very clever ways around such problems – such as Zaggo’s treasure chest with a snap-off support for the chest’s lid.  However, Skeinforge¹ actually includes a “support cross hatch” option that will create a fibrous sort of netting around your object upon which other parts can be printed.  Allan Ecker’s Thingiverse blog post on skeinforge crosshatch support covers this feature in detail.

Until very recently, not many people had posted their experiments with Skeinforge’s support feature.  Frankly, I was put off by Allan’s description of the support removal process and instead either designed parts that adhered to the “45 degree rule” or could be assembled from multiple parts to avoid the issue altogether.

Then Rick Pollack of MakerGear posted some details about his orange cat, printed with support material.  The cat uploaded by i.Materialize includes a number of features that violate the “45 degree rule.”  The head, tail, and entire body of the object essentially have nothing underneath them.

Cat with support

Cat with support

Rick’s post indicates his first attempt, pictured above, at printing this object with support used an older version of Skeinforge.  Apparently his second attempt using a newer version of Skeinforge was a lot easier to clean up.  The newer version of Skeinforge gives the option of slowing down the extrusion rate, which leaves a thinner support webbing, which makes for easier removal.

Have you tried printing using Skeinforge’s support features?  What was your experience?

1. Skeinforge is the program used to turn an STL of a 3D model into commands ReplicatorG can understand and interpret into Gcode for the Cupcake [↩]