MakerBot Industries

What would you ask Santa's elves to make for you?

Or…  A gnome of your own?

Just over a year ago the idea of a DIY 3D printed toy with moving parts seemed a little far off. ¹  Then Kparanya uploaded their Toy Car with Captive Wheels.  Since then we’ve seen all kinds of multi-part toys uploaded to Thingiverse including lots of puzzles, a transformer, and Beco building blocks.

Although I use my Cupcake CNC to print a lot of tools and things to assist with repairs, what I really love using it for is printing toys – especially those I’ve designed.  At the moment I’m really enamored with the idea of designing an open source disc shooter.  But, this is just something which interests me. ²

If you had a MakerBot at your disposal, what kind of toy would you want to design?  I suppose another way to ask this question is, “If you had one of Santa’s elves³ at your disposal to create any toy imaginable, what would you ask for?”

If there’s enough interest, perhaps I could do a series on the process of brainstorming, designing, creating a proof of concept, prototyping, and creating a polished design for a toy.  (Although, I suspect this process is reasonably similar for any kind of inventing)  Leave a comment and let me know what you’d like to see!

1. Photo courtesy of jpellgen [↩]
2. Although, it seems like at least one or two others would want to print them out if the designs were available. [↩]
3. Or, perhaps a fussy gnome? [↩]

Things are heating up in the robot world. Botacon approaches. We’re happy to announce the speakers at this first ever Botacon! Get your tickets now!

Heather Knight – Robotic Touch: Capacitive Sensing to Understand Human Body Language
Rob Gilson – State of the Replicators
Chris Connors – MakerBot and emerging technologies in the classroom
Dustyn Roberts – 3D without the Glasses: Making Assemblies of Parts
Laura Greig – Helping Paintbots Become More Than Printers
Kio Stark – 9 Ways to Make Your Robot Come to Life
Ben Combee – Put a Web Server on Your Bot
Erik de Bruijn – Open source innovation: On empowerment, architecture and ecosystems
Mr.Kim and John Sarik – Makerbot Printable Transistors and OLEDs
George Hart – Cool Geometric Forms
Zach Smith – Compilers of Industrial Revolution 2
Ilan Moyer – Gestural Design: Product Design in an Age of Personal Fabrication
Iem and Andy Heng and Zhang – Autonomous and Non-Autonomous Flexible Robot
Amy Hurst – Nickel for Scale – automatically customizing 3D objects to fit YOU!
Adam Mayer – Tiny Robots Everywhere
MakerBlock – How to be a robot dad
Raphael Abrams – The Nine Step Program to Make a Robot Puppet that Will Haunt Your Dreams

This is shaping up to be THE conference about DIY robotics and the bright future for automated everything. Be there!

After all, this is a family blog

The  infamous Pink Panther Woman model by Pedro Januário was uploaded to Thingiverse more than a year ago.  As far as I can tell, no one knows why this was named “The Pink Panther Woman.”  A bigger question is – did it really take more than a year for someone to upload a naked male figure?

A few days ago Nicholas C. Lewis uploaded a Basic Male Form to Thingiverse as a printer test while he was learning how to use MakeHuman.org’s open source tools for making 3D human models.  One day later Erik de Bruijn uploaded his derivative Basic Male Form in the spirit of equality.  Above you can see Erik’s Basic Male Form along side the Pink Panther Woman, both printed on his Ultimaker 3D printer.

There have been a number of printable candle holders uploaded to Thingiverse lately.  In all seriousness, please do not use ABS or PLA for printed candle handle holders or any kind of use involving flame or heat.  ABS will catch fire, even without a blow torch, and keep burning while giving off a bad smelling and toxic smoke.  PLA becomes very malleable at low heat, will deform and melt, and could easily drop a candle.  That’s one of the reasons PLA can’t be used as a hot beverage or food container.

Please have a safe holiday season and do not use any ABS or PLA with or near flame or heat.¹

1. Remember:  Only you can prevent bunny fires. [↩]

Hanukkah is rapidly approaching. It starts this Wednesday, December 1st at sundown. Need a menorah? Want to do a little soldering? Want to save wax?

Come visit the MakerBot Store. We have the Deluxe LED Menorah kit from Evil Mad Science Laboratories in stock for $14:

Our Deluxe LED Menorah kit is an updated take on the traditional hanukkiyah, the nine-armed Hanukkah candelabrum. Two candles are lit on the first night of Hanukkah (one “real” candle plus the lighter candle, or shamash), three on the second night, right up to nine on the eighth night. (That’s (2+9)*(8/2)=44 candles all together, for those of you keeping score.)

Ours works pretty much the same way, but uses less wax. When you turn it on, it displays the correct configuration of LED “candles” for a given night of Hanukkah. Each time that you press the button (or switch it off and back on), it displays one more light than it did the previous time that you turned it on (unless it showed all nine last time, in which case it goes back to two). The LEDs are lit up in the traditional sequence, with a gentle fade.”

There is plenty more to shop for at the MakerBot Botcave. We have all the traditional MakerBot faire like MakerBot Cupcake CNC Kits, TTL Cables, LED strips, pen plotters, extruders, and ABS plastic. We also sell Adafruit Kits like the Brain Machine, stuff from Evil Mad Science Laboratories, Arduino products, Jimmy Rodgers and much more.

Also, every visitor gets an object printed by one of our very own MakerBots!

So come and say hello. We’re located at 87 3rd Avenue. Hours are Noon-8 p.m., Tuesday thru Saturday, now until December 24th. See you at the MakerBot Botcave!

Youssef Tayeb's full-scale model of a trans-tibial socket, printed on a MakerBot

I was joking earlier when I referenced the OLAF as an MakerBot printable prosthetic for frogs.  Youssef Tayeb has clearly taken the idea of printable prosthetic very seriously.  He designed this full scale trans-tibial socket to be printed as 16 separate pieces, glued them together, and then reinforced them on the outside with fiberglass.  Youssef has also started an OpenProsthetics.org project group for publishing and getting feedback on his designs.  If you’re interested learning more about printed prosthetics, be sure and check out OpenProsthetics.org, the Trautman Hook uploaded to Thingiverse by Erik de Bruijn¹, and the Prosthetic Hand Kit uploaded by SpedZero.

Besides being of noble purpose, Youssef’s designs demonstrate an interesting way to build larger forms out of smaller MakerBot sized print jobs.  With a set of calipers and a 3D printer, making one’s own prosthetics could soon become a reality.

(Thanks Make!)

1. Erik is one of the inventors of the Ultimaker! [↩]

On this week’s live webstream did a quick video tour of today’s Botcave Store Grand Opening!  If you haven’t heard, MakerBot has opened a small popup retail space at their headquarters in Brooklyn.

87 3rd Ave (Closest Subway: Atlantic Pacific 2/3/4/5/D/N/R/Q)

Tuesday-Saturday 12-6pm.

Come on down!

Have you seen the sharp hooves on the fine filly above? This MakerBot Unicorn Pen Plotter could be yours on the 11th of December.¹

Charged with setting up a Unicorn station at Botacon² , I decided I would take this opportunity to give away four of these kits as prizes for making contributions to the MakerBot Unicorn/pen plotting community.³

So the goals of this contest are two-fold –

• to encourage coders and scripters to make the process of designing for the Unicorn⁴ easier by making the pipeline from drawing to printable design simple, and
• to encourage artists/designers to create work to be plotted on a MakerBot Unicorn Pen Plotter

The winner of each prize will be announced during Botacon 0 on Dec. 11th.

Inkscape-to-Makerbot-Gcode Challenge

Goal: Create an open source Inkscape plugin or extension allowing a MakerBot Operator to take a 2D SVG vector-based image and create printable MakerBot Unicorn gcode in one step. Share your code/extension at Thingiverse.com with the tags “unicorn” + “inkscapechallenge”, perhaps linking to a project page explaining how to use your tool.

Right now, the best tool for translating vector-based images into printable gcode is Scribbles⁵. One of the best open source, cross-platform tools for creating vector-based art is Inkscape, a fabulous SVG editor. Currently, optimal workflow for connecting these two tools is rather complicated.

There is already work going on to generate gcode from Inkscape. The Eggbot community are really pushing Inkscape-for-pen-plotting really far, even using Inkscape as its host printing software. So jump in and bring all of these initiatives together by create a single, optimized tool.

Fill/Tone/Crosshatching Tool Challenge

Goal: Create an open source Inkscape plugin that makes life easier for designers by helping them to generate and manage hatches (one direction), crosshatches (two+ layers of lines), and other line patterns as a means of simulating tones and solid blocks when pen-plotting. Share your code/extension at Thingiverse.com with the tags “unicorn” + “crosshatchchallenge”, perhaps linking to a project page explaining how to use your tool.

You cannot use a fill command with a MakerBot Unicorn, only the path of the pen tool itself, so creating rich vector-based art on a plotter requires the “fill” elements to be re-interpreted as hatches, crosshatches, dithering, pebbling patterns, and other marks that through direction and nearness of lines create the sensation of tone and saturation of color. This is a similar problem to how Skeinforge 3D prints volumes by converting “solids” into a labyrinth of lines to match the density requested in the “fill” settings.”

I’m a massive fan of the Inkscape Eggbot Extensions and use them all the time in my Unicorn design work. Look to the official plugin that assigns preset values to the Inkscape “Hatches (Rough)” Path Effects tool to tame it for plotting — a great place to start! Bonus points if your tool can be used by the Eggbot community as well as the MakerBot community.

Favorite Robots Design Challenge – Single-Pass & Multi-Pass

Goal:  Create a Creative Commons-licensed portrait of a favorite robot (real or imaginary) and post jpg/svg/gcode to Thingiverse.com between Nov 26th and Dec 10th with tags: “favoriterobot” + “unicorn”. One Unicorn will be awarded to a “single-pass” (i.e. single pen) illustration, and one to a “multi-pass” (ie swapping tools for multiple colors) illustration.

Those participating in the visual design challenges will get this additional bonus: I have, as far as I know, the only herd of Unicorns⁶ currently out there in the wild. So as the contest continues, I will be making use of this herd to print and share work submitted to the contest on Thingiverse and on the blog here. And I am arranging a Botacon 0 Thingiverse Unicorn-art gallery show, so even if you don’t win the challenge, I will be happy to show off your work.⁷

As the work to be judged will be printed on the Unicorn Herd from the files you supply, make sure to include a jpg, svg, and gcode version of your art (even if you can’t print it!) by following a process similar to this tutorial. Learn more about the MakerBot Unicorn on our wiki here and with these tutorials-in-progress.

1. Or rather a kit to allow you to create one like this. [↩]
2. I’m bringing 3 Cupcakes configured for pen plotting-on-demand during the event. [↩]
3. And anyone in the MakerBot/Thingiverse.com community can participate in this project whether or not s/he yet has a Unicorn Pen Plotter. [↩]
4. and other gcode pen plotters [↩]
5. a Python script adapted by the inventor of the MakerBot Unicorn, Will Langford, from MakerBot co-founder Zach’s Lunchlines script for the Frostruder [↩]
6. Well, if three makes a herd. [↩]
7. And I will have the gcode handy for the Unicorn Herd to print your work as well. [↩]

Ethan (13 years old) came in to the Botcave today and bought a MakerBot Cupcake CNC Ultimate Kit. We’ve sold a few MakerBot Cupcake Ultimate kits today and been able to hand them over to real people. It’s been great being able to meet customers in real life!

If you’re in NYC, you’re invited to stop into the MakerBot Botcave retail store and say hi and purchase a MakerBot kit too! We’re open Noon to 8pm from Tuesday to Saturday.

@gmchar was the first customer today. Visiting from the Netherlands on a tour of hackerspaces, he stocked up on MakerBot and Arduino supplies.

We also had visitors from the West coast come by and get a MakerBot Cupcake Ultimate for a young inventor in the family named Caleb. Congrats!