MakerBot Industries

I like laser cutters. I like MakerBot Operators who modify their MakerBots. I LOVE this amazing hack by iliis. Knowing what I know about laser cutters, I can’t endorse this awesome modification, but wow, just wow. Much respect!

My makerbot now serves me since quite some time and I have to say, it’s one of the coolest (and most useful) toys I’ve ever had. Besides Lego maybe I experimented a bit with my Laser”pointer” (a 1W Spider III Arctic from http://www.wickedlasers.com/lasers/S3_Series-105-37.html) and the Unicorn-scripts. While this laser is not nearly strong enough to cut wood, it draws very nicely into it. And you can cut paper. This gives way to some pretty cool applications

Tbuser promptly noted that it looks like this movie poster!

Tracing the key fob

The last post covered my decision to remake/repair my mother’s car key. Frankly, I’m surprised I haven’t been fired from this job for not having fixed this problem immediately. In my defense, from the moment I learned of this issue I dropped everything to begin working on it.

A critical step to printing a replacement part is measuring your existing parts to make sure the replacement components will fit well.  I find the easiest way to start doing this is to simply trace the existing parts on a white sheet of paper.  Once this has been completed, I flesh out the “sketch” a little and draw in all of the measurements.

Marking the dimensions of the key fob

Once the measurements have been taken down and associated with the relevant areas on the existing parts, I like to create a digital representation of these parts.  Doing so allows me to use those existing components as a basis for developing the replacement parts.  With printing tolerances, a little ooze, and some very minor Z axis wobble I find that 0.5mm – 1.0mm room on all sides is sufficient to develop parts that print and fit together nicely.

Next up:  A first draft

Posts in this series:

• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys I
• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys II
• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys III
• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys IV
• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys Epilogue

Key fob, apart

My mom had been a public school teacher for all of her working life until she retired several years ago.  It was just before she retired that she bought herself a nice new car.  Yesterday she came to visit and she handed me her car keys to grab something from her trunk.  I was horrified at what I saw.  Her car keys, which have a built in electronic car lock/unlock remote, was wrapped in cheap packing tape.  On top of that, it was old packing tape.  So old that it had become stringy and oozey.

I asked what happened only to be told that while at her school she had dropped her keys which immediately cracked at the point where the metal key met the plastic housing for the electronic guts.  The school maintenance worker had kindly offered to fix it up the only way he could – with public school¹ packing tape.

This conversation ensured:

• MakerBlock: “How long has it been like this?”
• MakerBlock’s mom: “Oh, a looong time.”
• MakerBlock: “How long?”
• MakerBlock’s mom: “About two years.”
• MakerBlock: “Two years?!  Mom, you do know I have a machine in the other room capable of just making you a new plastic housing for your keys, right?”²
• MakerBlock’s mom: “Oh, that never occurred to me.”
• MakerBlock: “This is just unacceptable!  You can’t live like this.  I’m making you a new one.”

With the careful application of a utility knife to remove the packing tape and precision screwdrivers to take out the one lone screw, the key fob revealed its secrets, as depicted above.

Next:  Designing the replacement

Posts in this series:

• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys I
• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys II
• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys III
• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys IV
• MakerBot Hero:  Car Keys Epilogue

1. Read: cheap [↩]
2. 3D printers has essentially been all I can talk about, or write about for that matter, since hearing about them for the first time in April of 2008. [↩]

Thing-O-Matic shipments are delayed. Here’s what’s going on:

Thing-O-Matic shipments are currently delayed until we get a package delivered to the Botcave that is currently being held in transit because of the recent mail bomb scare and the new procedures put in place to make us more safe.

Everything for the Thing-O-Matic launch was supposed to arrive at the beginning of November. We know from experience that everything takes two weeks longer than expected to arrive so we gave ourselves an extra 3 weeks lead time to iron out any last minute delays. Electronics have been our biggest challenge in the past and so when they turned out to be two weeks late in getting to us and we felt all smarty pants and high fived when they arrived last week. Then, like a cruel slap to the face, we learned about the shipping delay on our super awesome custom Z-stage motors. Our super special custom made Z-stage motors are currently being held somewhere between Hong Kong and customs in Cincinnati. Sam, our supply chain manager, is working hard to find out when that shipment will be released to us, but we don’t have any hard information at this time.

I hate it when I order things and they come late. Because we have a little extra time, we’ve organized a little treat to go in each box for each Thing-O-Matic Customer. It’s not much consolation, but it’s all we can do as we wait for the final parts to reach us so we can send them on to you!

We’ll keep you updated here on the MakerBot blog and on twitter so you can know the exact second when the machines start to ship out.

Thanks for your patience. As soon as we get the final parts in, we’ll go into double time to get them out to you. The first Thing-O-Matic order will be the first one out the door and we’re going to be putting all our resources into getting all of the pre-orders in the mail in the order that the order was placed so that you can put your machine together and start printing with your beautiful new machine as soon as possible!

- Bre Pettis, CEO MakerBot Industries