MakerBot Industries

I’ve always daydreamed of putting things in a tub and filling it with chocolate milk one centimeter at a time and taking a picture. Then I’d do edge detection on the objects and stack them up to make a 3D model.

I don’t have to dream anymore. It appears that Trace Modeler will do just that and more! It will also automatically output STLs! Very cool!

Super mega bonus points to this project for being open source. You can download the source here!

The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic is featured in Makezine’s holiday tool gift guide! Check it out.

Today was a big day for the MakerBot Support Team, with the debut of our live streaming Q&A show – ROBOT HOSPITAL! We will be doing this weekly starting today, so tune in next week and hopefully we’ll have a smoother start and all new topics- Check out the BotCave Store opening on the next show!

Hey everybody!

Here at the Botcave, we recently decided to “up our game” as regards customer service.  As you can see, there is now more than one person answering emails here.  So now, when you send email to support@makerbot.com a veritable team of highly-qualified technicians will respond to your requests.

From left: Isaac, our team leader, is an electronic music enthusiast who is known to have a collection of highly valuable (?) comic books.  Ethan once worked in the wine industry and tutors Latin.  Matt’s background is in film and creative writing.

Even more exciting, this afternoon, you’re going to have the chance to talk to all of us, LIVE and IN PERSON on the MakerBot UStream feed at http://bit.ly/dv23P3

We are starting a new event, tentatively titled called “Robot Hospital.”  In addition to taking questions over live chat, we are going to do a roundup of support-related issues over the past week, or whatever cool, robot-related stuff you need to see.

So, dial us up and send us your questions!  We’re here to help.

9 Volt Racer by mraiser

Who was tired of the other animals making fun of it for being slow.  It happened one day that this snail won the lottery and decided to buy a fast car.  He insisted the dealer paint a large letter “S” on every side of the car.  When the dealer asked him why, the snail replied, “Simple.  When people see my zooming past, I want them to say, ‘Wow!  Look at that S-car go!’”

Okay, this 9-volt battery car by mraiser is pure printed awesome.  I like the idea that it can just be snapped together and you’re off to the races. ¹  The directions indicate that the parts need to be glued in place.  While it looks like gloppy hot glue from the pictures, the parts list suggests it is crazy glue.  Most crazy glue includes acetone which would actually melt the ABS – so if you use it, be careful.

There are so many directions to go with this little car.  How about swapable covers for a Lamborghini, Mini Cooper, or VW bus?  How about custom printed bearing wheels? If you check out Jerome Demers’ “Beetle Robot”, you can see how he made a little toy that will change directions when it hits an obstacle.  With an extra motor, you could probably build a similar system into this little toy car.  Or, you could change up the gear teeth or gear sizes² to make it go even faster. ³  The wheels on this little racer a nice, but they could probably have a whole lot more grip.  You could use tires made from helical gears for extra traction.  If you look closely at the pictures on j_seigel‘s rubber band pull-back car, you’ll notice an interesting use of rubber bands used as rubber rims for the plastic tires.  I suspect if you stretched a thick rubber band over helical gears, they would make for great tires.  If your car got a lot larger, you might even be able to use the robot frog legs as a suspension system.⁴

Rubber band pull-back car by j_seigel

1. So to speak. [↩]
2. Or both! [↩]
3. Or slower? [↩]
4. Frog legs and escargot jokes?  What the heck?!? [↩]

Chair plus Paris equals?

Full scale furniture printed using 3D printing technology?  How else would you get a map of Paris molded into a chair?¹

There are already several examples of downloadable furniture on Thingiverse.  If you think about it, a MakerBot Cupcake is basically the perfect size for printing doll furniture.  I’ve designed and printed a doll sized table and chair set, but there’s a LOT more room for doll sized designs.  What kind of awesome doll furniture will you design and share?

1. Thanks i.materialize! [↩]