MakerBot Industries

Since the introduction of the teflon-coated nozzles for the Plastruder MK5, the MakerBot Automated Build Platform v1.0 has been shipping with a silicone nozzle wiper instead of a wire brush.

Assembly couldn’t be easier: the small piece of extreme-temperature silicone rubber comes pre-bored with a bolt hole.Slide nylon washer onto the M3 x 20mm bolt. Press barrel of bolt down through the top of the wiper bolt hole, and then mount the unit onto the tiny protuberance to the left of the build surface (where the wire brush had previously been mounted). In the Botcave, often the upright portion of the wiper is closer to the electronics ports on the heated build surface than the toothed gears at the front of the ABP. (Note that this choice requires you to offset your y-axis placement when establishing the “zero” position to just behind the wiper so the wiper path — originally crossing the current bolt position — now crosses the silicone flap.) Other Operators flip the wiper backwards with the flap on the forward side of the mount point so that they don’t have to adjust their starting placement. (I recommend that latter option.) Tighten the M3 nut underneath the tiny platform to lock wiper into place.

Depending on how you mount your Plastruder to the Z-stage (ie thumb screws, bare bolts, etc.), you might consider trimming down the flap to a height that your mounting points clear or grace the top of the silicone. The current default MakerBot Automated Build Platform wiping settings send the nozzle across the wiper at 6mm height, so that is the factor to start with when considering whether to trim your wiper or not. (I trimmed my wiper to 8.5mm, measured from bottom of L to top of flap.)

Done! Molten plastic “boogers” (a technical term?) no longer interrupt your serial printing pleasure….

These instructions have been added to the Automated Build Platform assembly instructions as well.

An awesome movie follow up to the earlier Dead Drops post — we had a reporter from France come investigating the dead drop outside so there is some pretty widespread interest in the Dead Drop phenomena –  the movie is really nicely done, too!

Dead Drops ‘How to’ – NYC from aram bartholl on Vimeo.

Shooting for 300

Josef Průša is giving a talk at the TedX event in Prague on November 20th.  You may recognize his name from his contributions to the development of the next generation RepRap printer, the Mendel.  Josef has been working to simplify the parts and reduce the print time for the parts necessary to create a RepRap printer.  In order to demonstrate the possibilities of DIY 3D printing, Josef is looking to give away 300 printed whistles at this event.

As of yesterday, Josef still has 250 more whistles to go.  Can you help Josef spread the word by sending him some whistles to give away?

Big ideas

The guys over at PublicKnoweldge.org have just released a new white paper covering current legal intellectual properties issues and discussing how they relate to developments in 3D printing and DIY tech:¹

Today, we at Public Knowledge launched a whitepaper about how copyright, patent, and trademark apply to 3D printing, and how incumbents might use those laws to stop it from going mainstream.  While I urge everyone to check it out, I also know that there is a bit of confusion about how copyright, patent, and trademark apply to the things coming out of 3D printers.  Hopefully, this post will give you some general rules of thumb about how to think about copyright, patent, and trademark.  Before I begin, the lawyer in me needs to say that this is deliberately simplified, and should not be readas specific legal advice.

Copyright

For the last ten years or so, copyright has been the intellectual property issue online.  There are at least two reasons for this.  First, copyright attaches to all original, creative works.  Second, copyright attaches to a work automatically.

It just so happens that networked computers are really good at copying and distributing the types of works (music, movies, books, photographs, ….) that are protected by copyright.  Since just about everything that is written down (or recorded, or filmed, or photographed) is protected by copyright, and when computers transfer information they make copies of that information, rights in these works are implicated when computers exchange information.  So, copyright has always been kind of a big deal online.

However, copyright applies less frequently in the world of physical objects, and as a result in the world of 3D printing.  With the noteworthy exception of purely decorative objects, copyright does not really attach to “things.”  That means that most of the things on thingiverse, the whistles and the gears and the bricks and the ball bearings, are not protected by copyright.

Patent

While the things are not protected by copyright, they might be able to get patent protection.  Patents protect “useful articles,” a category that includes things like whistles and gears and bricks and ball bearings.  Unlike copyright, however, patents only protect things that are actually novel in the world.  Also, and this might be the most important part, patents are not automatic.  In order to get a patent, you need to apply to the Patent and Trademark Office, and then actually have your patent approved.

As a result, far fewer things are going to be protected by patent than by copyright.  Just about every recording online is protected by copyright automatically.  Only a small percentage of the objects in the world are protected by patent.

Trademark

Trademark was originally intended to be a form of consumer protection and protection of goodwill earned by a business.  A trademark on a product meant that there was a company standing behind the product.  It was important to protect the integrity of the mark so that consumers did not buy a product thinking that it came from one company, only to find out that it came from another.

This means that trademark primarily is about logos, and much less about product design.  Although there is “trade dress” protection for particularly memorable product designs (think the curved Coke bottle), in general trademark focuses on logos and brand names.  The specificity of 3D printing makes this easy to work around.  As long as you leave logos off of your objects, you can generally avoid trademark trouble.

Obviously, this is a very brief tour through IP law, and there are plenty of caveats that I skimmed over.  As I mentioned before, there is more detail in our report.

Perhaps more importantly, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that IP law is a kind of law, and laws can change.  Just as the DMCA expanded the scope of copyright law, once incumbent industries wake up to the disruptive force of 3D printing they may try to pass a DMCA-style law aimed to curb its growth.

The makers who helped build the Internet were not really ready when entrenched industries started to push back against them.  One of the things that my organization, Public Knowledge, is trying to do is to make sure that the makers who help build 3D printing are ready to prevent industries who feel challenged by 3D printing from stopping it.

Definitely check out their white paper for a friendly and readable opinion on intellectual property!

1. Photo courtesy of Cayusa [↩]

Z Axis Extender Kit for Makerbot Cupcake by Zydac

Thingiverse citizen Zydac just uploaded his Z axis extender kit for the MakerBot Cupcake 3D printer.  The Z axis threaded rods that ship with a Cupcake CNC are already longer than you need – which allows for Z axis cranks, Z axis toppers, and Z axis extenders such as Chooch’s designs.  The interesting contribution from Zydac’s designs is the way in which it elevates the four Z axis rods to nearly level with the printing platform.  This idea allowed Zydac to extend his printer’s Z-axis even higher than you could get by simply raising the top panel of the Cupcake.  It’s also interesting to note that his designs allow for the extra height to be adjusted, depending upon the particular requirements of your print job or machine’s capabilities.

So, who’s ready to crack the tallest print hall of fame record?

Printable Linear Bearing For 8mm Rods by TheRooster

Quick, how many bearings are on Thingiverse?  I was able to count at least 9 different examples.  You have your choice of over-sized bearings, pure printed bearings, and even linear bearings.

• Tri Linear Bearing For 8mm Rods by Sublime
• Printable Linear Bearing For 8mm Rods by TheRooster
• Sarrus Linkage Linear Bearing by fdavies
• Printable 608 Ball Bearing using BB’s by TheRooster
• Ball Bearing by RayRaywasHere
• Bearing by PP3DP
• Turntable (lazy susan) bearing by ferret7
• [experimental] 3d Printable Rotary Rolamite Bearing by Gene_Hacker
• Printed bearings using beads instead of metallic spheres by MakerBlock

If you’re looking to build a robot, invent something, or create a toy you now can print off a custom bearing for your project!

Alcohol, designers, and lasers… and alcohol! Can you think of a better combination? Our friends in Europe have created a wonderful design challenge event called Design Smash. Designers will gather, collaborate, and make wonderful things.

3…2…1… The horn blows and a group of designers throw back a stiff drink before plunging into work. They are producing a laser-cut object… a design that will hit the shelves in under a week. They have 4 hours to accomplish what most do in a month, but armed with liquid bravery, a bit of training and all the materials they need, they smash out a design as you party around them. At the end of the night, you decide who gets the biggest prize and the pieces are produced in front of you… on-the-spot.

Location: betahaus Berlin Prinzessinnenstr. 19-20 10969 Berlin
Time: Saturday the 20th of November 6pm – 3am

If I was in Berlin or London on November 20th, or if I could figure out how this dang teleporter works, I would be there.

It recently came to our attention that many MakerBot Operators are skipping the crucial ceramic tape insulation stage when building and using their Plastruder MK5s. We have a tendency to display the Plastruder MK5 in kits without the tape to show off the beautiful thermal core and nozzle, and have been less emphatic about this point in the past. But no longer.

My Elite Wrapping Techniques Are Unbeatable

Up until now, this was something of an veteran Operator trick, now we are suggesting that this slips into general practice. Applying ceramic tape reduces the radiated heat, insulates the thermistor or thermocouple, and makes the thermal core a bit safer from radically burning your fingers. As a result, you will require less juice to get your hot end up to temperature, less juice to keep the temperature steady (also isolating hot end temperature readings from environment factors), and no Aloe Vera juice on the fingers.

To accomplish this feat: Simply take the piece of ceramic tape and wrap it around the hot end.  I tape a long strip of kapton to the ceramic before wrapping, and then secure it in place by taping kapton on one side onto the kapton on the other side. Additional loops of kapton around the ceramic wrap to hold the tape in place helps keep the insulation from dipping below the bottom of the thermal block where it might drag on the model. Make sure tape is firmly attached (kapton taped against kapton: the kapton tape will not stick to bare ceramic tape), as you don’t want it falling off during a build.

What the PID?

If your wrapped Plastruder still has difficulty reaching and maintaining the target 220˚ temperature, you may need to make changes to your Extruder Controller’s PID settings. In the v2.x firmware release, Adam opened up the ability to control the heater’s control system Proportional, Integral and Derivative (PID) parameters within ReplicatorG in the Machine > Extruder Onboard Preferences… dialog box.

From the “MK5 PID tuning?” discussion, the following PID settings may be a good starting point:

• Set Proportional to 5.143
• Set Integral to 0.0612
• Set Differential to 108.0

Also working well for many Operators, are the “Bre” MK5 Settings:

• Set Proportional to 5.1367
• Set Integral to 0.055
• Set Differential to 108.0

For further discussion, see PID Controller Tuning for one approach to manually tuning the parameters beyond default values.

– Matt

Broken Heart by GregFrost

When I saw the above picture I thought, “Oh, nice, a heart print.  Okay, that’s sweet.”

When I saw the video below, I thought, “OMG, that’s SWEET!”

Deceptively simple and beautiful.  GregFrost, that’s an incredible design.  It is simultaneously reminiscent of brain gears, a jack-in-the-box, and a valentine.  It truly lives up to your description as a kinetic sculpture. ¹

1. Honestly, it doesn’t strike me so much as a broken heart as a cranky heart. [↩]

A MakerBot 3D Printer makes a cameo appearance in this video (@2:16) about eliminating waste through upcycling.

It’s great to reuse, reduce, and recycle to minimize our impact on the environment. But is there a way to make trash a thing of the past? Graduate students at Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity University think so. Taking lessons from nature, where nothing is wasted, ever, the team dreams of a society where trash is reborn, just as in nature things die and decompose, providing nutrients for new living things. They call this closed-loop process of material renewal the upcycle.

So where do MakerBots fit in? Do-it-yourself 3D printers like MakerBots promote distributed manufacturing. The centralized manufacturing processes we currently rely on are wasteful because products spend 90 percent of their lifetime in transit, according to Singularity U speaker Kausar Samli. That means that for most of their inanimate lives, they are traveling on a boat, in a truck, or flying through the air on a plane, pouring carbon dioxide into the air.

If everyone had their own personal manufacturing facility, the environmental and economic costs of transporting those goods would be virtually eliminated. Although it may be a while before such a considerable change in the manufacture and distribution of goods is implemented on a mass scale, the Upcycle team dreams of bringing 3D printing technology to communities in developing countries as soon as possible. Locals could print their own goods with environmentally friendly bioplastics, making things that were previously economically out of reach newly accessible.

Projects such as the Fab Lab–a mobile manufacturing facility produced by M.I.T.’s Center for Bits and Atoms–are already doing just that. There are 45 labs in dozens of countries around the world, from South Africa to Afghanistan to Austria.

So democratizing manufacturing with 3D printers like MakerBots will not only allow everyone equal access to stuff, it could also help us all be better upcyclers.