MakerBot Industries

***IN BOTCAVE POP-UP SHOP ONLY***


Andy Doro and I (Mike Kelberman) put together a Jimmie Rodgers’ LOLshield to use for signage in the Botcave (MakerBot’s popup shop).  We had to use diffusion (piece of paper) since the LEDs are so bright, they would overexpose the video footage.  The LOLshield is connected to an Arduino clone The Diavolino by Evil Mad Scientist, both available here in the store.

LOL Shield

Diavolino

Nova1313's Christmas Tree Topper Base

There are an AMAZING number of design challenges out there right now! Pattywac has two design challenges (holiday themed and make a MakerBot do something it wasn’t designed to do).  The chosen designs from each of these two challenges will get $40.00 in cash from Pattywac, with MakerBot adding $100.00 in store credit to each winner!  MakerBot is giving away a Unicorn Pen Plotters to each of four separate challenges (Inkscape to Gcode, Fill/tone/crosshatching extension, design a single pass robot portrait, design a multi-pass robot portrait).

As if six design challenges weren’t enough to keep you busy, Thingiverse citizen Nova1313 has posted his own Christmas Tree Topper design challenges!  Here’s more information from his Christmas Tree Topper Thing:

The idea is to make a printable tree topper. This part is just the base and all different tops to it could be printed as long as they fit over the cylinder at the top of the base.

Cylinder at top of mine has a radius of 1/8″ (diameter is 1/4″). and a height of 5/16″

Contest:
1 – $15 USD Sparkfun gift certificate for best re-design of the base of the topper.
1 – $25 USD Sparkfun gift certificate for the best top part of the topper (Star/Angel/Makerbot etc..)

Rules:
1 – Must be printable on Makerbot
2 – Model files need to be provided, not just the STL.
3 – Submit your item to thingiverse and message me a link to it. I need to receive a message from you, else your entry will not be counted.

How to know if you won:
I’ll select the one I like the most on 12/19 at 11PM EST.
I’ll contact you via Thingiverse message to figure out how to get the gift certificate to you, I’ll update this item with the winners.

Thanks for participating!

Eight Thingiverse design challenges!!!  We better get to work!

We started shipping Thing-O-Matics this week, and the team at MakerBot Industries has been meticulously documenting every aspect of it to get operators from boxed MakerBot to first print as quickly as possible. Thing-O-Matic hardware has been getting a lot of attention at the Botcave, as every new product gets its own photo shoot.

You can find a full set of assembly instructions on our website. We are continuing to update them and improve them on a daily basis.

OMG! Those are Thing-O-Matics!

It’s been an exciting week here at the BotCave.  We have begun to ship out our much-anticipated Thing-O-Matic kit.  We’ve already shipped out the first hundred kits or so, and that means that some of you will begin to get your boxes.

And that means that it will soon be time for some early adopter to start building their bots.  If that’s you, point your information browser to: http://wiki.makerbot.com/thingomatic

Thank you all so much for your orders and excitement.  We really appreciate having the best customers in the world, and we hope that you’re as excited as we are!

Happy Building!

Rhodri Armour, a PhD student from the University of Bath, created this “Jollbot.” It is a remote control robot designed to both jump and roll. The idea behind it is that if it runs into an obstacle while rolling around it could slowly squish itself, storing energy, and then release all of that energy at once in order to jump out of the way of the obstacle. This has implications for designing robots that can navigate other planets more freely. The article says that the parts (I’m guessing the green bits) of the robot were fabricated using 3D rapid prototyping technology, such as the RepRap which also originates at the University of Bath.
While Armour’s Jollbot obviously relies on some stock parts, big chunks of it are clearly custom fabricated. One of the great things about 3D printing and prototyping is that it allows a designer or inventor to focus on their ideas and not on how they’re going to actually make those ideas a reality. Other than drawing with a computer, there’s no special machine skills required for using a 3D printer. I imagine there are a ton of people out there who have some great ideas – but no way to actually realize them. Perhaps they lack access to a machine shop, materials, or lack the ability to operate those machines. A low cost 3D printer and easy to use drawing software changes everything.

Do not fear this robot!

Nothing about the above robot strikes me as particularly weird.  Then again, I have a robot in my home and grew up reading books and watching TV shows about robots.  Last week that little robot stopped traffic in Denver when authorities called in the bomb squad to investigate this “suspicious object.”  I think there are several take away lessons from here:

• Make sure your robot looks friendly, or at least not too menacing
• Robots cannot introduce themselves¹ , so you’ll need to do that for them²
• Don’t leave your robot unsupervised
• You don’t need to blow up a robot to make it safe

1. Yet [↩]
2. For now [↩]