MakerBot Industries

We’ve just become aware that there’s a bug in some of the default settings in the last release of ReplicatorG.  The nozzle temperatures are set way too high on certain profiles.  Please avoid using any Thing-O-Matic profile with Skeinforge 0006 (default) in ReplicatorG 22.  Skeinforge 35 is safe, so if you’re skeining for Thing-O-Matics, please select Skeinforge 35 in the GCode menu.  (This is the recommendation in the docs.)  All profiles for Cupcakes are okay.

There will be a new release of ReplicatorG tomorrow afternoon that corrects this issue.  Until then, use the Skeinforge 35 if you’re generating gcode for Thing-O-Matics, or you may end up with a sad extruder, like a certain Mr. Pax:

Napkin sketch of NEMA17 mount

Remember the days of the napkin sketch?  Those were the days when an idea could really only be initially expressed with a pen and piece of paper.  Yeah, those days are gone.  If you’ve got a modicum of design skill and an idea, you can now just hand your idea to someone else.

The napkin sketch above was drawn over dinner some 11 hours after the physical object it describes popped into existence.

Aircraft Carrier by Tasslehoff_Burrfoot

My first thought when seeing the above picture of Tasslehoff_Burrfoot‘s Aircraft Carrier¹ was, “What amazing Z axis resolution!”  After reading the description of this thing it became clear he had printed the two halves vertically to minimize warping as the ABS cooled.  I’ve finished lots of printed parts with an exacto knife, putty knife, pliers, and sandpaper – but I had never thought to use sandpaper as Tasslehoff suggests:

Sand down the two conjoining pieces to get a better fit, best way to get perfectly flat is to place a piece of sandpaper on a table and put a piece of 2×4 down perpendicular to the table. Then place the flight deck against the wood and sand down. Same thing with the flight deck. This is if you do not have a heated build platform.

Sanding the printed object on a flat piece of wood results in a flat piece of sandpaper.  Unfortunately, I’ve created unintentionally uneven edges on prints by just using sandpaper without any supportive material underneath.

Thanks for the pro-tip Tasslehoff!

1. Would two be Burrfeet? [↩]

Royal Mail Postage size guide by Solexious

Answer: A standardized uniform design!

In a world where even atomic weights are not necessarily constant, the uniform standardization from the postal service is somewhat comforting.¹²  Thingiverse citizen Solexious has uploaded a copy of the size template found in UK post offices.

What I like about this Thing is that rather than providing us with a mercurial changeable thing³ , Solexious has provided us with the Platonic ideal – a perfect digital rendering of a physical metric for comparing other physical things.⁴⁵ As long as you have access to a standard “Thing” you could always compare your own objects against the standard.  Now you can know before you leave your house what postage you need to affix. ⁶

If you could have a standardized object in your home or office, what would it be?  How would it help you?

1. Thanks slashdot! [↩]
2. I try to be educational and entertaining! [↩]
3. Something that would have made Hericlitus proud. [↩]
4. Mom!  Dad!  I finally used my philosophy degree!!! [↩]
5. “Yes, son, that makes us very proud.  Now, why can’t you be a nice doctor like your brother?” [↩]
6. You could probably also print this out on paper for extra portability and use a laser printer instead of a laser cutter. [↩]

Without further ado, the winners!

Fill/Tone/Crosshatching Tool Challenge

On the code-front, Dan Newman created a great Inkscape tool for creating hatches and crosshatches for bounded objects that is as useful for Egg-Bot as the MakerBot Unicorn.¹

Favorite Robots Design Challenge

Given that no one stepped up to the (admittedly daunting) task of transforming Scribbles.py into an Inkscape extension², I have three prizes for the “Favorite Robots” visual design challenges.

Carmiac put up designs for a friendly turret from Portal as well as for the unstoppable Spirit Mars-bot.

DLPlanes put up designs for his two favorite robots: AstroBoy and a classic American tin robot.

And finally, Cyrozap gives us a nice sticker- (or sticky-pad) ready design for everyone’s favorite non-Shakespearean Patrick Stewart performance.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in the MakerBot Unicorn Challenges!

1. Note, I knocked my Unicorn out of whack stippling the winner-bots, so the image of my test of the crosshatch tool is more sketchy than usual. [↩]
2. Honorable mention goes to Nick from the Gcodetools project. While his team did not submit a project page to Thingiverse or create an Inkscape friendly plugin, Nick did jump on the blog here to let us know the gcodetools project would probably get us pretty close to Unicorn-printable gcode. I look forward to testing it! [↩]

Calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II - OR molecular awesome

Frequent MakerBot wiki contributor jcclc1 is an illustrator and model designer at Denoyer-Geppert Science Company with a bioengineering, science illustration, and biomedical visualization. ¹   Recently she updated the MakerBot wiki to include a tutorial on “How to Download and Print Protein Models from Protein Data Bank“!

Proteins can be so pretty² that they shouldn’t just be relegated to flat images on paper or monitors or have their beauty squandered at the microscopic level.

1. Photo courtesy of Ethan Hein [↩]
2. Especially when colored like that picture! [↩]

I'm not a polygon, but I play one TV

One commenter posted that it took him a little while to really get the “incomplete polygon” or “open hole” method¹ thought up by Zach to avoid oozing and threads around interior holes in objects.  Above you can see my dramatization of how this works. ²  With a normal closed polygon hole, Skeinforge lays down a regular path all around the edge of the interior hole.  However, the plastic extrusion is much thicker than the ideal mathematical path plotted out by Skeinforge.  As a result, it can cause little blobbies to appear inside the hole.

With the method depicted at the bottom of the diagram shows how creating an incomplete polygon/open hole method means that the only real bit of blobbies that occurs with an extrusion is where the two sides of the incomplete polygon meet.  And, if that gap is small enough, say 0.1mm or less, then although the Skeinforge path is drawn with them very close together – they end up fusing together.  The end result is a complete polygon or whole hole³ with little to no blobbies inside.

Zach Clarification: The main reason this technique works well is because of the outline continuity. Current DIY extruders are not very good at precisely starting and stopping exactly when we want them to. When you have an outline + 4 holes, the extruder must start and stop 5 different times. The effect is that your holes do not come out very nicely. When you use this technique, you have one continuous outline and your holes have much better definition. Furthermore, since the gap is so small, the tiny gap ends up getting bonded anyway and you end up with nicely defined, gapless holes.

1. I thought up the names.  Like it? [↩]
2. I just want you to know that the above picture was rendered with perfect mathematical fidelity.  If it looks a bit off to you, well, that’s because of the limitations of your tiny monitor. [↩]
3. I’ve been waiting since Friday morning to make that joke. [↩]

Incomplete polygons

3D printers can have a difficult time printing small holes.  This is never a catastrophic problem and really only requires a little bit of time reaming the hole out with a drill bit, bolt, etc.  One potential problem with printing small holes is that the print head could move across the hole causing a string to inadvertently be deposited.  One way to compensate for this is to make sure those holes are less complex – opting for a hexagonal or octagonal hole instead of  a circle.  With a circle the ‘bot has to make a large number of calculations relating to the various points along the edge of that circle.  One other issue is that even when the hole is a low-count polygon (such as the aforementioned hexagon or octagon) the extruder can leave extra plastic in and around that hole as it travels to and from the various points around the hole.

Zach thought up a new way to compensate for this issue.  In the above picture he’s printed a motor bracket where the holes at the base of the thing aren’t actually holes.  They are holes where there is a 0.1mm slice out of the edge.  The two ends of the “hole” are not touching, which causes Skeinforge to draw the two sides of the hole independently.  However, they are close enough together that the thickness of the molten plastic laid down at that layer touches – and they fuse together.

The result is that you end up with not-holes that really are holes – without the problems of filled in holes and the not-holes are just as strong as if they were designed as holes in the first place!

MakerBot is a fast growing robotics startup and we’re looking to add a production and shipping rockstar to our team. Here is the scoop on the open position:

Duties & Responsibilities:

• Manual assembly of small products and kits
• Picking, Packing and Shipping customer orders
• Maintaining accurate inventory counts in our computer system
• Restocking supplies from warehouse

Requirements:
Detail oriented

• Strong work ethic and able to work in a fast paced environment
• Rock solid computer skills (e.g. Windows, Office, Internet)
• Experience using UPS Worldship shipping software or equivalent
• 2-5 years experience picking, packing and shipping customer orders
• Able to lift 35 lbs

Bonus Qualifications:

• Experience using different types of shipping software (e.g. DHL, Endicia)
• Past experience or interest in robotics
• Experience in shipping products for a large company

This position is full time 40 hours per week, the pay is $12/hour. Background check required. We offer a fun working environment, a steady paycheck and the opportunity to be a part of the manufacturing revolution.

If you’re interested, click through to the job posting on craigslist and please email us your resume along with a brief explanation of why you want to work with us and how your qualifications & experience will add value to our company.

At MakerBot we’re looking for Marketing Experimenter to help us take it to the next level.

Your job as Marketing Experimenter will be to development and implement a marketing strategy based on experiments. If the experiments work, you’ll put them on autopilot and come up with other experiments. You’ll increase visibility, profitability, and performance. You’ll be the marketing department (for now), and focus on creating innovative marketing programs designed to execute the MakerBot vision, mission and values. This is a great job for someone with experience and ambition.

The ideal candidate will have:

• Strong strategic marketing skills with good digital/online/web background as well.
• A track record and a passion for emerging / digital / new media and innovation, combined with a sound understanding of consumers, social communities and brand interaction and overall marketing strategies.
• Passion for democratizing manufacturing and bringing 3D printers to the masses.

Experience in:

• Marketing a physical product
• Market segmentations
• Planning marketing experiments
• Developing marketing strategies with quantifiable data

Knowledge of:

• Channel distribution
• Customer segmentation
• Marketing Communications
• Market research
• Trade show
• Developing/implementing web based marketing programs

3 years experience required. Send a email with your resume to makerbotmarketing@gmail.com.