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Botacon 0 – as seen through Twitter

Posted by on Monday, December 13, 2010 in Events, Human Friends!

Botacon 0 was beyond awesome.  I got to meet people whose things I print on Thingiverse1, whose blogs I read every single day, and who I correspond and chat with over e-mail, Twitter, and IM.  I also met with other dads who want their children to grow up not just experiencing life, but understanding they have the ability to actually effect change on the world.  Putting names2 to faces and meeting these people while we shared experiences about the robots we love was the absolute highlight of my trip.  Thank you to MakerBot Industries for putting on an amazing Botacon 0 and thank you to everyone else I met for taking the time to stop and chat with me.

To help memorialize the event, I’ve compiled the 19 pages of #botacon hashtag search results into one long post. 3 (Remember, it’s in reverse chron) 4 Share and enjoy!

Newer « Page 19
  1. DUDE?  You designed that?  I PRINTED that!  It’s awesome! [↩]
  2. And, in some cases ‘nyms to faces. [↩]
  3. I know there was so much more in Twitter that didn’t have that hashtag. [↩]
  4. So, hold your monitor upside down and it should be fine. [↩]
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Botacon Begins!

Posted by on Friday, December 10, 2010 in Events

If you haven’t gotten your tickets, you will be able to pick them up at the door. Doors will open at 10am with a bit of time for folks to have some coffee and say hello before we get the show on the road at 10:30.

Here’s a map of the location:


View Larger Map

See you there!

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Robot Hospital! Live From the BotCave Ep. 4 on Ustream!

Posted by on Friday, December 10, 2010 in Botcave Store, Events, Inside Story, MakerBot Botcave Retail Store, Stuff We Printed, Unicorn, Video

This week we discuss Thing-O-Matic assembly and use, Botacon 0 and introduce a couple of faces at the Botcave. Thanks for checking it out!

Check out our previous episodes here:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-from-the-makerbot-botcave

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Robot Hospital! Live from the BotCave today at 4:30 EST

Posted by on Friday, December 10, 2010 in Uncategorized

Our live streaming support show Robot Hospital! is up to it’s unprecedented 4th episode today on UStream! Come check it out and chat us your questions- We’ll be discussing Robots, Botacon 0, and showing you some Thing-O-Matic build tutorials from MakerBots’ own Charles Pax!

Check out our previous episodes here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-from-the-makerbot-botcave

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Unintentionally musical ‘bots

Posted by on Friday, December 10, 2010 in BotSounds
32 side polygon

32 side polygon

Above is a picture of my failed attempt at a collapseable sword.  Fortunately, this was one of those rare happy accidents.  In order to simplify the object’s designs I made the permiter a 32-side polygon rather than a true circle.

While this thing was printing from the other room my wife commented that the sound of the robot printing was unusually musical.  After looking back at my designs and the way my Cupcake 3D printer was creating the object I realized what was happening.

As the robot was printing one quarter of the polygon the X and Y motors were working in concert – the X motor decreasing its movement as the Y motor increased its movement – I could hear eight distinct tones.  Each section was taking the same amount of time to print, with a different XY ratio of movement.  However, as the robot starts to move to the adjascent quarter of the 32-side polygon the order and direction of the XY ratios would change.  (While the duration and sound of the notes sounding the same).

The end result was an eight note tune played in a repeating pattern.  Now I have a new reason besides simplified models and printing to create 32-side polygons rather than designing perfectly circular models!

What kind of music does your printer play as it makes things?

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At the Botcave!

Posted by on Friday, December 10, 2010 in Events
BotCave store!

BotCave store!

Imagine, if you will, a symphony of tearing plastic sheeting, squeaking packing tape, humming motors, camera flashes, and the occasional buzzing machine.

Today has been a very exciting day for me.  In preparation for tomorrow’s first ever Botacon I caught the redeye from California1 to New York arriving early this morning.  A little while later I arrived at the Botcave – MakerBot Industries headquarters in Brooklyn.

The place is completely abuzz with activity – numerous robots humming, bubble wrap crinkling, and Thing-O-Matic boxes getting packed, stacked, and shipped to loving homes around the world.  I can’t wait to work play with one!

  1. Braving the rigors of time <zone> travel! [↩]
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Botacon is almost here! Check out these talks!

Posted by on Friday, December 10, 2010 in Events

Botacon is a gathering of roboticists and robot enthusiasts to discuss the future. Themed “Robots For A Better Future,” the day is set up to explore both the practical and philosophical aspects facing robots today.

We are excited to announce the schedule and look forward to seeing you on Saturday! (This schedule is subject to change)

9:00 AM Load in. Volunteers arrive and help set up
10:00 AM Doors open and tickets are available
10:30 AM Opening remarks
11:00 AM Ilan Moyer – Gestural Design: Product Design in an Age of Personal Fabrication

In the 1980′s, desktop publishing empowered ordinary people with no typographic training to produce beautiful documents which rivaled the work of professionals. Product design is now poised on the precipice of a similarly pivotal transition. In a manner analogous to the introduction of the Apple LaserWriter in 1985, low-cost personal fabricators such as the Makerbot are on a trajectory towards placing a means of professional-level production in the hands of individuals. However, a piece is still missing. Equally important to the Macintosh and the LaserWriter in the birth of desktop publishing were programs such as PageMaker and MacPublisher – tools which automated the highly skilled profession of typesetting. Will the birth of “”desktop product design”" look similar to that of desktop publishing? Can the arts and skills of mechanical and electrical engineering, industrial design, and programming be automated and abstracted so that the ordinary person can wield their powers when designing their own products? Or will our perception of what constitutes a product change to match our abilities? Based on my work in product design, personal fabrication, and machine design, I would like to address these questions and share with you the lessons that I’ve learned through my struggle to design products for an audience of one.

11:20 AM Mr.Kim and John Sarik – Makerbot Printable Transistors and OLEDs

Printable transistors and OLEDs are possible today. We want people to go home and start working on building transistors! This talk covers the essential info needed for you to get started. First, a visit to the Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics where transistors are printed today. Then we go dumpster diving at Arts and Crafts stores and your local super market for possible alternatives. Finally, we present our progress and experiences printing with Makerbots and welcome others to join our cause.

11:40 AM Kio Stark – 9 Ways to Make Your Robot Come to Life

I’ll explain 9 strategies for successfully anthropomorphizing robots. How it looks matters, but what’s exciting is that it matters a lot less than things like responsiveness, timing, movement quality, sensitivity to input, and other variables. Using data from humanoid robotics experiments, I’ll show you how you can enhance the illusion that your Bot lives!

12:00 Noon Dustyn Roberts – 3D without the glasses: Making assemblies of parts

One of the comments mentioned “designing multi-part assemblies” as a good tutorial topic. So I’d like to help out! Using Alibre Design, a free to try – cheap to buy modeling software, I’ll talk about why you would want to go 3D in the first place, what the basic landscape looks like, and how to make assembly files with individual parts to make sure everything fits together.

12:20 PM Quick Talks – Five speakers will each give a five minute talk on a variety of topics.

  • Raphael Abrams’ nine step program to make a robot puppet that will haunt your dreams
  • Chris Connor will share classroom applications for 3D printers
  • MakerBlock will explain how to be a robot dad
  • Amy Hurst and Marty McGuire – Nickel for Scale – automatically customizing 3D objects to fit YOU!
  • Adam Mayer – Tiny Robots Everywhere

1PM Break for lunch – Not Ray’s Pizza Sponsored by MakerBot Industries
2PM Heather Knight – Robotic Touch: Using Capacitive Sensing to understand Human Body Language.

Touch is one of the most intimate of our senses. Our strongest emotional bonds, with lovers, pets, children or fellow sportsmen, are highly tactile. It is archaic. It is innate. An unobtrusive tap on the shoulder from a waitress will result in higher tips, even if people don’t remember that it occurred. The Sensate Bear is an exploration of this elusive sensation as part of the Huggable project at the MIT Media Lab. Fifty-six capacitive sensors cover its pink foam surface; they are tuned to interpolate between each other and can sense contact through a teddybear fur. Let us introduce and lead you on a tour of this handmade robot. For example, we chose capacitive sensors because they respond to people but not to inanimate objects. You can make a touch-sensing robot too! Learn some basic techniques, get jazzed up about analog sensing and get ready to implement some basic pattern recognition algorithms!

2:20 PM Zach Smith – Compilers of Industrial Revolution 2

3D Printers are the physical equivalent of software compilers. They are going to play a pivotal role in the future of the Open Source Hardware movement, or as we like to call it: Industrial Revolution 2. There is much yet to be done, and this is a frontier with many challenges to face. These are challenges you can solve and become a rockstar of the open source hardware community in the process. Do you want in?

2:40 PM George Hart – Cool Geometric Forms

Robotic layered assembly is revolutionizing what can be made in the world of cool geometric forms. George will show some of his experiments with the technology of the recently possible in 3D printing.

3:00 PM Ben Combee – Put a Web Server on Your Bot!

There are many advantages of putting your robot on the web by having it run a webserver. I’ll talk about applications of the Webduino code and why this is an effective way to get data from your robot or issue it commands.

3:20 PM Rob Gilson – State of the Replicators

A discussion of the future of self-replicating additive machines. Printable electro-magnets, circuitry, super-strength printed titanium, and the inevitable replicator industrial revolution that will follow. This is a look at both existing state of the art replicators and the future, where we will use the iterated progression of this technology to revolutionize everything. The open source 3D printer will be the biggest disruptive technology of the next hundred years. This talk will outline how it will happen in the next decade.

3:40 PM Erik de Bruijn – Open source innovation: On empowerment, architecture and ecosystems

It is unprecedented that the distributed phenomenon of open source development is thriving in hardware as it does in open 3D printing. It is an empowering technology, that can be used in many ways, both by fueling other innovations and by furthering the development of fabrication technologies themselves. The powerful co-existence of user-founded businesses and the embedded/embedding communities, only highlights the importance of good architecture where collaboration is facilitated. In this talk, Erik will present results from his RepRap research, provide (some) theory and invite you to collaboratively reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of current and future platforms to best catalyze the massive potential that our communities have.

4:00 Laura Greig – Helping Paintbots Become More Than Printers

It is easy to offend a traditional painter with any attempt to teach a robot to paint: surely painting is too human an act to emulate with technology. It requires soul and emotion and all those mysterious properties that keep robots and animals on the intellectual sidelines. Likewise, it is easy to offend a technologist with a traditional art class: the lessons are wishy-washy, everything is permissible, and anyone lacking innate talent is doomed to failure. Paintbots considerate (and critical) of both these camps have a better chance of survival in the world. I have made an effort to systematize what I’ve learned in years of traditional art classes, museum trips and art history books, according to the way I’ve seen sophisticated AI behave. The central strategies employed by the best painters (patience, steadiness, repetition, pattern-recognition, chemical analysis, etc) play to robots’ strengths. Art can be as rigorous and empirical a discipline as any other and I would like to see more robots taking it seriously.

4:20 Iem Heng and Andy Zhang – Autonomous and Non-Autonomous Flexible Robot

Our Flexible Robot is a unique robot. It is comprised of a novel combination of off-the-shelf items, as primary components, with some additional components designed and fabricated by ourselves at the college machine shop. One human could operate a squad of these devices, allowing most to perform their function and attending only to those which may require assistance. It will provide a stable platform from which it may perform its ancillary functions. These might include: explosives removal, lifting or shifting of heavy material (as in forestry, mining or rubble removal), or in the delivery of life and property saving equipment, sensors and communication in locations where there would be possible great harm to humans performing these tasks. Moreover, as devices, one person could supervise a team of such robots, enhancing productivity and safety of the operator.

4:40 PM Closing remarks
5:00 PM Mingling and cleanup
6:00 PM Self organize dinner with your robot friends in Brooklyn
9:00 PM Drinkup – Location to be announced. Beer sponsored by Make: Magazine

Make: Magazine, which spotlights fantastic makers and work in the maker community will be sponsoring Botacon. Expect to see lots of magazines around at the event and some Make: Magazine sponsored beer at the drinkup after the event!

Make: Magazine loves robots and we at Botacon recommend that every roboticist get a subscription!

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Botcave : LOLCave Signage

Posted by on Thursday, December 9, 2010 in Botcave Store

***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

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Have you entered Nova1313′s Thingiverse challenge yet?

Posted by on Thursday, December 9, 2010 in Thingiverse
Nova1313's Christmas Tree Topper Base

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!

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Glamour Shots for MakerBots

Posted by on Thursday, December 9, 2010 in Inside Story, MakerBot News, New Products

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.

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