MakerBot Industries

Last week Bre declared an internal 3Dtin.com botcave throwdown for all MakerBot employees. Bre: “It could be something simple, like a smileyface badge or you could go wild and make a self portrait or the empire state building, but I’d love to see everyone try and use 3Dtin to make something!” Well, many of us jumped on this tool, experimented, and exported objects to Thingiverse.com, with results ranging from Matt Mets’ Ball Maze to Ethan’s hilarious Deerorbunny. We have been assembling a few “Pro Tips” to help those encountering the program for the first time to push this strange beast even further.

A few quick tips for using 3Dtin.com to achieve Awesome + Beauty

• Save often as the the Undo features can behave unexpectedly.
• Before you do major work (Such as filling in a new row or deleting lots of blocks) save your model, and then work in a “working” copy.¹

• If you want to design from an existing image, bring a source image into a graphics program², rotate/skew the image to establish a perspective from one of the six “faces” of your figure³ and then use lines or guides to approximate a grid to work from. You can now print this marked up version out or just keep it open to eyeball while you design. Bonus points for creating guides for more than one perspective.

Guide scaffold and outline base layer in 3Dtin for "A Single Mario Cloud"

• If your final goal with the design is an STL for 3D printing, take advantage of color as a guide. By alternating between highly-contrasted colors from layer to layer you will have an easier time seeing what blocks you have filled or voided than if you stick with the same color for the entire model.⁴
• Additionally, you can place voxel markers anywhere you like while you are designing — to help you eyeball symmetry, etc. — and simply dismantle this scaffolding when you are satisfied with your final design.

• Take advantage of the Tool Palette in the lower left side to help you quickly mock up your model.
• Camera Placement settings can take you immediately to each of the six perspectives.
• Afterwards, clicking the top cube icon can help you alternate between “Orthographic”⁵ and “Perspective”⁶ .
• The Color Selector is powerful, if a bit bizarrely implemented. You may never quite achieve the same color chip again once it disappears from the palette, so I’d suggest doing color as a later stage of “finishing,” one color at a time, or pick colors you can easily re-create.
• Switch from the Pencil to the Eraser view so that you can quickly reference cube boundaries. Then return to the Pencil tool to continue to build your model.

Use Transform: Scale filter to change scale of x, y, z axis -- separately!

• Bring your resulting STL model into a tool like Meshlab to run filters and scale your model. Note that using the Transform: Scale feature you can turn off Uniform Scaling, allowing your to scale x-, y-, and z- axes separately to deform the shape of your “voxels” or otherwise expand or contract your model.

• Create many models and print them — tiny crude models can result in more compelling prints than you expect. Depending on the level of detail in your initial model — and whether you opted for the “extra shells” option in the Fill section of Skeinforge — your prints might can range from strictly geometric to more organic results.

We learned from Legos and Volvos that there is Beauty in Boxy. And, counter-intuitively, there is an evocative Awesome hovering around low-resolution splendor (think Chiptunes and ascii art). Dive into this tool and keep hacking away — and don’t listen to anyone who tells you your model isn’t Awesome + Beautiful. (Or printable?)

–Matt

A Single Mario Cloud @ 3Dtin.com (2.5D version) by mifga

I have always been a fan of the clouds floating along in Super Mario Bros so I thought I'd take a stab at creating a 3D 8-bit voxel version at 3Dtin.com. This is an exclusively 2.5D version (i.e. 4-axis millable extruded profile, more like a coin or a keychain). I added a Pendant version that includes a hook at the top for dangling this bling from your gold chain. Special shout out to Cory Arcangel, who I got to know while interning at Harvestworks a little before he launched his Mario Cloud cartridges!

This thing brought to you by

1. I created the initial footprint of “A Single Mario Cloud_outline” as one model, and then created “A Single Mario Cloud_working” for  taking risks with additional layers so I could go back to the previous model if necessary. [↩]
2. I recommend Inkscape [↩]
3. Approach your like a 6-sided die: top, bottom, left, right, front, back [↩]
4. The color information is going out the window when you export an STL file anyhow! [↩]
5. Orthographic projection – lines parallel over distance instead of skewed for perspective, very useful for designing one later at a time [↩]
6. Perspective projection – good for working with an overall sense of the developing model as it will appear when printed [↩]

Why is everyone laughing at me?

Last week I had dinner with my in-laws.  My father-in-law was talking about making a trip to the hardware store because he was hoping to find a specialized bracket just so he could hang a new mirror on the wall.

At this point my wife, my daughter, and I all erupt with laughter. ¹  My in-laws looked at us like we’ve lost our minds.  When we finally regained our composure he asked us what’s so funny.

“Um, Jerry, you know that that room over there, the one we call the ‘robot room,’ has not one but two robots capable of creating any kind of bracket you can imagine?  Why in the world would you go to a hardware store where they *might* have something that would kinda work when we can just make you exactly what you need?” ²

Oh, grandpa!

1. Photo courtesy of Alex-s [↩]
2. I kid you not.  We re-named our living room the ‘robot room.’  It contains at least four honest-to-goodness robots.  A Cupcake CNC named Bender, a Thing-O-Matic named Flexo, a yet unnamed Egg-bot, and a kitty litter robot. [↩]

And we even recorded it this time!  Some good stuff this week about finishing techniques, a bit about the process of making the Thing-O-Matic coin, a preview of the Botfarm, and an important message about Molex Y-splitters on your bots.  Check it out!

Complex OpenSCAD forms from simple OpenSCAD forms

With the first three OpenSCAD tutorials I showed you how the basics of the OpenSCAD interface works, how to make a 2D form, and how to make some basic 3D forms. ¹  As you know from playing with Legos, you can build almost anything if you have a few different shaped blocks of various sizes.  Armed with the knowledge of how to make a sphere, cylinder, cube, tapered cylinder, cone, and rectangular box of any size in OpenSCAD now gives you the ability to design almost anything!  Not bad for just three tutorials, eh?  Unfortunately, although we know how to make those forms, they are all attached to the XYZ origin at [0,0,0] which doesn’t do us much good.

Not to worry!  That changes today!  I’ll show you how to take any of those forms, and move them around in 3D space at will!

Manipulating forms is not that difficult as soon as you remember the lesson of the “cube” command.  As you recall, the cube was formed by specifying the dimensions as X, then Y, then Z to say how long, how deep, and how tall an object is supposed to be.  When you can spin a model around in your computer, the concepts of long, deep, and tall being a little disorienting.  So, it’s best to learn to think of these objects in terms of the actual dimensions themselves.  This last rectangular box was written as “cube([4,8,16]);” to achieve a cube with an X dimension of 4, Y dimension of 8, and Z dimension of 16.

• Translate.
  • When you “translate” an object, you’re really just moving it, that’s all.  And, you can move it in any combination of the three dimensions at the same time.  For the sake of simplicity, let’s take a basic sphere with a radius of 5.
    1. “sphere(5);”
  • Now, let’s move it around in the X dimension.
    1. “translate([10,0,0]) sphere(5);”
  • Now, just the Y dimension.
    1. “translate([0,20,0]) sphere(5);”
  • Now, just the Z dimension.
    1. “translate([0,0,30]) sphere(5);”
  • Now, all three at once.
    1. “translate([10,20,30]) sphere(5);”
  • As you can see, it’s really just a matter of using the “translate()” command, inserting a set of distances to move an object in each of the three dimensions, and then saying what object you’d like to move.  This same system works equally well with any of the other 3D forms we described.  Very quickly, here’s how you can move any of them in the same fashion. ²
  • Here we go with a cylinder, cube, tapered cylinder, cone, and rectangular box:
    1. “translate([10,20,30]) cylinder(20,5,5);”
    2. “translate([10,20,30]) cube(5);”
    3. “translate([10,20,30]) cylinder(20,5,10);”
    4. “translate([10,20,30]) cylinder(20,5,0);”
    5. “translate([10,20,30]) cube([4,8,16]);”
• Rotate.
  • Rotating an object is easy once you get the “translate” command.  Just as with “translate” above, all you have to do is specify how much you want (in degrees) to rotate an object around the X, Y, and Z axis.  Let’s rotate a rectangular box in each of the three directions.  First, just the box.”cube([4,8,16]);”
  • Now, let’s rotate it 90 degrees around the X axis.
    1. “rotate([90,0,0]) cube([4,8,16]);”
  • As promised, the way we use the command “rotate” is really similar to the “translate” command.  Now let’s rotate that same box around the Y axis by 90 degrees.
    1. “rotate([0,90,0]) cube([4,8,16]);”
  • Now, the same box around the Z axis by 90 degrees.
    1. “rotate([0,0,90]) cube([4,8,16]);”
  • Now, the same box rotated around the X, Y, and Z axes by 90 degrees each.
  • 1. “rotate([90,90,90]) cube([4,8,16]);”
  • Now, the same box rotated around the X axis by 45, Y axis by 90, and Z axis by 135 degrees.
  • 1. “rotate([45,90,135]) cube([4,8,16]);”
  • Pro Tip:  I tend to get disoriented very quickly when rotating an object in 3D space in OpenSCAD.  Since it’s easy to render the changes by hitting “F5,” if I need to make a change to the way something is being rotated in 3D space I just make a change to one of the axes in “rotate,” render, then try another axis if I got it wrong.
  • For the same of completeness, let’s spin each of our basic forms in the same manner.  Here’s a rotated sphere, cylinder, cube, tapered cylinder, cone, and rectangular box in that order:
  • 1. “rotate([45,90,135]) sphere(5);”
    2. “rotate([45,90,135]) cylinder(20,5,5);”
    3. “rotate([45,90,135]) cube(5);”
    4. “rotate([45,90,135]) cylinder(20,5,10);”
    5. “rotate([45,90,135]) cylinder(20,5,0);”
    6. “rotate([45,90,135]) cube([4,8,16]);”
  • You now have the power to create any basic sphere, cylinder, cube, taper cylinder, cone, or rectangular box of any size you wish, move them to any place in 3D space you wish, and then rotate them in any way you wish.  It has been just four short tutorials to this point – but you now have the ability to make almost anything you want.  Savor the moment!
  • But, while we’re here… why not learn just one more simple command?
• Scale.
  • Just as “translate” let you specify how to move an object in each of the three dimensions and “rotate” let you rotate an object around any of the three axes, “scale” will let you scale (or, really, stretch) an object in any of the three dimensions.  However, instead of using a distance (as with “translate”) or degrees (as with “rotate”), with scale we specify the percentage to scale a dimension up or down in decimals.  A decimal of “1″ will effect no change in that dimension, a decimal of “2″ will double the size of the object in that dimension, and a decimal of “0.5″ will halve the size of the object in that dimension.
  • My favorite thing to scale is a sphere because they just look cool when stretched or squished.  First, our trusty basic sphere with a radius of 5:
    1. “sphere(5);”
  • Now, to scale it to 200% in the X axis:
    1. “scale([2,1,1]) sphere(5);”
  • Now, scaling it to 50% in the X axis:
    1. “scale([0.5,1,1]) sphere(5);”
  • Now, let’s scale it 200% in the Y axis:
    1. “scale([1,2,1]) sphere(5);”
  • Now, let’s scale it 200% in the Z axis:
    1. “scale([1,1,2]) sphere(5);”
  • Now, let’s scale it 50% in the X axis, 150% in the Y axis, and 200% in the Z axis:
    1. “scale([0.5,1.5,2]) sphere(5);”
  • For the same of completeness, let’s scale each of our basic forms in the same manner.  Here’s a scaled sphere, cylinder, cube, tapered cylinder, cone, and rectangular box in that order:
    1. “scale([0.5,1.5,2]) sphere(5);”
    2. “scale([0.5,1.5,2]) cylinder(20,5,5);”
    3. “scale([0.5,1.5,2]) cube(5);”
    4. “scale([0.5,1.5,2]) cylinder(20,5,10);”
    5. “scale([0.5,1.5,2]) cylinder(20,5,0);”
    6. “scale([0.5,1.5,2]) cube([4,8,16]);”

Homework

As you can see from the image above, you can make some really complex things out of just the simple forms we’ve already learned and the three new ways to manipulate those forms.  Hopefully you’re following along with these tutorials and learning with me because you’ve got something you want to build.  Today’s your day to show us what you can do.  Your homework is to make something, anything at all, using at least one of the OpenSCAD commands you learned today and upload it to Thingiverse.  If you want to make me extra proud, please tag it with “openscadtutorial.”  That way anyone who clicks that link will be able to see all of our hard work!

Bonus Section 1:  The Prior Tutorials

[simple_series title="OpenSCAD Tutorial Series"]

Bonus Section 2:  There’s something he’s not telling me

Yes, you’re right, there’s some stuff I’m not covering.  Yet.  There are some finer points to using 2D forms other than just as a stepping stone to 3D forms, positioning cube forms, getting a certain amount of resolution out of spheres and cylinders, but I’ve given you the basic tools you’ll need to assemble anything you want.  You won’t need those finer points right now. ³

Bonus Section 3:  Other sources

If you like reading ahead or want more information about OpenSCAD, I’ve found these three websites to be very helpful.  A word of warning, as much useful information is on these sites, I found the presentation to be confusing.

1. Official OpenSCAD website
2. OpenSCAD User’s Manual
3. OpenSCAD beginner’s tutorial

Humble Request 1

I’d really like to know what you guys think. Are you finding these tutorials helpful?  I’m trying to cover concepts in a way that builds logically on what you’ve already learned, with an emphasis to getting you ready to design things as quickly as possible.  So  please leave a comment telling me what you think, e-mail me, or otherwise express your opinion.  And, if you don’t like these tutorials – please let me know why!  Is there some other program or skill you’d like to learn?  Do you want to know about arduinos, some other design program, a basic primer on soldering?  If there’s enough interest, I’ll learn it myself and create a tutorial!

Humble Request 2

Besides those I’ve already thanked, I want to say a special thank you to Marius Kintel for his continued amazing work on OpenSCAD as the sole current developer.  He’s been especially patient with me and my own basic questions.  Right now he’s finalizing a new version of OpenSCAD with some improvements, but he has put out the call for help from developers.  If you’ve got some coding skills, they’d be gratefully appreciated helping out with the next iteration of OpenSCAD.  And, if you’re a web programmer or designer, the OpenSCAD.org web page is on Github.  And, last but not least, if you want to help Marius please consider flattr’ing OpenSCAD.  Marius told me that whatever comes in on Flattr is going to be used as development bounties for helping to improve the program.

See you next time and don’t forget your homework!!!

1. The above image is a derivative of the CSG forms from Zottie [↩]
2. I can see how this might be a little repetitive for you, but sometimes it’s nice to have it spelled out explicitly. [↩]
3. Plus, I’m still learning those finer points too! [↩]

Bad Y-connector on the left; good Y-connector on the right

We’ve discovered that one of the parts we’ve shipped with some recent Thing-O-Matic kits, the Molex Y-Splitter cable, isn’t up to spec. The copper wires in some of these connectors are thinner than expected, and has trouble carrying enough current to the power-hungry extruder controller. This can cause the cable to grow hot, or even burn out. Luckily, there’s a simple work-around for this problem.

How do I know if I have a bad splitter?

The bad parts all have bright white plastic shrouds around each connector. If you look at the 4-pin Molex connectors that are attached to your power supply, you’ll notice that the plastic is semi-translucent. If the connectors on your Y-splitter are noticeably Whiter and Brighter™ than the ones on your power supply, and the cables say “20 AWG” in tiny characters on the side, you probably have one of the problematic ones.

Bright white (left) == lame, translucent (right) == sweet

What do I do if I have a bad splitter?

Don’t panic! There’s a workaround. Although the under-spec Y-splitter can’t handle the power delivered to the extruder controller, it can handle the power required by the stepper controllers without too much trouble. All you need to do is unplug and rearrange the power connectors inside your bot:

1. Turn off the power to your bot and unplug if from the wall and USB.
2. Open the bottom of your bot.  You’ll probably need to disconnect a few of the wires, particularly the endstop cables, to open it all the way.
3. Disconnect all the 4-pin Molex connectors from the stepper drivers and extruder controllers.
4. Plug one of the 4-pin Molex connectors that come straight from the power supply to power your extruder controller.
5. Use the Y-splitter(s) to hook up your stepper controllers.

Please note that if you have multiple Y-splitters, you shouldn’t chain them– hook one up to each power connector coming from your PSU.

That’s it! You should now have a much happier bot.

We’re still in the process of diagnosing this problem, so if you’ve got some input (or you’ve already burned out your Y-splitter) please drop us a line and we’ll get in touch as soon as we can.

While Makerbot Operator “Babs” was attending the Solidworks World 2011 expo and conference, he stumbled on an unused booth. Where many of us would have seen the lonely table & chair and thought: “Aww, no demo of cool stuff there!” before moving on,  Babs — flush with MakerBot community spirit — saw a unique opportunity.

He seized the table, whipped out his laptop,  fanned a stack of homemade Makerbot fliers, and operated an unauthorized Makerbot stealth-booth!

Babs on what lead him to take MakerBot evangelical tablemanship into his own hands:

Well, I attend Solidworks World Each year and thought we needed a Makerbot representation. So I took it upon myself to find a place to setup flyers to educate the Solidworks community about Makerbot. I was afraid of being shutdown, but no-one realized that I should not have done it. (Success.)

We are loving this story at the Botcave, and are grateful that Babs helped us expand the number of expos that Makerbot could “attend” by one this year.

Babs' Homemade Makerbot @ Solidworks Flier

Top Ten Reviews caught us at CES and made a video!

Doorknobs? I think I need some new ideas for things to make with a MakerBot. What are your best examples that you say when people ask you what you can make with a MakerBot?

Maintenance of your 3D printer

This is the fourth in a series of how to get better print results from your 3D printer.  The first three posts focused on calibrating hardware, upgrading hardware, and calibrating software.  If you are just tuning in to this series, check out the list of prior posts at the end.  And if you’re only following along via an RSS feed, you’re really missing out.  There have been literally dozens of amazing comments with many many more suggestions from other roboticists.  Even if you think you know every trick in the book, you’re guaranteed to find something you haven’t thought of before.  And if you’ve got an idea, a hint, trick, or hack – leave a comment and help out future roboticists!

• Maintenance. A well treated 3D printer should give you years of trouble-free printing. ¹  Here are some suggestions on how to keep your pet 3D printer well maintained.

1. Oil your X, Y, and Z rods.  I do this about once a month.  Since the Cupcake uses plastic bushings, I see a black plastic residue accumulate over time.  I wipe this off at the same time I oil the rods.
2. Periodically tighten nuts and bolts.  Again, monthly.
3. Periodically test and tighten belt tension.  I check and adjust belt tension rarely – usually only after I see a printing problem develop.
4. Periodically test your filament tension.  There’s a sweet spot to filament tension that’s a lot easier to set with a MK5 style plastruder than it was with a MK4 plastruder.  Too tight and you’re putting extra strain on the extruder motor.  Too loose and you’re not really getting the best extrusion possible.  As plastic filament actually has a slight variation in its diameter, this is something I monitor whenever I am printing.  It’s partially a way for me to fuss over my robot as it is happily printing away. ²  If I notice that the extrusion is suddenly too thin, a quick adjustment to the filament tension screw will fix this.  I’ve heard that adding a second nut to the filament tension screw prevents the screw from loosening slightly over time.
5. Repair or replace.  Having a 3D printer means that if a part breaks or wears out you can actually replace it.  Just accept the fact you’re going to bend, pop, snap, crackle, or pop a part.  When that happens you’ll need to rig or hack a temporary solution while you print up a replacement part.  One benefit to a solid plastic replacement part to a component that’s assembled out of layered plastic and/or plywood is that there are no parts to loosen over time.
6. Floss extruder gear.  Use something soft-ish like a toothpick to pop the plastic bits out of the gear’s teeth.
7. Clean out the plastruder.  The plastruder can accumulate very small plastic chips which fall out from the extruder gear.  If you leave your hot too long, you can develop a blockage that will cause plastic to ooze up into the plastruder.  Disassembling the plastruder is the best way to pull the extra plastic out.
8. Keep firmware updated.  The firmware has come a long way and I’m pretty sure it to go even further.  Don’t forget to update the extruder firmware too!
9. Keep software updated.  ReplicatorG is constantly under development.
10. Replace warped build platforms or build surfaces.  A flat even build surface will ensure nice flat builds without having to worry about the extruder head crashing into the platform.
11. Keep your plastic in a cool, dry place.  As mentioned above, the filament’s diameter can very slightly.
12. Check wire connections on any moving axes.  The cable clips attaching motors, endstops, and various other bits to the XY stages can work themselves loose after time.  I check these whenever I see that a cable might be working itself loose.
13. Cupcake – Clearing extruder nozzle blockage.  This is really only relevant to the MK4 style plastruders.  I’ve never had a bad blockage after running a MK5 plastruder for the last six months.
14. Thing-O-Matic – Clear the inside of your robot of any plastic boogers that might get wiped off.

Links to the prior posts in this series!

1. How to get better results from your 3D printer – Part I (Calibrating Hardware)
2. How to get better results from your 3D printer – Part II (Upgrading Hardware)
3. How to get better results from your 3D printer – Part III (Calibrating Software)

1. And, if you’ve build the robot yourself, you can make sure that it will be running forever!  Isn’t DIY great?! [↩]
2. Just think of it as the roboticist version of a mom dabbing a corner of napkin and wiping your cheek. [↩]

I’m happy to announce the availability of a few new kits from our friends over at Liquidware- check them out! Liquidware makes really cool sensors and modules for your hacking projects. We’re going to carry some for all you MakerBot Operators, so you can keep innovating and making awesome new devices and projects. Check out all our new kits in our Accessories section!

I was walking by a shop window art exhibit here in Brooklyn, and the display sensed my presence and a bunch of lights started flashing- and it got me thinking- what would a Compass Module, a 3-Axis Accelerometer, and a Temperature Sensor do for that piece? Or for your Arduino project? I remember in my college “New Media Technology” class students agonized over Macromedia Director to trigger a sequence of audio samples and lights. The equivalent of that today is a handheld WIFI touchscreen that senses it’s position and triggers an HD camera at 1800 frames per second, and writes it’s own tweets.

Make something happen!

Liquidware AMBI Light Sensor

Liquidware Temp Sensor

Liquidware ButtonPad

Liquidware Compass Module

Liquidware 3-axis Accelerometer Module