We <3 the MakerBot Operators: John A (NY)
John Abella at MakerFaire NYC 2010
John Abella in New York may be one of the busiest Operators contributing to the open source 3D printing field, and he along with his father, John Abella, Sr(also quite the 3D printer!), have feet firmly planted in both the MakerBot-specific community and in the custom/RepRap community. I consider John one of the most dependable printers I have met, and I always take time to see what he has been printing at events and expos.
I noticed recently on the forums that he has been putting together a second cupcake and reached out to him for a few quick details about what he is up to.
My father printed and I built a Mendel (the ‘Big Red Mendel‘, printed in fluorescent red ABS) that ran all MakerBot electronics and he won an Editor’s Choice award for it at MakerFaire NYC.
In order to simplify our settings across two bots we decided to part that one out and use the funds to pick up another Cupcake. We found someone selling #2494 locally and recently bought it, and have started bringing it up to speed. I soldered up the HBP and printed wajazn’s relay board standoff this past weekend for it.
During MakerFaire NYC, John and several colleagues ran a tent next to the MakerBot booth with some very interesting custom 3D printer projects, including working MakerBot and RepRap printers. Here is a piece of the story behind that booth:
For Maker Faire NYC we decided that it would be fun to try to organize a “3D Printer Village,” just a tent where we’d get 4 or 5 people together with different DIY printers to print out items for people, and answer their questions. By the day of the show we’d upgraded to a 20′ x 40′ tent and we had 18 people printing at once, including MakerBots, Reprap Mendels (in plastic and wood), a wooden repstrap, some Fab@Home units, a MakerGear prototype, and a few others I’m forgetting. We had a standing-room only crowd the entire show, gave out hundreds of printed pieces, a ton of postcards and stickers, and even had a live build of a Cupcake Ultimate + Frostruder which we raffled off at the end of the event, courtesy of MakerBot. I think we had the largest single-themed tent at the whole event. We ended up in the NY Times, NPR, CBS, and a few other publications. Photos of the event are here.
He also has the distinction of having rocked his Mk4 Plastruder harder and to more epic success than many of us can hope to achieve with our MK5 toolheads. As a result, I often privilege his troubleshooting notes in the MakerBot Google group and Forums searches when hunting for resources for Support emails. The traditional MicroInterview follows below.
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