MakerBot Industries

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.

MakerBot Operators MicroInterview

Q:   What brought you to 3D printing/MakerBot?

A:   I’d been following MakerBot since before any bots were shipping; I was a MAKE: subscriber from day one and had followed along with all of the pre-release news. I was in the middle of moving to a new state and starting a new job so I didn’t actually get one until sometime later. What really pushed us over the edge was the idea of being able to print parts and sell them to cover the cost of the bot. Naïvely, my father and I jumped right in, not knowing what it meant to print 60 hours of parts, or what that meant in real life fiddling hours. By now we’ve printed and sold enough to pay for a bunch of MakerBots so it worked out in the end, but it wasn’t easy.

Q:   What is your favorite thing you have printed so far?

A:   I’m going to cheat and give two items, since it’s too hard to narrow it down to just one. From a technical and “I could never design that” point of view, my favorite is the Mendel Inspired X and Y Carriage Lowrider by twotimes. It works great, it looks great, it’s not hard to print, and I think it’s a nice improvement over the stock pieces.

Mendel inspired x and y carriage lowrider by twotimes

Here is my take on merging the lowrider and the mendel inspired y carriage for the cupcake. link to bearings:vxb.com/page/bearings/PROD/3mm/623ZZ10-1 I went with smaller bearings than the Mendel because it allowed me to do everything with M3 screws and it allowed me to drop the height a bit. This design is shorter than the standard platform by 10mm, I was pushing for more, but the bearings killed the height gains. It does mean that you can gain back about half of the height that you loose by putting in the automatic build platform. Also, the y rails have been separated to 70mms so hopefully that means that the platform is a bit more stable. I attached the solidworks file for people who want to play (WARNING - the file is messy and I was bad and made all of my parts in one part file). If you would like any other formats like .igs, .step and the like, just shout. Should have all of the holes teardropped later today. - Truncated teardrop holes are up, that's a pain. Update: The stl files from solidworks would not slice in Rep G, I have no idea why, if you know please tell me. I reuploaded all of the stl files and tested them in Rep G 19 they seem to work but I will not have a chance to print until Monday. I have all of the parts, now on to the debug... so you do not have to... The updated files are in the zip file, I got rid of the first generation of parts. Things were moved around a bit and these are the updates after printing round one and putting it into the makerbot. I should have all of the gen 2 parts printed and through debug tomorrow. Update 2 - I got the bearings in and other that a few "What the hell was I thinking..." moments that were easily repaired with an X-acto knife, everything went great. I'm in the process of printing the gen 3 parts and everything should be cool now. I'll post pictures and video once the final draft is printed. Update 3 - In process of using gen 3 platform to print gen 4 platform. Once I have printed and assembled it, I will upload files. I think that will be it for variations. Update 4 - Gen 5 files are out and I can now say you can download them and print! Update 5 - Instructions are up. Update 6 - I just uploaded the gen 7 version - I have not had a chance to print it yet, I was getting annoyed with the slight curve in my heat spreader and decided to rip it apart and lap it until it was flat. This update addresses: Adding nut pockets on all adjusting screws for bearing tension to make adjusting easier (do not have to hold nut in place) Back X bearings cluster has been reworked so the is less interference with the X pulley. Back X bearing adjustment screw head has been nested into the plastic to have less interference with X belt. Interference between Y belt attachment nuts and plastic bodies has been addressed X belt attachment point has been lowered. First shot at integrating endstops have been added. I think that that is about it. I will shout when the directions have been updated, everything should be the same except the endstop part. If you have already printed this and do not want to reprint, reprint parts 09 and 16, those have to do with X belt and pulley issues. (and they are small) I just sent out the third package of nuts, washers, and screws. If anyone else wants them, just message me. Gaffertape kindly updated the files so if you are using the older repG and skeinforge, use the resaved gen 7 files. Update: Finally updated for mechanical endstops, instructions still need to be updated though.

This thing brought to you by

From a general point of view, I think my favorite prints are the Faceted Vases (3 and 4) by Zydac. They’re easy to print, they come out great, and people love them. I keep an orange one on my desk, but for some reason these really resonate with people when you’re trying to explain 3d printing.

Faceted Vase 4 by Zydac

Faceted bud vase. The design looks nice with the Makerbot print style.

This thing brought to you by

Faceted Vase 3 by Zydac

Another faceted vase that looks good with the Makerbot look. Design idea goes to some Dutch ceramicist from whom I bought a vase like this at a crafts fair a few years ago.

This thing brought to you by

For Maker Faire NYC we probably printed 300 or so of the MakerBot Coin and the NYC Subway Token in every color I could get my hands on. Those have been my ‘most printed’ items. This was pre-ABP, so it meant printing 4 at a time, over and over.

MakerBot Coins and Old NYC Subway Tokens

Q:   What object do you most want to design (or download from Thingiverse.com)?

A:   Again, I’m going to sneak in a two part answer. Right off the bat I think emmett’s Cube Gears are just amazing, and I plan to start printing a set this week. I suspect I’ll probably have to print a lot of these for people, but plastic is cheap.

As far as my own designs, my drafting skills aren’t the greatest but I have a few things in the works including some prototype cases for a friend’s new project, and if I can convince him, maybe we’ll plot out the PCB’s with a Unicorn.

Thanks for the interview, John!

If you or someone you know is an MakerBot Operator with an interesting story who we might feature here, please drop us a message to support at makerbot dot com!

John Has Two MakerBots