Skimbal is easily one of the most popular designers on Thingiverse. His designs tend to be big, complex, multi-part prints that form seriously epic objects. His Gothic Cathedral Play Set, challenge winning Rubber Band Gear Mechanism, or Christmas Lego Men of Kansas City are must-see designs. To get an idea of the scale of Skimbal’s devotion – this nine-piece submarine print would probably take about 30 hours of printing.
One of the things I really like about this particular design is that it (again) pushes the limits of a MakerBot printer. His Gothic Cathedral Play set has high unsupported arches and the submarine above is significantly larger than the build area of a Cupcake. Skimbal has once again proved that with a 3D printer you are not limited by anything except your imagination.
Today we are very proud to introduce a fantastic upgrade to your Thing-O-Matic.
It’s the MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK6 and it comes as a full kit for those upgrading from a MK3 or MK4 and it also comes as an upgrade kit so that if you have a MakerBot Plastruder MK5, you can just get the upgrade kit and you’ll be ready to rock. With this new extruder you’ll have the option to configure it to use MakerBot 1.75mm ABS filament. Today we’re also launching 1.75mm filament for sale in the store.
A New Day is Dawning for MakerBot Extrusion Technology
The MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK6 is the latest and greatest in MakerBot extrusion technology. With it, you get a lot more control over your plastic extrusion because instead of using a DC motor that just goes on and off, the MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK6 has a high torque stepper motor that allows you to control the rotation. This stepper motor has 200 steps per rotation and you’ll be driving it using the MakerBot Generation 4 Stepper Driver v3.3 (included in both the upgrade and complete Kits) to get a 1600 step per revolution. That means that you can control the extruder motor and when it goes one step it turns .225 of a degree.
The kit comes with extra parts that give you the option of using either MakerBot 3mm or 1.75mm plastic. Standard 3mm filament is what we’ve used so far and this extruder will happily print with it, but looking to the future, we are experimenting with a thinner diameter filament and you’re along for the ride! We’ve included parts that you can swap in to use 1.75mm filament too. Using this bonus experimental capability to extrude 1.75mm diameter plastic filament allows you to put less pressure on the filament to get the same amount of extrusion. Using smaller filament is something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time and with the MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK6 you can swap in parts to turn your 3mm filament extruder into a 1.75mm filament extruder.
We’re clearly declaring 1.75mm filament “Experimental” because it’s new. If you’re someone who likes pushing the edge of the technology, you can use the parts in the kit that are specifically for 1.75mm and try it out. We like it and we think you’ll like it too. You can get 1.75mm plastic individually or in a 1.75mm Mini MegaRainbow Pack.
A few notes about the development of the MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK6. We’ve been working on this actively for 9 months. Because there was no stepper motor available that had enough torque for this application at a reasonable price, we went ahead and had one manufactured to our specifications. We were all set and ready to go when we learned under testing that the motor gets pretty hot during printing. So we added a fan and a lasercut bracket to hold the fan over the motor to keep it cool.
This cathedral was printed with a MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK6 using 3mm filament.
Thinner 1.75mm Filament Available
You’ll still be able to use your stash of 3mm plastic with your MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK6 but you’ll also have the capability of changing some of the parts (included) to be able to use new MakerBot 1.75mm filament. We’re launching this sweet thin material in classic MakerBot colors of Red, Blue, Natural, Black and our new UV reactive “Nuclear” Green! It’s the same green you’ll see in all your favorite video games when you splatter aliens or find nuclear waste.
We’re committed to having the best extrusion material for your MakerBot and so all MakerBot ABS Plastic is sealed in bags with desiccant at the manufacturing facility to keep moisture out and to keep your filament dry. This is an added expense to MakerBot plastic and makes it cost more, but we feel that it’s worth it so that you can get fresh plastic with great extrusion characteristics right out of the bag.
We ran out of MK5 motors two weeks ago and have had Thing-O-Matics on hold as we have been getting parts in for this kit. Orders have been stacking up and so Thing-O-Matics that have been ordered, but not shipped yet will get this upgrade for free as a thank you for their patience. Starting with any Thing-O-Matic ordered today, the price of the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic has gone up to $1299 due to the increase in costs associated with this upgrade.
The latest version of ReplicatorG is now available for download! The big news with this release is support for your shiny new MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK6 (or other stepper extruder), which drastically improve the reliability and repeatability of the printing processes. This release also brings a new firmware version for Generation 4 electronics, which features an improved temperature control system, support for servo motors, and a number of heater safety features.
We’ve moved our issue tracker to Lighthouse, so if you notice any bugs please report them there. Here’s the changelog:
0024 ReplicatorG
* Support for stepper-based extruders on G4 hardware
* Early reversal for stepper-driven extruders
* 5-axis motion commands for G4 hardware
* More example objects and scripts
* Build temperature monitoring reenabled
* Number of UI cleanups
* Improved extruder status reporting
* Several memory leaks solved
* 64-bit platform fixes for Mac OS X, x86_64
* Added s3g decompilation script
* Startup info dump to aid debugging
* Continuous jog and motion stop commands
* Improved Ultimaker support
* Support for legacy RepRap firmware
* Improvements to serial layer
* Scale field reflects mouse scaling factor
* Skeinforge 31 reintroduced
* Skeinforge 39 introduced as experimental
I love the shape of these vintage erasers. When I saw a whole bag of them for only 99 cents at Office Depot, I had this idea for a little office toy. 3D printing fanatics, here is my gift to you.
All the instructions for this project are on instructables : instructables.com/id/Eraser-ball-3DP/…
