MakerBot Industries

Recently I had to the chance to help out a couple of aspiring ‘botters from California.  Matthew and Spencer had let their kit go unfinished for a number of months by the time they reached out for help…but with a few parts and a bit of attention, I helped them complete their first print.

One of my favorite parts of the MakerBot experience is putting it together.  While I love all kits, I think you learn a lot more by putting together a Cupcake or Thing-O-Matic than you do with most…which makes it an ideal inter-generational project.  Some of the happiest MakerBot operators are the ones who’ve just built a kit with a child.

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There have been two very different revolvers uploaded to Thingiverse in the last few days. There’s Renosis’ scarily realistic revolver and mrkim’s GCode rendition of the Beatles’ Revolver.
Mrkim’s collection of GCode produces more than 30 minutes of 3D printer music. With some careful editing of your “end.txt” file and a set of GCode scripts, you could get your MakerBot to play a song when it finishes a print task.
What would be the best song to have your printer announce the end of a print job?

Revolver by Renosis

This is a replica of a revolver. Not really sure what kind of revolver but, I got some of the dimensions from a page showing the specs for a Ruger SP101 (This was the first thing that popped up on a google search for "snub-nose revolver"). The cylinder spins but there are no other moving parts. This is my second design and if I tried to get carried away with over engineering it, I would have never finished it.

This thing brought to you by

Error - could not find Thing 6429.

What’s cooler than an LED lit skull? Owenscenic’s remix of the Larson Cylon scanner with Bothacker‘s scan of a Skull.

The Science of Printing

There are two schools of thought when it comes to dialing in the best settings for a 3D printer.  The first is to start fiddling with Skeinforge, clicking buttons, changing numbers with wild abandon and print off a truckload of 20mm cubes.  The more rational way is to apply SCIENCE!  Recently there have been several Things uploaded to Thingiverse specifically designed to help you set the best feed and flow rates for your printer.

• Excel spreadsheet to determine workable T-O-M feed rates by benipk
• DC Extruder Calculations by rwensley
• Solving for skeinforge flow rate by DaveD
• Calculating your Feedrate to get awesome prints by Bre Pettis

Am I missing any Skeinforge calculation helpers?