MakerBot Industries

Dave Durant - DIY 3D Printer Vertical Resolution World Record Holder

With Dave Durant’s magic printer calibration program I was able to just specify what layer height (vertical resolution) I wanted – and it just worked.  This is a totally new experience for me.  Before playing with this program I spent time dialing in each version of ReplicatorG to my specific 3D printer’s settings – with different settings for my Cupcake than for my Thing-O-Matic.  Now I can just choose my desired vertical resolution and FIRE THE MAKERBOT!  If you’re planning on playing limbo with your computer too, there are a few practical concerns:¹

1. Careful measurement of the filament is important. Printing by laying down 0.2mm thick layers of plastic means your printer has to have a very good idea of how much plastic is coming in and going out.  Dave’s magic program will figure how much is going out, so all you have to do is carefully measure your filament.  I suggested my method the other day.  You don’t have to use my method, but I would suggest that you can’t take too many samples in getting this right.  Printing at 0.2mm layers means that over or under measuring will have a pretty big impact on the amount of plastic deposited at each layer.
2. Attention to the build height is important. Printing at 0.2mm thick layers of plastic means that if your starting build height is off by as much as 0.1mm, you’re basically compromising half a layer of plastic.  Being off by 0.1mm in starting build height just isn’t that much of a problem when you are printing at 0.4mm per layer – there’s plenty of room for the plastic to squish around and find a place to go.  Make sure your Z maximum endstop doesn’t have a lot of wiggle, your platform is hitting the Z maximum endstop in the same area reliably, and that there’s not much wobble or wiggle² in your Z stage that could cause a big variance in your starting build height.  Also, be sure to check your printer’s auto-homing features several times before printing at this level. ³  If you’re not sure about how to calibrate the proper print height, follow these calibration directions.
3. Having a perfectly flat build surface is important. Since you’re printing at such thin layers, inconsistencies in your build surface will be magnified through the layers as you print.  You’ll want to make sure your build surface is totally flat – or flat to within about 0.1mm.  If you’re very close to having a level surface a good way to test it is to print a large flat object.  When that first layer goes down you’ll see the filament fuse together where the platform is at the proper height and either become individual strands where the platform is too low or it will start pushing plastic around where the build platform is too high.  I would suggest calibrating your starting build height for the highest point on your build surface and, if you’re using an automated build platform, you can just slightly adjust the lower points by adding a piece of Kapton tape.  Putting it under the belt in the lowest spots will raise your build surface very very slightly.

Next time – more about Dave Durant’s magic printer calibration program!

1. How low can YOU go!?! [↩]
2. Or wibbly wobbly [↩]
3. A printer head crash isn’t catastrophic, but it is a pain. [↩]

Keepon co-creator Dr. Marek Michalowski recently visited the Botcave during the Toy Fair to pick up a brand new MakerBot Thing-o-matic kit that he and his co-creator Dr. Hideo Kozima have purchased for prototyping parts, characters and mechanisms right in the design studio. Marek was generous enough to introduce us to his incredibly expressive, cuter than cute, Keepon character robot.

Summer Software Engineer Intern Winter G. (“xtremd” on Thingiverse) and I interviewed Marek about Keepon and other matters. Parallel to the spoken interview, Marek gave us a unique glimpse into the software tools he developed for Keepon, performing the character exploring the space, watching us humans talking about him. The patient viewer will be rewarded with a chance to see Keepon break into dance!

Inspired by the visit, members of the Thingiverse community have been sketching out 3D printable Keepon accessories for release on Thingiverse. With the eminent release of the mass-market $40 Keepon robot late this summer, we are hoping that the MakerBot community will release a number of hats and other fun things for the larger robot-loving masses to try out on their My Keepons.

To make sure your Thingiverse Keepon accessory doesn’t get overlooked when print them out to send them to Marek, tag your design with “keepon“!

Below are current work-in-progress designs so far up on Thingiverse.

Messenger Keepon Hat by xtremd

I made this hat after hearing that Marek Michalowski and his unbelievably cute robot Keepon were going to stop by at Makerbot's Botcave. Sadly I did not have enough time to optimize it for printing and it was never printed. I am posting this hat as a work in progress in the hopes that later this weekend I will have the time to flatten out all of the overhangs or someone might make a printable derivative and repost it to Thingiverse.

This thing brought to you by

Keepon head hat by cibomahto

This is a Keepon-shaped hat for Keepon (http://beatbots.net) to wear.

This thing brought to you by

Fedora for Keepon by mifga

Keepon (and co-creator Marek Michalowski) visited the BotCave other day. A number of the MakerBot staff are big fans of Keepon so we started an internal challenge to create hats that can be printed with Marek's new Thing-O-Matic for Keepon. Here is my cluster of work-in-progress fedoras. Please feel free to make improved derivatives of my STLs in progress or wait for me to tune this up. "My Keepon" is a $40 "toy" version of Marek and Hideki Kozima's Keepon robot. You can learn more about it here: beatbots.net/2011/01/31/my-keepon-from-wow-stuff/

This thing brought to you by

Mark Cohen purchases a Relay Board kit in the Botcave vending machine

Mark Cohen has been a financial programmer for about 25 years, and is currently a developer for a hedgefund (also developing applications for the iPad and Android). The MAKEzine article featuring MakerBot last year drew his attention to 3D printing: four cupcakes later, he is still going strong.

Mark’s son Elliot is a student at Stuyvesant High School in NYC. The two of them often work together on printing projects — the son draws objects in 3DSMAX or Google Sketchup and then exports them to STL files for Mark to print. It was through working with his son’s high school and FIRST Robotics Competition robotics teams that Mark first became interested in CNC. Now, the two of them print out objects with Mark’s MakerBots to replace broken items around the house, and prototype science projects.

When he and his son aren’t printing together, Mark has tuned his bots for a unique print-on-demand service. It turns out that in order to build a self-replicating RepRap printer, you need a reliable 3D printer to print your first set of parts.¹ While Mark himself hasn’t needed a Mendel printer², he has been happy to comply with his customers desires: printing these parts and selling them on eBay, he has earned back the entire cost of his favorite hobby.

One of his four cupcakes is a successful print of Webca’s 3D-Printed Full Sized MakerBot³. “It took me a full week to print, and another two weeks to put it together, but it prints!”

For those who wish to print a MakerBot, he recommends taking the time to print duplicates of parts, and then following the following finishing tricks to make sure your parts will work. Apply liquid cement. After the parts dry, sand them down until surfaces are smooth. Paint acetone over the parts with a paintbrush to seal the surface⁴, and then tune up every slot and bolt hole with a file in case any need attention. Mark tested the complete fit of his kit before adding any hardware. Result? Successful replication!

Mark’s approach to settings is unusually simple: he uses almost exclusively Black ABS⁵ and performs only minimal calibration beyond out-of-the-box MakerBot settings. In fact, he restricts almost all of his attention to travel rate and feedrate adjustments.⁶ He builds each of his bots the same way: when he finds a tweak to positioning that works, he sticks with it. His advice for those building a kit for the first time: slow down, take the build in stages, pay particular attention to the extruder.

The first two weeks I was very angry with my bot — couldn’t get anything to print, and my MK4 print head exploded. But I kept reading the Forums and tried different solutions I found there.

Below the fold, we perform the traditional MakerBot Operators MicroInterview.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Sort of a chicken/egg problem. [↩]
2. Though he did submit a design to Thingiverse for using parts of a Mendel to make a great spindle holder for printing with a MakerBot. [↩]
3. Mark’s MakerBot self-replicated! [↩]
4. Acetone is very, very bad for you — do not mess with the stuff unless in a place with very good circulation. [↩]
5. Though has experimented with PLA [↩]
6. He uses each print as a guide for tuning his bot for the next print. [↩]