MakerBot Industries

Zomboe's print of tc_fea's Minature Castle

About ten months ago there was an amazing bunch of modular sets uploaded to Thingiverse:

1. Dungeon Tiles for Miniatures Gaming by Telvin_3d
2. Improved Dungeon Parts by TheRooster¹
3. Dungeon tiles by scottmac
4. Modular Dungeon Walls by zxqueb
5. And, last, but certainly not least the ever popular Gothic Cathedral Play Set by Skimbal

I was reminded of these awesome sets when I saw the “Miniature Castle” by tc_fea and the “Mew Mew Modular Desk Tidy System” by brendandawes a week ago.  Each of these models is pretty awesome in its own right, but as soon as I saw these two models I started wishing for a mashup. ^2 3  Back in October I wondered at the lack of more modular playsets, specifically castle themed ones.

I think it would be pretty easy to chop up the various wall sections, towers, turrets, gate entrance, and living areas of this castle into separate sections.  Brendandawes’ connection system for his desk tidy system almost seem tailor made for connecting a modular building set such as tc_fea’s nifty design.  Add to this that both designs were uploaded to Thingiverse on the same weekend?

Can you imagine how cool it would be to set up a sprawling medieval city across your coffee table?!⁴

Miniature Castle by tc_fea

A miniature castle.

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Mew Mew Modular Desk Tidy System by brendandawes

Mew Mew is a modular desk tidy system so you can keep you pencils, pens, paper-clips and other office supply goodies neat and tidy on your desk. The system allows you to combine the hexagon based Mew Mew in different ways; each Honey Pot slides together simply and easily.

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1. A self-described improvement over the Modular Dungeon Walls by TheRooster [↩]
2. In fact, this would be a pretty cool recurring challenge – to mashup any two models uploaded in a single day. [↩]
3. Who doesn’t love a good mashup challenge? [↩]
4. Pardon my drool. [↩]

A Gangsta War A-Brewing

On December 30th, 2010, Thingiverse user Yzorg uploaded his Gangsta model as a work-in-progress, with the unassuming description: “the lowpolyest Gansta in woorld.”

From the beginning, his part was a popular model to print — with rumors of the mustering/printing of Gangsta armies running rampant throughout the Botcave.¹ But it took nearly a month before user Cibomahto² mashed-up the head of the popular Snake model by Zimboe with Yzorg’s Gangsta body and ignited the Thingiverse community-wide practice of vivisecting and mashing up the Gangsta with his model Snakesta.

World of Gangstas

There are BrainyWaltDisneyStas, Primestas, Rabbitstas, a tribute to Belgian statuary, StaStas, and even now a Lowresta. What will be appearing next? The Gangsta model is currently giving the historical 3D model Stanford bunny a run for its money as a starting block for 3D designers and mashup maniacs. Join the mania and tag up your Thingiverse model as a “gangsta.”

And while you’ll notice that a number of users now grab Cibomahto’s cleaned-up, base-flattened model as the source for the Gangsta part of the mashup, it is only due to the current limitations of Thingiverse’s inheritance model that the new derivatives don’t twist their way back down the alley to finger the part modeled by Yzorg as the one and original gangsta.

Gangsta by yzorg

lowpolyest Gansta in woorld printed vertical in two parts successfully. now started a horizontal version.

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snakesta by cibomahto

There was a time when the gangsta ruled the botcave. Models were downloaded, plastic was melted and re-formed, the gangsta represented, and all was rosy and cheerful. Those days are over. The snakesta is here to stay. Snakesta is an unholy chimera of: the gangsta by yzorg thingiverse.com/thing:5367 the snake by Zomboe thingiverse.com/thing:4743

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Mashup DevilSta by yzorg

just mashing up

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BrainyWaltDisneySta by TeamTeamUSA

"I hope we never lose sight of one fact... that this was all started by a Gansta." -BrainyWaltDisneySta This is a chronic mashup of BrainyWalt thingiverse.com/thing:828 and Gansta thingiverse.com/thing:5367. 'Nuff said.

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Rabbitsta by mifga

A mash-up of: * Stanford Bunny by archiveman (Thing #406, though using later cleaned up models) * Gangsta by yzorg (Thing #5367) I'm tempted to clean up that collar -- but will probably print first to get a sense of where I am so far.

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Carbonitesta by yzorg

Derivative of Han Solo in Carbonite by gianteye thingiverse.com/thing:1274

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Blocksta by mifga

Blocksta is a mashup of yzorg's gangsta (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5367) and the 20mm test cube from spacexula's Makerbot Calibration set thingiverse.com/thing:2064. I created this because it made me to do it.

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Stasta by mifga

This is a mashup of Gangsta by yzorg ( thingiverse.com/thing:5367 ) with Gangsta by yzorg ( thingiverse.com/thing:5367 ). This was born from a mutually shouted out idea from Nick Starno and Matt Mets, implemented in Wings3D at a dead sprint by me.

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Primesta by mrbug

Gangsta + "Optime Primus" = Primesta

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Gangsta Pis by cibomahto

A Gangsta in the classic Belgian style. This is a derivative of yzorg's Gangsta: thingiverse.com/thing:5367 See a video of it in action here:flickr.com/photos/cibomahto/5504486829/

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BREsta by whosawhatsis

Snakesta is dead. All hail BREsta! I guess I caught the mashup bug. This Thing is a mashup of: •Bre Pettis in 3D! by bre - thingiverse.com/thing:3628 •Gangsta by yzorg - thingiverse.com/thing:5367

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Camsta by JohnA

The classic gangster mashup vs the 2011 surveillance state! I'm a rank amateur at openSCAD, so use this at your own risk. Combination of the following items: Gangsta (cleaned up) - thingiverse.com/thing:6891 Surveillance Camera - thingiverse.com/thing:6652 The two files are: camsta2.stl - regular camera on the gangsta body camsta2-lo.stl - low-rezzed camera on the usual gangsta body

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Lo-Rezsta by JohnA

The 'gangsta', smashed down 4 or 5 times into a blocky, angular form. Used the same method as the Tron Bunny, for decimation. Only 374 faces, the normal model is 6,000.

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Stalisman by tbuser

A derivative of a derivative of the OG by yzorg: thingiverse.com/thing:5367 I mashed it up with a bunch of other stuff in Meshmixer: meshmixer.com

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1. I still see four fluorescent red Gangsta’s at Zach’s desk, vs the a blue army of Gangsta’s and mutant gangsta’s at Matt Mett’s station. [↩]
2. MakerBot software engineer Matt Mets [↩]

Matt from MakerBot working with teens at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum recently purchased a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic. As a prelude to teaching an upcoming teen design course on prototyping with a MakerBot, MakerBot staff members Matt and Mike were invited in to take lead on the assembly of the Cooper-Hewitt bot, joined by a group of design-focused teens as part of an open studio.

Cooper-Hewitt, a subsidiary of the Smithsonian Institute, is the national design-focused museum, so it was quite a coup to be building a MakerBot downstairs from the Van Cleef and Arpels show and next door to a master class in wax carving for casting jewelry settings.

New York City-area teens looking to register for the upcoming prototyping course Matt and Mike will be teaching should keep their eyes on the Cooper-Hewitt Youth Programs calendar over the next month: we should be setting dates for late spring/early summer soon.

Thanks to Katie Shelly for the great pics (more below) and Youth Programs Manager Monica Harriss for putting together the event and upcoming course.

Mike from MakerBot helping with ABP build

Assembling Thing-O-Matic Electronics

Searching for optical illusion models on Thingiverse

A busy table: a sign of productive workshop

More Pine Trees by tc_fea

Welcome to the second installment of Super Sweet Printing Tech.

Tc_fea’s work on printing with unsupported overhangs shows a progression from a stringy “Pine Tree” to an almost Lego-tree like Pine Tree 4.  What I find interesting about the last tree is just how straight and horizontal those “branches” are.  The “Pine Tree 2″ has branches with 5mm vertical clearance and the “Pine Tree 4″ has 2.5mm vertical clearance between branches/layers.  In any case, I think that this opens up new design possibilities – such as being able to create textured furry and/or hairy printed models. ¹²³⁴  Or cacti.  Or porcupines.

Also, tc_fea?  Dude, I’ve played with Sketchup.  Those trees would be about 100 times easier to design in OpenSCAD.   ⁵

More Pine Trees by tc_fea

These are nicer versions of the pine tree experiment first tested in thing:7018. Pine tree 2 has a more random look and has 5 mm vertical spacing between branches. Pine tree 4 has fuller look and has 2.5 mm vertical spacing between branches.

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1. Or, a plastic chia pet. [↩]
2. I’m not sure if a plastic chia pet is actually any better or worse than a real chia pet. [↩]
3. On the one hand, the real deal is an actual plant.  On the other hand, a printed chia pet could be recycled as soon as you tire of it. [↩]
4. And, really chia pets are rather useless – so having one that could be recycled seems like a real bonus to me. [↩]
5. All you would need to do is design one vertical layer of branches, make that into a module, and then rotate multiples of that module as needed. [↩]

This is a really nice multi-part assembly that should be very handy for budding robot engineers.  It’s a nicely 3d printable version of an earlier Thingiverse design, which is laid out on just two sheets for easy printing.  There’s also a clever OpenSCAD version which should allow for easy changes!  Way to go bobbens. (And jjshortcut for the original design!)

This is really a great way to do an assembly on Thingiverse.  Virtual gold star for all involved.

Mini servo gripper Plate by bobbens

Plates for a 3dprinter of thingiverse.com/thing:2415 . They are done in openscad and require the original files from the Mini servo gripper. There are currently two plates: one for geared parts, another for the rest of the parts. This is so you can print the gears at better quality and to avoid possible ooze making them not fit properly. The original versions are just a plate directly made from the original files. There is also gripper_plate_v2 which contains tweaks for 3d printing. Namely it merges both 4mm tall arms into a single 8mm tall one and the base is modified to fit an HXT900 servo and merges both servo plates. This decreases the parts needed and helps simplify assembly. A video of it in action: youtube.com/watch?v=-3I8lXD45wI Files: - gripper_plate.scad: Openscad code for the original plate. - gripper_plate_gears.scad: Openscad code for the gear plate. - gripper_plate.stl: Rendered model of the original plate. - gripper_plate_gears.stl: Rendered model of the gear plate. - gripper_plate_v2.scad: Openscad code for the modified plate. - gripper_plate_v2.stl: Rendered model of the modified plate. - Gripperservoplate_v2.stl: The new servo holder part (in gripper_plate_v2). Total weight assembled with Natural PLA: 53 grams (including servos and screws).

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