MakerBot Industries

Ask an Engineer 3/26/2011 from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

I was on Adafruit’s Ask an Engineer broadcast. Check it out!

The MakerBot Gen 4 Interface Board Kit!

Today we are happy to announce a new product in the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic line, our new MakerBot Gen 4 Interface Board Kit v1.1! This is a fun DIY Interface that allows your to operate your Thing-O-Matic independently, without the use of a computer! So you can pop in your SD card into the Generation 4 Electronics, and regulate, operate, and print from your machine by this interface alone.

With the great set of programmable buttons and LCD interface, you can turn this hackable board into an control surface for almost anything as well! We are using it in-house here and are really pleased with the live feedback it provides during a build- monitor temperature, percent completion, and view files on the SD card are all available. Plus manual jog control of the stages, and extra assignable switches are available for new inventive uses.

It’s a fun soldering kit as well, and the complete through-hole construction makes the level of difficulty appropriate for even beginner kit-builders. This kit is open source, so you can use it to control anything you build, even your robots, or homebrew CNC device. Advanced users can match it with our Gen 4 electronics kit and use it to control any machine they can design with our electronics. It’s flexible, open, and provides programmable feedback depending on your application.

A Thing-O-Matic warming up in Monitor Mode

We are installing a group of these on the BotFarm™, so we can quickly fire up builds and monitor progress on multiple machines without needing computers attached. It truly turns the Thing-O-Matic into a standalone 3D Printer that just needs a power cord, and your files on SD card to operate. Awesome! The lasercut wood body includes tabs so the MakerBot Gen 4 Interface Board can hang nicely from the top or side of your Bot.

Check out the store page and buy the MakerBot Gen 4 Interface Board Kit v1.1 now!

John Abella (New York, USA)

Veteran MakerBot Operator John Abella has printed a number of the “twisted forms” geometric models on Thingiverse lately using his new MakerBot Stepstruder MK6. The models themselves are impressive, of course, but we have been particularly admiring JohnA‘s prints of these and wanted to share them with you.

A twisted mind…geometrically speaking.

Screw Cup, Printed by JohnA

Screwable Jewellery Box printed by John Abella

Shot Glass 7 sides twisted, Printed by JohnA (ABS)

Shot Glass 7 sides twisted, Printed by John Abella (PLA)

Death flying towards your refrigerator at 325kph from the outstretched hand of a ninja assassin has rarely been printed (and photographed) with such beauty and grace.

Ninja Fridge Shuriken printed by John Abella

We love your Stepstruder MK6, too, JohnA! Keep showing us how it’s done.

Heart Gears printed by John Abella

Improving a print through abrasion

This is the fifth in a series of posts about ways to get even better print results from your 3D printer. ¹  The prior posts provided information on calibrating hardware, upgrading hardware, calibrating software, and maintenance.  Please keep sending in your hints, tips, hacks, and suggestions!  Today’s post is about one of the most common kinds of finishing techniques:

1. Abrasion.Removing excess plastic by abrasion is an obvious way to improve the look of a printed object.  Here are the tools I use to clean up a printed object:
   1. Needle nose pliers or wire cutters to remove any large strings of plastic or plastic blobs.
   2. A spackle or putty knife to pop off any large blobs.  This is the same spackle knife I use to remove printed objects from the print platform.
   3. A utility knife to clean, smooth, and sometimes even carve parts.
   4. Sandpaper or emery board.
   5. I have been known, on occasion, to rub a printed object on concrete to sand down an edge.
   6. I’ve also used drill bits to ream out holes or clean off edges.

What other techniques do you use to abrade a printed model to get a better printed result?

1. Photo courtesy of jwcline [↩]

Ah, the classic bust of Beethoven, residing on your piano, and you scribble the notes of your next aria…well…the Bosendorfer doesn’t quite fit into my apartment, and a marble bust doesn’t look right sitting next to the laptop.  Instead, print out this bust and set it next to your midi controller.

Way to go, dino-girl.  And appreciate the epic print by our own Botfarm.

Beethoven Bust by dino-girl

duh duh DUH dun! Beethoven looks pretty grumpy for a really awesome bust you can print on your MakerBot, eh?

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