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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Hey folks — you remember the Open Source Hardware Definition?  Sure you do.  Well, they’re choosing a logo, and I highly recommend that you go and vote here.

They’ve narrowed it down to 10 possibilities, and the vote is open until April 15th, so vote early and vote often, as all the successful electioneers like to say.  You can see my personal selection above.

The Mendel inspired x and y carriage lowrider by twotimes

Just how good is Twotimes’ XY lowrider? ¹  Well, take a listen for yourself.  MakerBot operator RealBaxsie uploaded videos of his Cupcake in operation before and after the installation of this must-have printable upgrade.

Printing with a Cupcake CNC before installation

Printing with a Cupcake CNC with an XY lowrider installed

Mendel inspired x and y carriage lowrider by twotimes

Here is my take on merging the lowrider and the mendel inspired y carriage for the cupcake. link to bearings:vxb.com/page/bearings/PROD/3mm/623ZZ10-1 I went with smaller bearings than the Mendel because it allowed me to do everything with M3 screws and it allowed me to drop the height a bit. This design is shorter than the standard platform by 10mm, I was pushing for more, but the bearings killed the height gains. It does mean that you can gain back about half of the height that you loose by putting in the automatic build platform. Also, the y rails have been separated to 70mms so hopefully that means that the platform is a bit more stable. I attached the solidworks file for people who want to play (WARNING - the file is messy and I was bad and made all of my parts in one part file). If you would like any other formats like .igs, .step and the like, just shout. Should have all of the holes teardropped later today. - Truncated teardrop holes are up, that's a pain. Update: The stl files from solidworks would not slice in Rep G, I have no idea why, if you know please tell me. I reuploaded all of the stl files and tested them in Rep G 19 they seem to work but I will not have a chance to print until Monday. I have all of the parts, now on to the debug... so you do not have to... The updated files are in the zip file, I got rid of the first generation of parts. Things were moved around a bit and these are the updates after printing round one and putting it into the makerbot. I should have all of the gen 2 parts printed and through debug tomorrow. Update 2 - I got the bearings in and other that a few "What the hell was I thinking..." moments that were easily repaired with an X-acto knife, everything went great. I'm in the process of printing the gen 3 parts and everything should be cool now. I'll post pictures and video once the final draft is printed. Update 3 - In process of using gen 3 platform to print gen 4 platform. Once I have printed and assembled it, I will upload files. I think that will be it for variations. Update 4 - Gen 5 files are out and I can now say you can download them and print! Update 5 - Instructions are up. Update 6 - I just uploaded the gen 7 version - I have not had a chance to print it yet, I was getting annoyed with the slight curve in my heat spreader and decided to rip it apart and lap it until it was flat. This update addresses: Adding nut pockets on all adjusting screws for bearing tension to make adjusting easier (do not have to hold nut in place) Back X bearings cluster has been reworked so the is less interference with the X pulley. Back X bearing adjustment screw head has been nested into the plastic to have less interference with X belt. Interference between Y belt attachment nuts and plastic bodies has been addressed X belt attachment point has been lowered. First shot at integrating endstops have been added. I think that that is about it. I will shout when the directions have been updated, everything should be the same except the endstop part. If you have already printed this and do not want to reprint, reprint parts 09 and 16, those have to do with X belt and pulley issues. (and they are small) I just sent out the third package of nuts, washers, and screws. If anyone else wants them, just message me. Gaffertape kindly updated the files so if you are using the older repG and skeinforge, use the resaved gen 7 files. Update: Finally updated for mechanical endstops, instructions still need to be updated though.

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1. You know, besides being the most commented thing on Thingiverse… [↩]

Cooling ducts by wurp

With Wurp’s “simple model slicer” and OpenSCAD you can easily slice up a large model into smaller parts for printing.  While the script, is as the name suggests, simple it is also elegant.

Wurp’s solution to the limitations of his print area was to design a script that can chop up a model into different cube shaped sections.  As you can see from the image of his Cooling Duct above, he was able to slice that model into three large segments that could be printed separately and then assembled.

Interestingly, there’s no special reason for using a cube shaped.  You could just as easily use cube shaped sections with symmetric keyed spans along all of the edges.  That way, you could conceivably print several models and just slot them together right off of the print bed – without having to spend too much time actually designing the connections.

Simple model slicer by wurp

This OpenScad file can slice up larger models into printable pieces. I used it to make thingiverse.com/thing:6721 This is pretty trivial, but can be handy for a lot of objects, and gives a template for more sophisticated slicing.

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Symmetric Keyed Connectors / Spans / Tiles by relet

An update to the scad file to include - a parametric symmetric joint, consisting of a combined male+female connector. - a parametric symmetric span, having a combined male+female connector on each end. - a parametric symmetric tile, having a combined male+female connector on each side. - a parametric rectangle with symmetric connectors, having a combined male+female connector on each side. Feel free to flattr this design or any derivatives if it was useful for you. update: 2011-02-08 16:04 - some of the parameters were not used correctly, resulting in asymmetry if you changed the settings. Should be fixed now.

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Eggbot Nutrition Label by dnewman

Have you noticed the recent marketing of prepackaged produce?  I’m not talking about washed, bagged lettuce here.  I’m talking about a prune or a banana in a single serving plastic wrapper.  The prune, okay, maybe.  Unless you’re buying prunes individually this just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort.  As for bananas, pineapples, oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, avocados, kiwi, mangoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, and any other fruit where you do not consume the exterior…  I just don’t get it.  Perhaps it’s more pushed by a desire to utilize more marketing space on produce?

Dnewman’s solution is beyond elegant.  Why not just print the nutritional information right on the produce using an Eggbot??  I just LOVE this idea!  I would absolutely buy eggs from any producer that did this.  Not only is this idea so so so cool, but it opens the door to all kinds of other food labeling robots.  I mean, who wouldn’t want a Mangobot 2000?  Oh, and if you’re going to buy an apple, pear, or other fruit or vegetable where the exterior is consumed, why not just print with an edible ink? ¹²

Eggbot Nutrition Label by dnewman

In need of nutrition information for your large eggs? Then this drawing is just what you've been looking for! This is a 3200 x 800 pixel plot intended for plotting with the Eggbot. P.S. The text was rendered using the new Hershey Text extension by Windell Oskay and distributed with the latest Eggbot software release. It may be found in Inkscape under Extensions > Render > Hershey Text (after you update to the latest Eggbot software). The utility of that extension is not limited to just the Eggbot. Among other things, it provides nice, non-filled, single stroke fonts ideal for use in CNC and CNC-related applications.

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1. I suppose this would cause an infinite regression of trying to then print the ink’s own nutritional information on the ink itself…  [↩]
2. Wibbly wobbly… [↩]
3. I’m just letting it be known I had to restrain myself from using a number of other adjectives here. [↩]
4. Frankly, this is the mark of incredible self-control [↩]
5. I didn’t use the words extraordinary, example, or exemplary. [↩]

Glen Kotapish sends in these instructions on how to mod your Automated Build Platform Belt to make it last longer and keep it from coming apart. We’ve just considered these belts somewhat disposable, but this hack should keep your ABP in action for longer!

Materials and hardware used: ABP mylar conveyor belt, foil tape (3M Foil Tape 3311 – found at most automotive supply stores and hardware stores – other types of metal tapes may work well too), Kapton tape, scissors, paper cutter, coffee thermos with 3.5” diameter, coffee mug,

Put a new ABP mylar conveyor belt on a metal thermos with approximately a 3.5” diameter (or similar cylindrical object). Place shims behind the belt (shims between the thermos and mylar belt) until the belt is taught around the thermos.

Then wrap the metal foil tape around the mylar conveyor belt. You can use a coffee mug or other object to flatten out the bumps and bubbles in the foil tape as you wrap it around the mylar belt. You can drag the coffee mug’s round surface over the bumps and bubbles. Rocking the coffee mug also works to even out the foil tape. You’ll have to do more than one strip of metal tape depending on the width of your tape. There are tapes and rolls of metal foil with ahesive that are wide enough to cover the full width of the mylar conveyor – this example uses tape that can be found easily at hardware and auto stores.

After completely covering the mylar belt in metal foil tape wrap it in Kapton tape. Now carefully remove the shims from between modified conveyor belt and thermos. Put modified conveyor on ABP and you’re good to go. Be sure to recalibrate your machine’s Z axis for the addition of the foil tape and Kapton tape layers to the mylar belt.

Testing of this conveyor belt has shown no warping so far. The parts off of this build surface have looked good too.

Thanks for sharing Glen!