MakerBot Industries

Caliper Holder by LightingPhil

With a 3D printer at your disposal you can design everything from a complex machine to a replacement knob for your stove. Sometimes, elegantly simple designs that make your life easier are the killer models. And bonus meta-points when you design and print 3D printed parts … that make it easier to print 3D printed parts. Here are two functional designs that have arrived up on Thingiverse since Friday that I am certain to print this week — and put into immediate use!

MakerBot Filament Spool Holder by charlespax

MakerBot Filament Spool Holder by charlespax

MakerBot Industries now sells filament on spools! Here is a spool holder you can mount on you Thing-O-Matic or Cupcake CNC in place of any rod cover. You should also print the spool housing to keep you filament nice and tidy. thingiverse.com/thing:8762 If you want to stack two spools, checkout tbusers Spool Stacker thingiverse.com/thing:9198

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Caliper holder by LightningPhil

Hold a caliper and 3 hex keys neatly on the front of the makerbot. Now I can find them! Everyone needs a caliper. Much easier to read a digital display than guess fractions of a mm. The hex keys come with the makerbot. Seemed a good holder to put them all together in one place. In addition to the above, I have a small holder for a craft knife and a tourch. Might draw them again, but didn't keep the STL's. This was my first go at using Solid Works. Far easier than expected! :)

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Daily earring #53: Castle by Schorhr

As Ferris Bueller famously said, “You can never go too far.”

Thingiverse citizen Schorhr has uploaded nearly 60 totally different earring designs. ¹  His designs include earrings in the shape of Tetris blocks, pi to eleven decimal places, the Enterprise being attacked by a Borg ship, traffic lights, an excavator, a gecko, the earth’s core, a little tentacle monster, a Gameboy, ball bearings, and wool and needles.  Now, don’t think these are just the whimsical ramblings of a mad designer – Schorhr has actually printed these things and uploaded pictures of them² to prove it.

In Schorhr’s own words:

Why am I doing this?

- To test how small I can go with the printer
- The little prints allow me to try lots of stuff without wasting much time and material
- It increases the WAF ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_acceptance_factor )
- 3D printing + Gifts = Love!³

Let’s put Schorhr’s accomplishment in perspective.  In two years of Thingiverse‘s existence the most things anyone had uploaded as of 12/31/2010 was an astonishing 80 designs from MakerBot’s own Zach “Hoeken” Smith.  Schorhr has managed to design nearly 75% of that amount in about 60 days time and upload more than half of that amount in just one day.  It’s no small task to upload a printable file, the design file, a screenshot or photograph, description, and instructions for each one.

Keep up the good work!

1. For the sake of accuracy, I only found 54 Thing under Schorhr’s Things section.  I can totally see how a few could get lost as you upload such an enormous pile of designs. [↩]
2. Usually painted with nail polish! [↩]
3. I would take exception with this equation.  I think it’s more like “Love + 3D printing = Gifts!”  However, I might have forgotten to carry the one. [↩]

Here’s something sweet to start the week.  OK, this might not be entirely useful, but I think the attraction is obvious.

Kudos to CreativeTools for baking a cookie and then running it through their high-res laser scanner.  There’s no need to ask why when it’s this awesome.

Laser scanned chocolate cookie by CreativeTools

A small chocolate cookie laser scanned with a Handyscan 3D VIUscan. The .zip file contains both model and texture, as well as reference images. Creativetools.se

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BetaSolution

If you’ve got a dual extruder in your 3D printer, you’re not far off from printing with support material.  A few months ago our friends at iFeelBeta published the details on their newly developed formula for a solution that would dissolve PLA and leave ABS intact.  As these chemicals are no joke, it’s no wonder that it’s taken several months for them to get the legal clearances to be able to ship this solution throughout Europe.  (It’s basically the equivalent of a heavy duty drain cleaner)  However, they now have BetaSolution up for sale on their website!

Once again, thanks to these guys for being amazing open source innovators and blazing this trail for everyone.  Now that they’ve launched their shop, be sure and buy the solution from them!

Also, be sure and read their safety data sheet and manual before using it!

Marius Watz, MakerBot artist-in-residence, is having an art show called, “Extrusion” and there are MakerBotted things in it! Congrats Marius! Check out the photos from the whole show on Flickr!

Today we have a 10 new products in The MakerBot Plastics section. Our ABS filaments are now available as 1 Kilogram spools! We have been preparing to transition our plastic offerings to spools for some time, and now we’re ready to let them out of the bag. We have the first group of spooled ABS plastic online today, including two new colors available in both 3mm and 1.75mm formats.

New Safety Orange and Fruit Punch Magenta are here, along with resupplies of our classic colors in 1.75mm width on industrial strength spools for easier use. We’re really happy with spooled filaments, they are more compact and a lot cleaner to use. They are handy to mount in your workspace and are stackable too.

Charles Pax created a great printable spool mount that screws right onto your Thing-O-Matic too.
Check them out!

Until May 1st, Instructables.com are offering a chance  for participants to win one of three MakerBot Thing-O-Matic kits by uploading awesome new Instructables to their site.

Here are the details for their posting!

So how do you win the MakerBot Challenge?

Make something awesome. Any project is eligible. Submit a new Step By Step, Photo, or Video Instructable that shows off your amazing skills and creativity, and proves that you deserve a MakerBot 3D Printer. Be sure to document your project with lots of great photos, and provide details so others can learn from your work.

What can you make with your very own Thing-O-Matic?  Check out the Thingiverse 3D library for ideas and inspiration, or share your own digital designs.  Just post an excellent Instructable to the MakerBot Challenge, and you could soon be printing any of these Thingiverse designs at home!

And thanks to Instructables for the shout out to Thingiverse. Create and document your project at Instructables, post design documents and models to Thingiverse — the world awaits the fruits of your imagination¹!

1. and science! [↩]

0-extra shell on left print, default settings on the right

While perusing Thingiverse yesterday I noticed TheRuttmeister’s suggestions on printing a small 7 toothed gear for a Stepper Upgrade for the MK5.  Here’s his suggestion:

I recommend that you print the small gears with 0 extra shells (infill of 0.1 or higher will result in solid teeth).

I had never heard of such a technique, but RoberHunt‘s print of this gear, showing the “zero-extra shells” on the left and his default settings on the right.  However, those results really speak for themselves.  I’ve tried to print small objects before only to find out that I couldn’t get the fill ratio to the point the object was solid.  I’m definitely trying this idea out next time!

The other day I casually threw down a gauntlet.  This gauntlet has been picked up by Thingiverse’s amazing users like Marcus Wolschon, mcneight, and our own MakerBlock.

While nobody has created a fully parametric OpenSCAD script for lens caps on multiple systems, MakerBlock’s Parametric Lens Cap is a simple, press-fit cap that should work as a front cap for a variety of systems (though it could use slightly more detailed instructions…)

Perhaps even more exciting, mcneight and Marcus Wolschon have modeled the flanges for various systems, which is a necessary step for body and rear caps for many cameras.

This is awesome work, and a great example of the sort of collaboration that a community like Thingiverse can facilitate.  Thanks to all of you…and if you’re a 3d-modeling camera nut, please get involved!  (And if I missed your work, give a shout in the comments and tag your work “lens cap”)

Parametric Lens Cap by MakerBlock

Saw this post: blog.makerbot.com/2011/03/09/pinhole-lens-for-nikon-by-xjcrawler01-and-a-wee-challenge/ So I whipped this up.

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Canon FD Flange by mcneight

Accepting the challenge thrown down by Ethan at blog.makerbot.com/2011/03/09/pinhole-lens-for-nikon-by-xjcrawler01-and-a-wee-challenge/. Actually, this is something I've been working on for a little while. I just wasn't going to post it until it was really finished. Printing on the powder printer at metrixcreatespace.com resulted in an inner diameter that was a hair too small to fit around the Canon 50mm lens I have. The important measurement in this flange is the height. Placing this on a lens, your focal length will be 42mm from the bottom of the flange to the imaging surface (42.14mm if you measure to the back of a piece of 35mm camera film).

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Micro-4/3 Flange by MarcusWolschon

inspired by the FD flanges I measured the m4/3 -side of my m4/3 to FD adapter. status: NOT PRINTED YET, WORK IN PROGRESS. I'm not even sure this can be printed (1mm height details)

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Extending Tube by MakeALot

Before I understood the glory and power of OpenSCAD, I fumbled around with Sketchup for designs.  A while ago I had wanted to print concentric cylinders in PLA for the purpose of making a light-up collapsible sword.  It worked terribly and I uploaded it to Thingiverse anyhow. 

MakeALot, on the other hand, has wrought an amazing parametric OpenSCAD script for a set of collapsible concentric cylinders that can lock in place.  MakeALot’s designs and description are another example of an excellent contribution to Thingiverse.  He’s uploaded his design files (the OpenSCAD script), a couple of different STL’s (so you don’t even have to use OpenSCAD if you don’t want to), a detailed set of instructions and descriptions, and has contributed some really insightful responses to the comments offered by others – all with a very permissive license.

I also found MakeALot’s notes on his experience with printing tolerances and  experiments with gaps for moving parts very interesting.  And, last, but not least this project serves as a great way to find out the limits of your machine when it comes to printing moving parts in place.  Seriously, how cool would it be to be able to just create fully functional mechanical objects straight out of a 3D printer? ¹  I’m really looking forward to playing with this script to make a toy collapsible sword as well as finding out the tolerances of my 3D printer.

Extending Tube by MakeALot

An extending tube printed as a single print. Extend, twist and push to lock in place.

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1. And, you know, it could even include a rubber band placer so that you could print a, say for instance, toy clockwork spider, that would just get printed and then walk off the platform.  That way you wouldn’t even need an automated build platform! [↩]