MakerBot Industries

Cupcake Tailfins by pandelume

Sure, MakerBots have loads of personality right from assembly — but does your bot exhibit all of its personality right out of the box?

Bot Bling

Lately, there have been a number of great “bot bling” items appearing on Thingiverse, some exclusively ornamental and others primarily practical (tool and spool holders, etc). Now “bot bling” items need not be 3D printed objects that have been cast using precious metals and hung around the neck or affixed to teeth — it is enough for them to be the regular type of plastic 3D-printable models you can affix to your MakerBot, usually found on Thingiverse, tagged with “bot bling.”

Some favorite recent entries include the MakerBot Thing o Magic Serial number by Joakim to brag out your MakerBot serial to the world, the 1950s rocket Cupcake Tailfins by pandelume (feat. above), and the MakerBot Coin Holder Updated! by M_G.

Sure, go too far with “bot bling” and you might end up with 37 pieces of flare, but on this side of clutter you have a user-assembled, Open Hardware 3D printer with plenty of resources for measurements and modification — so bring on the bling!

How about some mountable dragon wings to go with cibomahto’s Evil Dragon Head Trophy (or Tbuser’s Dragon Head Trophy)? Or mashup button covers for M3 bolt socket caps? Modified Heater Board electric cup holder?

Thingiverse Triangulation Obligation

Now is as good a time as any to reveal details of the Thingiverse Triangulation Obligation as it pertains to you.

Here is how it works.

See two (unrelated) objects on Thingiverse that together suggest to you the creation of a third object? It is now your duty to create and post that third object as quickly as possible. Because if you don’t, that item you saw so clearly in your imagination vanishes forever in a puff of distraction.

Now, let us consider the Obligation in terms of your MakerBot. Your MakerBot is sitting on your desk, right? You see it all the time. Look at your MakerBot. Now thumb through the ever-expanding catalog of wonder that is Thingiverse. See something, look at bot, inspiration … make something.

MakerBot Coin Holder by M_G

Cupcake Tailfins by pandelume

Here's the deal: I've been reading a book called "Cadillac Desert" - a good book, but not relevant to this Thing except that it brought to mind the word "cadillac". I've also been working on this:thingiverse.com/thing:7641 which is based on the cupcake platform, and cadillac + cupcake leads inevitably to cupcake tailfins. In this instance, at least, the mysterious process of inspiration has been documented. Anyhow, I'm also working on a version of this with integrated 5mm LEDs in the place of taillights - probably with a battery. More on that later; probably after I put more work into the x-gantry.

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MakerBot Thing o Magic Serial number by Joakim

In the cardbord box with the Lasercut parts - tere was a Serial Number In the hope thats it is unique i have made a sign for my maker bot.

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MakerBot Coin Holder Updated! by M_G

A holder for the metal coin that comes with your MakerBot. This allows it to be attached to the spare motor mounting holes on top of your machine using standard M3 bolts. Now with less drilling, sharp corners and rebuilding of your ABP! Changes from previous versions: 1.2 Raised above z=0 plane to prevent damage to ABP/HBP etc. (Sincere apologies to all affected!) Fixed naming issue "hole_diameter" vs "hole_diameters" so that bolt holes are correct diameter Gave it rounded corners using "rounded_cuboid" module 1.1 (DELETED) Increased hole_diameter from 3.1 to 3.2 Increased coin diamter from 37 to 39 Replaced hard coded numbers with named variables

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Evil Dragon Head Trophy by cibomahto

After printing the awesome dragon head trophy and mounting it on my bot, I realized that there was just one thing missing: LEDs. A small amount of drilling and some soldering later, and the dragon head was alive and well. Then it turned it's head to stare at me with its cold, unblinking eyes, and started making a low growling noise. Uh oh, that can't be a good sign...

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Hydrant Totem by tbuser

Yesterday morning, moments after learning about the Tinkercad beta, MakerBot Operator TBuser dived in head first to test what he might do with the tool. Before necessarily arriving at any specific sense of what his model might be, he sent me the model (simply by passing me a Tinkercad link).

Five minutes later, my bot was printed his object first at 1:1 and then at 2:1 scale without any cleanup or manipulation of the model other than centering it on the build platform. The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic on my desk (with a Stepstruder MK6 and 0.4mm nozzle) had no difficulty printing the model despite a number of challenges (like the cylinder cut through the middle) at either scale — and I was able to hand over the models to Tony before he had had much time to notice that I was printing it out.

Take a look at Tony’s Thingiverse release of the item (now a “Hydrant Totem”) and consider the implications of this workflow model. Not only is he able to generate a printable STL with a one-button click (which can be easily revised and adjusted in a host of STL scripts and tools) but he can also share a link to the model in Tinkercad so that another user might duplicate the project, make revisions, and then print a new model.

This is game changing, folks. Imagine how much easier this route is than jumping through hoops to share SketchUp files.¹ Share a Tinkercad link and others can work on your model in its original design environment right in your browser.

TinkerCAD is still in beta, so I suggest you jump in to push this tool hard as well — and send constructive feedback to the developer. This tool is shaping into something I have been waiting for since exploring the charming 3dtin.com.

Hydrant Totem by tbuser

Playing with tinkercad.com It sort of looks like a fire hydrant and sort of looks like a totem. View it on tinkercad: tinkercad.com/p/acc0c5996fe6d9d4

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1. The past benefit of Sketchup being the wide adoption and lower learning curve for modeling. [↩]

Hello noble readers and watchers of videos!  We’ve had some feedback that our recent Robot Hospital Episodes, though still full of entertaining information and helpful tips (obv.) didn’t answer enough questions from users.

Well, we agree.  And we’re only missing one thing — your questions.  So if you have a question about building or using your MakerBot, please submit it as a comment to this blog post.

Or, even better, submit your question as a short video — make your vid, post it on one of the popular video hosting sites, and submit the link in your comment.  (It’d be cool if you used one of the ones where we can get the source, so we can include your question right in Robot Hospital.)  If we use your video, we promise to send you a super-awesome, top-secret Mystery Prize! (LEDs.)

The first question will be answered during the Friday, April 22nd episode of Robot Hospital.  We’re really excited to get your questions and even more excited to answer them!