Robot Hospital Episode 7: A MakerBot BotFarm Domeraising Mini-Doc
As a special treat this week while we compile and film follows up to your questions from earlier in the week, we share a quick mini-doc featuring a project MakerBot Operator Michael Felix created with the assistance of the MakerBot BotFarm and MakerBot BotFarm guru Herb Hoover.
Michael, “Principal of Effalo,” was commissioned to create a gigantic geodesic dome for a high-energy music video directed by Emily Wormley for the song “Fireball” from upcoming album “Flux Outside”1 from the band Royal Bangs. MakerBot Operator community members Mark Cohen, Aaron Double, and MakerBot staff members Herb Hoover, Keith Ozar, and David Neff helped Michael print and assemble what has to be, to date, the largest thing build mostly from MakerBot printed parts to date.
UPDATE: Rumors have it that this dome will find its way into the luggage of the MakerBot team heading over to MakerFaire Bay Area 2011. And Matt, who created the first video, already has a draft going for a supplementary video going into more of the practical how-to elements so you can build your own geodesic domes….
- which probably raises different associations for this readership than elsewhere [↩]
| Tagged with | botfarm, buckminster fuller, effalo, geodesic dome, makerbot, royal bangs, Thingiverse | 7 comments |
7 Comments so far
The Ruttmeister
At the risk of sounding negative… “mostly printed”
Ahem… by what measure?
Its like making a bunch of rivets and saying that you made most of a bridge
The printed parts are key yes. But that’s not a “mostly printed” object. That’s a mostly sticks object.
Its very cool though
Jetguy
Ok interesting article but how about a link to the the video (the one the dome was used in?)
It’s like I get the shameless plug that the whole NYC is trying to be artsy and creative, collaboration between people, and all those great things, but not really related to Makerbot as a product. It’s like some really loosely related sales pitch when the title of the thing is ROBOT HOSPITAL!
I mean, they asked a bunch of us who are basically doing tech support for the comunity what would be the best videos to make to help people with their bots-not a pitch on here’s what you can do if you have a bot farm from us.
Just plane simple- it’s fine to post the video and I even enjoyed seeing it- but that has nothing to do with ROBOT HOSPITAL. If you want to start a general video segment where you talk about other projects and stuff-that’s fine, just keep robot hospital about fixing stuff like toolhead not found, how to adjust a profile, how to print, how to build the extruder head right the first time, and many other fix my bot problems.
Again, I’m not downplaying the video. It was a great video- just not in place of what is supposed to be live fix it forum.
Mark Cohen
Lets see.. each endcap connects to one stick. So in order to make this work then a stick is connected on each end with an endcap. Think of the sticks as an extension of the endcaps. That sounds like two endcaps per stick plus the hexagons and pentagons. There then has to be more printed parts than wood in this structure. It is therefore a mostly printed object if you simply count the parts.
Mark Cohen
This is actually both different and a little special compared to the other videos in that it is both a profile of a group of people helping each other out and us using our Makerbots to solve a real world problem in two weeks. The actual band is not so important as to how we tuned our machines to produce both the quantity and quality of parts and actually did a bit of cloud sourcing to get the job done. Not everything in Robot Hospital has to solve a technical problem dealing with Makerbots’ problems, sometimes it’s really cool to deal with Makerbot’s solutions instead. I find this idea way more interesting and I hope to see more of this type of work. I actually do have some video of day two of the video shoot with the band, music and lighting, but I need permission to publish it as the rock video is not out yet.
JETGUY
So many are taking my comment the wrong way.
I didn’t mean to bash the video, I think it is a good showing of what bigger projects can be made from the makerbot community as a whole. MakerBot is amazing in that localized custom manufacturing can create a whole new world of products and ideas.It’s a really great video showcasing a project.
My gripe was this, robot hospital needs to be about fixing bots or printing. This way, if you need to fix your bot or learn about the latest and greatest tips on using or building your bot-you watch Robot Hospital. The original intent was it to be a live feed so users could ask questions and see some really good explantions or demos. I know there were a lot of technical dificulties with that and the switch was made to recorded videos which were a little better-but over time-they have seriously strayed from the main purpose of talking about technical problems and I am still seeing a great need for some good printing and usage videos from the forums. There is nearly one “Toolhead not found” posting every few days in the forum-yet we have yet to really talk about it in Robot hospital. Wanna promote gen 4 electronics upgrades for Cupcakes–fine demonstrate how to set it up in a Robot Hospital video.
If you want to have a great promotional video about some new software or someone’s project, great, lets stick those in another place. This way, if I want to see what the latest software or project Makerbot is coming out with I watch this series of videos.
In other words, I saying if the announcement was- “instead of Robot Hospital this week, we have a special treat, the story of A MakerBot BotFarm Domeraising Mini-Doc” this would convey this is a special video- a real must see kind of thing.
The forum is full of people with problems, Robot hospital was the only live help with video. Users either stick it out in the forum, or use the contact Makerbot tool. This was the only real interaction Makerbot has with users who are trying to build or use their bots. I’m saying as a community- lets work together and help those people get printing-we can have a separate place to show great projects and other happeings in the world. I feel like we are hurting both sides of the argument by mixing the title. People want to see these kinds of videos and that’s great, so do I. On the other hand, there is the guy who spent $1300 on a Thing-O-Matic, and hasn’t printed a single object. His first Robot Hospital didn’t help him at all and he’s still stuck at toolhead not found. The guy wanting to print raftless but can’t figure out the difference between outline and raft because nobody posted a picture or video is just frustrated too. It’s the little things like this us MakerBot Operator Veterans take for granted.
Pingu
I see Jetguy is the new director of RH. Get to work, genius.
Domes… » Mal3aby
[...] but the idea is to print all the parts and then put them together.) Now, there have been many domes before, so in the interests of pushing back the frontiers of home-printed-domes, I’d like to add my [...]