MakerBot Industries

Photo by Windell H. Oskay

The New York Times took a look at The Evil Mad Scientist Egg-Bot. Thingiverse got a shoutout!

You can find Egg-Bot specific, freeware illustration files on Thingiverse, which you can then port to Inkscape to be printed onto your eggs.

Check out the article here. We have Egg-Bot kits in stock, order yours today, and make some intricate egg designs this Easter!

Thingiverse citizen nrp uploaded a Python script that enables a Kinect to track a hand in the air and feed the corresponding Gcode to a 3D printer – a process he calls “gestural 3D printing.”  From the video above you can see how the monitor provides visual feedback for the user while his RepRap in the background mimics the user’s movement.

Gestural 3D Printing by nrp

Really, the best description is the video:youtube.com/watch?v=BRJY927raTo Also on my website:eclecti.cc/computervision/gestural-printing-jumping-the-shark-on-kinect-hacks We’ve seen a seemingly endless array of amazing Kinect hacks over the last few months, from superhero generators to obstacle avoiding quadcopters. However, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with a hack so inane and irrelevant that it would bring shame to the entire hobby. That time is now, and that someone is me. I bring to you, gestural 3D printing! Using the Kinect to track your hand, you can draw one layer at a time, with the printer following your every move. Pushing forward extrudes plastic, while pulling your hand back will start a new layer. Who needs difficult and confusing CAD software when you can just directly draw the object you want to print?

This thing brought to you by

Brass Stanford Bunny, printed by Isaac Dietz

As with every holiday calendar event that rolls through the T-verse, the approach of Easter this coming Sunday has been the inspiration for a number of outstanding seasonal objects contributed to Thingiverse.com. Ethan featured Zydac’s cute Eggbunny last week¹, but check out some of the other great offerings. (Thingiverse-tagged as “easter.”)

HASENFRANZ Easter Bunny Cookie Cutter by elk

There are a few cookie cutter options, including Elk‘s Easter Bunny Cookies and brettjones Easter Bunny Cookie Cutter. (Make your own cookie cutters by using guru‘s Cookie Cutter Generator v2!) Stage your stained/painted/chocolate eggs in bpijls‘s BunnyCup – Bunny Footed Egg Holder. Of particular usefulness to those of you working with OpenSCAD to design Easter-flavored objects, you’ll want to grab nicholasclewis‘s Parametric Egg and take a look at TeamTeamUSA‘s impressive Virtual Easter Eggs color/multi-print assembly project for ideas and parts for your OpenSCAD or MeshMixer masterpieces. Also, if your Easter egg hunt actually involves firearms, don’t forget vik‘s Egg-Shaped Target.²

And this doesn’t even get us started with the t-verse’s prolifically breeding colony of Standford bunnies….

Stanford Bunny

Stanford Bunny, printed by mah_digilife

The Stanford Bunny model has a venerable computer visualization pedigree previous to becoming one of the more iconic Thingiverse first objects for printing or mashing-up. The bunny is but one of the more popular models from the Stanford 3D Scanning Repository, a collection of high resolution scans made available by Greg Turk and Marc Levoy in 1994 to assist computer scientists working with mesh tools who do not have access to high resolution scanning hardware. According to the Bunny’s Wikipedia article, the Bunny was scanned from a ceramic figuring, and “consists of data describing 69,451 triangles.”

Here’s an intriguing note from the scanners about their models:

As you browse this repository and think about how you might use our 3D models and range datasets, please remember that several of these artifacts have religious or cultural significance. Aside from the buddha, which is a religious symbol revered by hundreds of millions of people, the dragon is a symbol of Chinese culture, the Thai statue contains elements of religious significance to Hindus, and Lucy is a Christian angel; statues like her are commonly seen in Italian churches. Keep your renderings and other uses of these particular models in good taste. Don’t animate or morph them, don’t apply Boolean operators to them, and don’t simulate nasty things happening to them (like breaking, exploding, melting, etc.). Choose another model for these sorts of experiments. (You can do anything you want to the Stanford bunny or the armadillo.)³

Well, thank goodness for this, as the Stanford Bunny, as brought into Thingiverse very early on from Operator archiveman and then cleaned up for easier printing by phooky, has become along with the Gangsta one of the most frequently mashed-up and manipulated base models. It is even a base model in Ryan Schmidt’s wildly useful MeshMixer app.⁴

So when you are looking for treats to print this week (or this year, given that this is the Year of the Rabbit), don’t overlook gpvillamil’s Tron bunny, mrbug’s Bunny Trouble game or Optime Bunnyus, mifga’s Rabbitsta, and of course phooky’s printable-classic Stanford Bunny. My favorite Standford Bunny print involves simply taking phooky’s model and scaling it to 0.4 or 0.5 in ReplicatorG for execution with a Stepstruder MK6.

The Original Egg-Bot

While the Original Egg-Bot kits are currently back-ordered at Evil Mad Science, we still have a number of the kits in stock. Finding chocolate Easter eggs hidden in the backyard is one thing … but what if your love ones discovered a kit for building a robot to plot artwork on egg-shells on their Easter egg hunt?

A t-verse catalog of several compelling Easter-related models follows after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. an instant “I must print!” design [↩]
2. A note from Vik’s Thingiverse post: “Unlike real Easter Eggs, you should only practise on these targets with plastic Airsoft BB’s – Unless you just get a kick out of blowing things to smithereens” [↩]
3. Ed. My emphasis. [↩]
4. MeshMixer is back in active development now — grab the latest version for Mac or PC and add some literal Easter eggs to your other models [↩]

Bling'ed Bot, Boring Bot

What’s that?  You just don’t feel challenged enough? ¹  No problem!  Thingiverse citizen Carmiac was inspired by a recent post about people who trick out their robots to start his own design challenge.²  Right now the prize pool is $35 from Carmiac with MakerBot throwing in LEDs to help the winner rock out in style.

Being obligated to triangulate things on Thingiverse by blog.makerbot.com/2011/04/13/my-bot-rod-has-kickin-bot-bling/ my first two thoughts were design challenges and Bot Bling. So, this is a bot-bling design challenge. Hooray!

Rules For Entry:

1. This must be NEW bot bling, so it must be uploaded to Thingiverse after I publish this contest.
2. All entries must be tagged with ‘botbling_challenge‘
3. Must be mostly printable (Unicorns and Frostruders included)
4. Submissions must be posted by 11:59 EST May 15, 2011
5. Enter as many times as you want, as long as the entries are unique.
6. Judging will be completed within a day or two of contest end.

Judging will be based on the following, weighted in order.

1. Number of likes
2. Number of times it has been made by someone else
3. Aesthetics
4. Printability
5. File formats provided

 

What are you waiting for?!  There’s work to be done!

1. What an amazing time!  There’s literally three design challenges right now.  Pattwac’s “MakerBotUnited” team challenge, Twotimes “CutBag” challenge for cardboard and bags, and now the “botbling_challenge” from Carmiac. [↩]
2. Photo courtesy of Solo [↩]