MakerBot Industries

Working Together to Push and Shove

Thingiverse has become a hopping place with mashups, derivatives, and collaborations galore of late. ^1 2  In particular, Pattywac’s recent team design challenge has prompted several groups to work together on some pretty cool projects.

As an online-community Thingiverse is a place for sharing ideas and digital objects.  It has also come to be a place for collaboration.  If you don’t live near a hackerspace or have access to sophisticated tools, you can always ask for help or feedback on Thingiverse.  Even if you don’t have a 3D printer, a lasercutter, or even tools – you can probably still fire up OpenSCAD, start working on a project, and see your imagination realized.

If you’ve got access to a computer and an internet connection there’s no reason to wait.  You can start making things right now with the help of people all around the world.  What are you waiting for?

1. Photo courtesy of Solo [↩]
2. Special thanks to Schmarty for introducing me to the “Terrible Secret of Space” meme. [↩]

Eggbot omelet recipe by dnewman

If you thought an egg sporting it’s own nutritional information was awesome, it’s time to check out Dan Newman’s egg with a recipe for omelets written on it by use of an Egg-Bot.¹

Eggbot omelet recipe by dnewman

...or "omelette" if you prefer. These files are for plotting an omelet recipe on eggs using an Eggbot. Use the file omelet.svg or omelet-1-serving.svg if you park the "pointy" end of your eggs at the egg motor cup. Use omelet-flipped.svg or omelet-1-serving-flipped.svg if, like me, you park the fat end of your eggs at the egg motor's egg cup. (Less slippage when you do that, eh?) Note that the text is sized such that you don't need a nano sized pen tip: I used a Sharpie Ultra Fine for the pictured egg. So how many servings for omelet.svg and omelet-flipped.svg? Those two files have a "2 serving" recipe which calls for two eggs. If you desire a more self-contained recipe, then go with the "1 serving" variants. And, if you need nutrition info, well just see thingiverse.com/thing:7232 and then mentally add in the 2 or 1 Tbsp of cream and 3/4 or 1/2 Tbsp of butter. (Butter is about 100 calories per Tbsp and there's about 50 calories per Tbsp for heavy cream [the yummy stuff].) Bon appetit!

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1. On a slightly related note, I really love how unpredictably meta Thingiverse has become. [↩]

The NSU Roadster -- an early application of the Wankel.

Just the sort of thing that makes car people’s hearts race…a beautifully-conceived but little-deployed technology, with some wonderful advantages that nearly overshadow the crushing disadvantages.  That’s right – the Wankel Rotary engine!

We need to thank Thingiverse user mattmoses for modeling up a real, working Wankel-type rotary engine model — ok, well, it doesn’t actually burn gasoline, but it does turn around the driveshaft.  And btw, how many triangles do you see in your boring old piston engine?

I’m pretty sure that this means I’m finally going to be able to print parts for my Eunos Cosmo.

Wankel Engine Model by mattmoses

This is a stand-alone Public Domain model of a Wankel Engine in OpenSCAD. This is intended more as an example of an interesting mechanism than as a useful engine. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine The file uses code appropriated from Leemon Baird's PublicDomainGearV1.1.scad which can be found here:thingiverse.com/thing:5505

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