MakerBot Industries

Hey Botters — in case you haven’t already heard, there’s going to be a Robot Film Festival in New York this July 16th & 17th, spearheaded by the illustrious Heather Knight.  This will certainly be a cool event to see as their Vimeo teaser gallery proves.

But hey, aren’t we all robot operators?  Maybe some of us have films to share too — luckily, submission is open until June 5th, so there’s exactly one month to make a robot-based film.

This seems like an amazing opportunity for MakerBotters to let their creative juices flow, so sharpen some pencils, scout some locations, oil up the Bolex (or charge up the 5d Mark II) and make some movies, Bot-people!

Hollow Calibration Cube by Starno

Yesterday, I had a conversation with MakerBot Operator Rift and MakerBot Mechanical Engineer Nick Starno in the BotCave about the Skeinforge tool “Jitter.” Rift had come to visit for a consultation about Skeinforge calibrations and Starno’s excellent Print-O-Matic SF Assistant¹.

Rift had printed a couple of Tornadoes in his Thing-O-Matic using ABS and wanted to see if Jitter was the right tool to avoid seam that can appear on the sides of thin-walled geometries. (Jitter was designed to adjust where the z-height increments when completing a layer.) Starno and Rift considered the pane within Skeinforge for Jitter and found the option “Jitter over Perimeter Width (ratio).” How exactly does this tool function? Lacking sufficient details within Skeinforge, they jumped into experimentation, trying a range of values so that they could test results.

There have been a number of attempts to create wikis for various versions of Skeinforge, but most of these web resources are in such disarray that those who consult them leave more frustrated than informed. But there is a secret, hidden in plain sight — the best reference for most of the tools within Skeinforge are included as prose comments within the python scripts for the tools themselves. Even as ReplicatorG integrates assistants to help save users from Skeinforge gauntlet, taking a look at these comments can be helpful reading to get a sense of how these tools function and what are their interdependencies.

To read these comments, look inside your ReplicatorG folder for the “skein-engines” folder. Nested deep within the folder for the version of Skeinforge you want to learn about are the “craft_plugins” folders that contains the python scripts themselves.

Grab yourself a plaintext application² and investigate those python scripts one at a time, with a special emphasis on Carve, Fill, and Speed. While in places the scripts (in active development) diverge a bit from the comments, these comments remain your best shot for reading full explanations for what each tool was created for and how to use it.

Take a look at this excerpt from the Jitter page, that was able to help Starno and Rift investigate this tool:

“Jitter Over Perimeter Width===Default is two. Defines the amount the loop ends will be jittered over the perimeter width.  A high value means the loops will start all over the place and a low value means loops will start at roughly the same place on each layer.”

Now that is a huge improvement over the amount of information available in the Skeinforge Jitter tool pane!

1. which is now being integrated into the beta for ReplicatorG 25 [↩]
2. I recommend notepad++ for Windows and TextWrangler for Mac OS X [↩]

Sliding Latch by mrbug

…there is definitely something to be said for simplicity.

I can think of any number of scenarios where I would definitely see myself installing the geared latch by loonix2.  I could install the geared latch in a high or out of the way area and put a string on the large gear.  When pulled it could rotate and pull the bar out of the way.  This could be useful if you wanted to let a little one have controllable access to an area.  Or you could easily operate it with a small motor if you wanted to have electronic locking and unlocking control.  In a very raw form, it’s even a start on a printable linear stepper.  Or perhaps it could be operated by a series of other gears – perhaps operated by a printed clock so that a given object was only accessible during certain times of the day.  Like a cookie jar.  Or maybe a safe that has a printed combination lock on the outside and a geared latch that could be engaged to unlock the inside.

However, sweet geared latches aren’t for everyone.  Mrbug’s sliding latch is a straight-forward, simple, and elegant approach to the same object.  Slide to lock, slide back to unlock.  This is the kind of latch I would install so my daughter could lock and unlock something for herself or perhaps as a simple privacy lock for a guest bathroom. ¹

The beauty of these variations on the same utilitarian object is that you have the choice without any extra cost.  Both objects are free to download and use, so it’s merely a matter of your particular application and preference.  I haven’t checked about the volume of the two objects, but they are probably approximately comparable or could easily be made identical by scaling one up or down.  The upshot of this is that the complex version is not any necessarily more difficult or time intensive to produce.²

Or, think about it this way – imagine walking into a hardware store and seeing a hundred different latches with varying degrees of complexity and part counts – and everything was the same price. ³

Sliding Latch by mrbug

This is a sliding latch similar to what you would find in a bathroom stall. Don't depend on it for high security since it's likely only made out of plastic unless it has been printed using a metal material. However, it should be good for cabinets and any door that needs to be lightly secured.

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1. Mostly so that guests don’t have to look at the latch and wonder righty-tighty-lefty-loosey just to get out. [↩]
2. Did you notice both were made in OpenSCAD?  You really should learn… [↩]
3. Go forth my friends!  The the world is your dollar store! [↩]

Thingitag by whosawhatsis

Having seen the elegant tent-fold name tags for the objects in the BotCave display case, I’ve been been thinking about designing my own tags templates for objects in Inkscape so that I can mark what Skeinforge settings I selected, date of printing, etc.. But now MakerBot Operator whosawhatsis has not only made one set of awesome tags for prints, he has made two sizes. Really elegant tags….

What?! You tell me that it’s a bookmarklet I can use on any page in Thingiverse to generate tags automatically?! Now that is both cool and fantastically easy to use. If I can just figure out how to hook these tags around my 30% scaled Stanford Bunny prints….

Thingitag by whosawhatsis

I was showing off some of my designs at a recent Makerbot user group meeting, and I wished I had tags for them with QR codes and some other relevant data. This bookmarklet will generate such tags. Note: I initially set the license to CC-BY for the example picture because the CC licenses look a little nicer on the tags, but I've changed the license to PD, so feel free to use it however you want. Update: Some errors were reported with the DOM walking, so I rewrote those portions to use Regex instead. This should improve compatibility.

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Thingitag Jr. by whosawhatsis

I was showing off some of my designs at a recent Makerbot user group meeting, and I wished I had tags for them with QR codes and some other relevant data. This bookmarklet will generate such tags. This is a smaller version, with the QR code on one side and the human-readable information on the other. Note: I initially set the license to CC-BY for the example picture because the CC licenses look a little nicer on the tags, but I've changed the license to PD, so feel free to use it however you want. Update: Some errors were reported with the DOM walking, so I rewrote those portions to use Regex instead. This should improve compatibility.

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