MakerBot Industries

The MakerBot Family of Stepper Motors

Good news! We’ve launched all three of the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic’s motors for individual sale in the store this morning! We have had lots of requests to make the Threaded Rod Nema 17 and High Torque Nema 17 available, and now we can. The third motor shown is our new NEMA 17 model with a 5mm shaft, which now ships with our bots.

We can’t wait to see what awesome devices you build with these great motors- send in your photos!

Threaded Rod NEMA 17 Stepper Motor

High Torque NEMA17 Stepper Motor

Hybrid NEMA 17 Stepper Motor

Curvey bits in 3DTin.com

If you haven’t checked out 3DTin.com in a little while, it’s definitely worth another look.  When 3DTin.com appeared a few months ago it could only be used for designing 3D objects out of cubes.  Designing with just cubes can be quick and reasonably easy, but the end result can have a rough texture.

Since then, Jayesh Salvi, the creator of 3DTin.com has been hard at work developing even more functionality.  He’s added 11 new shapes including cylinders, cone, wedge, sphere, and several variations on these.  You can even specify some of the parameters for these components – such as the radius or height of a cylinder.  Once added, these new parts can be rotated and flipped to suit.

This new functionality is going to allow people to design even more interesting and detailed objects.  These would be amazing additions in any 3D design program, but their inclusion in a browser based program that can export directly to Thingiverse is just plain incredible.

Cho Oyu and Ngozumpa Glacier by bld

I have written before about the interesting mapping projects appearing on Thingiverse lately, but MakerBot Operator bld‘s Cho Oyu and Ngozumpa Glacier is the first I’ve seen of Thingiverse users creating 3D printed maps/scale models of terrain that might be useful for planning actual real-world mountaineering expeditions.

Cho Oya, on the border between Tibet and China, is the 6th highest mountain in the world. The Ngozumpa glacier at its feet is the longest glacier in the Himalayas, and has been a crucial area of scientific investigation regarding the effects of global warming on the region. bld modeled the NW and SW quadrants of the glacier for “a friend’s expedition to study the glacier.” And while bld promises to post further recipes for how to mine primary sources for creating models from any geo data, nonetheless the thing post for this object is a lesson in how to work with the data to create printable, accurate-to-scale models.

In particular, I found the following helpful:

I found that the default scale of the Blender displacement maps was too flat. I did a test print and used calipers to get the scale right. Each pixel in X/Y is 90-m. To get the vertical relief correct, I measured the height of known parts of the map (summit of Cho Oyu and a nearby valley) and compared this to terrain maps in Google maps and the width of the model (200 pixels multiplied by 90m).

Cho Oyu As Seen From Gokyo (I want to go to there)

Cho Oyu and Ngozumpa Glacier by bld

Cho Oyu, 6th highest mountain in the world, and the Ngozumpa glacier below it. Model has 4 quadrants (NW, NE, SW, SE) including Cho Oyu and the north end of Ngozumpa (NW), the southern end of Ngozumpa (SW), and two quadrants to the east including Mt. Everest (NE and SE). I printed the NW and SW quadrants for a friend's expedition to study the glacier. UPDATE: See thingiverse.com/thing:16851 for instructions on making your own.

This thing brought to you by

Hey folks!  We just wanted to share a few photos from our booth at Blipfest last week.  Not only did we have a great time, but the blipsters seemed to really enjoy it.  There were a lot of folks who already knew about us (and were excited to see a Thing-O-Matic in action) and a whole lot of other people who got their minds blown up by the future.  I even bought a backlight for my gameboy.  And it was great to see Bubblyfish in action.

I think it’s fair to say a good time was had by all.

Worthless Dice by blarbles

I’ve recently learned a few tricks with Inkscape to help me better use my Unicorn. ¹  Since then I’ve discovered that Inkscape can be used to import, edit, and export to DXF files. ²  This is especially relevant given my recent OpenSCAD tutorial that covered converting DXF paths to 3D solids.

Inkscape comes with a DXF exporting function, but it doesn’t seem to work well with OpenSCAD.  I believe the reason for this is that Inkscape exports DXF files in DXF R13 format which uses certain features that are not supported by OpenSCAD.  There are several ways to work around this:

• Use an earlier version of Inkscape. Around about Inkscape version 0.46 or so, it would export DXF files in R12 format – which OpenSCAD can understand.
• Break all curves into lines. Nudel posted his method for exporting to DXF files using any version of Inkscape. ³  Basically he suggests breaking all curves into their component lines.
• Use a different plugin. I have found using the “Better DXF Output” plugin would save my Inkscape drawings as DXF R12 files, which OpenSCAD could interpret.

Once you’ve got your DXF file, don’t forget to check out the OpenSCAD tutorial on extruding 2D objects.

1. Inkscape is a free open source vector drawing program. [↩]
2. Photo courtesy of blarbles’ OpenSCAD tutorial homework! [↩]
3. I’ve updated my OpenSCAD tutorial to link to this post as well [↩]