MakerBot Industries

Does Bre Pettis dream of electric sheep?

MakerBot Cupcake operator and Thingiverse champion Skimbal has done it again. ¹  This is not a guy who does anything half way. ²  While not a prolific designer, his works have easily become some of the most epic and memorable pieces ever printed on a 3D printer. ³

Skimbal’s latest work, in collaboration with Jestin Stoffel of the Cowtown Computer Congress, created this multi-print job Bre Pettis talking head.  See if you can tell the difference between the one Skimbal printed and the original:

Bre Pettis Talking Head by Skimbal

Have you ever wished you could be in two places at once? Is the thought of getting up for that early morning TV Interview really cramping your nightlife? Never Fear! The Talking head is Here! Just pipe an audio signal through and watch as the Talking Head comes to life and lip sinks your prerecorded interview. Guaranteed to be totally effective on TV audiences everywhere. Here are some video's of it in actionyoutu.be/8QQwjhJsz18youtu.be/U_PERylb8xM A Collaboration between Michael Curry and Jestin Stoffel of the Cowtown Computer Congress The Glasses are a scaled down version of thingiverse.com/thing:5544

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1. I hesitate to claim he’s outdone himself simply because his work is always SO epic. [↩]
2. Well, I guess the VW bus would be the exception? [↩]

3. • VW Bus
   • Gothic Cathedral Play Set
   • Spider Pumpkin of DOOM
   • Rubber Band Gear Mechanism
   • CD-ROM Motor Pump
   • Christmas Lego Men
   • Bathtub U-Boat
   • Bre Pettis Talking Head

   [↩]

Sundial by tatsuya

With loads of simplicity and elegance, Tatsuya’s sundial is just plain awesome.  I love the clean lines, thoughtful place for a tiny compass, and the almost seashell like appearance.  Given the small size, this might even make a really good give-away to demonstrate the utility of a 3D printer.

An interesting thing about horizontal sundials is that they need to be customized to the latitude of its location.  There are two ways to do this – either by angling the gnomon¹ or by tilting the entire sundial back or forth to compensate for the differential caused by the latitude of its location versus the latitude for which it was created.  The simple math involved in customizing makes it a perfect candidate for an OpenSCAD model.

Sundial by tatsuya

I made a simple sundial. Make the south the top; and to the left side 9°=1:00 18°=2:00 30°=3:00 45°=4:00 60°=5:00 Make the south the top; and to the right side 9°=11:00 18°=10:00 30°=9:00 45°=8:00 60°=7:00 Projection plate: Let's create a triangle on the latitude of the place where you live.

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http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:9082

1. The triangular bit on a sundial that casts its shadow [↩]

The Open Hardware Summit has just put out a call for submissions!  If you have a cool open hardware project (perhaps one which uses some MakerBot electronics or MakerBotted parts, perhaps?) then get your proposal over to proposals [AT] openhardwaresummit.org no later than June 24th at 11:59pm (EST).

For more details, see the complete post. And Good Luck, open hardware innovators!

Just caught this  quick, elegant 3D turntable animation of the electronics portion of the DIY MakerBot Watch project shared by Cafart. Don’t have many details about how this was made, but great work!

And also, if you haven’t seen this before, NYC Resistor’s own Mark Tabry wrote some fantastic code to bring in the new year with the MakerBot Watch back in 2009. Demonstrated below is the clock, New Year’s Eve, and party modes. (Video courtesy of Charles Pax.)

MakerBot Watch by makerbot

This kit is hard to make! It's SMD soldering and it's freaking hardcore. We're selling them at just a little bit more than cost because this is for alpha users! We're going to go into production on these and they will come mostly assembled. We are just selling these as alpha kits. There is no guarantee or warranty at all. Bre has made four of them and three of them required a lot of fussing with the soldering until he got rid of all the solder bridges. Specs: * Atmega328 chip with Arduino bootloader on it. * 6 pin header for bootloading. Also includes access to 4 I/O pins and power and ground * 6 pin header for programming. * 4 pin extension header for plugging in other things like sensors or shields that extend the watch. * 16mhz crystal. * Piezo buzzer * 3 pushbutton switches It has 12 LEDs to mark the hour and 12 LEDs to mark the 5 minute marks plus an extra 4 LEDs to mark the 4 extra minutes that aren't shown. So if it was 12:04 the hour LED in the 12 position would be lit up and the Minute LED in the 12 position would be lit up and the 4 extra minutes would be lit up to show that it's 12:04. Besides having it work on a watch, there are a number of other possibilities because it's an arduino environment on your wrist! You will need a TTL Cable and USBTiny programmer to program this kit. (Available here in the MakerBot store. Documentation is available in the wiki at wiki.makerbot.com/makerbot-watch We ordered a bunch of prototype boards and I've made them into 18 kits and put made them really cheap to just get them out there in the world and get friends playing with them. This is for alpha users because it is realllllly hard! I have soldered up 4 of them and 3 of them had major solder bridges that made me swear a lot. Be prepared for a serious smd challenge! Here's the google group for it: groups.google.com/group/makerbotwatch If you get one, you really really really need to join! Here's the wiki documentation: wiki.makerbot.com/makerbot-watch Here's the link to the store where you can get it: store.makerbot.com/electronics/electronics-kits/makerbot-watch-kit.html

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Omar: I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase. It’s all in the game though, right?

I know that we’ve covered chess sets, Gangsta mashups, and other models by Renosis.  But how could we pass this one up? It’s simultaneously one of the best mashups and one of the best chess sets on Thingiverse, as well as a brilliant metaphor for life.  Aren’t we all in the game, somewhere, whether or not we want to be?

I personally admire the rook, pictured here.  Not only is he one of the most handsome models on the board, he’s also one of the most important pieces.  The model is brilliant, with the turreted head, he is at once jester and stalwart, the corner and turning-point of one’s strategy.

This is a brilliant set of models and one of the best original works on Thingiverse.  Thanks to Renosis and all the other modelers who’ve made Thingiverse the vibrant community that it is today.

Gangsta Chess by Renosis

This is Gangsta Chess! Now you can wage your own criminal underground turf war in your home! This design is a mashup/derivative based on the original gangsta, created by the OG himself, Yzorg. I designed this as an entry to a design challenge that was created to settle a friendly disagreement between MakerBlock and I. I guess this is how makers settle disputes! Each gangsta has his own special chess style hat (or replacement head for the knight) to signify which piece he is. He also has a piece logo on his shirt, to make it easier to identify the pieces, because there is nothing more frustrating than playing chess with pieces that are hard to identify or not instantly recognizable. Unfortunately, the deadline for the challenge is coming up really fast, so I was only able to print up the black pieces minus pawns. I expect to use Z scaled down gangstas for pawns. The files were created in OpenScad. I have uploaded the file, but the code isn't that clean. Thanks to Syvwlch and MakerBlock for their advice during creation. Update: Unfortunately, the pawns, which I am printing 8 simultaneously, are going to take 6 hours to print! So, I probably won't have the entire chess set printed (white pieces) until Wednesday morning.

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