MakerBot Industries

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with Skeinforge 35′s Support preferences (located in the Raft tool) to print objects that either have nasty overhangs (so would be likely to drop loops) or do not offer an easy flat sides to print from. In the past, these tools worked, but lead to uneven results. But with the latest toolheads offering stepper driven extrusion and really precise temperature management, bridging and printing with support structure gets better every day.

One consequence of the mechanical and software engineering updates to the Thing-O-Matic printer: with each new round of releases it is worth the effort to experiment with tuning Skeinforge settings in the Raft tool so that you can see how your MakerBot responds to the new possibilities.

Here are the models I use for support testing:

• Wizzard by guru (the hat, sleeves, and arms are excellent support tests)
• a 40% scale, upside down Stanford Bunny (printing inverted will make it obvious if your settings are skewing your model)

I also have a really challenging support test (featured above): animator Raedia Albinson‘s abstract sculpture “SisterRaeSpiral3.” I can’t make this STL available (though she is considering sharing it with Thingiverse) but suffice it to say that this is a cluster of nested spiral tendrils with no flat base. Pretty much the most brutal support test I have found — so I keep threatening the R&D team to send it to them as a test print.¹

The Support settings are found within Skeinforge and can be accessed by clicking “Generate Gcode,” choosing a profile from the list, and then hitting the “Edit” button to open up the settings windows.

First Tip: Your settings in the Raft:Interface section will have a tremendous effect on your support material! So that Interface Infill Density (ratio) value determines how dense your support material will be (even though it isn’t in the support material section).

Second Tip: Can you use Support Material in combination with ReplicatorG 25′s Print-O-Matic features? Why, yes you can! Print-O-Matic overwrites some of the values in your profile, but not all of them. So you will be able to get the support material settings you like in your profile, and use a combination of activating “Raft” and picking a “Use support material” setting to use the Skeinforge:Raft settings you have added into your profile.

Here’s a great place to start for settings!

• Interface infill density (ratio): 0.4 (0.3-0.7)’
• Interface Layer Thickness over Layer Thickness: 1.2 ( also  0.7)
• Support Cross Hatch: No.
• Support Flow Rate over Operating Flow Rate (ratio): 0.7 (0.4-0.7)
• Support Gap over Perimeter Extrusion Width (ratio): 0.005
• Support Material Choice: Everywhere
• Support Minimum Angle (degrees): 35.0

1. And they keep saying “Bring it on!” [↩]

Hey folks!  This Monday brings a product announcement that should be exciting for some of you bleeding-edge types: a new, experimental 0.3mm nozzle for the Stepstruder MK6 and MK6+.

This is the smallest nozzle we’ve ever offered, and while we’ve decided that the 0.4mm nozzle is the best choice for general use, we wanted to get these nozzles into the hands of advanced MakerBotStars to see what they can do with them.  These nozzles have the same geometry and the same anti-stick coating as our other nozzles, but the a smaller opening does mean that it won’t work with the default printing profiles.  You’ll need to use Print-O-Matic in ReplicatorG 25 or roll your own custom Skeinforge profile.  Also, if you don’t have a stepper-based extruder, this isn’t going to work for you.

If  experimenting until you’ve got the perfect settings to get some of the best MakerBot prints ever sounds like loads of fun to you, then head over to the store and pick one up.

3D printed zoetrope

Each of these twelve sections was created with a 3D printer and then put together to show a figure walking.  Old school zoetropes had a thin wall all around the edge with slits through which you can observe the action.  As the zoetrope was rotated, the small glimpses through the holes in the wall would create the illusion of animation.  Newer zoetropes tend to use synchronized strobe lights so that the light comes on for a brief moment exactly when each segment reaches the point in the rotation where the prior segment was when the light was last on.  While still a work in progress the artist, Sam Ellis, has updated his website to show some more pictures and details.  He’s even promised to share the code for his work!

While we’ve seen animation using 3D printing before, this is probably the best example of something we could all be doing with our MakerBots right now.  Here’s what I’m hoping for – a stop motion video or zoetrope with a Gangsta.