MakerBot Industries

Check out this Crunchgear video of John Biggs getting scanned! You’re coming to the party right? It’s not a LAN party, it’s a SCAN party!

In last week’s Robot Hospital, I was remiss in mentioning the test piece I used to demonstrate that Skeinforge issue.  So I just wanted to give credit where it’s due, and spotlight this useful calibration print by the tireless MiseryBot.

This is a really nice calibration piece, and it should be helpful for many issues other than the one I mentioned.  It can also bring out other skeinforge bugs, as you can see from the main item photo.

And of course, it’s brilliant at demonstrating the “extra shells” bug — print one with 2 extra shells, and you’ll see see that the narrowest X’s and O’s are unfilled — then print one with zero extra shells and it’s hunky dory.  Remember that next time you’re printing an item with very thin walls and they’re coming out hollow!

And don’t forget to check in tomorrow afternoon for this week’s episode of Robot Hospital!

Wall Thickness Calibration Test Piece by MiseryBot

THIS THING IS FAMOUS! Shows up at 1:54 on this episode of Robot Hospital: youtube.com/watch?v=shpt1hD4z7Y This thing can be used to see what your skeinforge settings and bot will do for certain wall thicknesses: 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2 The OpenSCAD is included in case you want to try other thicknesses. The image has the "as designed" thickness in green, the measured straight wall thickness "as printed" in red (for my bot, of course), and the measured cylinder thickness in purple. My bot is set up with 0.25mm layer thickness and W/T of 2.0 for theoretical wall thickness or 0.5mm. For reference, I am using the MakerBot 0.4mm nozzle, but that really does not come into play. Slightly related to: thingiverse.com/thing:7114

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Curling

As printed plastic parts cool the different areas of the object can cool at different rates. ¹  Depending upon the parts being printed, this effect can lead to warping and curling.  Although PLA has a much lower shrinkage factor than ABS, both can warp and curl, potentially ruining a print.  There are some very common ways to deal with this potential problem, the most notable being a heated build platform.  However, sometimes that might not be enough.

1. Use a heated build platform.  A heated build platform helps keep the lowest levels of a print warm as the higher layers are printed.  This allows the overall print to cool more evenly.  A heated build platform, sometimes abbreviated as HBP, helps tremendously with just about any ABS print and large PLA prints.
2. Print with a raft.  Rafts are a printing option in ReplicatorG and Skeinforge.  They’re basically a large flat lattice work of printed material underneath the lower-most layer of your printed object.  They’ll also help reduce warping and curling by allowing your printed object to adhere better to your flat build surface.  Other variations on this are to print with a larger raft and/or a thicker raft comprised of more layers.
3. Calibrate your starting Z height.  A good first layer makes all the difference.  If your starting Z axis height is too high, the extruded filament won’t be able to make a good bond with the platform.  If you think your Z axis starting height is too high, try lowering it by 0.05mm increments until you find a good first layer.
4. Get the right build surface.  Some people have experimented with different surfaces such as steel, titanium, glass, different kinds of plastic, different kinds of tape, and foam board.  However, I find both ABS and PLA seem to stick really well to hot or warm Kapton tape.
5. Clean your build surface.  ABS and PLA stick better to a clean build surface.  Keep it clean of dust, pieces of old prints, and any other debris.
6. Print slower.  Printing slower allows finer detail, better adhesion to the build surface and lower layers, and gives the printed part more time to cool evenly.
7. Print cooler.  Printing at a lower temperature isn’t always an option.  Ideally, you should be printing at the lowest temperature required for extrusion and that allows good interlayer adhesion.  However, trying lower temperatures isn’t for the faint of heart.  Printing at a too low a temperature could cause harm to your extruder motor or extruder.
8. Eliminate drafts or enclose your robot.  Forrest Higgs found that having his 3D printer too close to an open window caused very uneven heating across his build surface.  This in turn caused the side of his prints closest to the window to curl.  Since keeping the window closed wasn’t an option for him, he compensated for the window drafts by adding a heat lamp.  Cupcake and Thing-O-Matic owners might have an easier time of eliminating drafts by simply enclosing two or three of the sides of their robots.  It will also have a fortunate side effect of helping to control fumes.
9. Design with mouse ears.  Zach Smith’s solution was to add little discs to corners of an object to help those corners stick to the platform.  These essentially serve as “mini-rafts” to give those corners more surface area and better adhesion without having to print an entire raft.
10. Design with aprons to hold down corners.  Forrest Higgs suggested adding “aprons” around an object to be printed, while that object was being printed on a raft.  These low thick pieces of plastic help keep the raft flat and help prevent any curling or warping from affecting the desired printed object itself.
11. Design with surrounding thermal walls.  While Forrest Higgs’ apron approach provides a mechanical advantage of essentially holding down corners with a chunk of plastic, Nophead has added thin surrounding walls to his designs to act as baffles to keep warm air around the printed object as it moves around.  He’s postulated that a very thin surrounding wall could have the same beneficial effect as printing inside an enclosed build chamber.  Interestingly, it seems that Nophead suggests that designing objects with more rounded corners might also help avoid curling and warping at those corners.
12. Reduce infill.  When printing a model you can chose to print it hollow, completely solid, or some percentage between zero and 100.  However, as Nophead points out even the plastic inside a model exerts a force on the entire printed object as it cools.  It stands to reason that the more plastic you have, the more those pieces of plastic will pull against themselves and the build surface as they cool.  By reducing infill there will a reduced amount of internal tension as the object cools.  Reducing these internal forces by printing with a lower infill ratio can help reduce curling and warping as well.
13. EDIT:  Sand the Kapton.  Charles Pax has suggested that sanding a Kapton tape build surface will increase the surface area, making it easier for the molten plastic to stick.
14. EDIT:  ABS surface.  Some have suggested essentially painting the build surface with liquid ABS.²  This is has the same effect of laying down a big flat raft.

If you’ve got some suggestions, tips, or tricks that you use to fight warping and curling, please leave a comment below!

1. Photo courtesy of backpackphotography [↩]
2. ABS dissolved in acetone or ABS glue [↩]

Thingiverse citizen Chris aka TheNewHobbyist just posted a fantastic new video in his “Everyday Fixes with MakerBot” series.  There are a lot of great things about this post, but one of my favorites is just how quickly he goes from photograph of the object to fixed tacklebox. ¹  He basically took a top-down view photograph of the clip, imported it into Google Sketchup, traced it, scaled it to size, exported as a standard STL file, then printed it FTW.²  Chris has also uploaded his work to Thingiverse so you can benefit from his ninja Sketchup design skillz.

I almost want to go out and get a tacklebox just to use some of these clips.

Tackle Box Replacement Clip by TheNewHobbyist

This is a replacement clip for a tackle box I purchased. The model can likely be scaled to fit your needs, though I'm not sure if there are any "standard" clip sizes. I modeled the part from the original manufactures piece using a photograph, a digital caliper and Google Sketchup. This may be a good candidate for OpenSCAD but I've yet to learn how to use it. The replacement I printed actually snaps and holds tighter than the clip from the manufacturer! Here's a link to my blog post showing the modeling/printing of the part: thenewhobbyist.com/2011/06/everyday-fixes-with-makerbot-3-tacklebox-clip/

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1. I can only hope that he uses this tacklebox to keep all the clips that have fallen off of his other tackleboxes. [↩]
2. For the win, natch. [↩]

This is the end...

That’s right folks: this is the end of an era.  We have looked over the numbers, and it’s official: we’ve just sold the very last Cupcake CNC kits that we’ll ever be able to offer.

Though we’ve moved on to bigger and better things, the Cupcake was the kit that got it all started for us, and we’ll never forget that.  It’s also still a darn good little machine, so if you have an order that’s among the last, you’ve just gotten yourself a great deal on your first 3d printer.

This must be what it’s like to send your kids off to college…snif.  I told myself I wouldn’t cry…

Of course we still have lots of parts for servicing and upgrading your Cupcakes at the store, so don’t be a stranger!  Check in once in awhile!

Yes, that's a rabbit.

As viewers of Robot Hospital may know, I am a huge fan of items that are used to stick pieces of fruit to things.  This is mainly because these items are generally intended to feed small, cute animals, and I am, in general, a supporter or small, cute animals.  As long as they are not vicious.

For these reasons, I was very excited to learn that it was also possible with vegetables, thanks to CloudMaker‘s elegant design.  I am a bit concerned about its performance with thicker carrots, but this is a “Work In Progress” so I expect updates.

I haven’t made a “What’s up Doc” joke as of yet…I apologize for this oversight.

Carrot Holder by CloudMaker

Just a carrot holder to attach to a bunny cage so the carrot wont lay in the dirt. Edit: Uploaded updated file carrotholder2, improved design! :-)

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Slow down, you move to fast. You've got to make the moment last.

Over the weekend I was experimenting with really really fast feedrates for my Thing-O-Matic. ¹  What I discovered was that if I start even a complex object off very slowly, I could run the Thing-O-Matic pretty darn fast. ²  The tricky bit was getting that first layer to print slowly enough.³

After some poking and prodding in Skeinforge, I found the settings here:

• Raft -> Object First Layer -> Object First Layer Feed Rate Infill Multiplier (ratio)
• Raft -> Object First Layer -> Object First Layer Feed Rate Perimeter Multiplier (ratio)
• Raft -> Object First Layer -> Object First Layer Flow Rate Multiplier (ratio)

I set each of these settings to the same value.  However, my target range was between 10 and 15mm/s.  So, I look the Feedrate from the Speed settings, and discovered that I would have to reduce my Feedrate to 30% of it’s normal speed in order to get within that range.  Thus, I entered 0.3 in each of the above settings.

The result was an almost agonizingly slow first layer – but a print that adhered well to the heated build platform, did not deform as the infill was applied, and provided an excellent base layer for the rest of the print. ⁴

1. Feedrate is the speed of the X and Y axes.  Flowrate is the speed at which the plastic comes out of the nozzle. [↩]
2. More on the speed stuff in a later post. [↩]
3. Photo courtesy of Jakob E. [↩]
4. If you’re curious, I was printing the 27-to-1 gear toy [↩]

MakerBot Industries is hiring! We’re looking for smart, driven developers to help us build the software that will define 3D printing for thousands of users. Candidates should be independent workers with strong software design sense. You’ll form the kernel around which we’re building our software shop; good team leadership skills are key.

Requirements:

• Strong C/C++ skills
• Experience working with small, nimble teams
• Good understanding of 3D geometry
• Ability to quickly grasp new ideas and technologies

Desirable skills:

• Embedded platform development (AVR, ARM)
• Qt (on the desktop)
• OpenGL programming
• Git/Github
• Python
• Understanding of open source and the OS community

This position is located in Brooklyn, NY. To apply, fill out the online application, and be sure to upload your resume. We look forward to hearing from you!

About Us
MakerBot Industries is a rapidly growing, Brooklyn-based startup that designs and manufactures low cost 3D printers. We make machines that make things! We’re deeply committed to open source hardware and software, and have the goal of getting these incredible tools into the hands of makers, inventors, and ordinary people around the world.

How to Apply
Visit our Online Application to apply!

Duplicating Disc Detainer Keys by nrp

Thingiverse user nrp has been working on using his 3D RepRap printer in some pretty amazing ways.  He’s already put his 3D printer to use along with a Kinect to print by use of hand gestures.  Since then he’s been working on duplicating house keys and the more secure disc detainer keys pictured above.  Nrp’s website, and the comments that go along with his detailed posts, provide a wealth of information about his project along with lots of interesting links about computer enhanced key generation.

This project and the way nrp uses his printer remind me of the very cool Nickel for Scale project by Amy Hurst and MakerBot’s own Marty McGuire.  How cool would it be to never have to go get keys made again?  I don’t think it’s too much to dream that one day you might be able to put a key down next to a nickel, take a picture or short video, and have your MakerBot crunch out a few duplicates.

Duplicating House Keys by nrp

Full writeup on my blog at: eclecti.cc/hardware/physical-keygen-duplicating-house-keys-on-a-3d-printer It occurred to me recently that I had printed almost nothing actually useful on my RepRap 3D printer, aside from parts to improve on or build more RepRaps. I am rectifying that with this project. The goal here is to generate working house keys by inputing the key code of the lock into a parametric OpenSCAD model. Instead of having to explain to my landlord how I ended up with a wedge of plastic jammed in my front door, I ordered a box of (well) used locks and latches from eBay to experiment on. Luckily, the lot includes both Kwikset KW1 and Schlage SC1 locks, which are the two most commonly found in the US. I created an SC1 model to start with, but I’ll probably make a KW1 soon. EDIT: I uploaded a KW1 model as well. Designing the key model was actually pretty straightforward. I measured a key with a ruler and calipers and created an approximate model of it that is reasonably easy to print. I then got pin depth specifications and parametrically differenced them out of the model. To generate new keys, you can just edit the last line of the file and enter in the key code for your key. If the code isn’t written on the key, you can measure the height of each bit and compare to the numbers in the Root Depth column on the aforementioned pin depth site. Perhaps more nefariously, you could implement something like SNEAKEY to generate key codes without physically measuring the key.

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Duplicating Disc Detainer Keys by nrp

Writeup containing actual links at eclecti.cc/hardware/physical-keygen-now-for-disc-detainer-locks The Physical Keygen post got some interesting reactions, but there was a common claim among many of them that it was just a gimmick because there are more practical ways of getting past basic Schlage and Kwikset pin tumbler locks. I agree with that, and I’ll also admit that a fair number of my projects are gimmicks, or as a stretch, art. Schuyler Towne of Open Locksport saw past the gimmick (or art) and into the possibility of printing keys for more interesting locks. He stopped by recently with a collection of said locks, and over the period of a few hours we found that keys for disc detainer locks were printable and created a nearly working ABUS Plus key. He left me a cutaway lock, and over the next week, I refined the model to the point of working straight off of the printer. Despite being a higher security lock than the SC1 or KW1 pin tumblers I was working with before, the key is much easier to print accurately. The OpenSCAD model is linked below, and like the last files, you simply edit the last line to match the code for your key. The ABUS Plus and other disc detainer locks are much more common in Europe than the US, but we do have a pretty ubiquitous example around here. After the Bic Pen debacle in 2004, Kryptonite switched their bicycle U-locks from tubular to disc detainer. I designed a model off of the key from the Kryptonite Evolution I have, but as of yet, I have not successfully opened the lock with it. The key is smaller and thinner than the ABUS Plus, causing it to flex too much to effectively turn the last few discs. I’ve posted the file anyway, in case someone has stronger plastic or an idea to strengthen the model. EDIT: The Kryptonite key works. I tightened my X and Y belts and printed it a bit slower. Apparently some of the blobbing on the corners before was catching on disks.

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Candle of Android's Mascot by mah_digilife

When I saw the above image I first thought, “Gah!  Have we learned nothing from the flaming bunnies!”  After reading the entire description, I was greatly relieved and excited to see mah_digilife was using their MakerBot for printing molds, not candles.   His description, list of materials, instructions, and numerous pictures should be enough to help anyone get started in candle making.  These directions could probably be used to help make molds for candles, soap, and probably even little silicone objects as well.  What a great new use for a 3D printer!

Candle of Android's Mascot by mah_digilife

Derivative of thingiverse.com/thing:7188 . I made the candle from the mascot of android's print. It might be good for the candle making?

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