MakerBot Industries

Mars Exploration Rover by tbuser

In honor of Space Month on Thingiverse, MakerBot’s own Tony Buser has designed an amazing replica of the Mars Rover:

Articulated, snap together, Mars Rover! No screws, glue, or support structure needed (although some glue in a few places wouldn’t hurt). All the parts can be posed, turned, twisted. The wheels turn and the legs even pivot like the real thing to go over obstacles! Unfortunately, it is not autonomous.

42 separate pieces with 20 unique parts, painstakingly arranged into just five printing plates.  Designs like this really push the boundaries of what’s possible with just a 3D printer.  Parts that snap together with no hardware or glue, while still being movable means you can basically make any kind of plastic object out there.  It’s probably not long at all before we see a printable Transformer.

With any luck, a printed version might even be able to find its way back home.

Mars Exploration Rover by tbuser

Articulated, snap together, Mars Rover! No screws, glue, or support structure needed (although some glue in a few places wouldn't hurt). All the parts can be posed, turned, twisted. The wheels turn and the legs even pivot like the real thing to go over obstacles! Unfortunately, it is not autonomous.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover2011-07-19 Update: V3 fixes a problem with plate 5 that was causing some pieces to be too close together and get merged, makes the axel holes in the body a little tighter, half the panels in the plates have been flipped so that the shiny side of all pieces printed on a HBP can be on top, I made the dimples on the panel tabs larger so they hold together better, and I also added squares to the panels to make them look more like solar panels.2011-07-16 Update: I uploaded a new version of everything with a few changes like dimpled tabs for the solar panels (thanks to gpvillamil) and slightly larger holes to make it easier to snap bolts into. I also added a variable to the openscad script called tolerance that you can use to make those holes slightly larger. If you print the tolerance_test.stl you can use it to help find the right tolerance for your printer. The holes range from a tolerance value of 0.0 to 0.6 in 0.1 increments and the files I uploaded are 0.2

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Hey everybody!  I went looking on Thingiverse for some things that might help you celebrate le quatorze juillet and I must say…things are not looking so French right now.  We have the French Curve which actually does look vaguely French.  And then there are these French Fries…and that’s about it.  A search for France turns up some French Thingiverse users (formidable!) but not a lot of France-themed 3d models.  I don’t even see a fleur-de-lis.

I was really hoping for a small model of the Bastille itself which an enterprising printer might be able to print and then overrun with a number of mini-figs.  Let’s all get modeling so we can symbolically throw off the tiny plastic shackles of oppression next year, fellow-citizens!

Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort!