MakerBot Industries

Wow, just one short week after I issued the challenge (or request, really…) sirmakesalot comes through with this amazing print.

Ok, so this doesn’t have a fully-working valve assembly or intake/exhaust manifolds, sure.  But the thingiverse community (sirmakesalot anyway) knocked this one out pretty quickly…and that makes my head dance with ideas about fully-printable, crowd-sourced engine upgrades.  Sure, we can reprogram ECUs, and there are even some intrepid souls out there converting their hybrids to plug-in…but this is really exciting stuff.  Want to bore out your engine?  Just print a new block and some new cylinders.  Taller cruising gear?  Print it out!  I bet there’ll be parametric scripts to generate custom transmissions.  The only question is…who will have them?  Just your mechanic, or will your Tesla econobox come with the source code?

Ok, we can’t run gasoline through these ABS models (yet), but this is amazing work.  Her’s a big tip of the cap to sirmakesalot and his inspiring work.

4 cylinder motor by sirmakesalot

Like my single cylinder motor? Well here is a four cylinder demonstration model. I like to make mechanical things and this was something I wanted to model in 3d. The printable v8 is on the way! It was brought to my attention that the STL files weren't all they could be so I have fixed them, no more Skieinforge errors! I have added a larger set of pistons but it requires really good settings.

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