MakerBot Industries

Burning Man

Dave Monachello wrote into our help desk with this inquiry:¹

I was wondering if anyone that uses Thingiverse is taking anything to Burning Man? A MakerBot seems like the perfect tool for the kind of giveawys us burners make to gift while on the playa.  Plus there is a large percentage of burners that are from SF and Silicon Valley so I figured there must be some intersection no?

Let’s help Dave out here.  Are you going to Burning Man this year?  Are you a Thingiverse citizen?  Are you taking a MakerBot?  What would you print in the middle of the desert if you had a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic at your disposal?  Please leave a comment letting everyone know!

1. Photo courtesy of lightmatter [↩]

Today, I’m excited to announce that MakerBot is taking $10 million in investment, with Foundry Group leading the round. Our investors are really invested–while Brad Feld and Foundry Group were getting to know us, they built their own MakerBot; you can visit Brad’s Thingiverse page to see what they’ve been printing! Foundry Group has worked with other startup companies that create hardware. We’re thrilled that they understand and support open source. This round will also include investment from Bezos Expeditions, True Ventures, RRE and many MakerBot angels (listed below). We are proud to be working with such great people and we are going to use this money do wonderful things.

To understand how we got to this point, let’s step into a MakerBotted time machine. In January of 2009, we started up the business and needed money to buy materials, make kits and then sell them. At that time, we were 3 guys, a lasercutter, and a dream. We went to our friend Jake Lodwick for $50k of seed investment. He let us take over a small corner of his office for inventory and shipping. Well, that little corner grew until we had taken over most of his office, at which point we had to move into our own space, the MakerBot Botcave.  In those early days we also got Adrian Bowyer, creator of the RepRap project, involved. He and his wife, Christine Bowyer, contributed $25k to bring us to $75k of seed money that helped start MakerBot.

With that initial $75k, we developed the first round of prototypes and put the first 20 MakerBot Cupcake CNCs into production. We sold them and bought more parts and made them into kits and sold those too. As of today, we’ve transformed that $75k into 5200 MakerBots in the wild.

In 2010, we invited some of our favorite people and teams to be MakerBot Angel investors. Shana Fisher led the angel round and the MakerBot Angels are Shana Fisher/High Line Venture Partners, Bezos Expeditions, Kal Vepuri, Steve Garfield, Jake Lodwick, Chuck and Claudia Pettis (my folks), Founder Collective, Antonio Rodriguez, True Ventures, Matt Mullenweg, Sam Lessin,  Joshua Schachter, Lerer Ventures, 500 Startups, and Thrive Capital.  This angel round investment gave us the confidence to grow!

Our seed investors, angel investors and now our venture investors are an all-star cast of awesome people and teams and we’re proud to have them involved as we explore the future of personal fabrication.

What’s going to change? Brad Feld of Foundry Group will be joining our board and we’re hiring to grow the MakerBot team to democratize manufacturing and make 3D printing more accessible to everyone!

There are perhaps not enough things on Thingiverse like this: a little bit dreamy, a bit strange, a bit…twee?  Maybe? At any rate, I hope that more modelers follow gwygonik’s lead and start modeling things based on sketches from non-engineers.  (Apologies if gwygonik’s wife is, in fact, an engineer.)

Gwygonik also shares a link to a story on his design blog.  It looks like we’ll be seeing more cool items from this designer soon.

But of course, the most important thing here is how good this print looks covered in tinfoil.  All hail the MothBee!

MothBee by gwygonik

This is a "robotic moth-bee" loosely based on a sketch by my wife. Story and more pictures here: gwygonik.posterous.com/66358440

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Just one example of a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic creation (the one on the right)

Just because Cracked.com is not necessarily the first source you’d think of when it comes to great tech reviews doesn’t mean they don’t make a valid point.  The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic is ranked right up there with augmented reality goggles, personal satellites, and zero-gravity flight as a “shockingly affordable Sci-Fi invention.”¹  They even give several suggestions on the kinds of things you can 3D print for yourself. ²

Besides, what could be a better investment than a tool that can make more of itself?

1. And, interestingly, the Thing-O-Matic personal matter replicator is even one of the cheapest options of these future-devices! [↩]
2. And, er…, one option several times… [↩]

The tireless innovators of blablabLAB are taking it to the streets again, this time in Stortorget (that’s “the Main Square” for us anglo-speakers) of Malmö, Sweden, this Thursday and Friday, August 25th and 26th.  If you’re hanging out in Malmö, and you haven’t seen the blablabLAB “Be Your Own Souvenir” project, or just want to see some Thing-O-Matics in action, head on over.  Hopefully there’ll also be a korvkiosk so you can pick up a tunnbrödsrulle…

Flying Maple Seed Model by qharley

This Maple Seed Helicopter design race was one of the swiftest little challenges we’ve run.  There were four entries tagged with “mapleseed”, not counting my own contribution.  Each submission added an interesting twist, but my favorite variation was the hook added to the heavy end of the seed by Stefan so that it could be shot into the air via a rubber band or slingshot.  Of the entries,qharley’s contribution went through a second iteration, was actually printed, and he posted his results.

At the time I’m writing this, Stefan’s entry received 8 likes + 0 comments¹ and qharley’s had 3 likes + 5 comments.  qharley might have a slight edge due to the secondary iteration of the same essential design garnering an additional 2 likes, but I feel quite comfortable calling this one a well-deserved tie.

Thanks again to @mostley for the idea for this challenge and all of the participants.  If anyone has an idea for a cool design challenge or design race, please leave a comment or e-mail me through Thingiverse or this website.

Maple Seed Experiment by Stefan

This is a maple seed concept I worked on last fall. I couldn't quite get my machine to print one perfectly. The super thin blade was problematic for my cupcake and settings. The hook is for a rubber band launch. I was hoping for a slingshot style launch into the blue with a slow flutter back to earth. It launches nicely, but only spins and falls slowly about half the time. It needs to be optimized for transition to spinning descent.

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Flying Mapleseed model by qharley

So, the other thing was a dart. Very purposeful and straight downwards movement on that thing. This one flies well, but I'll see if I can work out the CAD files for it. It was quite literally derived from the Free falling design. I changed it by hand until it worked. I have no idea if something like this is even printable with no support, and even so - the support may be stronger than the fragile wing. I will give the tip a flat foot to stand on. Printing vertically may be the only way forward.

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1. Not counting my own, here [↩]

Spaceships have landed at the GE Air Show.

Share what you want to build. Type it out, draw a sketch, or take a photo, and post it in the comments at www.facebook.com/GE or email hello.social@ge.com.

Also, check out a few of the other non-flying objects they have been adding to their Thingiverse page.

(Though we are pretty sure these might fly if you set your mind to the task.)

French Bulldog by GE

A model of a French Bulldog. A request from the GE's Air Show, all about non-flying things! Idea submitted by Jean M. to the GE Air Show at Facebook.com/GE

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Pickup Truck by GE

A lifted Pickup Truck, with super chunky off-road tires! A request from week 2 of the GE airshow, all about non-flying things. Idea submitted by Ethan G. to the GE Air Show at Facebook.com/GE

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A Kayak by GE

Just a simple Kayak. A request from week 2 of GE's Air Show, all about non-flying things. Idea submitted by Braeden N. to the GE Air Show at Facebook.com/GE

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MakerBot’s Tony Buser has been doing quite a few experiments with mashing up the heads we have been 3D scanning lately. He put Bre’s head on the Statue of Liberty, Stephen Colbert’s head on a Teddy Bear, and made a classic statue bust and plinth of his own 3D scan. Well, this line of investigations has lead finally to the inevitable, the highest form of statuary … bobbleheads!

Now, “bobbleheads” (also bobbing head dolls, nodders, wobbler, dashboard nodders, and “those things you get at baseball games sometimes”) have been a quest for MakerBot Operators for a while now — one actually calling up to ask what the “bobblehead setting” was for ReplicatorG.¹ Well, Tony didn’t stop his work at producing one bobblehead, he created parametric tools to help all of us make the bobbleheads we have been dreaming of!

Check out his detailed step-by-step instructions for how to use his negative object or “nega-thing” to punch the bobblehead cavity and spring mount into the base of your own head model! Or a hero’s head model. Or an enemy.

He includes a great “*sta”² base — and you can use his tools to design and share your own base as well. Tony has observed that mounting bobblehead on the turning spool works pretty well.  Bonus points to the first MakerBot Operator to artfully integrate a bobblehead into beatbot’s Spazzi! (Perhaps next to Isaac’s Sign of the Horns?)

Bobblehead *Sta by tbuser

The infamous Gangsta super sized and ready to accept infinite variations of mashups with mildly amusing bobbing heads. Uses Pin Connectors V2 thingiverse.com/thing:10541 to assemble the sections together. Nameplate uses OpenSCAD Bitmap Fonts Module thingiverse.com/thing:2054 Wibbly-wobbly-bobbly head action: youtube.com/watch?v=ctFl9GKmiiE

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Brebble Head by tbuser

Bre's head with the bobblehead mount underneath. Using Polhemus Scan of Bre Pettis thingiverse.com/thing:9010

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1. True story. [↩]
2. ie the classic Gangsta mashup model [↩]

The humble maple seed

A few days ago @mostley aka Sven H. suggested another design challenge – designing a “maple leaf copter.” ¹  For those of you who haven’t seen one, a maple seed has a long thin wing-like structure.  As the seeds fall, they spin rapidly.  The better the particular seed is balanced, the slower it falls and the faster it spins.  While there are some artificial models, such as this origami version, a 3D printable version would make an incredible quick-printing demonstration piece and all-around super cool toy.  Some of these links, especially this discussion forum with pictures and diagrams or perhaps a review of the origami model, might help you design your own.

So, to everyone who reads this blog…  I hereby challenge you to a “maple seed copter” design race.  All you have to do is design and upload a printable maple seed-inspired copter to Thingiverse and tag it with “mapleseed.”  There’s no prize money on this one, just bragging rights, so it’s open to everyone, enter as many times as you like, and make something awesome!  The winning design, determined by the number of likes + comments, will be announced Monday morning on the blog.  Good luck!

(Although, if are motivated by money, the $50.00 prize for the disc shooter challenge is still up for grabs!)

1. Photo courtesy of Armand Agasi [↩]

The title says it all. Or does it.

A father/daughter project of assembling a Thing-O-Matic didn’t stop when the last nut was bolted into place. A paint job was in order, but that meant the famed MakerBot logo had to go…temporarily of course. Instead of merely repainting the logo, Tinkerer and his daughter took it upon themselves to take that logo and render it in three dimensions, and then paint it.

What really gets me is this line in the description: “I created a 3D text of the MakerBot name/logo that you can print out to add bling to your printer.” Make sure to take a look at Tinkerer’s bot – it’s smokin’ hot.

MakerBot 3D Text Logo by Tinkerer

I created a 3D text of the MakerBot name/logo that you can print out to add bling to your printer or maybe blend into other objects like key chains or what have you. I created this in Solidworks (because that is what I know) so I attached the native part file in addition to the STL file. My daughter and I finished building our Makerbot Thing-O-Matic last week and we decided to paint it red on the outside and white on the inside. This obliterated the nice logo's that Makerbot prints on the wood, so that is what we decided to create this 3D printed logo to attach onto the front of the bot.

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