MakerBot Industries

Two Color World by m6mafia, ecohen, JonMonaghan, and Skimbal

With the launch of the brand spanking new MakerBot Stepstruder MK7 the citizens of Thingiverse have already started to upload designs that take advantage of the ability to print in two materials during the same build.  Whether it is printing in two-tones, such as the “Two Color World” above, or by using a dissolving support material like PVA, there’s no denying the coolness that is a dual extrusion build.

So, what would you do with a second extruder in your 3D printer? ¹  A single print chessboard?  A single print zebra?

Oh!  I know!  How about a gangsta that dissolves in water and leaves behind a slouching skeleton? ²³⁴  Or, how about a surprise box that you can only see inside once you dissolve the cube in water?

1. Thanks to Geo for spotting a typo here! [↩]
2. Skelesta? [↩]
3. Solusta? [↩]
4. Dissolvesta? [↩]

Toy Robot Toolkit by tbuser

There are now 21 entries in the MakerBot Mascot GrabCAD Challenge with just 9 days to go!  You can check out the hopeful robot mascot competitors here.  There’s still time to design and upload your own!

The number of cool camera-related items keeps slowly climbing.  The camera gantry from jman (pictured above) is not only the most recent entry but also a very clever one: it includes beautifully knurled knob surfaces and a sturdy adjustments…and much of it is available in parametric OpenSCAD files.

This is an especially cool device since it really serves a different purpose than a normal tripod, it’s always awesome to see Thingiverse users making new, cool stuff to solve challenges that mass-market products can’t.  Well done jman!

Camera Gantry by jman

I needed a way of holding a camera in a stable position for desktop photographing of various small items. A desktop tripod was not really working for me, so I designed this gantry (a bit derived from a traveling crane!) The camera can be held at a wide variety of orientations and heights, and then easily locked in place by tightening the knobs at either end. The whole thing collapses down flat to go in a cupboard. The non-plastic parts are four 12mm by 400mmm aluminium tubes, with caps on to avoid scratching and slippage, a piece of thick plywood 50mm by 350mm (in my case with some aluminium angle along the edges for reinforcement), two M6 * 65mm hex bolts with washers and nuts, four M4 * 25mm bolts with washers and nuts, and some foam for under the camera.

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