MakerBot Industries

In the spring of 2010, Shapeways got a Cupcake CNC MakerBot with a MK4 extruder. The cupcake is an amazing machine that got 3000 people started in 3D printing, but the MakerBot MK4 Plastruder’s strong point was not printing small things like bunny ears. Shapeways printed out the Bowie Bunny by Rob Parthoens , which is one of their favorite prints and something that they use to compare machine types. It is a small model and stands about an inch tall from tip of the toes to top of the ears. As you can see in the image above, the MakerBot MK4 print of July 2010 left something to be desired.

At MakerBot, we live by the open source saying, “Release early and often!” and so we’ve been hard at work improving the technology since then. Fast forward a little more than a year and we’ve gone through the MK5, the MK6 and have just launched the MakerBot MK7 Plastruder. Look how much the MakerBot print has improved!

A few things that I noticed:

- When Shapeways printed the Bowie Bunny on their Cupcake CNC in 2010 the MK4 DC motor extruder had difficulty with the ears.  Back then printing tall thin parts on a Cupcake CNC required extremely careful calibration of a lot of arcane settings.  The Shapeways grey robust print from July of 2010 on their industrial commercial printer is clearly the superior print.

- In September 2011 the MakerBot print from a Thing-O-Matic with Generation 4 electronics and a MK7 stepper extruder with a 0.4mm nozzle was able to print Bowie Bunny at a layer height of 0.2mm – with stock settings right out of the box!  When shown side-by-side, the print from the Thing-O-Matic is comparable to the Shapeways commercial printer result.

- While there’s still a little ways to go to improving small features like the areas around the bunny’s ears, we’re looking forward to continuing to improve and develop our software so you can get professional quality results from your DIY printer right in your own home.

The difference from before is remarkable and I’m very proud of how far we’ve come in about a year! Thank you to everyone who has used a MakerBot and helped push it forward. We couldn’t have done this without the contributions of many people both internally who work at MakerBot and every MakerBot Operator in the community that’s given us support, feedback, or jumped in and been innovative. The future is bright. Full speed ahead!

If this sounds familiar, I apologize. You wash your pots and pans carefully, and on the rare occasion, even use soap. With your dishtowel, you dry off the last remnants of H20 and with any luck, you have a clean, water-free, cooking tool…with no home. The top of the stove looks convenient, until your last night’s sauce pan gets in the way of your cast iron skillet for your daily ostrich, bacon, and cheese omelet.

I’m a sucker for practicality and to this day have been looking for a good place to store my pots and pans. The cabinets work, until I have to stack one item on top of another, inevitably dirtying the bottom pot or pan. PolygonPusher‘s hook is brilliant: Strong, functional, and cheap. I’ll be printing some of these today to hang underneath my kitchen side table.

What’s particularly interesting about this Thingiverse item is the conversation about the, well, practicality of printing out such an item, when it would seem that these hooks could be sourced locally. PolyGonPusher gives a great explanation for why he did what he did, and it’s yet another example of what makes Thingiverse a fantastic forum for 3D design and printing.

Hook for hanging pots and pans by PolygonPusher

In this project I build a set of shelves for hanging pots and pans in my kitchen. For that I needed 27 hooks. In my local hardware store I did not find any suitable hooks so I decided to design and 3D print my own! :) This also saved me some money since a simple hook in the store costs $4 a piece, making the total $108!

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Here we have a very exciting new Thingiverse item: a Lego-compatible train!  This is a seriously viable toy, especially since we can already print compatible train tracks.  Add in the Lego blocks that you’ve already got at home (don’t pretend you threw them out…) and voilà: infinitely customizable train set!

You know, for kids.  I mean, I definitely don’t see any adults printing out these parts.  Who plays with toys at our age?

Thanks are due to prolific Thingiverse modeler sconine, who created this (and other) awesome 3d models for playing with.  I’m sure that he just printed these parts out to make sure they’re optimized for play.  For children to play with, I mean.  These things are for kids to play with.  Kids.

Toy Train for Legos by sconine

This is a derivative of my original train thingiverse.com/thing:11101 This version has wheels that work on the standard wood tracks that are a fairly common kids toy. There is also a 3D printer version of these available here: thingiverse.com/thing:8805 This version also accepts Legos and Mega Blocks. You can just snap them onto the top and build whatever you want.

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Miniatures for War Gaming by epengr

Thingiverse citizen epengr posted their very detailed and well finished gaming miniatures.  While many people have asked about whether a 3D printer is suitable for creating gaming miniatures, this is the very best example I’ve seen. ¹  These little guys were clearly painstakingly painted to look like a real army.

Miniatures for War Gaming with DBA or FoG Rules by epengr

These are a selection of elements that can be used with the ancient miniature war game rules De Bellis Antiquitatis or the fantasy version, Hordes of the Things. They may also work with Field of Glory, but I'm not very familiar with that game system. The most current version of these rules can be downloaded from the developers website (http://www.wrg.me.uk/) in the "History of WRG" section. They are planning to release a new version for sale later this year. These rules are sol as rules only, leaving it to the players to acquire figures from whatever vendor in whatever scale they choose. So why not just print your own! I settled on 10 mm scale after trying 15 mm and 6 mm. At 15 mm, the resolution limitations of the printer are rather obvious. At 6 mm... well, I just wouldn't want to paint 40 little men for one element of troops... 10 mm is a nice compromise and it give a good impression of massed troops. So far I've uploaded 4 of the 16 element types in the game. I hope to design the rest and upload them soon. There are a few additional elements in HotT such as dragons and Behemoths that I may or may not tackle, but I encourage anyone interested to jump in and supply their interpretation of these units!

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1. This was a farily common question at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 [↩]

These awesome  sculptures were created by artist Micah Ganske as part of collaboration with MakerBot for Art Star gallery.  The Wall Street Journal wrote about this fantastic union of art and technology on their Metropolis culture blog, calling MakerBot the “latest hit on the art fair circuit.” Check out the entire post here.

Micah’s limited-edition designs were sold at last week’s Affordable Art Fair. Visit Thingiverse if you want to print one of your own!

This week on MakerBot TV watch the head scans of Christopher Poole and Clay Shirky, hear about the coolest new way to go ‘vrooom‘ on Thingiverse and find out how Stepstruder MK7 was delivered to us from the future!

Special thanks to: Tony Buser for the use of Bobble Head Bob, 2ROBOTGUY for his alphabet design and Sirmakesalot for the engine models. Thanks to Charles Pax, Jonathan Monaghan and Yves Mervin-Leroy for getting in front of the camera. As well as Kevin MacLeod, Doctor Popular, and MakerBot’s very own Alan Bjorklund and Isaac Dietz for their musical contributions.

Here is one of the finest objects I have ever seen on Thingiverse: yes, it’s a toilet paper holder where the toilet paper comes out through the mouth.  Obviously, this is a tremendous win for functional, modern design.  At least in the sphere of functional, modern design that includes toilet paper holders and/or robot tongues.

Look at the face: is it smiling?  Is it frowning?  Is it screaming in fear?  No — it’s an robot face, which is emotionless, so you can’t tell exactly what’s going on.  Sort of like the Mona Lisa.

Thank you for advancing the state of the art, jag.  Much appreciated.  Um…would it be too much to ask for a tissue box holder?

Robot Head TP Holder by jag

I saw a ceramic version of this somewhere a while ago. This is based on what I remember of that design. This uses thingiverse.com/thing:8793 (syvwlch's awesome trapezoidal thread library)

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MakerBot Industries had a great time at World Maker Faire this year sharing the Turtle Shell Racers on the MakerBot Raceway as well as twenty Thing-O-Matics sporting brand new Stepstruder® MK7 toolheads. We have put together a few of our favorite photos from the event. Check out our slideshow for highlights from the weekend.

We are particularly proud of our MakerBot Raceway winners — who each more than deserved their MakerBot Awesome Awards! They have their very own winners slideshow below.

MakerBot will be at the BMW Guggenheim Lab today (09/24/11)  12PM – 5PM  — free 3-D printing lessons open to the public!

http://bit.ly/ojgvfC

“Who needs to outsource manufacturing anymore? Meet the kid-friendly future of manufacturing as the cooperative team of HTINK and the folks at MakerBot Industries bring their mobile mini-manufacturing plant to the BMW Guggenheim Lab. Whether you’re a real kid or just a kid at heart, a certified techie or confused by touchscreens, you’ll have fun using MakerBot’s mini 3-D printers to make your own gizmo, thingy, or doohickey. For young people and adults.”

This is far too silly to just let pass — it’s a handlebar mustache.  Yes, a mustache that attaches to your bike’s handlebars.  Get it?  Yes, you do.

So get printing and attach this to your fixie…or your foldie as the aptly-named mustachejack has done here.  But bravo for making something so brilliantly, purposefully useless!

Handlebar Mustache by mustachejack

This is a mustache I made for my bicycle handlebars. I originally made it much thicker but it kept breaking. Now it's been on my bike for two months without breaking. I've included the scad and dxf files I used should someone want to play with it.

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