MakerBot Industries

Experiencing Post Maker Faire Depression (either because you’re sad that you weren’t there or you’re sad that it’s over)?

Well, come with me and re-live the GLORY! This week’s episode of MakerBot TV: all-you-can-eat-Maker-Faire! Check out the 3D printing scene; catch the guest star appearances of Spazzi, Keepon, and BreBot; hear interviews with MakerBot enthusiasts; and sit on the sidelines of the Turtle Shell Races!

Special thanks to: Tristan Juan, Forest Crossman, Luis Rodriguez and Timmy Chao Li for their interviews.
As well as Kevin Macleod, Ciccilleju and Doctor Popular for the music.

While we were away showing off Turtle Shell Racers at Maker Faire, Thingiverse users like DrWeidinger have been busy making more awesome things, just as ever.  Case in point: this clever print to make playing with magnets even more fun.

This is a three-pronged version which you can use to assemble polyhedra; it’s a “Work in Progress” so I wonder if we might see some versions with different numbers of prongs.

So print them out, have fun but remember: DO NOT EAT THE MAGNETS, even if they look really tasty.

Magnet Toy by DrWeidinger

This magnet toy is great for exploring geometric shapes and the awesome power of MAGNETS. It is inspired by natural geometry and buckyballs, which are way too much fun. Unless you eat them. DO NOT EAT THE MAGNETS.

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Qball by Benoit

Benoit’s Qball is a cute little printed-plastic-and-rubber-band creation that snaps back into semi-spherical shape after being deformed. ¹  This little gem makes use of only two different printed parts² plus a number of rubber bands, so it could probably be built into an arbitrarily large springy structure.  I like this one because strikes me as a great conversation starter or desk fidget toy.

Qball by Benoit

A few years ago I was interested in Penultimate Modular Origami by James S. Plank cs.utk.edu/~plank/plank/origami/penultimate/intro.html folding paper into geometrical spheres. Now there's a rapman in my stable and paper turned into polylactic acid. This is my first printed object, I hope you"ll enjoy it! Can be pressed, stretched, thrown, twisted, and the bow-connectors could be basic elements for connecting rubbers into anything! In TwistinTheCube.skp I tried to reveal how you get a Qball by twisting a cube, before it becomes a cuboctahedron.

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1. There’s also a lasercuttable version by nikor! [↩]
2. One that goes over and one that has a bend in it to go under [↩]

The Be Your Own Souvenir campaign continues. Having just wrapped up a spot at Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, the blablabLAB team is heading to London for Alpha-ville for what should be another great festival. If you’re gonna be in London between the 22nd of 25th of September, you should go check ‘em out, just like the love birds out there in Linz.

Bathsheba, a mathematically-minded sculptor who normally sells individual copies of her designs, has shared a couple of her designs on Thingiverse.  Her work is very well-suited for 3d printing, so these are exciting aesthetic additions to our community.

Bathsheba has been sharing her designs on her own site for some time, but we’re really excited to see her join the Thingiverse community.  Welcome!  And now folks — let’s see if we can print these amazingly intricate designs!

And don’t forget — we’ll see you at World Maker Faire NYC tomorrow!

Mobius Net by Bathsheba

It's art! Good for absolutely nothing. Kidding aside, it's sort of a Mobius strip made out of a Voronoi network. I used Qhull to compute the network, a homebrew thickening algorithm to make the struts 3D, then Surface Evolver and (I think) ZBrush to smooth it out.

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Antichron by Bathsheba

This is a sculpture, it has no function. I modeled it in Rhinoceros. It's also available from the Downloads (http://bathsheba.com/downloads) section of my site, bathsheba.com. If you make one, I'd love to see it! Thanks!

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Dorm Doorstop by Tetnum

Tetnum and his fellow college dorm students tried every doorstop he could find to work on their doors to no avail. The commercial doorstops were too short, would slide, or just plain didn’t work.¹ The ones on Thingiverse were getting destroyed by the door closers. Undaunted, Tetnum designed and printed on his trusty MakeBot Cupcake CNC a taller gripping door stop that incorporated the school’s logo.

My cupcake has been running nonstop to make enough for my floor. the doorstops have been in use for 4 weeks and are all holding up.

I could totally see this doorstop as a must-have dorm essential for any incoming college freshman. It’s thin and can be stowed away anywhere in a small dorm room, useful for keeping the door open or from letting it swing open accidentally, and personalized for their college. In a dorm room where space is at an absolute premium, it makes sense to have a 3D printer where you can create objects on demand, rather than have to stock up on things in advance. Rock on Tetnum!

working doorstop by tetnum

In the dorms we have industrial carpet on the floors and all commercial doorstops people have or bought slid, were too short or failed. So I turned to Thingiverse and printed every door stop on here and they unfortunately they were destroyed by the door closers or did not work. So I designed a saw like door stop that was taller and did opt have any large openings to get crushed instead it has columns to direct the force to the carpet and grip tighter. I also incorporated the schools logo in to the door stop. My cupcake has been running nonstop to make enough for my floor. the doorstops have been in use for 4 weeks and are all holding up.

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1. Do you remember that super-low pile carpet from dorm rooms? [↩]

That’s right folks, it’s finally here: the monumental, extraordinary Stepstruder MK7.  It’s extraordinary in that this is our first extruder designed from the ground up for 1.75 mm filament, and monumental in the sense that it’s…well…smaller than any of our previous extruder designs.  So small, in fact, that it might just be possible to use two of them for experimental Dual Extrusion!  (Ssshhhh….)

They said it couldn’t be done, and we said they’re wrong.  We have the technology.  We knew we could make a better extruder, one that’s smaller, more reliable, and easier to put together.  And has a higher number.

So tell me: do you feel lucky, punk?  Well do you?  Because you don’t need to: the MK7 will make it easier than ever to get great results from your MakerBot Thing-O-Matic.  The Stepstruder MK7 takes care of the luck for you!  Just choose the normal complete kit or one with a stepper driver if you’re upgrading from a MK5.

In all seriousness, a lot of work has gone into the design of this new extruder, and we’re really excited to release it.  Head on over to the store and check it out! ¡Awesolenté!

The New York times is running an amazing infographic today by Frank O’Connell about the Thing-O-Matic.  We’re extremely excited about how well it explains our pride and joy to a wider audience.

As you can see, it also mentions the Stepstruder Mk7 in a dual configuration.  That’s right folks — the compact size of the Mk7 is going to make experimental dual extrusion possible for the first time.  Stay tuned for details, or come to World Maker Faire NYC this weekend to see a them in action!

It has been a passion of mine for a long time (about a week) to create “Raceway Targets” that can be run over for World Maker Faire 2011. Perhaps to gain points, perhaps to lose points, perhaps just to be ridiculous.

Thankfully, Andrew Plumb (aka Clothbot) built an OpenSCAD project for the brace and the hinged mount that I was requesting — and  leveled up the whole concept.

So now it is time for you to create your own 2D designs and 3D silhouettes to be used to make Raceway Targets of your own. Please share your own targets by making derivatives of the Raceway Targets thing, and tag your item “raceway” so we’ll see to print them out.

Check out my Raceway Targets Set 01 (with the Chicken That Didn’t Cross the Room) and ecohen‘s Flat Yodsta / Gangda as a place to get started.

Raceway Targets by clothbot

For all your Raceway Target practice needs! Still refining the code, but it works! DXF profiles created by Matt Griffin (mifga)! Notes: - Froggie: - May need to set shells=0 to slice Froggie for the thin scarf and leg sections. Changelog: 2011/09/16: - Added Froggie (Cleaned) using thing:11578 source. - Added SpookyCat and ChickenCrossesTheRoad.

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Raceway Targets Set 01 - LIttle Old Lady, Froggie, Spooky Cat, Chicken, and Slow Children by mifga

It has been a passion of mine for a long time (about a week) to create "Raceway Targets" that can be run over for World Maker Faire 2011. Perhaps to gain points, perhaps to lose points, perhaps just to be ridiculous. Thankfully, Andrew Plumb built an OpenScad project for the brace and the hinged mounting point that makes these possible. So now it is time for you to create your own 2D designs to be used to make Raceway Targets of your own! Please share your own images or sets! Or your flat items that you would like attached to a hinge and run over!

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Flat Yodsta/Gangda by Ecohen

A flat version of yzorg's Yodsta derivative. Attach it to a Raceway Target and your Turtle Shell Racer will fight for the Sith.

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Under the guidance of Professors Alberto Valero PhD and Juan Gonzalez PhD, students at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid have been taking advantage of an optional seminar, which focuses on the study of 3D design and printing. Using Open Source tools, this new program is the first of its kind in Spain, and the early returns have been tremendous.

Studying OpenSCAD for designing, and building a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic (named Madre) for printing, students have been looking at how to create and improve upon robotic mechanisms. Inspired by items on Thingiverse, the students have been printing their designs for over three months, eight hours per day, and to date, have gone through over 12kg of plastic! They have even been using it more than their industrial 3D printer. Professor Valero summed it up pretty well: “THIS IS PLASTIC VALLEY.”

You can see a sampling of their work on Thingiverse, under the tag, UC3M. One of the more challenging projects for now and for the future has been to take obijuan‘s MiniSkyBot and make adjustments to make it capable of moving through a sand box.

After a successful introduction to 3D design and printing, the university will soon be expanding to include even more classes, and MakerBots! One class in particular, “Designing and Printing of Mechanical Parts with Open Source Tools’ for the Robotics and Automation Master program looks very promising. Based on what we’ve seen so far, we have high hopes for the program’s future!

Caterpillator by Olalla

This is a printable caterpillar robot with gear wheels and links -kind of tank-like ;) . This is part a project developed in the UC3M university in which we are designing printable robots. Here, we have together all the pieces that form this robot, but you can have a look at the different parts pages to see some other people modifications -specially at the links. Take into account that this is a work in progress.Though this robot works as it is designed now, it can be improved a lot -and this is in what we are working right now. Some of the pieces -in their own pages- are parametrized, while others are still pending. Designers: Olalla Bravo thingiverse.com/olalla Daniel Gómez thingiverse.com/dannynoc A special thank you to Obijuan thingiverse.com/obijuan for printing us the pieces, providing useful advice and remarking us some obvious design mistakes and, in general, leading us into the nerdy way =p . Another thank you also to our other professor Alberto, for his advice,patience and invitations to have some coffee. Individual pages for the pieces: Gear wheels and links: thingiverse.com/thing:7209 Chassis: thingiverse.com/thing:7681 Parametric gear wheels: thingiverse.com/thing:7794 UPDATE: We've got a video of the robot in motion!!youtu.be/gRsKRrQQHos Update 4/13 23:52 The chassis now includes four drills in order to hold the PIC with the micro that controls the servos above the chassis. Also, the hole that it had so that some material could be saved has been removed in order to sustain better the PIC. Update 4/14 14:08 Added the parametric version of the gear wheels that we are using in the design. Update 4/20 00:28 The comments of the links scad file have been translated into English. I hope this will help to understand better the code and that it will make easier modifications of the file.

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