MakerBot Industries

Are you up for this?

Are there individuals reading this who can look on undaunted, and then make a plan to resolve it calmly and without fear?  If this sounds like you, we’re still looking for Support Agents to work with us in our amazing new Boerum Hill space, the “BotLair.”

To work for support is to be right in the thick of all that is MakerBot — if you find 3d printing exciting, this is the place for you.  Send your resume today — that is, if you’ve got what it takes.

Just a reminder that there are only 12 days left to enter the New Museum MakerBot challenge!

Ever wished you had a device or object that doesn’t really exist? Ever used something like a bottle opener or door handle and thought you can make it better? Now is your chance, you can win a Thing-O-Matic and be featured in the New Museum Store! Now is your chance to show off your skills as a designer!

Have a look at some of the best submissions, and then get to work — only 12 days left!

Toggles by larsie

But that day shall not be today, thanks to larsie for his son’s shoelace toggles.

Hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, billions of dollars in the footware industry, and using small ropes to lash bits of leather and rubber to our feet is the best we could come up with?  Tying knots in shoelaces has got to be one of the most ridiculous activities in the world.  It’s difficult to learn as a child,¹ the laces always come undone at inconvenient times, you can trip on them when they do, and you never notice until its too late.  Thankfully I don’t remember the days when I was frustrated with the vagaries and inefficiencies that are shoelaces. ²

Can you imagine putting yourself in larsie’s son’s place? ³  The poor guy was so frustrated with tying his shoes that he didn’t want to wear them on the way to kindergarten!  Thus, today’s MakerBot hero is larsie for leaping into action and realizing he could design and print spring-operated toggles so quickly he could get his child to school on time!

Toggles by larsie

My son is not very good at tying his shoe laces, so I made him this thing instead. It's basically a well known device from shoes, jackets etc, that are apparently called toggles (thanks). It could be redesigned in all sorts of ways, maybe even showing a head or some other object. This was made quite quickly, since he didn't want to wear his shoes on the way to kinder garten. :-) I have made another version and have added the STL files for this also. It's called toggles.stl. This one is smaller and has a slightly different shape.

This thing brought to you by

1. Wait, wait, wait…  the bunny hops where?  Why?  What did he see?  Why didn’t he go the other way around??? [↩]
2. But, mom, why CAN’T I have velcro shoes?! [↩]
3. I had to physically restrain myself from making the obvious pun here… [↩]

The Street recently posted a story entitled “How 3-D Printing Changes Everything,” featuring an interview with MakerBot’s Bre Pettis.  Check it out!

Photo credit

Update:

There seems to be a some misunderstandings about the project. Here are some clarifications:

• The final shell material has yet to be determined; plastic is being used for prototypes
• No printed shells have been distributed in the wild
• The goal is to create a printable hermit crab shell for domestic use thus reducing harvesting of natural shells

Hermit crabs don’t make their own shells. They scavenge their homes. And now, hermit crabs are facing a housing shortage as the worldwide shell supply is decreasing. With a shell shortage, hermit crabs around the world are being forced to stick their butts into bottles, shotgun shells, and anything else they can find. This is not acceptable. As a community, we can reach out to this vulnerable species and offer our digital design skills and 3D printing capabilities and give hermit crabs another option: 3D printed shells.

Miles Lightwood, AKA TeamTeamUSA, is doing exactly that as an artist in residence here at MakerBot. His big project is Project Shellter, to provide 3D printed shells for hermit crabs the world over. We are inviting all MakerBot Operators and digital designers on Thingiverse to design shells and participate in SCIENCE!

We’ve set up a crab habitat, a crabitat, here at the Botcave in Brooklyn and Miles is setting up a crabitat in Los Angeles. We need help from the community to design shells so we can print them out and see if the hermit crabs like them. Can you design a shell that hermit crabs will like? We’ll print them out here at the botcave, put them in the crabitats and see which designs the hermit crabs will move into. Will they like ABS or PLA? Will they prefer one color over another? Will they even consider a 3D printed shell? We won’t know until we use empirical science and test it out. If you participate in the project, use the hashtag #SHELLTER on twitter so that we can all track what’s going on. You can follow Project Shellter on Facebook too!

This is a new frontier of crowdsourced science. Please design shells that you think a hermit crab would like and upload them to thingiverse and tag them with “SHELLTER.” Miles will be posting a summary of his research on design parameters for hermit crab shells next. If you design them, together we’ll do science and find a way to solve the hermit crab housing problem.

Got feedback or ideas? Drop a note in the comments.

Imagine this: you’re working on a hobby project at home…working on, say adding binding to a mandolin or something like this.  Suddenly, you realize you’re almost out of clamps (the horror!)

Now imagine this: instead of driving down to the Hobby Hut or the McHardware and plunking down another $20 for that one extra clamp you need, what if you just printed one?  And then, you realize if you time the job right, that clamp would be ready just in time?

“It can’t be done,” you say.  And to this, I answer: not so.  It can be done.  NOW.

In fact, Thingiverse’s own RotoScan has already made this possible. That’s right, folks: the future is already here.  Again.

Hobby Clamps by RotoScan

Fully printable, functional mini clamps. Capable of maintaining up to five pounds of clamping force. Mini Clamp with 85mm clamping capacity Mini Spreader Clamp with 110mm capacityChanges made: Slightly shorter to better fit the TOM build platform Jaw changed to slide more easily on Bar Lip added to Jaw and to Wedge for easier one handed clamping/unclamping. Three more sizes of Wedges. Wedge2 is the standard size. If the jaw fits too loosely or too tightly, try one of the other sizes. The "ClampWedges" file has one of each size of wedge so that you can test the different fits. Added the Spreader Clamp Added 140mm blank Bar

This thing brought to you by

Polargraphs are basically really cool drawing robots that have been designed by Sandy Noble, a programmer and artist.  If you’ve never seen one in action, now’s your chance. ¹  Imagine a slow spider crawling around a wall and drawing at the same time.  A microcontroller operates two motors which reel in and out a line which is attached to a pen.  As the pen swings back and forth, it draws in a precise pattern to draw whatever you’ve programmed it to draw.  While very slow, it can cover a really huge drawing area that is pretty much only limited by the amount of string you set it up with and the ink reservoir of your chosen pen.

Thingiverse citizen and prolific printer John Abella recently created a printable gondola to hold the Polargraph’s drawing pen.  The Polargraph requires a bunch of stock off-the-shelf parts and some custom lasercut acrylic and wood bits.  By using a 3D printer to create these assemblies, you’re reducing the need for custom lasercut parts, fasteners, and the assembly time that would normally go into their construction.

Noble’s work reminded me of a similar project by Chicago artist Harvey Moon who showed off his work on “The Drawing Machine” at the recent Maker Faire.  Using a similar cable driven microcontroller controlled² pen drawing machine, Moon’s robot draws the same image differently each time!  Thus, each drawing is a unique little snowflake of arbitrary drawing machine coolness!

There are other equally impressive variations on drawing wall robots in the form of the Hektor, which draws with spray paint cans, the Drawbot by AS220 Labs, and Der Kritzler by Alexander Weber.  Alexander’s website provides a number of links to the websites of similar projects, if you’re looking for more information.

Also, thanks to John Abella for patiently answering my questions and pointing out additional resources!

Polargraph Gondola by JohnA

Based on Sandy Noble's Polargraph: polargraph.co.uk This is the first pass at a printable gondola for a Polargraph. It works, but it could use some tweaks. Anyone looking to improve it: the lower section arms are a little thin, and the spot for the captive nut isn't exactly sized right. I'd also beef up the upper chain mounts, as there's not much plastic outside the hole. The motor brackets and pulleys I'm using can be found here: thingiverse.com/thing:12403Lots more photos of the whole process here: flickr.com/photos/jabella/sets/72157627888557352/

This thing brought to you by

1. Cue video! [↩]
2. Redundant?  Perhaps. [↩]

Bicycle Spoke Beads by JonMonaghan

The bicycle spoke beads featured in this week’s MakerBot TV created by MakerBot artist-in-residence Jon Monaghan aren’t just retro, they’re futurist retro.  While bicycle spoke beads are clearly retro, being able to have spoke beads in any shape, color, or size created by your own MakerBot 3D printer is clearly futuristic ¹

Bicycle Spoke Beads by JonMonaghan

Go Retro.

This thing brought to you by

1. Okay, you got me.  Really, I just wanted a post with the title, “Bespoke Spoke Beads.” [↩]

MakerBot owner, John Biehler, explains the wonders of the  Thing-O-Matic on Get Connected, our new fave Canadian tech site! Check out the video to see John show off some cool things he’s printed including a money clip, Stephen Colbert’s head and even the Get Connected logo.

In this XtraSpecial episode of MakerBot TV grandiose guest host Xzibot shows you how to use your bot to deck out your bicycle (or tricycle for that matter)! Don’t miss out! Bot Your Bike!

Huge thanks to Jonathan Monaghan, Stef Shapira, Sam Gruen, Michael Curry and John Ditamos. Thank you also to devellison for the sprocket design, dreameredeemer for the light clamp design, gaarden for the tire lever, tamberg for the handlebar plug, jsadusk for the valve cap, aylr for the ipod case, and jonmonaghan for the cupholder and spoke beads. Music by Simon Stålenhag.