MakerBot Industries

Mark Sproul of the Rutgers School of Engineering has his students putting together their senior design projects in Industrial Engineering using MakerBot electronics!  For those of you who remember the very early days of MakerBot¹ probably recall that our electronics have been used in everything from RepStraps, to home-brew 3d printers, to CNC mills.  Right now, one of Mark’s students have begun construction of a CNC pick-and-place robot and the other is working on a CNC cutter for vinyl or leather.

A pick-and-place machine is a robot that picks up very small surface mount electronics and places them in the appropriate location and orientation.  Having such a device allows a user to quickly create electronics using smaller and cheaper surface mount electronics parts.  A DIY pick-and-place machine is a pretty big deal because commercial machines are incredibly expensive – in the tens of thousands of dollars for even a used machine.  Here’s a short video of their prototype pick-and-place machine going through some calibration steps.

Keep up the awesome work guys!

1. Which is really funny given that we’re less than three years old! [↩]

Annelise made an awesome  video that showcases fun things she’s done with sugru in the last few days- we can’t wait to see what our users come up with!

Thingiverse citizen deeeep is organizing a workshop around Project Shellter at TEDxYouth in Flanders, Belgium on November 20:

We are organizing a workshop for kids from 11 to 18 year old during the TEDxYouth@Flanders event in Belgium.
The idea is that the kids will sketch out their ideas for the shells and then some of them will get picked and made in CAD and printed. I will try to post the sketches and CAD files on thingiverse once they are done, so everybody can enjoy them and the kids can see their models online and see people liking them and printing them.

Thanks for the interest and support deeep!

We can’t wait to see what shells the kids create! Upload them to Thingiverse and we’ll print them out put them in the @ShellterEast and @ShellterWest crabitats!

If you’re in Flanders on November 20, go check out the event!

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• @ShellterEast
• @ShellterWest
• Thingiverse
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterCams

This guest post is part of Project Shellter.

Bre is featured in the latest episode of 12 to Watch in 2012, a new web series from the New York Observer and Jaguar, profiling some of New York’s top minds doing innovative things with technology and design.

Check out the video here!

We are very pleased to announce that we have received a shipment of Rob Giseburt’s ingenious 5d shield for the Cupcake/Gen3 motherboard.  If you’re not familiar with the project, have a look here or here for full details.

This is small board that adds another stepper axis to the Cupcake/Gen3 motherboard so you can more easily add a stepper-based extruder to your setup.

This community-supported project is a great way for advanced users to add new capabilities to their Cupcakes.  Check it out on the store!

MakerBot conquers NYC with the cover of this week’s Time Out New York! Not only did MakerBot print the entire cover, complete with our mascot, R. Maker, taking on a mini version of New York City, but the Thing-O-Matic is featured as a gift For the Person Who Has Everything. We are also giving away a Thing-O-Matic to one lucky reader, to enter click here!

New Yorkers who want to see a real MakerBot in person, or even buy one, can visit these brick and mortar stores:

AC Gears

69 E. 8^th Street (between Broadway and University)

New York, NY 10003

(212) 260-2269

Wired Store

4 Times Square (at 42nd and Broadway)

New York, NY 10036

Friday, 11/18 – Saturday, 12/24

Demo on December 17th

12pm-2pm

Gizmodo Gallery

White Box Art Gallery

329 Broome Street

New York, NY 10002

Tuesday 12/6 – Sunday 12/11

New Museum Store

235 Bowery

New York, NY 10002

212.343.0460

As many of you know, the recent release of ReplicatorG has introduced some of the software features that are necessary to use your Thing-O-Matic with two extruders, a process we like to call DualStrusion.

DualStrusion is highly experimental right now, and we’re all learning about it — engineers, developers, and tech support agents included.  While it’s a very exciting process, don’t expect DualStrusion to work right out of the box without some serious troubleshooting: that’s the cost of being on the cutting edge.

In light of that, we’ve just created a new support forum for DualStrusion experimenters to share their learning and experiences.  And so, I give to you: the DualStrusion experimenters support forum.

I can’t say I understand exactly what’s going on here, but this is a charming and useful design for a bag clip.  Who doesn’t love the double entendre about the popular electrical clip combined with the useful functionality? This is a charming design, regardless of any social media campaigns or widgets, and I salute it as such.  Well done, curiousmedia!

So, does anyone else want to share a design for a functional, animal-shaped tool/mascot?

Mr. Alligator by curiousmedia

Alligator clip

This thing brought to you by

Earlier this year, videos circulated revealing prototypes of Japanese “nekomimi”¹ — robotic, wearable cat costume ears that bend, twist and re-orient based on a wearer’s mood and brain activity. This impressive, if whimsical, engineering feat makes a great deal more sense within the context of the endless repetition of the motif of catgirls in Japanese manga, anime and cosplay.² But even beyond these cultural associations, anyone who has spent time with a housecat has probably noticed the expressive qualities of cat ears.

Ever since the high-end tech demos surfaced, DIY Makers world-over have been experimenting with how to accomplish this type of project using components at least a few orders of magnitude cheaper than research-grade brain scanning equipment. In fact, MakerBot R&D staffer and anime-fan Benjamin Rockhold has a folder full of mechanical and arduino sketches to address this very chibi-awesome design challenge.³

Well, MakerBot Operator Josh DiMauro not only beat everyone to the punch, he has brought the whole project in at a price that has kickstarted an entire branch of DIY, affordable brain-mappable appendages with his MindWave Cat Ears project on Thingiverse. And he was able to accomplish his mission quickly over the course of scores of iterations thanks to his MakerBot Cupcake!
Follow below the fold for a quick interview with Josh in the wake the posting of his own tech demo video (at the head of this article).
Read the rest of this entry »

1. combination of Japanese words for “cat” and “ears” [↩]
2. There are further recurrences of this image in the darker crevices of the Internets — I suggest you neglect to investigate further. [↩]
3. He is both delighted, and disappointed, that someone else got there first. [↩]

OpenSCAD (Theoretical) Rocket Science -- Don't try this at home!

Just a quick post to remind all of the members of the MakerBot Operators Group New York (MUGNY) that the second meeting of the OpenSCAD Study Group will be this Thursday in the MakerBot Workshop. I have in almost all of the homework from last month’s event — quite the success, folks! — and we plan to share it back with those who have been participating so that we can launch these tips and tricks on Thursday!

Make sure to arrive as close to 6:30pm as possible, as many of those attending will be heading right up to the NYCResistor Craft Night immediately at 8pm. The next meeting will be held the third Thursday of December: Dec 15th!

What: MUGNY OpenSCAD Study Group Meeting

When: Thursday, Nov 17th from 6:30pm-8:00pm

Where: MakerBot Workshop, 314 Dean Street, Brooklyn NY

Who: MakerBot Operators, OpenSCAD users, and their allies!

There have been rumors (well, emails and plans and such) to start Study Groups in San Francisco and possibly Seattle. If you are hosting (or hungering for) a Study Group in your area, drop us a message to griffin at MakerBot dot com and I’ll make sure to spread the word!