MakerBot Industries

Wendy-House Connectors by Bioluminescence

I don’t just like Bioluminescence’s “Wendy-House Connectors” because it makes an awesome house.  I like it because it’s really a system for connecting 1/2″ PVC pipes.  Using a pile of these connectors and some cheap PVC parts, you could knock out a cool play structure for those vertically-impaired persons in your life in a matter of minutes.  Better yet, enlisting their help to design the playhouse!

Wendy-House Connectors by Bioluminescence

With these connectors and different lengths of cheap and common 1/2" PVC pipe, you can construct the frame of a personalized Wendy House (or playhouse) for your miniature, chronologically-impaired, humans! The version I have built, creates a simple, 'traditional', gable-roofed, playhouse frame. NOTE: The gable end pieces are temperamental when I try to print them. The rotation I have them on the print bed is the only rotation that it doesn't break horribly with. Otherwise, the print-head knocks the model at the top of the tear-drop holes and shifts itself across - creating a geology-like shear across the model I have included the SketchUp model which shows the sizes of the house. Should you wish to change the lengths of the pipes to scale it up or down for your own use, this model should help if you don't want to just do the maths. (The gable is 45 degrees for ease of trigonometry.) (And the reason there's two extra struts on the bottom of mine, is that I was intending to wear this hut as part of a costume for Halloween - Baba Yaga's Hut, complete with chicken legs and miniature witch inside. I didn't finish it in time!)

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ReplicatorG 0029 is now available. This release is a minor update, with only one new feature, one click Print-O-Matic defaults. MakerBot operators indicated that they wanted a better and easier way to put Print-O-Matic settings back to the Defaults we recommend. So we added a ‘Defaults’ panel to Print-O-Matic for resetting to the Factory defaults for all of our Stepper based extruders. Since there are a lot of new Bot Operators during the Holiday season, we choose to roll this now to make it easier to tinker with their new bots.

If you are new to 3D printing, this is a really helpful set of buttons. New users can now test and experiment with Print-O-Matic settings to their hearts’ content, safe in the knowledge the factory defaults for Print-O-Matic are a button click away!

Have you already decorated your DIY non-specific winter Holiday tree?  If not, I humbly submit for your approval not one but TWO complete winter solstice holiday tree topping solutions!

Firstly, cheerioboy has crafted a very traditional (and very beautiful) 5-pointed star of the type commonly found…well, atop trees inside people’s homes at this time in the winter.  While the above image is a mockup (he unfortunately does not yet have a 3d printer) it certainly would look very nice printed in PLA with a light source inside!

Nextly, Weldingrod1 boldly offers a star format with more than 5 total points!  This design, while breaking from tradition, exploits the multi-dimensionality of the medium.  Brilliant! (Get it?)

So once you’re hone hewing the celebratory bough with your DIY chainsaw, fire up your MakerBot and top it off!

Holiday Star / tree topper by cheerioboy

I bought my first Christmas tree this year, so to celebrate I designed a digital star topper to go on top. Unfortunately I don't have a printer to make him :(. But I bet it would look great if it was printed with a translucent material so a light could shine from within! Let me know how I might improve on this and make it easier to print.

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Christmas tree topper/star by Weldingrod1

This is a stellated dodecahedron to fancy up your tree!

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IdeaMensch.com, a self-proclaimed “community for people with ideas,” is now featuring MakerBot’s Bre Pettis as the main profile on their homepage. Learn more about what inspires Bre here!

"It's a Through-Hole Christmas, Charlie Brown!

As we close out 2011, we are offering big close-out discounts on well known kits from Sparkfun, Adafruit, Jimmie P. Rodgers, Evil Mad Science and more! We’ve cut prices 20-50% off list; these items are awesome gifts for for all your DIY stocking stuffers. From Multimeter kits to musical instruments, we have great soldering projects or the pièce de résistance for holiday mischief!

Check out the MakerBot Store’s Accessories section for the complete selection! These items are shipping same-day for hyper-fast delivery time. You aren’t too late to save money and still stuff the gift boxes of your loved ones, or favorite geek next door!

Naturally, we suggest overdoing it on the LED themed holiday party decor. Start with these holiday classics.

Sparkfun’s It’s a Through Hole Christmas, Charlie Brown
Evil Mad Science LED Menorah
Jimmie P. Rodgers Open Heart

Stop by the Gizmodo Gallery tomorrow, December 9th at 6pm to catch a talk from MakerBot collaborator and former Artist in Residence, Micah Ganske. An acclaimed painter who has always used tech elements in his work Ganske was excited to create sculptures (like the ones above) on a Thing-O-Matic. Ganske will be speaking about his experience merging art and technology on a MakerBot, with a short Q&A to follow. These awesome sculptures are available for viewing and purchase at both RH Gallery and ArtStar.com.

Kendall Karshellian adopted a printed shell!

After nearly 2 months of ongoing experimentation by the Project Shellter teams, on Wednesday December 07, 2011 at approximately 04:23 PM PST at the Shellter West crabitat in Los Angeles, Kendall adopted a printed shell!

Similar to the shells suggested by hermit crab caretaker and commentator wodosorel, the shell is modeled on that of the Oxystele sinensis sea snail.

Watch the entire fascinating process as she examines, switches, and adopts a 3D printed shell!

Got red/blue anaglyph glasses? Click the “3D” below the playback bar to see it happen in the third dimension!

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter or the shellter tag to let others know you are participating in this crowd-sourced science experiment!:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterShells
• youtu.be/​ProjectShellter

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

Project Shellter - Oxystele by TeamTeamUSA

UPDATE 2011-12-13 07:23Kylie Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here with annotations and music: youtu.be/LtvlLBQnEc0UPDATE 2011-12-07 21:35Kendall Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here: youtu.be/QpCusZ_q0wwUPDATE 2011-12-04 19:11The original oxystele.stl had spiral holes in it. After running it through cloud.netfabb.com the holes are gone. If you downloaded the file before, please re-download it. Another one of M. B. Cortie's greatest hits sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009784939390054D! Modeled on the shell of the Oxystele sinensis sea snail, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxystele_sinensis, will Coenobita clypeatus - "Purple Pincher" - hermit crabs like this? Only experimentation will tell! It was created using Maya's shellNode plugin, which is based upon Cortie's model, and thickened using Blender's Solidify modifier blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-256-beta/solidify-modifier/. The goal is a workflow using open source tools, but this shell surface required a commercial tool. Thanks to a tip from thingiverse.com/mesheldrake, the conversion to a solid is now handled by an open source tool. :) Cortie's model and many of its resultant shells have been written in Maple maplesoft.com/applications/view.aspx?SID=3851&view=html. Porting them to an open source tool such as Sage or Blender is the last step in creating a complete open source workflow. Any python ninjas up to the task‽ Follow Project Shellter progress here:projectshellter.comtwitter.com/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterCamsbit.ly/ProjectShellterVideos

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Not for your Spanish Omelet.

For those who thought to themselves, “I want an Egg-Bot, but it won’t work for me on my ostrich farm,” this one’s for you. The Ostrich Egg-Bot kit is a special, extra large version of the original open-source Original Egg-Bot kit with a chassis that fits larger objects, up to 6.25″ in diameter(!) – perfect for ostrich, emu, and your run-of-the-mill jumbo chicken eggs.

It can tackle wine glasses, Christmas ornaments, mini pumpkins, and more, so vegetarians can get their paint on, guilt-free!

The Ostrich Egg-Bot is equipped with CNC cut plywood, and laser engraved calibration and assembly marks. With high-torque precision stepping motors, this bot means business. Get one today!

They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from MakerBot.

Howdy intrepid MakerBot Operators! Today we have released the newest additions to our line of experimental nozzles, the 1.0 mm and 1.5 mm MK7 big bore nozzles. Carefully machined in house by our own Charles Pax, these nozzles are custom made and doubly awesome. These nozzles will have you printing at the round cutting edge of MakerBot extrusion. Maybe it’s just me, but when I see this photo I can’t help but think of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd tearing down the highway on their way to Chicago.

This nozzle is designed for MK7 users, so those with a Plastruder MK5 and Stepstruder MK6 will unfortunately have to sit this one out.

Make sure to adjust your Print-O-Matic settings accordingly. Limited supply so get them while you can!

Due to an overwhelming response, I’m sad to report we have accepted as many orders as we can for Thing-O-Matics for Christmas arrival. You can still order them, but you won’t be able to put a big box under the tree. We suggest giving your MakerBot-craving loved ones a card on the 25th that says “You’re getting a MakerBot delivered in a few days.”

Our shipping crew has been working long hours sending out the high volume of orders we’ve taken in this holiday season, and today’s day-long outage at our colocation facility has not made their job any easier.  We’ve used the time to double-check our numbers and we’ve had to make the call — no more guarantees about December 24th delivery.   We are waiting on several parts shipments, we simply cannot guarantee delivery before Christmas.

Order placed prior to December 6th should still ship for Christmas arrival.

Additionally, we will be accepting orders for only more 10 fully-assembled Thing-O-Matics this year, so our bot-building team can catch up with previously-filed orders.  These fully-assembled units have a 4-5 week lead time and will be shipping in January 2012.

We still have Thing-O-Matics to sell, and these will be available for order as soon as we get our servers moved to the cloud. While we can’t guarantee that the box will be under the tree on December 25th, you should have your kit orders soon thereafter.

Finally, we’d like to take the time to say thank you to all of our amazing customers.  This year has been an intense, exciting journey, and you, our customers, have made it possible.  We really wish we could give all of you everything you want instantly.  Thanks for your patience as we go through these growing pains.

Update: Since we’re not going to be able to get these under the tree, we’re dropping the price for Thing-O-Matic kits by another $100 for those of you who are ordering now.  This is a thank-you to those of you who will have to wait a bit longer for their MakerBots!