Last week I posted on the process of scanning one of the cables of the Bay Bridge, in preparation for designing an LED attachment strategy for the Bay Lights project. Here’s a bit more info on what we came up with.

Bay Bridge LED attachment clip test

The brief is to attach strings of high-intensity Philips outdoor LEDs to the vertical suspension cables of the bridge. Initially, the thought was to just zip tie them into place, but Philips engineers pointed out that this would damage the data and power cables. Ideally we would also come up with a solution that simplifies the work of the installation crews, by allowing for easy positioning and assembly.

A first step was to design a clip that would allow attaching pre-existing rails to the cables, and have the LEDs latch into the rail. However, this would have been expensive and unsightly. I had the idea to just use the clips to go directly onto the suspension cable. I was also able to add side channels for the extension cables that go to other segments of the LED cable. (The extension cable is the thick black one on the side). The clip is designed to clip securely to the data cable, and to guide the zip tie into the right position.

The plan is to test a strand of LEDs on the bridge this week, using 55 clips printed on a Makerbot (!). If all goes well, then we need another 25,000 of the things…

Here’s a video that describes the process in a bit more detail:

There’s one week left to sign up for our third class in the “How to MakerBot” series at Tekserve in Manhattan. Liz Arum, our education specialist, will be leading the class.

This class is focused on the program modeling program Blender. In order to participate, those attending the class should take some time to download the following programs before class:

• ReplicatorG
• Blender
• MeshLab
• KinectToStl
• NetFabb

And then you should bring that computer, a 3-button mouse, and a desire to learn some awesome stuff about 3D modeling and MakerBotting!

RSVP now to reserve your spot! You can view the invitation here.

Tekserve – Seminar Room
119 W 23rd Street
NY, NY 10011
212-929-3645

Thursday, May 10; 6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

The May 10th installment of MakerBot User Group New York (MUGNY) will offer MakerBot operators, Thingiverse makers, and Parsons students a rare glimpse into the working methods of two revered Thingiverse designers: Cushwa and PrettySmallThings. For the many of you who wrote in asking for in-depth design demos — these two demos will deliver knowledge and then some!

Special thanks to Parsons for inviting MUGNY to host this meeting in their beautiful space — a great chance for students using the Parsons MakerBot to learn more about the community of makers they are joining.

Where:

The New School
Parsons School of Design
“Masters in Design & Technology Thesis Show”
6 E 16th Street
12th Floor, Room 1200

 When:

6:30pm – 8:00pm
MakerBot will provide light snacks and refreshments.

Kacie Hultgren – “PrettySmallThings”

Kacie Hultgren, also known as PrettySmallThings on Thingiverse, is a scenic designer in New York City.  She uses her MakerBots to build scale models for set design models.  Kacie works as an associate on a variety of Broadway, US Tours and West End productions, in addition to pursuing her own design work in NYC and around the country.  At the May MUGNY, Kacie will share her work process and showcase scale models she has been working on.  She’ll also speak about how to harness the design constraints of printing with MakerBots to create models that bend the rules and push the limits of DIY 3D printing.

Tom Cushwa – “Cushwa”

Tom Cushwa, known as Cushwa on Thingiverse, is a 15 year veteran of the computer graphics, specializing in creating 3D models for film and television. He has worked with major studios all over the world. Tom has created characters for national ads, Superbowl spots, and major motion pictures. Always trying to stay ahead of the curve, Tom dived into 3D printing this past fall, creating models for the Thingiverse Playsets projects to be printed for the MakerBot CES booth. Recently, Tom created an Owl statue for Thingiverse that has now been downloaded over a thousand times, with over 40 people posting pictures of printed Owls on the site. Check out a small sample of his work as Big Character Inc. here.

Parsons The New School For Design

A pioneer in art and design education since its founding in 1896, Parsons has cultivated outstanding artists, designers, scholars, businesspeople, and community leaders for more than a century. Today, when design thinking is increasingly being employed to solve complex global problems, Parsons is leading new approaches to art and design education. Students at the Design & Technology program pursue forward thinking, creative, commercial, research-based, educational, and art-based career paths. Areas of study include Interaction, Physical Computing, 2D and 3D Animation, Motion Graphics, and Digital Filmmaking.

Thingiverse just featured this incredible MakerBotted model of a root structure. Thingiverse user TSDF used the iPad app iDough to model the shape above. I can’t explain the coolness any better than he did.

25 years after art school, 22 years after learning CAD, and 10 years after learning gcode, I would have never conceived that it would be possible to model complex organic geometry on a handheld device and hold a physical output in my hand 90 minutes later at such a low cost.

The app is $6.99 but holy moly does this look well worth it. It has brushes to “push, pull, smooth, move, pinch, spread, [and] flatten” your virtual clay. You can export your .obj from the app (email it from your iPad to your computer, says TSDF), and convert to an .stl in Netfab.

Here’s the final printed part:

Dragon Bookmark

Simple and stylish, this is dragon bookmark by roland is definitely up as my next print in the queue.  One of the cool things about intricate flat prints such as this dragon is that they should, for the most part, take about the same amount of time to print as a flat rectangular plank of the same volume of plastic.  Sure, some settings – especially those that include extra layers at the edge or ones that slow down the print speed for the outlines – might decrease the overall print time.  However, with such a thin piece the time differential is basically negligible.

For most product having a more intricate design means more creation time, more machine time, more production resources.  This is one of the reasons that 3D design and printing are so very exciting.  With 3D printing, you basically get all the intricate designs and features you want without any additional cost!  Your imagination¹ is your only real limitation.

Untitled by Roland

This thing brought to you by

1. Or the imagination of your designers! [↩]

Joinery - Not just for lasercutters any more

The Make Blog recent posted about CNC panel joinery techniques.  However, there’s no reason these really amazing assembly techniques should be relegated to just CNC cutting machines.  Any of these techniques could be easily applied to 3D printing to create objects that can be assembled without any tools or hardware.  Some of my favorite things to 3D print of all time are multi-part pieces that can be hand assembled.  There’s the dinosaur, the spider, the 27-to-1 gear ratio crank, and Tony Buser’s Toy Robot Toolkit.

Of course, having a 3D printer at your disposal means you don’t need to use joinery to create a 90 degree angle or a corner like those pictured above.  Even so, there’s no reason why one couldn’t use those same techniques to connect larger, more complex, 3D parts.  I would love to see an OpenSCAD library of joinery – little cutouts and tabs that could just be dropped into a design to make it snap-slide-slot together.

Mother’s Day: Say It With Flowers

Mother’s Day is fast approaching and MakerBot wants you to say it with flowers — 3D printed flowers!

Mother Nature has decorated our planet with an endless variety of flowers, trees, ferns, and vines. Let’s model some original, printable flowers for the awesome Mamas in our lives– maybe even some that can sing, dance, or squirt water in her face — and share them on Thingiverse.com!

We’ve asked our own Mothers to *pick* their favorites, so c’mon, MakerBotters! Let’s make ‘em proud.  Read the rest of this entry »