I know I’m not through my backlog of WYMB pictures, but just look at the one we got a minute ago via twitter!

These awesome, eager, MakerBotting 4th and 5th graders come to your screen from Boynton Beach, Florida’s Poinciana Elementary Magnet school for STEM. I’m going to have to dig deeply into teacher Kris Swanson’s blog now. I want to know all about what they are making, how they are designing, and how you get a dozen 10-year-olds to look that happy and excited for a picture.

A sincere happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all of you teachers.

Instructables.com is a fountain of good stuff for the DIYer. Here are a few recent favorites:

Rubber band-powered car toy

This 18-step Instructable from Thingiverse user mrigsby is really straightforward and you get a fun toy to play with at the end! What impressed me here is that this project was Mike’s first experience with 3D modeling software. He used Tinkercad to design the car, and seems to think it was pretty easy.

To make a wheel, you just drag a cylinder onto the workspace.  Set the diameter and the thickness and you’re almost done.  Drag a hole onto the workspace, adjust the diameter and place it in the center of the wheel.  Group the hole and the wheel.  That’s it.

He made this on The Replicator, and shares his tricks, too. For example, to make these pieces with a raft underneath, Mike says he has had the most luck setting the build plate temperature to 115° C, rather than 100° C.

You can find all the files for the Rubber Band Powered Car on Thingiverse!

Tilt-Shift Lens Adapter

Here’s another Instructables/Thingiverse gem, made especially for the photo geek. A tilt-shift lens is “used to create a miniature effect or a very shallow depth of field in your photography,” and if you shoot from a high angle pointing down, the accessory “creates the illusion of looking down at a miniature model.”

What I liked about this project in particular is the cost savings here. Joe Murphy, author of the Instructable, says the professional version is pretty pricey; “we’re talking $1000- 3000.” So I decided to just make one for myself and see how much it costs in ABS.

Answer: at 7 grams, the part costs $0.30. And it took 19 minutes, from digital to tangible. So there ya go.

3D-Printed Circuit Boards

Just as a blog post at Oppino.com noted a lack of experiments with 3D-printed circuit boards, an Instructable showed up from CarryTheWhat, an Open Source Hardware group with a presence on Etsy and Thingiverse.

In this step-by-step, you get careful instructions on making the circuit board itself from files available on Thingiverse. There is a library of files for all the different components and advice on arranging them successfully. The example in the Instructable will output a simple circuit to get an LED to blink.

This is admittedly not complex stuff, but it is remarkable to see a DIY circuit project that involves no soldering or etching. All of these parts have been “thoroughly tested on the MakerBot Replicator, with ABS plastic,” according to the Thingiverse page.

Today is the day when the residents of 78 countries engage in one big gasp: “Mother’s Day is two days away!” I bet you could hear this from space.

Here’s how a Maker solves this. Go to Thingiverse.

There are a number of things to download and make that your mom would love. Flowers, sculptures, jewelry, things to hold jewelry, phone accessories, organizers, aquarium structures, things for the home.

Did you take a nice trip with your mom? Thingiverse probably has a miniature of one of the buildings or monuments you saw. Or maybe you just want to customize a picture frame for that shot of the kids.

If you have a MakerBot, you can make your mom anything you can think of. Here are a few ideas to get you going. Whatever you make, be sure to tag it Mother’s Day to help fellow citizens of the Thingiverse.

I’m taking a short break from the blog series this week, but I didn’t want to leave you hanging.  I’ve put together a short screencast on how I use the creation tools in 123D Catch, specifically reference points and reference distances, to create scans that print in my desired scale.  This tip is great for anyone who wants tight control over print size, whether you’re working in scale or not.

A Quick Note: I’m running Autodesk 123D Catch on my mac through VMware Fusion.  Autodesk just released a web version, which is great for mac users, but it lacks some of the advanced features like creation tools.  So to use this tip, you need to use the desktop application on Windows.

World, you need to be following the developments of Joe, who is now a fully fledged MakerBotter.

Joe, or Cymon on Thingiverse, was the winner of the Tinkercad Chess Set Design competition, for which we awarded him The Replicator.  And now he’s on the way toward making his famed Action Chess set!

As you can see, the sweet thing about this chess set is that the pieces are designed to assemble into this chess giant. Now that Joe has had a chance to test his design, he’s reporting success! The pieces do in fact assemble, but he says there’s a bit of calibration and fine tuning left.

Did you all catch the adorable R.Maker Adventure at the end of S02E10?

Don’t let the week end without subscribing on YouTube or iTunes to MakerBot TV!