NASA engineer Eric Stackpole may be changing the face of ocean exploration with his open-source submarine made from inexpensive parts. The New York Times’ Brian Lam had a very nice post on the Bits Blog (and some extra details at another site he runs, Scuttlefish) about this $750 machine that’s rated to 100 meters, which is “below the range that divers can easily reach for long periods of time.”

That price tag is really something special, especially compared to the $10,000 professional ROV “Scout” from Videoray, which the Bits Blog post says can be used to a depth of only 76 meters. And it’s certainly a big chunk off of the expensive deep sea exploration devices like the Alvin, which explored the Titanic wreck site to the tune of $55,000 a day (and that’s 1986 dollars!).

Mr. Stackpole can’t afford exotic alloys or custom technology for his little sub. … The depth sensor they plan to use is commonly found in a scuba diver’s computer. High definition video camera is scavenged from a cheap Web-camera that people use to video chat. The most expensive part inside is the computer, a little Linux computer called a BeagleBone that costs $89. Still, the team thinks they can get costs down by buying parts in bulk.

Also, a quick shout out: Stackpole’s OpenROV is yet another cool project to come out of TechShop in San Francisco.

Enjoy this talk from our CEO Bre Pettis from Creative Mornings, a monthly breakfast speaker series in New York and 26 other cities around the world. He talks about his own creative history, why we embrace failure at this company, and what he learned from a case of ramen noodles.

 

This is the coolest thing in the world right now.

Remember those Fisher Price record players that pumped out jams like Mary Had A Little Lamb and, I dunno, the theme from Babar? They’re back, and ready for MakerBotting!

Instructables author fred27 has published a nice set of steps for producing custom records for these machines on a CNC mill. There is also an app for generating the music. It looks fairly simple, just drop in notes.

Here’s the thing: this was all done on a mill, but as Gizmodo points out, this is prime territory for a 3D printer like a MakerBot. Of course, longtime MakerBot community members will remember some of the serious research we have already done into 3D printable vinyl…

I read through the Instructable and noticed this bit of caution:

we will end up creating plastic pins around 1mm in size that trigger the music box hidden in the record player’s arm. I was worried about whether the extruded plastic technique used by most printers would give it the required strength.

 

Looking at the picture above, I feel confident a MakerBot could make these nubs more than strong enough to resist the music box mechanism. I’d suggest making this with higher infill settings to be sure.

But how to MakerBot this?

The gcode for milling these suckers is available from fred27, and the process would need to be converted. The Instructable provides the design file for the blank disc itself, but in order to be used with a MakerBot, you’d need the entire model with the music added in.

Fred27 says that in order to mill the disc at one time, you should use the gcode file marked “…(Full).nc”.

Aha! Maybe that’s the answer. If that gcode for the entire record, musical nubs included, can be converted back into a model, then that model can be sliced to provide appropriate instructions for the MakerBot.

This is the perfect opportunity to put a modern spin on an old toy, and Fred plans to submit it to the Make It Real Challenge.

So what tunes do you remember from these records, and which custom tunes would you make?

 

Remember MakeALot’s awesome Amsterdam House Chess Set from the Tinkercad challenge? Today’s WYMB transports us to that attic window in a real house in Amsterdam.

This is where Bas Pijls MakerBots.

 

Looks like the filament is pretty nicely fed from the bar overhead. Bas tells me this is his “single-person hackerspace”, and I have to agree it appears that all the tools of the trade are on hand. This must be the place where Bas designed and made his Escher cookie cutters and Bunny Footed Egg Holder. It seems like there should be a pulley system from the kitchen to the attic, so those designs can be tested right away.

The world wants to see Where You MakerBot, so go ahead and shoot us an email! Check out all the WYMB’s here.