A couple months ago we posted about the Fayetteville Free Library in New York setting some ground rules for how a MakerBot could best be incorporated into a public library.

It looks like another library has picked up the torch! The Killam Library at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, has an excellent resource page explaining The Replicator and how people on campus can use it. This library appears to be running a bit of a printing shop for the cost of $1/hour.

Students can submit .stl files through email or into a shared file space and go pick up the final products later. Nice!

Given the school’s focus on marine research, let’s hope there’s a big jump in the number of related tools on Thingiverse. Have they heard about Project Shellter?!

Rescuing the world from hunger, one burrito at a time

There is an actual robot designed and built to print burritos using MakerBot 3D printer technology.  Foodstuffs extruded by MakerBot frostrutders onto a tortilla warmed by a MakerBot heated built platform, a burrito could be assembled before your eyes by a robot, layer by delicious salty layer.  While a Burritob0t would almost certainly be slower than a seasoned¹ Taco Bell employee, it would also have 1000% more DIY robotic goodness than anything available anywhere.²

Kidding aside, I’m assured by reliable sources this is not just a photo-mockup of what a burrito assembling robot would look like.  The creator Marko Manriquez has built a real robot capable of assembling parts of a burrito using some off-the-shelf open source parts and proven open source technology.

That’s one of the amazing things about open source hardware and software – you never know what someone will be able to create based on what you’ve contributed.  Who could have suspected three years ago the guts of a Cupcake CNC could have been put to use for an automated burrito making robot?

Hat tip to Hack-a-Day

1. Pun intended [↩]
2. And, again, I’m sorry for helping propagate the whole TacoCopter thing. [↩]

Good morning and “Welcome to the big time!”

From Fabbaloo:

How do we know this? Has 3D printing really and truly made it to the Big Show?

The answer is easy and was found in our inbox last week. A gentleman kindly explained that he had obtained well over 200 domain names related to 3D printing and would gratefully part with them for a negotiable fee.

Yes, only when a topic becomes popular do the domainmeisters emerge from the dark with their word permutations and financial proposals. Fortunately, we already have the domains we need.