MakerBot Industries

I’m looking for someone to hire as an executive assistant to provide seamless administrative support. Successful candidate will be responsible for managing Executive calendars, relationships and correspondence, for which s/he will be the first point of contact. This will require the Assistant to develop a deep understanding of the Business to establish priority based on the level of importance.

Key results expected: effective calendar management, well managed travel arrangements, timely & thorough preparation of expense reports, optimum screening of incoming communications and routing for action and follow-up; communication with both internal and external contacts including significant prospect and client relationships; well proofed standard correspondence; optimum logistical arrangements for official travel and management of expense reports; comprehensive organization of meetings, luncheons, interviews as needed; establish effective working relationships with colleagues and external contacts and may be required to provide flexible support to other Managers as required.

Job Requirements:

• 3-5 years executive/administrative assistant experience; financial services preferred.
• Proven ability to work well in and contribute to a team environment.
• Excellent organization and communication skills.
• Shows tact, discretion, confidentiality and good judgment in handling sensitive and confidential matters and documentation.
• Demonstrates ability to prioritize and manage multiple assignments in a fast-paced environment to meet deadlines with efficiency and accuracy.
• Has excellent attention to detail, and executes responsibilities with a sense of urgency and follow-through.
• Candidate must be flexible and adaptable to rapid changes in the daily work environment and be resourceful in solving problems.
• Able to act in a project management capacity.
• Excellent computer skills and writing skills.
• Have proficiency in or willingness to learn company applications.

To apply send a cover letter and resume to helpbre@makerbot.com.

Photo credit

Update:

There seems to be a some misunderstandings about the project. Here are some clarifications:

• The final shell material has yet to be determined; plastic is being used for prototypes
• No printed shells have been distributed in the wild
• The goal is to create a printable hermit crab shell for domestic use thus reducing harvesting of natural shells

Hermit crabs don’t make their own shells. They scavenge their homes. And now, hermit crabs are facing a housing shortage as the worldwide shell supply is decreasing. With a shell shortage, hermit crabs around the world are being forced to stick their butts into bottles, shotgun shells, and anything else they can find. This is not acceptable. As a community, we can reach out to this vulnerable species and offer our digital design skills and 3D printing capabilities and give hermit crabs another option: 3D printed shells.

Miles Lightwood, AKA TeamTeamUSA, is doing exactly that as an artist in residence here at MakerBot. His big project is Project Shellter, to provide 3D printed shells for hermit crabs the world over. We are inviting all MakerBot Operators and digital designers on Thingiverse to design shells and participate in SCIENCE!

We’ve set up a crab habitat, a crabitat, here at the Botcave in Brooklyn and Miles is setting up a crabitat in Los Angeles. We need help from the community to design shells so we can print them out and see if the hermit crabs like them. Can you design a shell that hermit crabs will like? We’ll print them out here at the botcave, put them in the crabitats and see which designs the hermit crabs will move into. Will they like ABS or PLA? Will they prefer one color over another? Will they even consider a 3D printed shell? We won’t know until we use empirical science and test it out. If you participate in the project, use the hashtag #SHELLTER on twitter so that we can all track what’s going on. You can follow Project Shellter on Facebook too!

This is a new frontier of crowdsourced science. Please design shells that you think a hermit crab would like and upload them to thingiverse and tag them with “SHELLTER.” Miles will be posting a summary of his research on design parameters for hermit crab shells next. If you design them, together we’ll do science and find a way to solve the hermit crab housing problem.

Got feedback or ideas? Drop a note in the comments.

Miles Lightwood, AKA, TeamTeamUSA is in town doing an artist in residency in the MakerBot Industries workshop. He arrived into town and we wandered over to check out Occupy Wall Street and we got a chance to hear Tom Morello, who’s part of Rage Against the Machine and is righteous. They are using the human megaphone technique since they aren’t allowed to use electric amplification. The way it works is speaker says MIC CHECK and everyone who can hear them repeats it and one sentence at a time gets repeated so that the speaker can be heard.

Miles was inspired to make MIK CHK, a megaphone to extend the range of the human microphone technique. Miles modelled up a clip that connects a coffee cup and two manilla folders and adds a comfortable grip. Viola! You’ve got yourself a MIK CHK megaphone that will extend the range of the human microphone technique.

Download it and go be heard!

MIC CHK by TeamTeamUSA

Share your voice. Save your voice. This thing is part of a DIY megaphone to acoustically amplify your voice. It's great for gatherings where electronic amplification is forbidden. All you need is a coffee cup, some card stock, and the printable MIC CHK (microphone check) clip. Once assembled, like the movie directors of yore, you can make yourself heard loudly and clearly.youtu.be/hlzPJrGIbTo Print out a bunch and bring them to your next gathering! Share your voice. Save your voice.

This thing brought to you by

Drumroll please…

Mr. Maker by ErikJDurwoodII is now the official MakerBot mascot. We judged this challenge based on creativity and 3D printability. It’s a very cute mascot, it’s simple enough to be easy to print and has a playful, creative character that embodies the MakerBot spirit. Congrats to ErikJDurwoodII, we’ll be sending him a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic kit and we can’t wait to see what he does with it! Check it Mr. Maker on GrabCAD and Thingiverse. If you have a MakerBot there are printing plates that will make it easy for you to churn this design out!

With so many awesome entries, this was a hard contest to judge. We’ve got 10 runners up and we’re going to be printing out their designs over the next month and sending them out to them as runners up gifts.

Mikey

Replicant JR Also on Thingiverse and on plates.

MakerBot Transformer Also on Thingiverse.

Botbot Also on Thingiverse.

makerbot-084824-65-7

Mambo

Mark II Also on Thingiverse.

mrobot

Mascot 5 Also on Thingiverse.

Make-a-bot Also on Thingiverse.

There were almost 100 entries into this contest and there was so much creativity in all the entries. Check them out too!

My family had a software company called “Software Productions” that made children’s software for the Apple II+ from 1982-84. The programmers that worked on the software were 17 and 18 year old hackers and as a 10 year old, these guys programming software for the Apple II+ were magicians that could make the computer sing. Those programmers, specifically Randy and Dan Chang were my childhood heroes. I daydreamed that I would be as cool as them when I grew up. They taught me to edit the source and hack it to make my characters in the game wizardry have 10 gazillion gold pieces. The software company failed, but that computer opened up the world for me in the 80′s and inspired a generation of people to understand technology and use it creatively.

As an open source company, we’ve got a very different in approach to technology but Apple’s beautiful style and the focus on user friendly interfaces changed the face of computing and made it easy to use for people to be creative. I am sad to hear of Steve Jobs’ passing. I’m sure that there will be lots of talk about Steve over the next few days and about the iPod and iPhone, but I love the old stuff. I’d like to suggest that if you’re a fan of Apple and you’ve got a MakerBot. Print out the Apple II+ on Thingiverse and display it proudly! Got some design chops? I’d love to see a Mac 512 modeled up to go with the Apple II+ print!

1:9 scale model Apple II+ computer by pmwasson

I made this toy Apple II+ computer as a prop to go with my 8" Mego action figures. Mego action figures were a popular toy from the 70s. megomuseum.com This computer will to go into a diorama for some upcoming 8" Lost action figures. For more information see lasermego.com/latest-news/19scaleappleiicomputer

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I saw these action figures pop up on the internet and I had to interview Ed to find out more!

Can you explain the grant you got and why it inspired you to make action figures on a MakerBot?

The Cambridge Center of Adult Education is exploring the idea of producing art in the model of sustainable agriculture. It’s called CSArt. People buy shares in nine artists and recieve 3 pieces per delivery, over a two month period. CSArt encourages artists to think about their work in a small business context. In return, shareholders get access to a wide range of artists at a fair price.

When the grant was announced last June, I had just returned from my visit to the BotCave and was really charged up. I was convinced the MakerBot would be a great tool for artists. It was only a matter of time before I was all-in. The CSArt grant came up at the perfect time. It gave me the opportunity to adapt my work into mass customization without giving up the hands-on aspects of making art. Price barriers makes it hard for people to access original art. This is one of the key ideas in CSArt and in my approach to making art. The low cost of production on the MakerBot makes the end product very accessible. The work I produced is a series, but, not a set of “signed and numbered” reproductions. The MakerBot enabled mass customization as a practical artists’ tool.

What was your process like? Please walk us through it from idea, to design to object. I’m curious about the survey, too.
I used a Thing-O-Maticwith ABP and the beta of Rhino3D on the mac. I assembled and tuned the MakerBot over a five week period, starting in mid-June.My original idea was a model kit, like the tiny anime robot kits from Japan. I learned about design vs print by developing a prototype form, heavily influenced by Kaiju movies of the 60s. I printed a lot of variations and thought about print-to-print variations, what designs work best raftless and efficient post-printing assembly. In the end, I decided to produce the action figures as kits of parts that I would assemble. For this first series, I wanted to ensure the end result met my standards. I also settled on the idea of mechanical men who carry tools and do heavy work. The one exception is a variant inspired by the works of HP Lovecraft, droids and the octopus on Thingiverse (I love the tentacles).I spent June through early July building the ToM, then prototyped until mid August. I did a test run of the final forms on Labor Day and production through the second week of September. I designed and printed accessories during the third week of September, with two days of assembly and packaging at the end. The MakerBot performance was excellent. I couldn’t have been as efficient without the ABP, Print-O-Matic and the memory card.I decided to start the project with an on-line survey to the shareholders. I wanted to introduce myself and get the shareholders involved from the start of the project. Here is a sample question:

If you had to pick, which of the following would be your most prized possession?
(a) magic ring; (b) lucky pliers; (c) a never-miss hammer; (d) a pencil that promotes worldwide literacy.

95% of the shareholders participated and reported they enjoyed the survey. The packaging of the action figures includes a QR code to the survey results.

What are your plans going forward? What’s next?

I’m very excited about more action figures — so many ideas came up during the summer. I want to look at small groups of figures presented in a scene. I’d really like to create another large series and show them as a group.

Thanks Ed! I love the focus on tool carrying action figures. Ed’s put Robot Toy #A up on Thingiverse for your MakerBotting pleasure.

In the spring of 2010, Shapeways got a Cupcake CNC MakerBot with a MK4 extruder. The cupcake is an amazing machine that got 3000 people started in 3D printing, but the MakerBot MK4 Plastruder’s strong point was not printing small things like bunny ears. Shapeways printed out the Bowie Bunny by Rob Parthoens , which is one of their favorite prints and something that they use to compare machine types. It is a small model and stands about an inch tall from tip of the toes to top of the ears. As you can see in the image above, the MakerBot MK4 print of July 2010 left something to be desired.

At MakerBot, we live by the open source saying, “Release early and often!” and so we’ve been hard at work improving the technology since then. Fast forward a little more than a year and we’ve gone through the MK5, the MK6 and have just launched the MakerBot MK7 Plastruder. Look how much the MakerBot print has improved!

A few things that I noticed:

- When Shapeways printed the Bowie Bunny on their Cupcake CNC in 2010 the MK4 DC motor extruder had difficulty with the ears.  Back then printing tall thin parts on a Cupcake CNC required extremely careful calibration of a lot of arcane settings.  The Shapeways grey robust print from July of 2010 on their industrial commercial printer is clearly the superior print.

- In September 2011 the MakerBot print from a Thing-O-Matic with Generation 4 electronics and a MK7 stepper extruder with a 0.4mm nozzle was able to print Bowie Bunny at a layer height of 0.2mm – with stock settings right out of the box!  When shown side-by-side, the print from the Thing-O-Matic is comparable to the Shapeways commercial printer result.

- While there’s still a little ways to go to improving small features like the areas around the bunny’s ears, we’re looking forward to continuing to improve and develop our software so you can get professional quality results from your DIY printer right in your own home.

The difference from before is remarkable and I’m very proud of how far we’ve come in about a year! Thank you to everyone who has used a MakerBot and helped push it forward. We couldn’t have done this without the contributions of many people both internally who work at MakerBot and every MakerBot Operator in the community that’s given us support, feedback, or jumped in and been innovative. The future is bright. Full speed ahead!

MakerBot Operator Scott Miller sent us these pictures of his students doing work with a MakerBot at Mech Design class at Olin college.  They have high end 3D printers installed at their school, but he brought his MakerBot in to show how 3D printers work and run some prints.

There is no substitute for being able to put a machine on the table, upload a file, and build a part in real time. Being able to build working prototypes quickly is a critical part of the Olin College Mechanical Design class.  We use 3D printing and Sheet Metal to leverage their complementing strengths.  To design effective parts, it is critical to understand the fabrication process.  We used the Thing-O-Matic in class to visually demonstrate the entire 3D printing process from the design in Solidworks -> STL -> SkeinForge -> GCode -> 3D print.  Understanding the print methodology and internal structure of the parts allows the students to be more effective right off the bat for their 3D printed designs.

Scott sent me a slide from his presentation courtesy of Professor Barrett that shows some basic guidelines for 3D printing. Great tips!

Today, I’m excited to announce that MakerBot is taking $10 million in investment, with Foundry Group leading the round. Our investors are really invested–while Brad Feld and Foundry Group were getting to know us, they built their own MakerBot; you can visit Brad’s Thingiverse page to see what they’ve been printing! Foundry Group has worked with other startup companies that create hardware. We’re thrilled that they understand and support open source. This round will also include investment from Bezos Expeditions, True Ventures, RRE and many MakerBot angels (listed below). We are proud to be working with such great people and we are going to use this money do wonderful things.

To understand how we got to this point, let’s step into a MakerBotted time machine. In January of 2009, we started up the business and needed money to buy materials, make kits and then sell them. At that time, we were 3 guys, a lasercutter, and a dream. We went to our friend Jake Lodwick for $50k of seed investment. He let us take over a small corner of his office for inventory and shipping. Well, that little corner grew until we had taken over most of his office, at which point we had to move into our own space, the MakerBot Botcave.  In those early days we also got Adrian Bowyer, creator of the RepRap project, involved. He and his wife, Christine Bowyer, contributed $25k to bring us to $75k of seed money that helped start MakerBot.

With that initial $75k, we developed the first round of prototypes and put the first 20 MakerBot Cupcake CNCs into production. We sold them and bought more parts and made them into kits and sold those too. As of today, we’ve transformed that $75k into 5200 MakerBots in the wild.

In 2010, we invited some of our favorite people and teams to be MakerBot Angel investors. Shana Fisher led the angel round and the MakerBot Angels are Shana Fisher/High Line Venture Partners, Bezos Expeditions, Kal Vepuri, Steve Garfield, Jake Lodwick, Chuck and Claudia Pettis (my folks), Founder Collective, Antonio Rodriguez, True Ventures, Matt Mullenweg, Sam Lessin,  Joshua Schachter, Lerer Ventures, 500 Startups, and Thrive Capital.  This angel round investment gave us the confidence to grow!

Our seed investors, angel investors and now our venture investors are an all-star cast of awesome people and teams and we’re proud to have them involved as we explore the future of personal fabrication.

What’s going to change? Brad Feld of Foundry Group will be joining our board and we’re hiring to grow the MakerBot team to democratize manufacturing and make 3D printing more accessible to everyone!

Recently MakerBotted rings were part of wonderful changes in relationship status!

Astera says,

I talked Marius into remotely printing two rings for me just in time to propose to Joernchen on July 15th. Well… he said yes! \o/ And he’s wearing the ring all day, though he actually never liked rings at all. ABS is just awesome for engagement rings!

Robert Carlsen also made the leap and on his flickr page, he says

Kara doesn’t wear much jewelry and we don’t support the diamond trade. I wanted to still give her a personal, meaningful symbol of the engagement.

I had heard of other folks printing rings (even an engagement ring) on Thingiverse – I’m not pretending to be incredibly original with this. However, I did design Kara’s ring with CAD software (open source of course – QCad / OpenSCAD) and printed it on my MakerBot Cupcake #2943. I wasn’t sure of her ring size, so I printed several sizes of the band in black ABS plastic. The “stone” was printed separately in orange ABS and glued into the setting. I also printed a threaded box available on Thingiverse, scaled to just fit the ring.

For the actual proposal, Kara had never seen the Pacific Ocean, but had grown up spending summers in Ocean City, NJ. We’ve also spent a lot of time at the shore together. After dating for a decade, standing ankle deep in the ocean with Haystack Rock in the background, it felt right to propose at that moment – she accepted and I presented her the box with the ring – which she loves….and here we are

There is nothing better than when a MakerBot gets to print love!