MakerBot Industries

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!

Thingiverse User Supermange has uploaded a design for a rotary sprinkler, thus making Thingiverse just that much cooler… water cooled in fact. He doesn’t have a MakerBot so he’s reaching out for help with prototyping. He doesn’t have a lawn either, so it’s not really going to be that practical for him. But it’s cool. Rotary sprinklers are cool like bowties are cool except that they turn your hose into an afternoon of fun and wetness. They go back and forth and do what they are told and they don’t even have a computer or arduino attached. They could water your lawn or your garden too.

The mechanics of it remind me of the Syvwlch’s clock escapement project. Very cool. Could you run a clock off a hose using this mechanism? Only the users of Thingiverse would dare to find out!

I love so much about this project. The designer wants it for no other reason that it should exist, it’s an opportunity for collaboration and shared development, and it’s just so freaking cool to see something like this show up as 3D printable. I also think it’s great that Supermange just decided that rotary sprinklers are cool and committed to showing us all how cool they are by whipping up a design in sketchup. If you’ve got spare time and the interest, help him bring the future of sprinklers to a MakerBot near you by prototyping the design and giving him some feedback or jumping in and making a derivative.

At MakerBot, we’re huge fans of the designer brand Nooka. They make awesome accessories and they use a MakerBot to make cool things like this giant icosahedron for their lookbook!

MakerBot Industries looking for a motivated video producer for a new MakerBot online video series. We are looking for someone to take on all aspects of producing a weekly video series related to the culture and community of MakerBot. This will include coming up with great story ideas, shooting and editing segments, publishing them online and staying in communication with online audiences.

Initially, you will be working with a consulting producer to help define the look, feel and direction of the show. Once the show is off the ground and processes are in place, you will take over the daily duties of producing the show. You will often collaborate with other MakerBot employees in sourcing story ideas and shooting segments.

Story ideas may include how people are using their MakerBot, interesting places MakerBots are being used (classrooms, prisons, design shops, etc) interesting designs and mashups people are sharing on Thingiverse and new MakerBot product features. That’s just a start. Click through for the details!

Read the rest of this entry »

View more videos at: http://www.nbcnewyork.com.

Ok, when NBC called me up to go to see Transformers 3 and review it, I was skeptical, but it was going to be free popcorn and I knew that even if the story was as sketchy as Tron2, I’d still love the visuals.

In the interview I was asked if MakerBot decided to jump tracks from making affordable 3D printers and instead switch to building autonomous transforming robots, how long would that take? In the video, I basically settle on 5 years, but to be honest, we’re living in that future already with such awesome Thingiverse hits as the Cupcake transformer and the Blockbot cube transformer.

I was surprised to find myself enjoying the movie. You have to look past the fact that it is a movie targeted at boys full of gratuitous explosions and the idea of robot war as the defining plot element, but Buzz Aldrin stars in it as Buzz Aldrin which redeems the movie. Also, the 3D effects were good with lots of action on many planes of view in the focal plane. It went on for almost 3 hours, but I got caught up in it and ended up enjoying it as long as I didn’t think to much about the plot.

What is the real cost of MakerBotting? Nick Starno, MakerBot Engineer decided to find out. He did some SCIENCE and made this handy chart so you can plan things out. You’ll notice that the electricity cost is at $.15 in this equation. That is a little bit more than we pay for it here in NYC, but we thought we’d adjust up in case your electricity is more. You’ll notice that the timing of the centimeter cubes is all the same, even though there are different infill settings. That’s because “cool” was turned on, which makes small layers take 15 seconds so they get a chance to cool. Even with solid infill, it needed to be slowed down to make each layer take 15 seconds and so they are all the same time! In the settings, these each have 1 shell so each model has two perimeters. The time noted here did not include warmup time. Using the new Print-O-Matic functionality in ReplicatorG, this was printed with a .4mm nozzle and a .3mm layer height and 30mm/sec feedrate.

We are proud of our plastic. We get the best plastic possible with great tolerances and we make it as cheap as we can! If you’ve done your own experiments in regards to power usage and costs. Drop us a note in the comments!

Check out this Crunchgear video of John Biggs getting scanned! You’re coming to the party right? It’s not a LAN party, it’s a SCAN party!

Here’s a great video of Schuyler and his dad at Maker Faire! Got a story to relate about using a MakerBot with your kids or parents? We’d love to hear those stories! Drop us a note!

Erik Beck is a video making machine! We had him by with Justin Johnson, another video-otron to the MakerBot Botcave to immortalize them in 3D by scanning them with the Polhemus 3D scanner!

Download Erik here and Justin here!

Kim Boekbinder, scanned into 3D and uploaded to Thingiverse, made a song and a video! Cool! Check out her latest album, “Impossible Girl.” It’s great!.