MakerBot Industries

In September and October 2010 MakerBot Industries received a number of support requests relating to our 37 mm extruder motors. While we have always been ordering the exact same part number from our supplier, It has come to our attention that we have been receiving two distinctly different motors.

In an effort to determine the cause of these issues and respond accordingly we are asking the community to help us do some science. Please complete this form once for each motor you have purchased from us. This will help us determine the quantity and failure rate for each type of motor. Even if your motor has never given you problems, it is important for you to provide feedback.

After removing the white plastic cover from each type of motor the difference is clear. One has a circuit board while the other does not.

The two types of motors we have in stock look different on the outside. The motor with the circuit board has a dull body with a shiny ring near the plastic while the other motor is completely shiny. This is true for the motors we have in stock, but we don’t know if the motors with shiny rings have always had the circuit board.

For more photos view the Motor Issue photo set.

(video source)

The MakerBot Cupcake has been described in various places as a machine that can “make anything you desire.” Well, we are putting more and more thought into what might be done with an army of such capable, affordable bots working in tandem. (By analog, think of last year’s news about the low-cost PS3 supercomputer, only desktop fab-edition.)

From this idea we invented the “bot farm,” the personal fabrication equivalent of the render farm model in use in the film/animation industry to network scores and scores of computers to crunch through endless calculations necessary to accomplish tasks like hanging the right shadow off of Buzz Lightyear’s nose. We are spending September putting our first bot farm together and running it through its paces, and to help build the army of robots needed we have been drawing on the local army of MakerBot Operators to help us out.

Last week we had a great turn out at the MakerBot Build Party. A dozen people came to NYC Resistor and collectively built four bots in one night. Thanks go out to all the builders and those behind the scenes who made this happen.

Attendees ranged from experienced MakerBot operators to a new visitor who had not heard of MakerBot until the morning of the build party. It was a friendly bunch, sharing tips and tricks across the work table as we enjoyed each other’s company — everyone walked away knowing more about building and printing on the MakerBot than they did before they arrived.

We are tempted to throw another one of these events the next time a window for it opens up — perhaps with pit teams and time trials. We’ll keep you posted on the MakerBot blog.

The bot farm army gained four new members…..

Help MakerBot understand what the community wants by sharing your ideas on the MakerBot Idea Torrent. Anyone can view and submit ideas. You’ll need to register on SourceForge to vote on ideas or to submit new ones. This will help guide research and development at MakerBot and keep track of who comes up with the best ideas.

An idea torrent “lets people submit their ideas, brainstorm them, and vote on them. The most popular ideas and requests are then easily assessable.” You may remember when Dell Idea Storm started. The most popular idea was preinstalled Linux. Now they sell Ubuntu laptops. This system is also used on the Ubuntu brainstorm site.

This is an experiment. We started with a wiki page for ideas, but this has vote up functionality and let’s folks respond and have conversations about ideas. If you’ve already submitted an idea on the brainstorm wiki page, make sure you write a detailed submission on the idea torrent.

UPDATE 2010-09-11: You don’t actually have to sign up with source forge to submit ideas. You can log in via OpenID. That means you can log in using your identity with Google, Yahoo, WordPress, or many others.

Calling all NYC MakerBot operators! We’re building a bot farm and we need your help! Today (Thursday, September 2nd) at NYC Resistor (map) we are throwing a build party. The goal: assemble three MakerBots in four hours. Drinks and snacks will be provided.

A bot farm is a group of MakerBots available to a group of people ready to print whatever is wished. We would love to print more of the great things popping up on Thingiverse, but here at the bot cave our machines are mostly used for developing future hardware and software. To increase the awesome we need to increase the number of bot hours available for printing. We need more bots and we need your help building them.

Everyone is encouraged to attend. There will be three or more kits for assembly. Just let us know you came for the build party and we’ll get you started on a task. If you’re thinking about buying a Cupcake CNC, this is a great opportunity to experience the build process. Feel free to bring your own MakerBot and work along with us. Several MakerBot employees will be in attendance, building bots and ready to help. We’re looking  forward to seeing you there.

Location:
NYC Resistor, Floor 4
87 3rd Avenue,
4th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11217

Time:
September 2nd
6 – 10 pm