MakerBot Industries

The advent of mobile computing has brought us many things: the sum of human knowledge at your fingertips wherever you are, instant map capabilities, and the ability to wax poetic on the go 140 characters at a time. Well, now you can carry a universe of things in your pocket. Provided your pocket has an iPhone, of course.

The iPhone site is the product of about 4 days of feverish hacking and refactoring of the existing Thingiverse code. It’s pretty much read only, but if you need to do any heavy lifting you can easily switch back to the standard HTML view. The idea is to create a site that is interesting and helpful if you want to kill some time and see whats going on in the ‘verse.

Of course, there is an ulterior motive: I wanted to be able to access the inventory system on my iphone. I’ll admit that I’m a selfish bastard, but also a thorough one. When I launched the parts and inventory systems I was really happy. Especially when I realized that I could skip the whole barcode reader step and just put QR codes with the part url on all of our parts. (Notice we auto-generate QR codes for all parts and things on thingiverse…)

Well, unfortunately I soon realized that the computer-monitor optimized Thingiverse did not make managing the inventory via iPhone very easy. So, instead of simply converting that single page into one that works well with the iPhone, I converted the whole site! Now that its done… its really awesome! All of our boxes at MakerBot are covered in QR code stickers. I just scan one of those stickers with QuickMark and it takes me to the Thingiverse page for that part. From there I can add or subtract from our inventory nice and easy. No more lugging a heavy box to the barcode scanner station just so I can add or subtract one bolt. I can just grab a bolt, scan the code and go!

Ah the joy of 4 days work to save 5 minutes work.

The store was down for a few hours today as we made some changes to it. Some of these you’ll notice, some you won’t. They will make life easier for everyone though. Here’s a quick list of the new changes:

* Its now on its own server which is much faster! (Previously it shared a server with the makerbot site, thingiverse, blogs, and a few other random sites)
* We now have SSL and all your account information is now encrypted and secured.
* We now accept credit cards directly! No more using Paypal. Good for those of you that work at universities or in large corps and want to buy a MakerBot
* Magento now uses memcached on the backend for caching sessions and such. Should result in a speed boost.
* We found and installed a new order status module which will result in more informative order statuses (eg: ‘On Hold’ is now ‘In Production’.)
* We found a module that will serve as a start for UPS WorldShip integration which means we’ll be switching to UPS soon.

PS. We use Magento, which is awesome, open source ecommerce software.
PPS. DNS may still be propogating, so you may still see a ‘site is down’ message. It will be back ASAP.

A few weeks ago, we picked up some old Zebra LP 2844 thermal printers in hopes of using them to print barcodes, packing slips, stickers, and all sorts of other fun stuff. Well, since most of us around here use Ubuntu, we figured it would be awesome to be able to use it with Linux.

Okay, sounds easy… well, how do you do it? First off, the printer we have only has serial and parallel ports. Crap. Undaunted, I order a USB to Serial cable that uses the good old FTDI chip. I manage to add it as a printer in Ubuntu, and go to print a test page. Ugh. Super slow. Its also pretty buggy and half the prints die. Fail. Twitter to the rescue, and @adafruit recommends a USB to Parallel adaptor.

Fast forward two days, and the Sabrent USB to Parallel cable has arrived. Things got busy, but tonight I was able to get out the cable and give it a shot. Parallel may be old, but the cable looks nice and plugging things in are easy. I remember order of operations being important from the ‘old days’, so I tried this combination and it worked. Remember, this is on a standard Ubuntu 9.04 install, YMMV.

1. Plug Parallel end into Zebra
2. Turn on Zebra
3. Plug USB into computer

Okay, now I have it plugged in. A quick ‘dmesg’ in the terminal confirms that it found SOMETHING that looks like a printer. Rock.

[996085.966096] usblp2: USB Bidirectional printer dev 4 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x1A86 pid 0×7584

Alright, and now the tricky part: How do I get the computer to talk to it? Actually it was ridiculously easy!

1. Go to System -> Administration -> Printers
2. That brings up the printer management dialog, where you click the New button.
3. It doesn’t find the printer automatically, so go with the Unknown device option and click Forward.
4. It searched for a bit and brought up the Choose Driver screen. Scroll all the way down to Zebra and click Forward.
5. The Zebra LP 2844 uses the EPL2 language, so select EPL2 Label Printer model and the recommended driver.
6. Name it. I called mine ZEBRAR.
7. Print a test page. You know you want to.

Bingo! If everything went okay, you now have a working label printer. Now, what do you do with it?

Well, the easiest way I could figure out how to make things to print on it was to use the GIMP. Here are a few tips:

* The printer is 203dpi. When you create your images, make sure they use this DPI setting (its under advanced settings) Then make the size of the document the size of your stickers in inches. That will make things work great for you.

* Make sure you adjust the page setup! Go to File -> Page Setup. Make sure you select Format for: Zebra as well as your paper (label) size. This will ensure that your prints are exactly what you see.

* For some reason, from GIMP the print copies stuff doesn’t work. Bizarre for sure, but I found a workaround: Use the Print to File option to print a PDF and set the desired number of copies. This will create a PDF with a page for every copy you want. When you print that, it will print out the number of copies you want. Make sure you set the page properties in your PDF viewer before printing!!!

Anyway, thats how you get a Zebra LP 2844 thermal label printer working under linux. Now to get the right kind of stickers and print out hundreds of MakerBot QR code stickers.

Thingiverse is the wonderful little underdog of a website that we run as part of MakerBot Industries. While CupCake CNC gets all the glamour, Thingiverse does all the heavy lifting in this little revolution we’re starting. Well, its about to do quite a bit more lifting as we’ve just upgraded it with a major new system: parts listing and inventory tracking. Yup, now anyone can list the exact parts and quantities needed to build a thing in a structured way. You can also track your own personal inventory of things which is super handy.

Why did we build this? Mostly because we needed it, but also because we the problems that people deal with daily when working with open source hardware designs. Creating lists of parts that are actually useful to other people is a very important thing to do, and often it can be rather difficult to do right. We’re not the only ones struggling with it, and we’re hoping that the tool we built for us will be useful for other people.

Not only is the part listing a problem that we deal with, but now that we are manufacturing robots in fairly large quantities. Keeping track of what parts we actually have in stock is the flipside problem to listing what parts are actually needed to build something. By creating an integrated system to both keep track of what parts are needed to build something as well as what parts you actually have it should streamline things for us as well as hopefully benefit the community at large.

If you want to read more about the features and such, head over to the Thingiverse Blog or just check out the actual parts nebula directly.

Problems are opportunities

At MakerBot, we have a problem of production. You see, our CupCake CNC is made of a variety of components: electronics, lasercut parts, machined parts, and printed parts. To be specific, there are 4 idler pulleys that are printed by the machine, for the machine. Currently, we produce all of the idler pulleys on our own bank of MakerBots in our Brooklyn factory. This worked smoothly when we were shipping 20 bots a month. Lately, demand is increasing so fast that we’re ramping up production to be able to ship 50 to 100 bots a month. Our next production bottleneck is printing enough pulleys for the kits.  We could switch back to lasercut pulleys, but we’d rather not have to.

Crowdsourced manufacturing

In the conversation about cheap, ubiquitous 3D printing, people talk a lot about distributed manufacturing  The concept is simple: instead of having a centralized factory that produces parts and then distributes them to the people that want them, individuals have the tools they need to build the things they want and distribute them without a central hub. Here at MakerBot, we fully support this vision of the future–we’re actively building tools that support this revolution. We want to take a first step toward that future by starting crowdsourced manufacturing, where production is distributed, but distribution  still uses the hub model.

That is where you, the MakerBot Operator comes in. If you have a MakerBot, then you have the means of production. We want you to take part in our grand experiment in crowdsourced manufacturing. We want you to use your MakerBot to produce the next wave of MakerBots. In essence, we want to distribute pulley manufacturing to you. Since this is just the first step, we want to make it easy and simple. You build the parts, we handle distributing them.

Be a part of it

We will pay $1.00 / pulley for 608 Idler Pulleys. Download the linked file for the 608 Idler Pulley and print it out. When you have at least 30, mail them to us and we’ll either send you a check or pay you by Paypal. When we make them, the bearing press fits into the pulley and yours should too! Don’t forget to check the pulley for bearing fit before sending them off, because we certainly will! We need 150 of these pulleys before September 3rd and if this experiment works out, we’ll ask for folks to print out 625 Idler Pulleys too!

This is a new and exciting adventure for us. As far as we know, crowdsourced manufacturing is just something people have talked about, not actually done. We’re looking forward to the results, and we hope that you will take part. If this whole thing goes well, then it means we will be able to crowdsource other parts as well, and gradually turn our MakerBot design into a 3D printable design and fulfill the RepRap dream of a 3D printable 3D printer.

Being able to collaboratively create MakerBot kits with the help of MakerBot operators is going to be an awesome future, and we want you to be a part of it.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that we recently signed a lease on a new warehouse which shall henceforth be referred to as The Factory. Well, we’re moving the entire MakerBot operation to this new factory. This is happening on July 20th. Unfortunately this means that a) we have to move a lot of stuff and b) there will be a few days of downtime as we move everything and get setup in the new factory.

We want to make the move easier on ourselves, so we’ve figured out an easy way to do it: the less stuff we have, the less we have to move! So, we’re doing a two day moving sale. Use the coupon code GTFO in the MakerBot store to get 10% off anything. We only have 1 deluxe kit left, so maybe you’ll be able to pick it up for cheap if you’re quick. All orders must be received by Midnight, Thursday 16th to be shipped out. Any orders received after that day will most likely be shipped out once we get setup in the new warehouse. We’re aiming to be up and running again by Friday, July 24. We apologize for the delay that this will cause, but this is just another one of those growing pains we’re dealing with.

Oh yeah, and check out the last clause in our lease (our landlords rock):

It’s a new record! I’ve been itching to find a model that really tests the limits of a MakerBot, and the other day I stumbled upon this AWESOME creative commons model of Walt Disney’s head (on a plate). I downloaded it and took a look. Unfortunately it was intended more for 3D animation than printing, but about 30 minutes later I had closed all the holes and fixed all the non-manifold vertices. I scaled it up to be nice and big, and then let her rip. 2 hours and 45 minutes later I was looking at my very own fist-sized bust of Walt Disney.

This may be one of my favorite prints to date. It certainly is impressive, and has a very nice heft to it. Not only that, but I printed this using a fan which really improved print quality. For example, the chin had very little sagging . Other than the ears, the only part that needed any cleanup was the very first layer of the nose. There is a bit of vertical pixellation, but that is not very noticeable when you hold it in your hands. It does get highlighted under bright light though. It has a very nice feel to it.

If you want to print your own, you’ll need to get a MakerBot and then head over to Thingiverse and download it. Enjoy!

I’m leading a MakerBot 3D printing workshop down in Philly tomorrow. It’s going to be a blast and we’ll be designing and making some cool things. Here are the details:

This workshop I do know about. The MakerBot workshop is happening right here at Hive 76, starring MakerBot founder Zack Hoeken. The class is Saturday June 20th, from 1PM to 5PM. You just need to show up on time, and with a laptop, and we do the rest. We’ll teach you everything you need to do a first design, and a first printing using the MakerBot. Tickets for the 4 hours class are $25 (or $5 for students).

Here at MakerBot, we’re big fans of the McMaster.com website. It’s basically the worlds biggest hardware store and they sell pretty much anything mechanical that you’d ever want to lay your hands on. Their online catalog is one of the best we’ve encountered in terms of ease of use. You can search quickly and easily, and if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for you can whittle down category by category until it tells you what you are looking for. The whole way there are nice, clear pictures and lots of descriptions of what the various things mean. Not to mention the gluttonous amount of specifications and CAD drawings they provide.

However, there has always been one thing lacking from their website: NO DEEP LINKING! As it was a javascript / ajax based site, it was always a pain to link to that specific part you were looking for. Well, fear no longer because they relaunched their website today and added this crucial picture. Want a $1344 bar of titanium? No problem.

Thank you McMaster!

The day we’ve all been anxiously awaiting will soon arrive. We’ve been busy little bees the past few months gearing up for this awesome event. For me, Maker Faire is pretty much like heaven. It is filled with all sorts of interesting people who are all there because they love doing. After slaving away for months in our collective workshops, we all take this chance to come out and share our progress, our stories, and our friendship. Every time I go, I take a way a lasting inspiration to work harder, do cooler things and to make more stuff.

This MakerFaire is going to be very special for me. I’m going with Bre and Adam and we’ll be demoing the robots that we’ve been working so hard to build for years now. We have 3 fully functional machines and we’ve been printing out things like crazy the past week in order to have schwag to hand out to people. Our plan is to have the machines running and printing all weekend, so if you have a 3D printable design, come on by and we’ll print it out for you.