We’re cleaning out our inventory at the Botcave! Last week we put up a grab bag of extra parts in our store and everyone loves it – so we made another one with a whole new set of items in it. You can pick up some pulleys, M8 bolts, timing belts, all at a fraction of their cost for your own projects. The best part is we’re selling each bag for only $9.99! Most of these parts are from the cupcake – so this is a chance to stock up on some extra parts for veteran MakerBot operators, but it’s really just a great deal that makes sense. My favorite things in this kit that I know are a great deal are the smooth steel rods used in the cupcake. If I tried to buy these separately I’d probably spend over thirty dollars just for the rods.
In the spirit of crazy grab bagness, we don’t guarantee items and quantities in each bag, but we do guarantee an incredible deal on each one (10 Bucks!). It’s a fraction of the cost! So pick up one in the store today: grab bag#1 and make your parts drawer all that much happier.
Last week we launched MakerBot Projects, featuring the Botmobile, the Dynamo! and the Windup Walkers. I’m excited to say we already have some great Thingiverse activity to report.
Thingiverse User Luis printed out a gorgeous silver body in PLA with an orange ABS interior (featured above). We can’t wait to see this dune buggy ride!
Buy all 3 of the brand new MakerBot Projects today and drive your own 3D printed RC car, generate electricity, and conquer the world with your windup robots!
Today we’re launching MakerBot Projects with 3 fun projects. The MakerBot Wind Up Walkers, The MakerBot Dynamo, and the MakerBot Botmobile Remote Control Car. (Store Link)
MakerBot projects is an ongoing collection of kits to make everything in your world with your MakerBot printer. We’re on a mission to give every MakerBot owner the parts and instructions for making everything in their lives.
The MakerBot Botmobile is the first open source remote control car. MakerBot’s own designer Michael Curry, took everything he learned from creating the Turtle Shell Racers which were featured on the track at Maker Faire, and created the Botmobile kit. All you need to do is get the kit, print out the parts from thingiverse and you’ll have your own RC car. It’s got a great 12 volt motor, a 2 channel radio controller, a tiny servo for steering, rubber racing tires; all rolled into a a ready-to-go kit. The BotMobile kit requires no soldering, all the parts snap together – It really is a perfect weekend project. The body design is a slick dune buggy – and it’s already on thingiverse (link), ready to be printed. You want to change it or customize it? The design files are open source and are ready for you to turn it into a hot rod.
The MakerBot Dynamo is a wonderful project that shows how hand motion is converted into electrical energy. The kit comes with a toy motor, 3 metal screws and 3 large bright LEDs – you print the big gears and a handle on your MakerBot (thingiverse link). Simply put it all together following our assembly instructions to make a simple science project that showcases some basic principles of engineering and energy production. We can’t keep our hands off this thing at the office, and have put in 100s of hours of electricity generation while fidgeting in meetings.
The MakerBot Windup Walker was inspired when Bre declared: “everything on Thingiverse should be able to walk”. The Windup walker pack comes with 5 barebones windup feet, ready to start walking. They’re cool, but they’re mostly soulless and require your creativity to bring them to life. Need a robotic posse? Fire up the MakerBot and start printing them out! Elliot Cohen here at MakerBot modified R.Maker for you to get started (thingiverse link), but we expect a flurry of windup walker designs to start popping up on thingiverse as soon as you start designing the next greatest wind up toy.
Today and through end of day Monday we are offering a limited time special deal. Buy the Botmobile and the Dynamo, and get the windup walkers for free (Store Link) – We know you’ll like them as much as we do!
We’re cleaning out our inventory at the Botcave! We’ve put together a of grab bag of great parts that you can pick up at a fraction of their cost for your own projects – We’re selling each bag for only $9.99! Most of these parts are from the cupcake – so this is a chance to stock up on some extra parts for veteran MakerBot operators, but but it’s really just a great deal that makes sense. Some of my personal favorites in this kit that I know are a great deal include the USB to TTL cable from grab bag #1 which usually retails for $20, and that big collection of thermistors.
In the spirit of crazy grab bagness, we don’t guarantee items and quantities in each bag, but we do guarantee an incredible deal on each one (10 Bucks!). It’s a fraction of the cost! So pick up one in the store today: grab bag#1 and make your parts drawer all that much happier.
We’re excited to announce that we’ve started carrying Sugru in the MakerBot store. This air curing rubber is just plain fantastic! It feels like modeling clay, and you simply hand mold it into the shape you need – that’s pretty much it. It cures in under 24 hours, taking on the characteristics you expect of rubber – it’s soft, flexible, grippy, waterproof, and can withstand extreme temperatures. It’s a fantastic way to improve everyday items in your life – The first thing I did was fix my fraying laptop power cable.
But that’s just the tip of what’s exciting – it’s all about what happens when you attach Sugru to one of our favorite filaments. It turns out Sugru bonds particularly well to ABS, making the two completely inseparable buddies. Want proof? Check out the video at the bottom.
We have a lot of cool ideas for tricking out Makerbot Prints with Sugru – In fact our very own Annelise has kinda fallen in love with the possibilities, so she’s been making all sorts of fun things that we’ll show you in the next few days.
We’re also planning on hosting a Thingiverse design challenge to see what kinds of interesting uses for Sugru our talented community can come up with. I have no doubt awesome things will happen with Sugru and Makerbots. Basically Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
See that compact grid of 36 white LEDs in the picture? It’s called the openVolver. Just about the size of a wrestler’s fist, the openVolver can store thousands of animation patterns on a memory card that you can design individually on just about any computer.
Friends, this is no ordinary blinky project. Those 36 LEDs are diffused, have 255 levels of thumb-wheel controlled brightness, run on a single 9V battery and can be worn on a lanyard (oh, you’ll be noticed). We’ve already included 59 separate animations with intriguing names like ‘edgewerks‘, ’snuggles_butts‘ and ‘4 drunks‘. I’ll give you a hint on that last one, 4 friends (as LEDs of course) trying desperately to find each other in the night, but never quite pulling it off.
If you’re too modest to wear it on your chest, we’ve included a plexiglass faceplate that can turn it into a great desktop companion (it’s very easy to use with a DC power supply). And if you have access to a makerbot, we can’t wait to to see what kind of holders and cases you’ll upload to Thingiverse.
The openVolver comes as a kit that anyone with some modest soldering skills can build. To get a sense of it, take a look at the clearly laid out instructions and the animation software right here.
the openVolver is a lovely design by our very talented friends at the New York art collective Image Node . They’ve been making the openVolver in various incarnations and taking them to Burning Man for many years – so we know this Blinkytronic can in the very least withstand playa dust.
So why wait? Go to the makerbot store and order one today!
I love the shape of these vintage erasers. When I saw a whole bag of them for only 99 cents at Office Depot, I had this idea for a little office toy. 3D printing fanatics, here is my gift to you.
All the instructions for this project are on instructables : instructables.com/id/Eraser-ball-3DP/…
