MakerBot Industries

We started shipping Thing-O-Matics this week, and the team at MakerBot Industries has been meticulously documenting every aspect of it to get operators from boxed MakerBot to first print as quickly as possible. Thing-O-Matic hardware has been getting a lot of attention at the Botcave, as every new product gets its own photo shoot.

You can find a full set of assembly instructions on our website. We are continuing to update them and improve them on a daily basis.

Forklift delivered to the Botcave in anticipation of growth. Photo taken on September 13, 2010 by Olivia Koski

Remember just a few months ago when we had that forklift delivered and we needed a forklift to lift it?

Less than a month ago, the Botcave warehouse was full of loosely organized but slightly messy piles of boxes.

The Botcave warehouse before shelves were installed. Photo taken on October 18, 2010 by Olivia Koski

Well, things are a lot different now. Our garage has been transformed with the addition of towering shelves that keep our ever expanding stock of MakerBot items organized.

Towering shelves line the Botcave warehouse. Photo taken on November 29, 2010 by Olivia Koski

It’s a good thing we got the forklift when we did!

It’s amazing how quickly things change at the Botcave.

Hanukkah ends December 9th. There’s still time to spin the dreidel. Don’t have one? Print one out with your MakerBot. There are several designs on Thingiverse, all of them inspired by phooky’s original. The ones in the picture above were printed by smwombat.

Thingiverse user staffert took the letter designs from spooky and created his own model based on his child’s plastic models.

This top spins for more than a minute. The design was created by shwekwek, who was inspired by a bicycle wheel.

And this is the original dreidel, uploaded to Thingiverse last year by phooky.

Happy Chanukkah, everyone!

Hanukkah is rapidly approaching. It starts this Wednesday, December 1st at sundown. Need a menorah? Want to do a little soldering? Want to save wax?

Come visit the MakerBot Store. We have the Deluxe LED Menorah kit from Evil Mad Science Laboratories in stock for $14:

Our Deluxe LED Menorah kit is an updated take on the traditional hanukkiyah, the nine-armed Hanukkah candelabrum. Two candles are lit on the first night of Hanukkah (one “real” candle plus the lighter candle, or shamash), three on the second night, right up to nine on the eighth night. (That’s (2+9)*(8/2)=44 candles all together, for those of you keeping score.)

Ours works pretty much the same way, but uses less wax. When you turn it on, it displays the correct configuration of LED “candles” for a given night of Hanukkah. Each time that you press the button (or switch it off and back on), it displays one more light than it did the previous time that you turned it on (unless it showed all nine last time, in which case it goes back to two). The LEDs are lit up in the traditional sequence, with a gentle fade.”

There is plenty more to shop for at the MakerBot Botcave. We have all the traditional MakerBot faire like MakerBot Cupcake CNC Kits, TTL Cables, LED strips, pen plotters, extruders, and ABS plastic. We also sell Adafruit Kits like the Brain Machine, stuff from Evil Mad Science Laboratories, Arduino products, Jimmy Rodgers and much more.

Also, every visitor gets an object printed by one of our very own MakerBots!

So come and say hello. We’re located at 87 3rd Avenue. Hours are Noon-8 p.m., Tuesday thru Saturday, now until December 24th. See you at the MakerBot Botcave!

A MakerBot 3D Printer makes a cameo appearance in this video (@2:16) about eliminating waste through upcycling.

It’s great to reuse, reduce, and recycle to minimize our impact on the environment. But is there a way to make trash a thing of the past? Graduate students at Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity University think so. Taking lessons from nature, where nothing is wasted, ever, the team dreams of a society where trash is reborn, just as in nature things die and decompose, providing nutrients for new living things. They call this closed-loop process of material renewal the upcycle.

So where do MakerBots fit in? Do-it-yourself 3D printers like MakerBots promote distributed manufacturing. The centralized manufacturing processes we currently rely on are wasteful because products spend 90 percent of their lifetime in transit, according to Singularity U speaker Kausar Samli. That means that for most of their inanimate lives, they are traveling on a boat, in a truck, or flying through the air on a plane, pouring carbon dioxide into the air.

If everyone had their own personal manufacturing facility, the environmental and economic costs of transporting those goods would be virtually eliminated. Although it may be a while before such a considerable change in the manufacture and distribution of goods is implemented on a mass scale, the Upcycle team dreams of bringing 3D printing technology to communities in developing countries as soon as possible. Locals could print their own goods with environmentally friendly bioplastics, making things that were previously economically out of reach newly accessible.

Projects such as the Fab Lab–a mobile manufacturing facility produced by M.I.T.’s Center for Bits and Atoms–are already doing just that. There are 45 labs in dozens of countries around the world, from South Africa to Afghanistan to Austria.

So democratizing manufacturing with 3D printers like MakerBots will not only allow everyone equal access to stuff, it could also help us all be better upcyclers.

Since I started working at MakerBot Industries, the company has hired about eight more people. I started in September, so that means that every week, one or two new employees join the MakerBot team. Recently, I tagged along for one of the orientation tours. Here is what I saw:

Spools and Spools of Plastic: Some black plastic sits atop a box in the garage. This is the view from just in front of Bre’s car. It’s fun to imagine what all of those boxes filled with plastic might someday become.

Boxes o’ Parts: Each MakerBot Cupcake CNC or Thing-o-matic build kit comes with laser cut housing. This is where they live as they wait to be shipped to their new homes.

More Plastic: Plastic spools in limbo. These spools have been liberated from their oppressive boxes in the garage, but have not yet found a new home. Perhaps they will become part of a Mega Rainbow plastic pack.

Bagged Hardware: Feeding your MakerBot is a little easier with the Deluxe Filament Spindle & Box MK1 Kit. The kit keeps your plastic organized and on its spool on the bottom of your MakerBot.

Clear Plastic Cups: All of the nuts and bolts you need to assemble your Cupcake CNC are hand sorted with these pretty plastic cups. We call the finished product, which includes all the hardware you need to assemble your MakerBot, a hardware burrito.

Labeled Boxes: Each plastruder – that thing that turns your plastic into parts – is supported by metal rods that allow the plastruder to travel up and down. Some people call this the “z” direction, and hence the name – Z rod. This box stores finished Z rods.

Products Ready to Ship: Ever dreamed of using your MakerBot to frost a cake? Well, it’s perfectly possible with a Frostruder. They are currently in stock and ready to go.

Toolboxes: As MakerBot Industries rapidly expands, we have to have new tools. Charles Pax happily labels a new drawer where snips, wire cutters, and X-acto blades will live.

Packaging Material: A giant spool of packaging material used by shippers safely bundles MakerBots for their journeys into the wide, wide world.

Storage Racks: We have a very sophisticated technique for naming our shelves. We number them. We have ten so far.

Supplies for Experimentation: You never know what you will find on the shelves where the Research and Development department stores its stuff. In this case, it’s an experimental plastic.

The Vintage BMW: If you ever come to the the Botcave, you will probably get a glimpse of Bre’s 1979 BMW. It rests alongside hundreds of pounds of plastic spools in the garage. It needs a little work.

Techs at Work: A production technician lays out laser cut parts in preparation to assemble a Thing-o-matic.

Photos of cute baby animals: Puppy and kitty calendars peppered throughout the Botcave remind us what life is all about.

A 3-D printer did not print out this Schulich I solar car that has raced thousands of miles in the Australian outback, U.S. and Canada. However, one of its team members, Thingiverse user silby101, said it would have been awesome to have a MakerBot while designing the Schulich I to rapidly prototype his ideas on a small scale.

If you’re designing a new type of car or just like to play with car models, here is some inspiration from Thingiverse:

Yellow Lamborghini designed by Thingiverse user twotimes.

A red Lamborghini printed by Thingiverse member gpvillamill (people love printing this car).

Leesa’s car designed by Thingiverse member imaterialise.

Toy car -with moving wheels – by Thingiverse member kparanya.

Rep Rap action car designed by Thingiverse member wizard23.

This is the 3D model of the Schulich I that is available for download from Thingiverse. If you print it, be sure to upload a picture of your print to Thingiverse.

Okay, so the MakerBot will probably not be making a full-size operational vehicle like the Urbee – an Urban Electric Ethanol car – anytime soon. The team that created the first-ever 3D-printed car, Kor Ecologic Inc., collaborated with high-end 3D printing companies Stratasys and Dimension. Those printers start at $20,000, whereas you can get a Cupcake 3D Printer for $649.

So what would it take to make an actual car with a MakerBot? Post your ideas to Thingiverse and tag them with “car.”

A few weeks ago, we who populate the Botcave started to think about Halloween. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of us expressed the desire to be a MakerBot.

You would think that living and breathing MakerBots all day, every day (including weekends for some) would make you want to escape from the world of MakerBots when given the chance. But apparently, everyone thinks it’s a great idea to be a MakerBot. So I guess my idea was not that original, considering the company I keep. Initial concern that we might be stepping on each other’s creative costume idea toes evolved into the delightful epiphany: we’ll all go as a MakerBot ‘Botfarm!

Alas, extenuating circumstances such as illness and not-a-minute-to-spare have plagued the Botcave. So there may not be a ‘Botfarm this year. But there will be at least one MakerBot – me!

So for those of you who are desperate for a cool costume idea, have a few hours to spare, and are healthy enough for the challenge, I give you my step-by-step guide to becoming a MakerBot.

Step 1: Find a Box

We have been hiring people like crazy at the ‘Botcave, and we’ve been scrambling to keep everyone comfortably seated. Because of this, there’s a surplus of chair boxes that are the perfect size for a MakerBot costume.

Step 2: Gather Supplies

The foundations for a good MakerBot costume are box cutters, scissors, and tape. I initially was trying to make cuts in the box with scissors when Sam shook his head and told me I needed box cutters. He was right. Cutting out the walls of the box was much easier with box cutters. I used the scissors to cut pieces of brown paper I salvaged from the recycling bin to coat the box with. I used the tape to hold the paper in place. I loved that someone wrote on the tape dispenser “Become what you dream.” It was fitting, considering I was using the tape to become what I had dreamed of being – a MakerBot.

Here I am, just a woman with a vision. A woman wearing an average chair box, but dreaming of becoming a MakerBot.

Step 3: Paper your Box

Covering the box with brown paper was the most time consuming part of this job. It took over an hour. An alternative solution is to turn the box inside out, which would require cutting down one of the sides and potentially compromising its structural integrity.

The paper I found in the recycling bin was the perfect texture for the task. It was soft and malleable. The costume was coming together.

Not yet a MakerBot, but slightly more than a woman wearing a chair box.

Step 4: Get Your M On

At first I had grand visions of an anatomically correct MakerBot. I decided I would be a Cupcake as opposed to a Thing-o-matic, and wanted to mimic it perfectly. But that idea crashed and burned when I absentmindedly cut a hole in each of the four chair box walls instead of three. Had I been true to the Cupcake anatomy, my left side wall would have stayed intact. I quickly realized in the interest of time that I would not be able to make a perfect MakerBot. So I settled for good enough. In that spirit, I managed to print out an M with the help of Matt Griffin, who mercifully tolerated staying later than he should, donating his exacto knife skills for the cause. There was no time to spell out “MakerBot Industries,” or to preserve the bump in the front wall of the Cupcake for the M. I was proud just to have a bright-colored, nicely printed MakerBot logo.

Step 5: Bling Your MakerBot

There’s no doubt about it – people are impressed by LED lights. I was hoping to decorate my MakerBot with circuit boards, plastic parts, and anything else I found lying around the ‘Botcave, but I decided to keep it simple in the spirit of getting it done. If there’s one thing that will make the costume, it’s those bright little LEDs, which we sell in the store to bling your real MakerBot. Although I had lots of ideas about things to add to the costume, I realized that I was almost done.

Step 6: Accesorize

Any good MakerBot costume is all about the final touches. I gathered some ABS, put some blue tape on my belly, wielded an extruder, and appropriated a freshly printed object with the help of one of our talented MakerBot engineers, Nick Starno.

So go forth, and create your own MakerBot costume! Let us know how it turns out. Take a picture, and if we get enough of them, we may be able to make a virtual ‘Botfarm!

Three years ago, a marketing company produced a video envisioning the future of the media. It illustrates the collapse of old media and rise of new media through the concept of the “prosumer.” The prosumer is not content to sit passively as news is fed to her, but actively contributes to the knowledge stream as an idea producer.

Needless to say, prosumerism has expanded to the world of manufacturing, and MakerBots is at the cutting edge of that transformation. Prosumerism is not just for digital media anymore.

According to one definition, in a prosumerist society, “interconnected users come together to create products to meet their demands.” The power of advertising wanes as consumers realize they can design their own goods.

MakerBot Industries teeters at the intersection between the producer and consumer. Our product is interactive, and we encourage our consumers to help us improve our product, and to be producers.

This new model is what Mateusz Makosiewicz explored for his master’s thesis in philosophy from the University of Gdansk. His blog is “probably the first dedicated entirely to the matters of prosumerism.”

If you’re interested in learning more about prosumerism, check out his recommended reading list, which includes classics such as “Wikinomics,” “The Third Wave,” and “Netocracy.”

This man is the 27th coolest tech person in New York City | Photo Credit: Joi Ito

Bre Pettis made Business Insider’s Silicon Alley 100, an annual list of “100 people in the New York tech community who did really cool stuff this year.” He is #27.

We’ve always known he was special, but now his specialness is quantified and packaged by a leading online business magazine.

“It’s all because of Makerbots,” said Bre, who also said he thought he was something like #99 last year. In fact, he was #52. Indeed, his position on the list is undeniably tied to MakerBot Industries and his role in the DIY 3D printing revolution. His movement up the list from last year can be attributed to a great year for the business.

Tonight he will be hanging out with the likes of Mayor Bloomberg, Kickstarter founder Perry Chen (#18), Gawker founder Nick Denton (#9), and Foursquare founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai (#1).

Congratulations, Bre!