MakerBot Industries

Look at that texture!

There seems to be a trend in MakerBot land…child sees object, child wants different object, child asks parent for object, parent designs and prints object, parent uploads design to Thingiverse, much rejoicing.

Some young ones approached their father, sconine, after seeing the ever popular octopus, and wanted a starfish. Taking the challenge, sconin enlisted SketchUp to produce these beautiful (great color choices!) sea stars. Using the properties of MakerBot printing, the texture on these fish is most convincing. Not content with completely flat starfish, sconine tried heating up the starfish while resting on some rocks, and the results are pretty remarkable. Have a look yourself and try to convince yourself they wouldn’t look real just a few feet away. Just try.

So now you can find starfish on the sea floor at almost four miles down, or just across your desk on your MakerBot.

Starfish by sconine

My kids love the octopus, and kept asking for a starfish. This did the trick! I drew this in sketchup freehand. It took quite some time to get the surface right. Looks very topographic once printed. A great flat bottomed animal for the Makerbot. Perhaps a flounder is next up :)Update: This prints really well if you scale it up as well, I've printed it so that it just fits on the build platform, takes a bit longer, but comes out great. Sort of neat that the ends of the feet tend to curl up a little due to the heating/cooling of the plastic. Was very odd but overnight these things crawled up on a few rocks I'd left on the table...Update 10/15/2011: if your original needs a companion, check out Squiggly version.

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Sylvan Heumann, or Syl by those who know him, has always been at the forefront of designing, using, and adapting new technology. Like many MakerBot operators, he was born “with an intense curiosity about how stuff works.” This insatiable appetite just had to be fed. And fed. And fed. From acquiring his Ham Radio license in 1950, to building his very own computer (IMSAI 8080) in 1976, he’s never shied away from the latest and greatest. It’s no surprise that he just added a Thing-O-Matic (assembled it himself of course) to his workshop.

Syl’s journey into the world of fabrication did not begin in school. Studying Business Administration, and pursuing a career outside of the sciences, Syl relied on his own devices to get his creative fix; he built up his workshop, which in addition to his Thing-O-Matic, consists of a beautiful lathe, a CNC mill, electronic test equipment, and a plethora of other gizmos and gadgets. He’s taken on photography, boating, and even flying.

Over the years Syl has designed and built engines, argon lasers, and countless other projects, but his long term interest has been telescope design and accessories. He’s taken some absolutely gorgeous images of the moon with a telescope and digital camera.

So what does he have in store for his MakerBot?

[My] main motivation in building the Bot was to understand the technology. But I have amazed some of my friends with a few of the items from Thingiverse! Right now, I am making Coke can holders for a friend’s boat.

Less than two weeks ago, Syl turned 86 years young (can anyone top that?), and when he’s not working on his next project, he can be found cruising down the highways of California in his Ferrari F430. What does he have to say to all of those tinkerers, hobbyists, inventors, and designers out there?

My advice – when something doesn’t work or you don’t understand it, never quit trying. Put it aside for a short while, but come back and try again until you dominate. Never shy away from getting help. The satisfaction will erase all the frustration!

It’s quite clear that Syl has put an enormous amount of time into educating himself and pushing the limits of DIY. He is an inspiration to us all and we thank Syl for being a MakerBot Operator and friend to the community!

Now we may be a little over a year away from the election, but it might do us some good to educate ourselves as much as possible, so we can be informed, knowledgeable voters once the time comes…or at the very least appreciate how a state’s physical size doesn’t necessarily correspond to its influence in a national election. TheNewHobbyist has taken the electoral votes for the presidential election, and used those values to dictate the heights of the US states. Very cool.

Whether your political views have you leaning a little to the front, the back, the left, or the right, I think we can all appreciate the awesomeness of this Thingiverse item.

Now let’s see those predictions, printed of course!

United States Electoral Vote Map by TheNewHobbyist

This is a 3D scale replica of the United States, the state height corresponds to the number of electoral votes each state controls in a presidential election. I thought it could be a fun visual tool for learning about U.S. politics. Also included in this thing is a flat 2D Sketchup map of the U.S. suitable for resizing, extruding, scaling, puzzle making, you name it! More about this project in my blog post here: thenewhobbyist.com/2011/09/3d-printing-for-the-classroom/

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Horseshoes. Urban Style.

With Labor Day just about 60 hours away, it’s a great time to start practicing your long-toss in preparation of perhaps your last BBQ of the summer (and for some of you, the last time to wear white for quite some time). Thanks to PolygonPusher‘s printable horseshoe, we can play the ancient (over 2,000 years old!) game with modern technology! I do not recommend using the shoe for your beloved pony.

So get outside and enjoy the long weekend!

To avoid backyard arguments, please be sure to consult with The National Horseshoe Pitchers Association (NHPA) for proper game rules.

Horseshoe by PolygonPusher

Simple 3D-printable horseshoe. - 90x90x7 mm

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Hurricane Irene is on its way to New York City and as such we here at MakerBot are taking the necessary precautions to make sure MakerBot HQ survives the storm. Sales, support and other contact requests may be delayed until Monday at the earliest as we prepare for the worst. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank Noah for his superb engineering and design skills. MakerBot appreciates your patience. Stay safe everyone.

You’ve asked for it, and here it is. You can now find the 32 inch Thing-O-Matic ABP/HBP Wire Harness in our online store! We’ve got ‘em in stock and ready to go. Feel free to now use your old harness as a great fashion accessory to complement your “Fall” collection or your custom project. If you need to replace the wire harness for your Thing-O-Matic’s Heated or Automated Build Platform, this is the right part!

The title says it all. Or does it.

A father/daughter project of assembling a Thing-O-Matic didn’t stop when the last nut was bolted into place. A paint job was in order, but that meant the famed MakerBot logo had to go…temporarily of course. Instead of merely repainting the logo, Tinkerer and his daughter took it upon themselves to take that logo and render it in three dimensions, and then paint it.

What really gets me is this line in the description: “I created a 3D text of the MakerBot name/logo that you can print out to add bling to your printer.” Make sure to take a look at Tinkerer’s bot – it’s smokin’ hot.

MakerBot 3D Text Logo by Tinkerer

I created a 3D text of the MakerBot name/logo that you can print out to add bling to your printer or maybe blend into other objects like key chains or what have you. I created this in Solidworks (because that is what I know) so I attached the native part file in addition to the STL file. My daughter and I finished building our Makerbot Thing-O-Matic last week and we decided to paint it red on the outside and white on the inside. This obliterated the nice logo's that Makerbot prints on the wood, so that is what we decided to create this 3D printed logo to attach onto the front of the bot.

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I love SideLong‘s Door UnJam. SideLong, who hails from Melbourne, Australia has a problem when his house…oscillates. (That can happen when your house is built on sand.) The problem is that door frame to the entrance of his home shifts in relation to the actual door, resulting in a stuck door, and inevitably, some frustration.

Looking for a better solution than repeatedly damaging/bending what he could find to open the door, he looked to his most powerful tool: his MakerBot. Now, after placing the UnJams underneath his door prior to leaving home, he’s able to easily open his door upon his return, by simply stepping on his UnJam, lining up the door with the door frame.

Now I know this isn’t an issue most of us deal with on a regular basis, but this is a fantastic example of a user seeing a legitimate problem, designing and printing a solution, and sharing it for the rest of us.

Door UnJam by Sidelong

My house is built on shifting sand and is continually oscillating between Brunswick and Coburg (in Melbourne, Aust) with the direction of travel depending on the weather. This means that my front door frame has a disconcerting habit of moving and getting stuck; really stuck! It's very frustrating to get home and find that I can't get in, because the door has moved and the lock tongue is jammed into the frame. So before I managed to destroy all the screwdrivers/bike levers in the house I designed this small thing, which I call the Door UnJam, to do exactly that.

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Yes.

This doesn’t need much explanation, and I think we all know where this is going. Thaed has started the process by taking advantage of the Google 3D Warehouse. (as a side note, check out the Google Sketchup Warehouse – some very cool and possibly challenging items to print!)

So, what happens when you combine one aggravated avian¹, Batist‘s slingshot, and a challenge to the Thingiverse community to upload a few other fowl balls? Perhaps just enough material for some kind of video…

Aggravated Avian. by Thaed

Taken from Google Sketchup Warehouse, I see this more as a tribute than anything else.

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Slingshot by Batist

I tried to print this one, but I scaled it to big... and it was warping a lot. Perhaps printing a mini version? UPDATE: Today I printed a smaller one, and it works like a charm! When I was a child I made slingshots out of wood... Living in a city nowadays (Ghent, Belgium) I can relive my youth by printing them. I hope one day my children will use tools like this to explore their creativity :-).

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1. From 3D Warehouse [↩]

For many MakerBot users, the plethora of downloads available on Thingiverse is more than enough to satisfy their printing needs. For other users, the MakerBot serves as a tool with which they can express themselves.  Geoffrey Wardman is one of the second class of MakerBot user: he’s been using his CupCake to help with design and testing of the Magnetic, interconnecting, Modular, Mounting system – or MiMMs.

This simple, elegant, yet brilliant design has gone through months of testing to create a mounting system for all of the portable electronics in your life. His CupCake allowed him to make modifications to his idea, offering an affordable way to prototype his designs. As he put it himself, “This is a product that was fully enabled by Makerbot – without my Cupcake it would only be an idea.”

Cheers, Geoff!  One of MakerBot’s goals was always to make industrial prototyping faster, cheaper, and more accessible.  Thank you for being an inspiration to all the inventors out there!

If you want to find out more, or get your hands on a set, Geoff is using kickstarter to get his product to the next level.  Best of luck!