MakerBot Industries

Having recently been contacted by someone interested in testing a few samples of makerbot-made braille, I polished up my previous design and shipped a few pieces off earlier this week. Now, the results are in…. and it seems to be a resounding YES!

He writes: “I am enormously impressed. With my fingernail I can feel where the filaments laid down. With my fingertips though, the dots are correct sized, smooth feeling and comfortable to read. I really think this is professional quality stuff.”

I’ll be talking with him about where to take it from here and about what implications/possibilities this may have (and I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop).

Check it out on Thingiverse for the details.

We’ve been printing tons of pulleys recently and have started to notice that little delays, like waiting for the test extrusion, really start to add up.

Some very quick GCode modifications can seriously up the production capabilities of your MakerBot. All of the sudden pulleys that would take 20 minutes pop out in 15. Checkout the write up on the wiki and start pushing your bot to the production extremes!

In ReplicatorG 005 support was added for controlling multiple MakerBots from the same computer. On Windows and Linux it just involves opening more instances of ReplicatorG and assigning them to their respective serial ports but on a Mac it’s a little bit trickier.

The other day Adam showed me this cool trick for running ReplicatorG from the source in terminal and today I documented it on the ReplicatorG wiki. I’ve been using this trick the past few days to pump out pulleys for batch 5. It’s an awesome feeling to be surrounded by lots of MakerBots all humming away as they print out tons of parts for you. Yay for MakerBot threesomes!

CES, where the VCR got its start, saw the launch of some of the most awesome technologies including some that you may have heard of: the NES, the commodore 64, the cd player, and now in 2010, the MakerBot!

Yesterday we spent the entire day showing off the MakerBot at the CEA Lineshow. We met some great people and have gotten awesome press (Huge thanks to Gizmodo, Engadget, Make, Dvice and Hackaday) while doing what MakerBot does best: cranking out awesome objects!

Read about how Bre wowed the judges at the startup competition in the NYTech Meetup Blog.

So you got your MakerBot together and are ready for your first prints… With the wealth of digital designs out on Thingiverse these days it might be hard to choose which one is going to be your first ever print and forever mark this historic occasion. Having just recently experienced my first 100% successful print I’m hoping I can offer some guidance.

Bre’s MakerBot Coin is definitely my pick for first print. It’s easy, fast, and perfect to show off to your friends.

Zach’s 608 idler pulleys are again a quick build and will definitely help you prove to the skeptics out there that the MakerBot can and does print useful parts.

For your third print you should definitely test the limits of your machine. It took a lot of tuning and fiddling before my MakerBot could print Wizard23′s Screwable Jewellery Boxes but once they came out flawlessly I knew my MakerBot was ready to take on any challenge. Now go out there and start printing and be sure to upload your pictures to the MakerBot Flikr pool!