MakerBot Industries

Tomorrow night, New Yorkers will have the chance to see The Replicator in action at The Apple Store Fifth Avenue! Explore the emerging world of 3D printing with MakerBot Industries and see a live product demonstration by CEO and co-founder Bre Pettis.

Space is limited to get there early!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

8:00 p.m.

767 Fifth Ave.

New York, NY 10153

(212) 336-1440

OpenSCAD Bathtub Sailboat

The hardest part of cranking out a Thing-A-Day for me is coming up with new ideas.  When I have an idea for a printable thing, I typically just design it, publish it, and get it out there on Thingiverse.  However, that means I generally don’t have many ideas left over for creating something new each day.

Thankfully, I have my daughter.  After explaining that February was Thing-A-Day month and that I wanted to design something that was printable on our 3D printing robot, I asked her what she would like me to design.  A saildboat for the bathtub was her answer. ¹

In many ways the challenge of coming up with something that will meet her arbitrary and completely unpredictable specifications is actually easier that thinking up an idea for something each day myself. ²

Thing-A-Day #2: OpenSCAD Bathtub Sailboat by MakerBlock

After explaining Thing-A-Day to my daughter, I asked her what she would like me to design for her for day 2. Answer: A sailboat for the bathtub. Designed in OpenSCAD, but not very parametric.

This thing brought to you by

1. Actually, her answer was a paper sailboat.  I reminded her it had to be something out of plastic, so she revised her response. [↩]
2. After all, the spirit of the exercise is to create a new thing each day, not necessarily come up with the ideas for them yourself [↩]

Ben Fraser has a the Test Jig #4 ticking. Exciting!

There are a number of awesome clock projects that are ticking forward. If you have an interest in working on MakerBottable clocks, you’re invited to swing by the MakerBot workshop this Saturday, February 4th, from Noon to 6PM and hack on clocks.

Please RSVP on eventbrite and join the MakerBot Clock Google Group to stay up to date with the latest clock action. Bring any models you’ve made and a laptop so you can work on clocks while you’re here!

MakerBot Clockathon
MakerBot Workshop
Saturday, February 4th
Noon to 6PM
Pizza will be served.

Check out the slideshow of photos that Ben Fraser took of the last Clockathon

MakerBot Industries has partnered with 3D Artist Magazine in the UK for an exciting design contest! Our challenge is to design your own pet monster – whether it’s an adorable companion or a fearsome crittter, use your imagination to create the pet you wish you had. Each design will be judged on its creativity, character and ‘MakerBot-ability’, by a judging panel of 3D Artist and MakerBot Industries staff. The winner will receive a custom, fully-assembled MakerBot 3D printer, and the top 3 runners up will have their models printed, photographed and mailed back to them.

How to enter

You can submit as many designs as you like. Simply:

• Create a free account at Thingiverse
• Upload your original design files and ready-to-print STLs (under an Attribution – Share Alike – Creative Commons license) plus at least 3 non-textured renders
• Tag your creation with ’3D Artist mag’
• Submission deadline is 1 March 2012

Use any tools you like to design – 3ds Max, Blender, Maya, modo, Rhino, SketchUp or ZBrush, for example. The goal is to generate a manifold (watertight) mesh model (STL file) that can be printed on a MakerBot (consider that thin elements like feathers, amll joints, thin clothing etc are difficult to fabricate on a MakerBot). See a tutorial here from 3D Artist Mag on how to make a model for 3D printing.

Your character design can be made up of one or multiple parts, but must be smaller than 100 x 100 x 120mm when assembled. Different parts can be made in a variety of colors.

The ‘MakerBot-ability’ of your model will be an important factor in the judging – the challenge is to be innovative within a small footprint!

MakerBot is excited to be part of this weekend’s Art Hack Day in Brooklyn at the 319 Scholes gallery! Participants will be using the Thing-O-Matic throughout the week, from Thursday, January 26th through Saturday, January 28th, to work on their projects. We’ll also be bringing The Replicator by for a few key appearances!

Art Hack Day is an event dedicated to cracking open the process of art-making, with special reverence toward open-source technologies. Artists and collaborators will inhabit 319 Scholes to create and explore the participatory nature of technology, bringing together hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is technology.

At the close of the hackathon, a giant party will be held at 319 Scholes to show off participant’s creations! The party will be open to the public, starting at 7 p.m. If you’d like to attend, please RSVP here.

The party will be one of the first opportunities for New Yorkers to be able to see the new MakerBot Replicator live and in the flesh! Stop by and say hi!

If you are in the Greater Los Angeles Area, stop by the Affordable Art Fair this weekend to catch Keith and myself as we introduce the brand new MakerBot Replicator to the West Coast!¹ The remaining hours are today until 8pm and tomorrow (Sunday) from 11am until 6pm.

We have been running “Keith It!”² versions of 3D scans of people like Laurie Anderson, Bre Pettis, Keith Ozar, Phill Niblock, and others, as well as a few other favorites such as a (newly revised v18!) Barrel of Octopi, giant chess pieces, cows, work by Micah Ganske, and others.

We have been visiting with AAF neighbors and presenters such as ArtStar.com, the filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, and the LA-based Toy Art Gallery. We are even making 3D printed versions of vinyl art toys by awesome Art Toy heroes Luke Chueh and Dave Bondi for the Toy Art Gallery staff, work the gallery hasn’t yet had the opportunity to produce.

Quite a few MakerBot Operators such as Miles Lightwood (TeamTeamUSA), Theron Trowbridge and the crew at CRASHspace, and MakerBot’s Taylor Goodman (based in LA) have spent a lot of time with us at the booth, sharing things for us to print and generally introducing us to the wonderful design and DIY community here. We are hoping that Cliff who designed Chess Set I (that we are making giant) and other Thingiverse superstars will stop in also.

At night, we have been running all over town, introducing the machine to CRASHspace, UCLA’s engineering students, galleries and museums, and other hackerspaces. We have also been printing “Keith it!” busts of a cleaned up Beethoven model at night and placing them on the Thomas Organ in the lobby of The Standard – Downtown. To date, these custom 3D printed sculptures have been either stolen or disposed of by the hotel staff within a couple of hours of appearing. But we have photos to document.

Check out our photo gallery below!

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1. Wanna visit for free? drop a request to griffin at makerbot dot com by 11am on Sunday and he’ll see about adding you to the list with a comp’d ticket! [↩]
2. The software engineers working on revisions of ReplicatorG for our new machines created a button called “Keith It” to created maximum-sized objects to suit the new three-times-Thing-O-Matic build volume by Keith’s request. This name will only persist if you request it… [↩]

Gear O’Clock by PrintTo3D

We’ve added 5 last-minute tickets for the clockathon this Sunday. It’ll be a fun day of sharing, hacking, and MakerBotting. Sign up at eventbrite!

You’ve heard about Michael Curry’s Rocket Playset and the MakerBot Astronauts who live there. So you must know that these astronauts love adventure – over their lifetimes they will be traveling to the farthest reaches of Thingiverse to discover the unknown. Follow along on their adventures or take them on adventures of your own.

What lands will your astronauts traveling to? Take some pictures of your MakerBot Astronauts in the wild and show us what kinds of adventures they’ve been having!

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So, you’ve probably heard by now that we got a few awards while we were at CES last week, but what you may not have heard is that we were also giving out a few awards there. As a team we spent some time exploring the tradeshow and seeking out some of the raddest robots, the coolest companies, and the products we could really get behind to present them with MakerBot Awesome Awards. Here’s some pictures of a few of the honored recipients.

Will Smith and Norman Chan from Tested are definitely keeping it awesome – they do a segment on their show called the MakerBot Mystery Build.

Derek from iBallz is keeping it awesome too with his inexpensive and incredibly fun ipad cases.

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Tune in at 7:30pm ET: 4:30pm PT to see the live interview with Bre Pettis from the Engadget CES stage!