The results are in! We called a close on Friday to the MakerBot Customizer Challenge, and before you read down to see the winners, you have to know one thing: this Challenge was outstanding.

Everyone who participated rocked our socks off, including those of you who were already doing great stuff with parametric design and adapted your files to work with Customizer. The participation was also huge. There were hundreds of entries spread out among the three categories (Useful, Artistic, and Wearable), and the quality of the designs made judging much harder than we expected.

So, huge kudos to the winners, who have each won a new MakerBot Replicator 2X Experimental 3D Printer, and all the runners-up, who are fast becoming Thingiverse celebrities. Results after the jump!

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The MakerBot Customizer Challenge has over 200 entries and over 100 participants, and there are still eight full days to go. Whoa. It’s the home stretch with just over a week left, so let’s have an update and make sure everyone gets the chance to enter.

If you’re just hearing about the MakerBot Customizer Challenge for the first time, get some background information here. We’ve seen a ton of great activity for this challenge. It’s great that MakerBot Customizer has given a lot of you who were already being awesome with OpenSCAD a chance to spread your designs a bit. Big shout out to you parametric veterans.

It’s also encouraging people with no experience in this kind of design to jump into the game, and quite a few of you have uploaded your first thing to MakerBot Thingiverse just for this Challenge. Score!

IMPORTANT

●  You have a week left to enter. Enter as many times as you want.

●  There will be a winner in each of three categories: Useful, Wearable, Artistic.

●  We’re announcing the winner during SXSW in Austin, Texas.

●  See all of the entries here!

Questions and Answers after the jump.

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Imagine the year 2040. What will we eat or wear? What will Congress argue about? Where will we get our cat pictures?

Most importantly, how will we get around? That’s what we asked the participants in the GrabCAD 3D Printer Challenge to consider in designing the vehicles of the future. The entries sort of blew us away, and we’re thrilled to announce the winners.

MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis, a huge car enthusiast, says judging a vehicle design contest was harder than usual. We were pretty excited to sponsor this challenge with GrabCAD, and are especially excited that the Winner and the Runner-Up will both be MakerBot users now. Think of what they’ll make!

Okay, time to ogle.

1st Place –  Alpha by user Omega from Germany

This entry from user omega includes a great synopsis of a future just a few decades from now where our technological breakthroughs make space travelers of us all. First, though, we need to get off the ground. The Alpha  pod takes traffic above the roads and into three dimensions. We asked entrants to optimize their models for printing on a MakerBot, and we can confirm the Alpha looks amazing. The prospect of omega owning a MakerBot is very exciting.

2nd Place – 2040 Direct Drive Vehicle by user Gabriel Ortin located in Canada

Gabriel Ortin presented one of the most detailed car models we’ve ever seen (left), and it looks incredible when printed on the MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer (right). You’re asking yourself right now whether this was printed in one piece. Nope! This does require assembly, but as you can see, the effort is very worth it. Gabriel calls the 2040 Direct Drive Vehicle the “rugged automobile concept for the year 2040 is designed for individuals that can’t live without a fundamental driving experience.”

3rd Place — Personal Hot Rod by user Matthew Gueller

How cool is this single-person hot rod from GrabCAD user matthew gueller? It’s beautiful and classic, but the minimalist body suggests there will be some pretty interesting changes to car engines in 2040. Great work, Matthew!

4th Place — Firanse R3 by user Luis Cordoba from Mexico

GrabCAD user Luis Cordoba envisions a car that’s totally customizable, since you could simply print out the components you want. And not to worry: ” if something is broken it can simply be reduced to its original material and reprinted again.” We like the sound of that. Kudos, Luis!

Something rad happened recently on Thingiverse when the mobile device company Nokia uploaded a design for the shell of a Nokia Lumia 820 that can be downloaded and 3D printed. Killer!

We saw this at MakerBot and took the liberty to adapt the design to work perfectly on the MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer. The result is impressive and a perfect fit for this phone.

Now Nokia is holding a 3D printing challenge to let designers from anywhere join in the action. Here’s what they say about the challenge.

Express to impress

There are a couple of things you need to take into account to impress the judges. Firstly, you should consider how to make an aesthetic and artistic design, which most appeals to smartphone users. Secondly, you should try and consider the practical aspects as well. For example, perhaps you might want to create a shell that allows for a bigger battery or one with a heavy-duty speaker. Go crazy and let wishful thinking and imagination combine.

The fantastic five

Your idea will be judged on very clear criteria, broken down into five categories, each of which will have equal representation in the final decision.

• Clear articulation of designs in written language and visuals where possible
• Real life possibility of being made into a mobile phone cover
• Aesthetic design and creativity
• Likelihood that mobile consumers will take interest in your design
• Community support for your idea

We’re thrilled that our own design master Matt Kroner will be involved in the judging! Go to Nokia’s announcement post to get all the details. Good luck!

If you haven’t explored the MakerBot Customizer, the tool that lets basically everyone be a designer on Thingiverse, check it out! Customizer is an app built on the 3D design program OpenSCAD that designers use to upload customizable designs. When designers with the OpenSCAD know-how upload these designs, any Thingiverse user can take the basic template and customize it to suit their tastes. Read all about it here, or login to Thingiverse to get started. Read on to find out how this new tool can win you something even more awesome.

Now for the fun part! The MakerBot Customizer Challenge is a chance for those of you who know how to use OpenSCAD, or are excited to learn, to upload amazing new customizable designs that the entire MakerBot Thingiverse community can use and be inspired by.

PRIZE One MakerBot Replicator 2X Experimental 3D Printer to the winner of each category.

CATEGORIES Useful, Wearable, and Artistic.

TIME OF CHALLENGE January 23-March 8, 2013, 11:59 PM ET. We will announce the winning entry at the giant annual arts and technology festival SXSW, and make sure the press knows about the winner and other great participants. We want to make you a star and famous 3D designer!

HOW You upload a design that works with MakerBot Customizer. You can learn about that process here. Tag each of your entries, with “Customizer,” “Customizer Challenge,” and the category you are submitting into (see below). Once it’s uploaded, encourage people in your social networks to use your design to create their own custom things. The more times it’s used, the more points for you, so get the word out!

JUDGING Our panel of judges will pick a winning design in each of three categories: Useful, Wearable, and Artistic. Enter as many designs as you want! Designs will be considered subjectively by the judges and objectively by the number of times people use your design to create new things. There will be one winner per category.

Get started with MakerBot Customizer today. The race is officially on!

UPDATE! You can see all the entries here.

Are you waiting to get your hands on a MakerBot Replicator 2? Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine and the author of the new book pictured above, Makers, is ready to give you one.

Check out the give-away contest over at Instructables, which calls for you to submit your “ultimate 3D design.” The submissions page explains that each entry will have to be in the form of an Instructable, which can be a step-by-step project explanation, a photo, or a video, and it should involve “the creation of a 3D design.”

Okay, that’s a little vague, so allow me to make a few suggestions. When we launched the Replicator 2 just under three weeks ago, Bre wrote a MakerBot Operator Manifesto for BoingBoing. Here are a few ideas that we think could merit the “ultimate” tag.

Where we’re going, there are no limitations: create your working flux capacitor by glueing MakerBotted components together for installation in your DeLorean.

Go big. With the MakerBot Replicator 2‘s 410 cubic inch build volume, you can finally create the trumpet you’ve been dreaming of.

Compete with the industrial machines. With the MakerBot Replicator 2′s 100 micron layer resolution you can create models that will look like they were made on a refrigerator sized machine that costs 100 times the MakerBot Replicator 2.

Make the unreal real. Use your MakerBot to manifest unicorns, dragons, or a functional sonic screwdriver.

Resist buying things that you can make on your MakerBot Replicator 2. There is no deeper nerd cred than MakerBotting frames for your glasses.

Optimize the world. That contraption to hold your microscopes glass slides together in the dishwasher is just waiting for you to design and MakerBot it.

Repurpose everything. The springs in pens and motors pulled from old technology can be used to create the replica of that V8 supercharged hemi you’ve been lusting after.

Repurpose the models in Cornell’s wonderful mechanical library to power your perpetual motion machine.

Prototype your inventions. We’re still waiting for you to align the lasers with your MakerBotted oscillation overthruster.

Use what you’ve got. If you are a programmer, use the openSCAD tool to create parametric gears If you are a photographer, learn to use 123D Catch to scan the greatest works of art at your local museum.

Ignore the naysayers. Your jackalope powered hovercraft is achievable and don’t forget to MakerBot a helmet for the jackalope.

Submit yours before midnight on October 12, 2012 (that’s 11:59 pm on 10/12, for you sticklers), and be sure to select “3D Design Contest” in the check boxes when you do. That will get it in the running, and Instructables staff will let you know if your entry is accepted. At the end of the contest, Chris and other judges will select one grand prize winner, and five runners-up, who will each receive a signed copy of Makers.

A little note from MakerBot: we highly encourage you to share your designs on Thingiverse, too! In the past, many Instructable contest ideas have received good feedback from the community on Thingiverse.

Get started here. Good luck!

Mother’s Day: Say It With Flowers

Mother’s Day is fast approaching and MakerBot wants you to say it with flowers — 3D printed flowers!

Mother Nature has decorated our planet with an endless variety of flowers, trees, ferns, and vines. Let’s model some original, printable flowers for the awesome Mamas in our lives– maybe even some that can sing, dance, or squirt water in her face — and share them on Thingiverse.com!

We’ve asked our own Mothers to *pick* their favorites, so c’mon, MakerBotters! Let’s make ‘em proud.  Read the rest of this entry »

Water Drop; José Manuel Suárez

Did you know that 1.1 billion people in this world live every day without a supply of clean water, and that 3,900 children die on a daily basis of water borne diseases?¹

Something really exciting started this week, and YOU are at the heart of it. In collaboration with MakerBot and the UK-based rapid prototyping firm Econolyst, techfortrade is offering up a $100,000 prize for a groundbreaking, world-changing innovation. This is an opportunity for all of our brilliant readers, you engineers and scientists, moms and dads and kids and everyone in between, to share your ideas for reducing poverty and growing local communities in the developing world.

Consider this — in 2006, the World Health Organization estimated that unsafe injection practices caused 1.3 million early deaths worldwide, or a more sobering “26 million years of life” lost. But an auto-disable syringe now in use in some locations may prevent the possibility that blood-borne diseases spread through contaminated needles. Could you have prototyped that syringe on your MakerBot; or better yet, can you make a better one?

What you need to know

Techfortrade is an organization that aims to energize small businesses in the developing world using mobile phone technologies. Did you know that by 2015, an estimated 400 million mobile phone users in Africa alone will not have electricity regularly supplied by a power grid? Accordingly, entries in the Challenge should

…exploit developments in 3D printing, mobile phone based scanning technology and web based design applications to improve the incomes and livelihoods of people in developing countries.

Are your gears turning yet? Techfortrade offers a couple ideas:

…entries could involve using 3D printed models and parts to improve agriculture practices, water supply or filtration processes, or energy supplies for rural or impoverished areas. An example suggested by techfortrade is creating parts on a 3D printer for broken waterpumps that can then be easily fixed by locals, rather than having to source parts and repairs from elsewhere. The technology could also be used generate income by manufacturing entirely new products from re-cycled plastic.

We’ve seen some great stuff at MakerBot along these lines. For example, this water purification system or the Freedom system that connects rural farmers with 3D printers. But we know there are many more seeds of ingenious devices waiting to be released into the world.

The participating organizations are eager to help participants brainstorm their ideas with each other and with industry experts. MakerBot will be hosting a workshop at our headquarters in New York City, and other events will take place in London, Nairobi, and Johannesburg. We’ll have more details on the New York workshop closer to the day, but here’s the full schedule.

New York, MakerBot Hedquarters – 12th May 2012
Johannesburg, Hackerspace – 22nd May 2012
London, Westminster Hub – 17th May 2012
Nairobi, Nairobi University FabLab– 25th May 2012

Click here for full information on the 3D4D Challenge.

1. According to the World Water Council [↩]

Wilcox vs 3D Printer

Dominic Wilcox’s offhand tweet about racing a 3D printer to make something became a reality this last Friday.  They competed against a 1.5 hour time limit to build a replica of the Duomo cathedral in a competition hosted by WeFab.it.

I would respectfully disagree with Dominic.  The future isn’t just humans – the future is human-robot collaboration!  Just imagine what Dominic could have done with a trusty robot sidekick!

Untitled by ErikJDurwoodII

This thing brought to you by

EARTH DAY is this Sunday, April 22nd and to celebrate, this week we’ll be sharing some awesome examples of makers doing their part to save the planet, and giving you ideas for ways you can participate.

This afternoon, we want to draw your attention to a fun contest that falls right into the Earth Day mission.

MAKE Magazine recently partnered with Schick to launch the Project Remake Contest to find the next great green maker. The contest wants to recognize ingenious ideas for making old things into new things. Whether your thing is de-soldering legacy motherboards for their reusable components, building furniture out of reclaimed plastics, or fabricating sculpture from waste objects, enter Project Remake for the chance to win one of 5 MakerBot Replicators!

One Grand Prize winner will receive (in addition to a Replicator) an expenses-paid trip for two (and their winning project!) to World Maker Faire in New York City this September.

Project Remake is already accepting entries, and will continue to run until May 14. The countdown is on!

As you think about what you might submit, remember that projects may be functional, utilitarian, or simply beautiful. This is a great opportunity for those in the MakerBot community who love to work on less artistic things. Ultimately, submissions will be judged against the following criteria:

• Originality & Creativity
• Alignment with the goals of Project Remake
• Eco-Friendliness
• Feasibility
• Media & Public Interest

Are you ready? Are the gears turning? Then go get started here!

Lastly, we must include this note to our international readers: to be eligible to win, you must be a legal resident of one of the 50 US states or the District of Columbia, and be 18 years of age or older at the time of entry. Complete rules can be found online here.

Go get ‘em, Makers!