MakerBot Industries

Going to be in Detroit for MakerFaire this weekend?

Make sure to drop in on software/hardware engineer guru Matt Mets and marketing manager/chief advocate of awesomeness Keith Ozar at the MakerBot Booth!

Matt and Keith will be printing out loads of great models on their mini-BotFarm, with a focus on sharing items created for MakerBot Space Month @ Thingiverse, including Tony Buser’s gorgeous Mars Rover.

They will also be giving a short 20min presentation about the MakerBot Universe that will interest veteran Operators and new audiences alike on the Make:Live stage on Sunday, July 31st @ 3:00pm.

MakerBot Zoetrope

Matt Mets will be bringing his brand new MakerBot Zoetrope project, DIY  turntable + light-strobe rig designed for zoetrope animations using objects printing on a MakerBot. Should the delicate models survive, look to see the Blender experimentation I have been doing for Matt, printing out poses of Big Buck Bunny from the open source blender files for that character!

Matt will be printing other animations (he’d really like a Nyan Cat if the Thingiverse modelers are listening) and experiments all weekend.

Here are the MakerFaire Detroit event details

Detroit, July 30 & 31
The Henry Ford
Saturday 9:30am – 6pm • Sunday 9:30am – 6pm

See things before they are Things!

Last year MakerFaire Detroit distinguished itself as a particularly fertile place for Hackerspace project launches and the truly cutting edge. A great place for innovators to get audiences revving before the monster audiences arriving to the East Coast for World MakerFaire NYC. So if you can make it there, you won’t be disappointed.

Pew pew!

I’ve been working on a printable open source snap-together disc shooter for a long time now.  I think it’s time I brought in some help.    I’ve decided on my own Thingiverse challenge.  The chosen design will receive $50.00 from me via PayPal.  Here’s the low down:

Rules:

• Design a printable, multiple capacity disc shooter that uses printed plastic, rubber bands, and, if you wish, up to one metal spring from a Pez dispenser
• The discs should be 19mm in diameter and 2mm in thickness
• The disc shooter should be tensioned by the trigger, rather than having to cock the shooter for each disc
• Needs to be printable on a MakerBot Cupcake CNC or Thing-O-Matic
• Needs to be posted to Thingiverse with an open license by 11:59PM on August 31
• Tag your Thing with the word “pewpew”
• Multiple entries allowed, so go wild

The entries will be judged using the following criteria:

• Number of Likes on Thingiverse
• Number of times it has been made by someone else (so post your ideas early!)
• Printability (not just fitting it in the space but also how many separate prints are required)
• Effort put into documentation and design (based on testing and revisions)
• Bonus points for:
• A snap-together design
• Parametric design in OpenSCAD
• Use of a removable magazine for holding discs
• Easy-to-pull trigger
• Uploading STL’s for printing plates

If you need some inspiration here are some links:

• Details on commercial varieties
• Disc shooter on Thingiverse cicra 11/28/10
• Disc shooter on Thingiverse circa 12/5/10
• Disc shooter on Thingiverse circa 7/3/11
• Snap-together pin connectors by Tony Buser
• Snap-together Mars rover by Tony Buser
• Snap-together 27-to-1 ratio gears by Mraiser
• Snap-together Truckbot by Mraiser
• Snap-together Tank v2 by Mraiser
• Ideas for improvements on the open source disc shooter
• Sublime’s pencil gun on Thingiverse
• Vik’s foam dart gun on Thingiverse
• Bongoboy23′s disc shooter on Thingiverse

Good luck!  I can’t wait to have a big pile of multi-colored disc shooters!

Also, squirrels in space.

You might have missed your chance to attend the live, pre-sold-out Impossible Girl show at the new MakerBot Workshop space, but here are a few glimpses of the fun.

Check out the live stream archive above and slideshow below!

We’re very pleased to lend our new workshop space to the Impossible Girl this Thursday evening.  I’m afraid that her entire audience has already been pre-booked through a very clever Kickstarter campaign, and thus you cannot attend in person.  However, there will be a live stream of the concert, which will start at around 7:30pm.

Read more about Kim’s awesome project after the break! Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s amazing, superlative Robot Hospital extravaganza is going to hit you like a ton of tribbles.  Why tribbles? Because it’s Space Month, as Keith Ozar explains.  Don’t miss the special Space Month MakerBot Make-A-Thon at 3rd Ward tomorrow, July 16th, 2-6pm, where we’ll be printing some of the space-themed items shown in this Thingiverse roundup!

Join us for our second 3rd Ward MakerBot Make-A-Thon, where you’ll get to see our tiny space factories in action, meet MakerBot Operators from the entire region, and talk to members of the MakerBot team.

In this installment, we’re celebrating Space Month. We’ll be printing Rockets, Astronauts, UFOs and Aliens in 3D. There will even be a space-themed 3D-printed object Zoetrope, giving a 21st century-spin on a centuries-old device.

Wear a space costume and get a printed space shuttle. Plus, grab a helmet and show your friends you landed on the moon in our photo booth. And there will be prize giveaways from MakerBot, NOOKA, Apress and O’Reilly Media!

Click here for photos from 3rd Ward’s first MakerBot Make-A-Thon.

MakerBot Make-A-Thon 2 // MakerBots in Space
Saturday, July 16, 2-6pm
195 Morgan Ave,
Brooklyn, NY 11237
FREE admission RSVPs are required at 3rdward.com/rsvp

That’s right — the time has finally arrived for the Robot Film Festival!  The screenings (and awards ceremony) are in lower Manhattan this weekend.  There are a number of films by many different directors, both famous and completely unknown, as well as comedy, workshops and a BotBQ.

Saturday is completely sold out, but Sunday tickets are still available (for now.)  That’s the day with the workshops, Reggie Watts, and the barbecue.  Get’em while you still can!

Hey good people of MakerBotDom!  This weekend, come on down to the Red Bull Creation challenge at McCarren Park in Williamsburg, where we’ll be running a demo table while the participants try to build a totally fossil fuel-free people mover.  We’re also going to be providing a printed trophy to the winner as well as scanning and printing the MC, Greg Barris.

We were there yesterday and took a few snapshots to give you a little taste of the event, but if that’s not enough, you should head on up to the Bedford L or Nassau G (as if you didn’t know, you fixie-riding professed hipster-haters) 3-7pm on Sunday to see the event and check out our table.  It should be a wildly caffeinated dose of awesome.

Many of you have noticed a new banner (above) popping up at Thingiverse.com. Well, as this July contains both the 42nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and the final launch of NASA’s Space Shuttle mission, we have declared July to be Space Month — and encourage everyone to join our Space Program!

July’s Notable Thingiverse Tag: “Space month”

We are eager to see your astronaut helmets, satellites, Mars rovers, rockets, UFOs, aliens, Space Camp badges, and anti-matter rayguns. Remember to tag your item “Space month” in Thingiverse!

MakerBot Make-A-Thon 2: MakerBots in Space

The MakerBot User Group New York (MUGNY) meeting will be returning to 3rd Ward this month. In this installment, we’ll be showing off some of the fruits of our collective Space Month labors, highlighting work uploaded to Thingiverse and tagged with “Space Month,” such as the Cartoon Rocketship, the cool statue “For All Mankind,” and, of course, a Space Shuttle Orbiter or two.

We’ll be printing Rockets, Astronauts, UFOs and Aliens in 3D. There will even be a space-themed 3D-printed Zoetrope, which will give a 21st century-spin on a centuries-old device. ((Also, check out the upcoming 3D Design and Printing with a MakerBot class taught by 3rd Ward’s Luke Schantz.))

MakerBot Make-A-Thon 2 // MakerBots in Space

Saturday, July 16, 2-6pm
195 Morgan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
FREE admission

Note: RSVPs are required at 3rdward.com/rsvp

On June 6th a team from MakerBot scanned the head Stephen Colbert and put the 3D model online, but we didn’t stop there. Hackers, bloggers, artists, musicians, comedians and anyone one else we think is notable stopped by our Brooklyn workshop to get immortalized.

Well, the week of the event is upon us! Come see the results, and hear a brief art talk by current artist-in-residence Jonathan Monaghan who performed scanning, digital clean-up, and printing for all of those lovely notable heads.

Thursday June 30th, 2011   7PM-10PM

314 Dean St

Brooklyn, NY 11217