Broken headband, fixed headband

Days before Christmas my daughter brought me her favorite headband.  With teary eyes and a quavering voice she explained that something had rolled over headband, cracking it.  The green ribbon had unraveled and the broken plastic interior had a clean break and was clearly beyond repair.  After helping her dry her eyes I told her I would see what I could do.

After about five minutes of measuring the broken pieces and some quick and dirty OpenSCAD design, I had a file ready for my Replicator. ¹  I had my daughter sit with me as I unwrapped the ribbon from the broken plastic insert and re-wrapped it around the new printed headband insert.  I ended up having to twist and destroy one of the larger pieces of the original plastic insert to get it completely out of the tightly wrapped ribbon.

Besides learning with her about how her headband was manufactured and what could be done to repair it, we discovered how easy it would be to create an entirely new headband using another plastic insert and some ribbon.  I think my favorite part of the process came when I told her that I would have to destroy the remaining part of the original insert in order to “remake” the headband.  While a simple clean crack was enough to evoke tears, she didn’t flinch at the prospect of watching her headband further deteriorate so we could create a new one.

1. Due to the size of the headband and its low footprint, I had to use several “mouse ears” to keep it adhered to the build platform while printing.  If you’re not designing your parts with these handy little additions, you may want to give this a shot. [↩]

MakerBot will be participating in the SIGGRAPH Studio again this year, Sunday August 5th through Thursday August 9th, in downtown Los Angeles. Each year since 1974, tens of thousands of amazing artists, designers, and computer graphics professionals head to the annual SIGGRAPH (short for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) conference and expo to catch demos and talks featuring the bleeding edge of computer graphics and interactive technology.

The Studio is a section of the event where attendees can roll up their sleeves and take a test drive of the best tools in the biz. MakerBot will be bringing a sizable eight Replicator BotFarm and most of our newest colors with us to the event which will mean that a lot of visitors will get a chance to print out loads of items from Thingiverse as well as original work.

What’s new this year: the BotFarm will be partially staffed by the outstanding MakerBot Operators from the Greater Los Angeles Area, including Theron, TeamTeamUSA, and a few volunteers from CRASHspace and art toy professional Dave Bondi. Wanna help us out? Drop a message to “griffin at makerbot dot com” by Saturday at midnight with your cell number, a message about your level of MakerBot experience, your availability for the Studio, and your favorite object from Thingiverse. The SIGGRAPH Studio BotFarm Wants You!

Speaking of friends getting together at the booth, the staff who went last year were deeply impressed with the level of talent from visitors to the booth — including the modeler who shared a picture-perfect Yoda Bust that MakerBot Operators print frequently all over the world. What will be the next Thingiverse hit to come out of our SIGGRAPH Studio BotFarm? Bring your files with you and we’ll check your work out!

Here’s where to find us!

This past weekend, MakerBot had a great time sharing The MakerBot Replicator with good friends from the MakerBot Community as well as probably the best manufacturing-savvy general audiences we have ever chatted with.

Special delights included:

• Inviting Zheng3 to share his open source tabletop war game called SEEJ on Saturday, followed by an afternoon of energetic gameplay. (Thanks, ShopBot, for the use of the awesome table!)
• A few MakerBot Operators headed to the Henry Ford Museum to 123D Catch the Wienermobile. (Let’s each share our results on Thingiverse, folks!)
• Bernie (aka SSW on Thingiverse) brought his kids with their Twirl Mini Mustache prints. (Our booth printed them for hours to the delight of eager children waiting for a Helsinki Sky colored ‘stache.)

We also added Chicago superuser Mike Moceri from the ChiMUG to the booth for the weekend to clock highspeed scanning time trials, using the Microsoft Kinect and ReconstructMe. He accomplished this entire process up to start-of-print in around 5 minutes per head, which Bre described as “a zero to sixty record for MakerBots.”

See you all at World Maker Faire in NYC!

We told you about our latest firmware release for The Replicator, but there’s nothing sweeter than getting good tips from a fellow user. Andrew Mazzotta has been sharing his growing MakerBot expertise with the world through a series of videos on YouTube (andrewupandabout). In the one above, he demonstrates a great process for updating to Firmware 5.5, and talks about the advantages of using the acceleration feature.

Thanks for the continued great work, Andrew!

Tonight, MakerBot will host a very special MUGNY (MakerBot User Group NYC) meeting at the beautiful Marymount School Fifth Avenue Campus right across from the Met Museum, preceded by a RSVP-only walking tour through the Met with a handful of the artists who participated in the Met MakerBot Hackathon.

While the free Met Tour event is ”sold out” at this point, I do want to remind those who managed to reserve a ticket that the Walking Tour guests need to check in with me (Matt Griffin) on the left hand side of the Met lobby (near the Greek/Roman entrance) just before 5:30pm to get your Met pin and be ready for the tour to depart — promptly at 5:30pm.

Glenn Berry will be handling the check-in list at the Marymount School starting at 6:00pm across the street. After the Walking Tour rejoins the reception, MakerBot Operators, Thingiverse Makers, and the curious public will be treated to refreshments, snacks, the latest community show-and-tell, and inspiring keynote talks featuring the Met MakerBot Hackathon and the Capture Your Town project.

MakerBot User Group meetings are monthly meet ups where members of our world-wide community get together locally to share what they have been up to with their MakerBots. The events typically include a featured guest or keynote arranged beforehand, and tend to attract a large crowd of those from the general public as well as those actively involved with MakerBot and Thingiverse — all are welcome!

And here’s a sneak preview of the mini-master class in casting to be given tonight by 3D designer and jeweler Jason Bakutis. The work he is bringing will drop some jaws, and offer all of those curious about creating replicas of physical objects a few new routes for finishing!

After visiting our HOPE Number 9 booth, Robot Dreams blogger Lem Fugitt stopped by MakerBot to pick up a few goodies he purchased to take back home with him to Tokyo. He has been by MakerBot several times, as far back as 2010, and he stopped by the BotFarm to meet the local robots, including MakerBot Petting Zoo favorite Bumper Bot designed by MakerBot designer Jason Bakutis and a few of the Minions created by MakerBot’s Michael Curry. He was thrilled to grab a BotMobile and a few MakerBot Windup Walkers for some projects back home.

Next Friday night, MakerBot will host a very special MUGNY (MakerBot User Group NYC) meeting at the beautiful Marymount School Fifth Avenue Campus right across from the Met Museum. Marymount is an an independent, Catholic all-girls day school that actually has a rocking fab lab full of MakerBots — so this is a special pleasure for us. What’s more, this venue allows us to host a special RSVP only (grab tickets quick here!) opportunity to do a walking tour through the Met Museum so that a number of the artists can share about their derivative works right in front of the originals!

At 6:30pm, MakerBot Operators, Thingiverse Makers, and the curious public will cross the street and join us at the Marymount School for refreshments, snacks, the latest community show-and-tell, and inspiring keynote talks featuring the Met MakerBot Hackathon and the Capture Your Town project that emerged: a chance for all of our community to dive in and digitize buildings, artwork, and other objects that they want to share with the world about where they live.

MakerBot User Group meetings are monthly meet ups for members of our world-wide community to get together locally to share what they have been up to with their MakerBots. The events typically include a featured guest or keynote arranged beforehand, and tend to attract a large crowd of those from the general public as well as those actively involved with MakerBot and Thingiverse — all are welcome!

Check back early next week for further details about the Hackathon artists, digital archivists, and MakerBot community members who will be speaking — and reserve your “5:00pm Pre-Event Demo and Art Talk at the Met Museum” and “MUGNY Event @ Marymount School” RSVP tickets so that you can receive instructions for attending this very special evening.

Thanks again to inspiring maker and educator Jaymes Dec for connecting us with the Marymount School.

This weekend, while Keith, Nick, Sasha, and Andrew will be on the West Coast at San Diego Comic-Con at the Toy Tokyo booth collaborating with art toy superstar Ron English, Glenn, a gaggle of MakerBot web, software and R&D staffers and I will be making the far shorter pilgrimage over the bridge into Manhattan to spend time in the company of another breed of superstar — the hacker superstars at HOPE Number 9 at the Hotel Pennsylvania!

H.O.P.E. stands for Hackers On Planet Earth (and also “HOtel PEnnsylvania,” the venue for the event) and does beg the question — are there hackers for whom this designation does not apply? (Check through the schedule to see if there is a talk on this topic: are astronauts/cosmonauts the first Hackers Off the Planet Earth?)

HOPE Biennial Conference

For those of you who have never heard of or attended 2600: The Hacker Quarterly‘s biennial conference before, you should take note: not only is this the premier east coast conference dedicated to an impossibly diverse and interesting list of talks budding off the core topics of security, privacy, computers/technology, Internet/broadcast/transmissions, associated legal/policy implications, open source development, and hackers/hacking, this series is constantly pre-saging its own imminent demise – and this might be the very last year! (Just like they said the last two times. No, really this time!)

This year’s keynote speakers William Binney and The Yes Men are unlikely to disappoint, but also take the time to sift through the entire list to learn more about what this conference has on offer. We are hoping that MakerBot’s own Rob Vincent (Rob T Firefly), part of HOPE’s organizing team, will sneak us tips about the best talks and events to attend at this rambunctious, infectious, 24-hour programming hacker conference extraordinaire. Generally the rule of thumb is that if you manage to score a badge and make your way to the event, you are bound to stumble on activities, concerts, talks and people who you will find interesting.

MakerBot @ HOPE Number 9

MakerBot has secured two-tables-worth of vendorspace at the venue where I will be setting up two BotStands featuring our latest MakerBot Replicators, 3D-printed parts, Thingiverse.com, MakerBotTV videos, and a Thingiverse data visualization that Thingiverse participants will tremendously enjoy.

The BotStands are also display cases — so anyone in the MakerBot / Thingiverse community is invited to bring over their 3D printed work to display proudly at our booth (bring a Thingitag or similar label so we can brag about who created what).

There is also a rumor that I can neither confirm nor deny that one of the tables will devolve into a Seej tournament partway through the conference. This likely depends upon whether anyone in the community can come even close to competing with the MakerBot Seej Masters.

But wait, there’s more!

Check out what the MakerBot’s software team will be up to at the conference!

• Friday 10AM @ Dennis: “Community Fabrication: Four Years Later” – talk by MakerBot’s Far McKon, a follow-up to the one he gave 2 HOPEs ago before joining MakerBot
• Saturday 4pm-6pm @ MakerBot Booth: “How to Get Hacking on ReplicatorG” – tech demo lead by MakerBot’s software team
• Sunday 10am-11am @ MakerBot Booth: “How to Get Hacking on MakerBot Community Software Early on Sunday Morning” – tech demo lead by MakerBot’s software team

A Special Note

And if someone asks to borrow your cellphone or laptop “to check something” … well … you might be about to learn a very valuable lesson in computer security practice, if not policy and assumptions made about said policies at network/computer security conferences. Don’t say I didn’t warn you: pranks are an inevitable if unofficial part of the entertainment on offer.

Thanks for the shout out from Pete Prodoehl of Rasterweb at Milwaukee Makerspace! There are some good shots of Matt and Michael’s Miraculous Midwest MakerBot Tour.

I particularly like the face Matt makes when focusing on a bot.

Is your hackerspace or makerspace on our radar? Whether or not you have a MakerBot, we want to know what you’re up to! Get in touch.

Michael and I have successfully reached the Twin Cities from Madison, WI, in our 10-gallon-tank rental car, learning a little bit about Wisconsin history at each and every rest stop. Tonight we have the pleasure of co-hosting TWO Twin Cities maker meetups to share our pair of MakerBot Replicators: one at the relatively new makerspace The Mill and the other at the hackerspace Hack Factory with TC Maker. If you’d like to learn more about these great places, check out this great piece that came out today in the Twin Cities StarTribune detailing them and the maker movement that has very much exploded in this community.

THE MILL: 6pm-8pm

2300 Kennedy Street NE, Suite #130
Minneapolis, MN 55413
(651) 592.3372
http://www.mnmill.org/

HACK FACTORY: 8:30pm-11pm

3119 E. 26th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55406
http://www.tcmaker.org/blog/hack-factory/

There are MakerBot Operators in both spaces that we can’t wait to spend time with. The two places cater to a different slice of the very makery and inspiring community here, so I’m very much looking forward to the two-event night despite the road weariness and confusion about reality that comes from waking up in a different motel every day for a week.

I’ve been dreaming of visiting Minneapolis for years — and have a few friends here who I’m hoping will help me locate the ideal Capture Your Town challenge sites for the Minneapolis Maker MUG to tackle. (Anyone up for a CaptureSession tomorrow in the Twin Cities?) Also, I’ve been told by many American poets (95% of which are published or funded by some foundation, publisher or org in the  Twin Cities area) that this is one of America’s most cosmopolitan communities. Take that provincial New York City (with the demise of funding for individual artists and poets)!

The enterprising will join Michael and me to both events — and perhaps to a late night CaptureSession should we find a suitably lit public art piece to #capture! At any rate, as our evening shifts from entertaining to hacking, feel free to dive in to the Capture Your Town processing and uploading that we will be doing to share back the spoils of our rather intense-but-awesome tour.