MakerBot Industries

Forklift delivered to the Botcave in anticipation of growth. Photo taken on September 13, 2010 by Olivia Koski

Remember just a few months ago when we had that forklift delivered and we needed a forklift to lift it?

Less than a month ago, the Botcave warehouse was full of loosely organized but slightly messy piles of boxes.

The Botcave warehouse before shelves were installed. Photo taken on October 18, 2010 by Olivia Koski

Well, things are a lot different now. Our garage has been transformed with the addition of towering shelves that keep our ever expanding stock of MakerBot items organized.

Towering shelves line the Botcave warehouse. Photo taken on November 29, 2010 by Olivia Koski

It’s a good thing we got the forklift when we did!

It’s amazing how quickly things change at the Botcave.

We got the last component for the Thing-O-Matic on Friday and we are going to start shipping Thing-O-Matics this week. If you’re eagerly waiting, we’ll be shipping them in the order in which they were ordered and when yours goes out, you’ll get an email with tracking information. I’ll update the blog later this week when they start going out the door!

Thing-O-Matic shipments are delayed. Here’s what’s going on:

Thing-O-Matic shipments are currently delayed until we get a package delivered to the Botcave that is currently being held in transit because of the recent mail bomb scare and the new procedures put in place to make us more safe.

Everything for the Thing-O-Matic launch was supposed to arrive at the beginning of November. We know from experience that everything takes two weeks longer than expected to arrive so we gave ourselves an extra 3 weeks lead time to iron out any last minute delays. Electronics have been our biggest challenge in the past and so when they turned out to be two weeks late in getting to us and we felt all smarty pants and high fived when they arrived last week. Then, like a cruel slap to the face, we learned about the shipping delay on our super awesome custom Z-stage motors. Our super special custom made Z-stage motors are currently being held somewhere between Hong Kong and customs in Cincinnati. Sam, our supply chain manager, is working hard to find out when that shipment will be released to us, but we don’t have any hard information at this time.

I hate it when I order things and they come late. Because we have a little extra time, we’ve organized a little treat to go in each box for each Thing-O-Matic Customer. It’s not much consolation, but it’s all we can do as we wait for the final parts to reach us so we can send them on to you!

We’ll keep you updated here on the MakerBot blog and on twitter so you can know the exact second when the machines start to ship out.

Thanks for your patience. As soon as we get the final parts in, we’ll go into double time to get them out to you. The first Thing-O-Matic order will be the first one out the door and we’re going to be putting all our resources into getting all of the pre-orders in the mail in the order that the order was placed so that you can put your machine together and start printing with your beautiful new machine as soon as possible!

- Bre Pettis, CEO MakerBot Industries

Clothbot, owner of MakerBot #9 from batch 1 was one of the first purchasers of a MakerBot. We’ve asked him to work on the documentation and instructions for the Thing-O-Matic and so we sent him one of the very very few prototypes of the Thing-O-Matic that exist in the world. As he says, “These things practically unbox themselves!” A few notes. The Thing-O-Matic ships with 1 pound of natural ABS, not red. Also, there are no electronics in this box because the electronics are still being manufactured and assembled.

We’ve used a 37mm motor from Kysan motors from the beginning. It’s a 2RPM Motor that has a lot of torque. There is nothing like it out there for brute torque at this price point. We sell it for $20 in our store. They do wear out. My first motor died after about 6 months because it was a MK3 and was getting pushed and eventually the driveshaft bent away from the internal gears and it just stopped. I was doing a public demo a the time and I just switched out the motor and was back in action in minutes. I’ve been using the replacement motor for that one ever since. MakerBots are cutting edge inexpensive 3D printing machines and they occasionally need maintenance and tuning and love. We keep working hard to make them easier to put together, easier to use, and easier to fix.

Because it’s a kit that you put together yourself, there is no warranty on it, but we will replace parts that arrive DOA. Recently we received some complaints about the motors and so we’ve started testing every motor that leaves the building. You can see our testing rig in the photo above. Out of the 455 we have tested in the past 3 weeks, 1 was DOA. With almost 2500 MakerBots in the wild, we’ve had 11 motors in total returned for being DOA. Considering that this is a cheap and rather complicated motor, that is a pretty good statistic and now that we’ve put testing in place, we won’t have any leave the botcave non-functional.

There are some people who have had some problems that we’ve had a hard time replicating and we’re still doing testing to figure out if the problems we hear about are related to ghosts in the firmware, software, hardware or the power supply. If you have a problem, don’t hesitate to drop us a note on the contact page and we’ll do our best to help out!

Engineer Nick Starno was working with some test plastics today and needed to open a filament spool box. Luckily, there happened to be a plastic wrench within reach – made by one of our own MakerBots!

You can see just how dirty the MakerBots got at Maker Faire from this photo of the top of Adam’s machine. The clean square there is the outline of a MakerBot sticker he had placed there.

Despite the dust and grime, the MakerBots kept printing away for two straight days. It was amazing to go down the line of ‘Bots and see MakerBot after MakerBot after MakerBot printing and printing and printing.

This wasn’t the first time that MakerBots survived – and kept printing – in extreme environments. Last year some MakerBots underwent impromptu environmental testing in the deserts of eastern Washington state, where the hacker’s convention Toorcamp was held.

Yep. MakerBots = desert proof. Of course, after a good dusting it’s probably a good idea to clean and lubricate your MakerBot’s metal bits (proper MakerBot maintenance is always a good idea). Technically, they are not really desert proof, but last weekend at Maker Faire we definitely saw the MakerBot Botfarm take some dirt, and keep printing through the dust.

A few months ago, Armando Mendez had never heard of a MakerBot. As soon as he did, he bought one, and has been an avid MakerBot Operator ever since. He even started a lab automation consultation business, with help from his MakerBot. As a field support engineer for a pharmaceuticals research company, he is an expert in robotic machines that do things like handle liquids. Now that he has a MakerBot he can build broken or missing robot parts for his clients.

Armando has generously donated his time (he’s in-between jobs) to help prepare the Botfarm for the upcoming NYC Maker Faire. He has learned a ton since getting his own MakerBot, and is happy to be volunteering at the Botcave. “I believe in what’s going on here,” he told me.

This afternoon Armando was troubleshooting the temperature control system on one of the MakerBots. He’ll be volunteering a few days this week and at Maker Faire on Saturday. Thanks, Armando!

Robot armies for peace

Unfortunately, I have never been to the ‘Botcave, MakerBot headquarters, or the general vicinity of either.  So, I learned about MakerBot’s Botfarm comprised of sixteen MakerBots at the same time you did.  Sixteen MakerBots!  After reading about the MakerBot build party at NYC Resistor, I figured they might have plans for a four ‘bot farm, maybe five.  Eight if they were going to be ridiculously extravegant.  But sixteen? ¹

Perhaps most cryptic and ominous was Bre’s tweet on Tuesday:

Thanks, stay tuned! RT @kwiens: @bre Wow, you guys are on a roll! That’s my two biggest requests knocked off in two days.

Clearly they have some designs for such production capacity in the form of Makerscanner kits.  But they don’t need sixteen ‘bots with automated build platforms cranking out parts to meet the entire world wide demand for Makerscanner parts.

Sixteen!  What hubris!  For $20,000 you could get one commercial grade 3D printer or you could have a ‘Botfarm sixteen strong equipped with MK5 plastruders and Automated Build Platforms.  The largest internal build volume for any commerical 3D printer I can find online is about 6000 cubic cm.  A MakerBot has about 1300 cubic cm of build space. Thus, a ‘Botfarm sixteen strong has about 22% of the commercial printer.

Importantly, that’s not the only metric.  I don’t know how fast a commercial printer is, but let’s assume for the sake of argument it is twice as fast as a MakerBot. ²  That still means a ‘Botfarm could crank out parts eight times faster than a commercial printer.³⁴

What in the world could they need that kind of raw production capacity for?  I don’t know what they have planned for the ‘Botfarm, but it is either going to be awesome or apocaplytic.

1. Photo courtesy of camerondaigle [↩]
2. I suspect a commerical printer using FDM tech isn’t going to be that much faster than a MakerBot, but I’ve got nothing to support this guess. [↩]
3. Not to mention at about 1/5 the cost of plastic. [↩]
4. For those of you interested in such things, imagine their ‘Botfarm churning out all the parts for a RepRap every 90 minutes. [↩]

As I wandered around the Botcave last Monday, I noticed a heart-warming trend in the décor:  puppy and kitten calendars everywhere. This is my photo essay about them.

Next to Widget’s workstation, where he is checking the levelness of some rods, two golden retriever pups snuggle with each other, on the verge of a nap.

Near an area where Bot Farm-bound Cupcakes are getting a final check to prepare for the upcoming Maker Faire, where sixteen of them will print full-time, a calendar shows two black labs posing in a grassy field.

Behind a desk where Sam and Marisol were discussing a recent shipment, an inter-species friendship seems to have formed between a floppy-eared pup and a silvery kitten. The furry friends sit together in a high chair.

Attached to a post in the shipping area where MakerBot Kits are gingerly hand-packed packed atop a conveyor belt, a calendar shows a pug-nosed pup nibbling at someone’s jean cuff.

What is the connection between MakerBots and the dogs and cats calendars? Some investigation has revealed that one of the MakerBot suppliers has the option to get calendars as a bonus gift with big orders. When faced with the choice between a gym bag and kittens and puppies, MakerBot will always choose the cute kittens and puppies!