MakerBot Industries

(video source)

The MakerBot Cupcake has been described in various places as a machine that can “make anything you desire.” Well, we are putting more and more thought into what might be done with an army of such capable, affordable bots working in tandem. (By analog, think of last year’s news about the low-cost PS3 supercomputer, only desktop fab-edition.)

From this idea we invented the “bot farm,” the personal fabrication equivalent of the render farm model in use in the film/animation industry to network scores and scores of computers to crunch through endless calculations necessary to accomplish tasks like hanging the right shadow off of Buzz Lightyear’s nose. We are spending September putting our first bot farm together and running it through its paces, and to help build the army of robots needed we have been drawing on the local army of MakerBot Operators to help us out.

Last week we had a great turn out at the MakerBot Build Party. A dozen people came to NYC Resistor and collectively built four bots in one night. Thanks go out to all the builders and those behind the scenes who made this happen.

Attendees ranged from experienced MakerBot operators to a new visitor who had not heard of MakerBot until the morning of the build party. It was a friendly bunch, sharing tips and tricks across the work table as we enjoyed each other’s company — everyone walked away knowing more about building and printing on the MakerBot than they did before they arrived.

We are tempted to throw another one of these events the next time a window for it opens up — perhaps with pit teams and time trials. We’ll keep you posted on the MakerBot blog.

The bot farm army gained four new members…..

Makerbot veterans (owner of bot #117 traveled from Connecticut) and fresh MakerBot Operators alike gathered Wednesday evening to answer these questions and help Makerbot Industries imagine the Makerbot of the future.

Do you want it to look like a Camaro, a Cadillac, a VW bug, or an antique BMW? An old radio? A shiny robot?

Where would you keep it? Your office, the garage, the kitchen, or your man cave? What color should it be? How big would it be? What does it look like? Is it more important to make it cheaper or have better resolution?

Everyone responded that reliability is both priority 1 and 2 and that tinkering is fun, but sometimes it’s just nice when something works perfectly when you want it to.

Do you like having to tweak the machine? Or would you rather just have it work out of the box? How would you improve it?

If you could make anything with your Makerbot – anything at all – what would you make?

The most interesting topic of the evening was whether the Makerbot looks more like a Mercedes Unimog or Volkswagen Thing.

What do you think? There are a lot of ways you can make your voice heard right now. There are comments on the blog, emails to contact@makerbot.com, the google group, and then there is the brainstorm page and now the MakerBot idea torrent!

Unimog photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Stefan Flöper

VW Thing photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Bull-Doser

The answer is “better than the original.”

Better than the original

I had first seen Ian Johnson‘s Soap Dish on Thingiverse months ago, thought “cool,” and moved on.  A few days ago I stumbled upon Ian’s Flickr photostream and finally got the full story.

This is the original soap dish from Pottery Barn. It rests in a fixture attached to the wall, from which it has fallen many times and broken. It can’t be replaced because the line has been discontinued, but I want to continue to use the fixture, since the pedestal sink doesn’t really have room for a soap dish.

Ian designed a replacement soap dish in halves, so it would fit on the MakerBot print platform and asked Will Langford to print the parts for him.  He then glued the two halves together with black ABS drain pipe cement from the hardware store, dipped the dish in an ABS cement/acetone bath to smooth out the texture, sanded it smooth, painted it with his ABS dip to give it a glossy finish, and then gave it several coats of white liquid plastic.  For more information on Ian’s exact process as well as his photos of the intermediate stages, check out his photostream.

MakerBot is looking to expand. The next person we’re looking to hire is an electrical engineer. We’re looking for someone with a deep and masterful understanding of the workings of electrons and how to control them. If you are the type of person who ends up boring people at dinner parties talking about Boron and other doping agents, you may be our person! This position will be focused on building the latest and greatest open source electronics for MakerBot, so we’re really looking for someone with experience in mechatronics. The role will primarily be electronics based, but they will be controlling things such as motors, relays and other mechanical beasts.

If this is not you, but describes someone you know, please send them our way. If you refer us someone we end up hiring, we’ll hook you up with 5lbs of plastic.

Check out the craigslist posting for full details on the position and details on how to apply.

Nirmal Thapa, pictured above working away at the MakerBot Botcave is going to be with us this summer helping on the blog and exploring ways to get more MakerBots in the hands of teachers and students. I’m looking forward to his posts!

I love the sight of fresh cardboard

This week we’re finishing up shipping out batch 12. This spring we’ve had some challenges getting all the bits and pieces for this batch but things are moving right along. We’ve had a few experiences lately where we’ve literally bought out all the stock in the world of a part and had to get the parts custom manufactured for us which takes time. It may just look like a pile of boxes to you, but for us, these boxes are bundles of potential creative energy waiting to be opened, built into MakerBots and used to make almost anything. We really can’t wait to see what you do with them and we’re working hard putting these kits together and keeping them going out the door to you!

There is a big demand for Gen3 Electronics and everytime we put them in the store, we increase the amount we put in the store and they still sell out very fast! Right now we have some in stock and I’m sure that shortly after I post this, they will all be gone.

How will you know when they will come? As soon as they ship, we’ll send you tracking information!

We’ve got 1500 sets of Gen3 on order and they’ll be delivered as they are manufactured. To make things fair, we’re putting them up for pre-sale so that you can get in line without having to check back everyday to see if they are for sale again! Keep in mind that if you order other items from us with in the same order as the Gen3 electronics that the entire order will be sent out when the electronics arrived. Having pre-sales will also help us understand demand for these so that we can continue to keep these in stock.

The cool thing is that with every Gen3 electronics sets, we know there is another CNC machine or RepRap machine being born. Up until January, we rarely sold Gen3 sets, but this year, things are really taking off, and we’re excited to get them to you to do amazing Gen3 electronics projects!

You can find the Gen3 electronics in the MakerBot store!

Do you have a unique project that you’ve got planned or have built with these electronics? Drop us a note in the comments. We’d love to hear more about what people are dreaming up!

Pictured above: Charles Pax created a custom lasercut case for his MakerBot that holds all the Gen3 electronics in bottom of the machine!

Zach and his botcave made slippers

Adam and his botcave made slippers

Nothing can stop us! Soo what!!! there is some wicked slush outside that completely gets into what ever footwear you have on- here at the botcave we have an invention for everything.

Introducing: The Botcave Slippers v1.0 & v1.1

v1.0 Includes: 2 pieces of 14″ stylish Salmon colored foam (Zach is modeling this lovely version)

v1.1 Includes: The same as v1.0 but also adds a bit more support to the foot with 4 12″ x 12″ x 12″ pieces of bubble wrap (Adam is modeling this lovely version)

We will begin taking orders soon

Our designer, James Provost, came up with these initial designs. James came up with this awesome set of style choices and we didn’t go with any one of them, but you can really see the way we were going and what he was thinking. James is a great designer and was flexible and driven enough to come up with the way the name MakerBot would look and designed the site for us.

A year ago we started making the first MakerBot prototype. It didn’t work, but isn’t it cute?