MakerBot Industries

According to the MakerBot map, where MakerBot Operators can share their approximate location of their MakerBot, there are more MakerBots clustered in Seattle than any other place on earth. It’s arguable that the greater San Francisco area has more, but you have to go pretty far and include Sacramento. There are lots of MakerBots out there that aren’t on the map, but this is what we have to go by right now! Is your MakerBot on the map?

Will Langford, who runs the Tufts Robotics Club, had a nice article about robots, people, engineering, and MakerBot on his school’s blog. Cool!

Looking at engineering on a broader level, Langford says it’s the responsibility of engineers and product designers to “to situate their solutions within the context that it’s needed for.” He’s getting some of that real-world experience through an internship with MakerBot Industries, a Brooklyn-based start-up that uses computer-aided design software to produce 3-D pieces like his dorm room coat hook.

The way the printer works is both simple, and slightly magical. Using a small, heated platform, plastic tubing is fed through the top of the printer and slowly melted and cooled. Currently limited by the platform size, which is between four and six inches in diameter, the printer is great for building smaller scaled pieces, from salt shakers to earrings.

“Their whole aim is to make these 3-D printing machines that usually only universities and research institutions have, because they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and make them available to a lot more people for a thousand dollars,” he says.

Having purchased a MakerBot printer himself, Langford says he is excited by the ease of assembly, which will make it more accessible to not just DIY-ers, but also the average consumer.

“It’s Ikea,” Langford says with a laugh. “A lot of people just want to be able to design their own things and have them now and not have to just accept whatever design Sony or whatever huge corporation determines is best.”

And Langford continues to make more things: glasses to share on the digital design site Thingiverse.com, or 3-D printed jewelry to sell on Etsy, an online storefront.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be stuck in the normal engineering setting, designing normal things,” he says. “I want to be testing assumptions. I want to fully physically realize my ideas as much as possible.”

via Tufts E-News: If You Build It….

From Robots Dreams:

Michael Overstreet posted two videos featuring a Sumobot chassis created using the Makerbot 3D printer, and the results look really professional. For a complex, relatively large, part taken right out of the Makerbot, Michael’s chassis is surprisingly good, even without any additional clean-up, sanding, or other finishing processes.

And the Makerbot cranking out the Sumobot chassis:

via Makerbot Turns Out Clean Robot Parts Video – ROBOTS DREAMS.

Keith moved his Extruder circuit board to the outside of his bot for better filament viewing. I am always taking the sd card out all the time so this wouldn’t work for me, but I like the idea and his wire wrap is beautiful!!!

I’d previously mounted the extruder PCB up on the highest two screws of the extruder housing, placing it above the feeder face instead of covering it, but that was pretty fragile and I was constantly worrying about bumping it and snapping it off. This weekend I moved the extruder controller to its new permanent home on the right side of the CupCake in the empty space above the motherboard. It fits nicely and shares a mounting screw with the upper Z-axis endstop.

via Relocating the MakerBot CupCake Extruder Controller « Keith’s Electronics Blog.

Vandebina found a way to turn MakeBotted objects into gold… well at least covered in gold! She did it at Miss Baltazar’s Laboratory at Metalab in Vienna. I asked her how she did it and this is what she said!

I demonstrated four different types of gilding a surface. The one with the makerbotted cup is a kind of oil gilding. You have to coat the surface with varnish or an oil-based gold size (oil/resin) that will dry and develop a tacky surface. The oil that i use is known as Mixtion. After the drying time (12 hours) you just have to apply the gold leaves. To protect the surface it can be painted with some acrylic finish, or whatever you want.

There are also other ways to gild the surface —> gilding milk as clay, it takes just 10-15 minutes to dry. The next weeks i will try to gild makerbotted things with galvanic method, the first tests failed. But i’m on it. heh!

Thanks Vandebina! Keep us posted with future experiments!

Cupcake CNC Build from Eric Stevens on Vimeo.

Here’s a time lapse video of a MakerBot being built over 3 Days found on betaobjects. Very cool!

Cupcake CNC Printing from Eric Stevens on Vimeo.

Bonus! Another time lapse video of the MakerBot making a dodecahedron from betaojects!

Check out the MakerBot Google Map where, if you’ve got a MakerBot, you can add yourself! Thanks to MakerBlock for creating it!

Marc de Vinck is bringing it with the next stage of his Cupcake building documentation! It’s great!

via Make: Online : CupCake CNC build, part 8: Building the X stage.

Robert Bowdidge discovered a cool way to make model train buildings!

I wondered if I could break up the long side pieces so that the top layer couldn’t pull across the piece to cause the warp. Back in SketchUp, I made the piece twice as deep, and cut some wedges out of the thickened back side perpendicular to the warping.

via Makerbot 216: I Trust My Makerbot / Making Model Buildings.

EricM made PERCIVAL (Printer Emulating Reprap to Create

Immense VALue) Great paint job!

via Percival1b on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.