MakerBot Industries

Under the guidance of Professors Alberto Valero PhD and Juan Gonzalez PhD, students at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid have been taking advantage of an optional seminar, which focuses on the study of 3D design and printing. Using Open Source tools, this new program is the first of its kind in Spain, and the early returns have been tremendous.

Studying OpenSCAD for designing, and building a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic (named Madre) for printing, students have been looking at how to create and improve upon robotic mechanisms. Inspired by items on Thingiverse, the students have been printing their designs for over three months, eight hours per day, and to date, have gone through over 12kg of plastic! They have even been using it more than their industrial 3D printer. Professor Valero summed it up pretty well: “THIS IS PLASTIC VALLEY.”

You can see a sampling of their work on Thingiverse, under the tag, UC3M. One of the more challenging projects for now and for the future has been to take obijuan‘s MiniSkyBot and make adjustments to make it capable of moving through a sand box.

After a successful introduction to 3D design and printing, the university will soon be expanding to include even more classes, and MakerBots! One class in particular, “Designing and Printing of Mechanical Parts with Open Source Tools’ for the Robotics and Automation Master program looks very promising. Based on what we’ve seen so far, we have high hopes for the program’s future!

Caterpillator by Olalla

This is a printable caterpillar robot with gear wheels and links -kind of tank-like ;) . This is part a project developed in the UC3M university in which we are designing printable robots. Here, we have together all the pieces that form this robot, but you can have a look at the different parts pages to see some other people modifications -specially at the links. Take into account that this is a work in progress.Though this robot works as it is designed now, it can be improved a lot -and this is in what we are working right now. Some of the pieces -in their own pages- are parametrized, while others are still pending. Designers: Olalla Bravo thingiverse.com/olalla Daniel Gómez thingiverse.com/dannynoc A special thank you to Obijuan thingiverse.com/obijuan for printing us the pieces, providing useful advice and remarking us some obvious design mistakes and, in general, leading us into the nerdy way =p . Another thank you also to our other professor Alberto, for his advice,patience and invitations to have some coffee. Individual pages for the pieces: Gear wheels and links: thingiverse.com/thing:7209 Chassis: thingiverse.com/thing:7681 Parametric gear wheels: thingiverse.com/thing:7794 UPDATE: We've got a video of the robot in motion!!youtu.be/gRsKRrQQHos Update 4/13 23:52 The chassis now includes four drills in order to hold the PIC with the micro that controls the servos above the chassis. Also, the hole that it had so that some material could be saved has been removed in order to sustain better the PIC. Update 4/14 14:08 Added the parametric version of the gear wheels that we are using in the design. Update 4/20 00:28 The comments of the links scad file have been translated into English. I hope this will help to understand better the code and that it will make easier modifications of the file.

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MakerBot Operator Scott Miller sent us these pictures of his students doing work with a MakerBot at Mech Design class at Olin college.  They have high end 3D printers installed at their school, but he brought his MakerBot in to show how 3D printers work and run some prints.

There is no substitute for being able to put a machine on the table, upload a file, and build a part in real time. Being able to build working prototypes quickly is a critical part of the Olin College Mechanical Design class.  We use 3D printing and Sheet Metal to leverage their complementing strengths.  To design effective parts, it is critical to understand the fabrication process.  We used the Thing-O-Matic in class to visually demonstrate the entire 3D printing process from the design in Solidworks -> STL -> SkeinForge -> GCode -> 3D print.  Understanding the print methodology and internal structure of the parts allows the students to be more effective right off the bat for their 3D printed designs.

Scott sent me a slide from his presentation courtesy of Professor Barrett that shows some basic guidelines for 3D printing. Great tips!

The Colbert Report June 8, 2011 with Bre Pettis

In case you missed it live last night, here is Bre’s appearance on Colbert. The show is really funny and Stephen is clearly excited about 3D printing and all his new mashup objects! Watch the whole show, or skip to Bre’s part at 15:48.

Hey it’s Friday!  In light of that, we’ve whipped up another addition of Robot Hospital, which we hope you’ll enjoy.  We’ve got a new product announcement (new Nema 17 motors), a report from the Blip festival, where we’ll be demoing bots tonight and tomorrow, and the final installment of Matt’s squirrel modeling tutorial.

I’ve been using a 1/16″ aluminum build surface on my Thing-O-Matic for weeks, with really good results. Now you can buy an aluminum platform from Makerbot, and cover it with wide Kapton tape for the ultimate build surface. I’ve been using this combination on my Cupcake CNC for a while, and it is great: parts adhere really well and there is no warping. (Top tip: wipe the platform with acetone before printing for even better adhesion.)

However, this poses a challenge: sometimes parts stick to the platform so well that it can take a real effort, and a lot of force, to get them off. On the Cupcake, I would just detach the build platform and lever the piece loose. However, on the Thing-O-Matic, the platform is fixed, and you end up applying a lot of force to the X&Y platform as you try to release the piece.

One solution is to just double up the aluminum plate, and hold it on with bulldog clips, as described here. However, I went for a quicker solution in the short term.

Wing nut holding heated build platform for easy removal

I just put M3 wing nuts on the bolts holding the platform (you only really need 4, one on each corner, not 6). When I’m done printing, I can just detach the HBP connector (power off first!) and quickly unscrew the wing nuts. This allows for easy access to the printed piece from all sides, plus I can apply quite a bit of force without affecting the structure of the Thing-O-Matic.

At some point, I’d love to see a quick release mechanism for the Thing-O-Matic platform, like this one, but for now this is really saving me a lot of time and effort.

When putting together my Thing-O-Matic, first with a Mk5 extruder and then a Mk6+, a perpetual source of frustration was attaching the thermocouple to the thermal block. It seemed like tightening the nut would rotate it, and it would come loose. Moreover, more than once the stresses of assembling and disassembling the extruder would loosen it as well.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution:

Mk6+ heater block with groove for thermocouple

I used a Dremel tool with a diamond grinding bit to make a groove in the side of the heater block, where the thermocouple fits. It grips the thermocouple wire as the nut is tightened, and prevents it from rotating loose. With this simple change, I can always get the thermocouple installed on the first try, and it feels really solid.

In this episode Keith takes us on an awesome tour of RobotFest 2011 at the National Electronics Museum, Ethan pushes the extreme limits of acrylic T-Slot construction, and Matt traps and traces a massive squirrel- Check it out!

MakerBot had a chance to hang out at the Nooka Lab this week. Nooka produces a line of wristwatches and other fashion accessories with enhanced functionality and a futuristic philosophy. We had an awesome time printing with the Nooka team and can’t wait to see what they create on their new MakerBot!

Printing the Nooka logo on the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic

Alexander from Nooka showing the first print!

Check out more photos on the Nooka Blog.

Neil over at Traintalk.tv recently got his hands on a Thing-O-Matic kit, with the idea that he’ll use the ‘bot to print out small, detailed objects for his model railroads.  As you can see, he’s off to a good start, but he’s going to need some help getting awesome 3d models to spruce up the old HO-scale down in the basement.

He also had his new Thing-O-Matic at Supertrain (Canada’s largest model train show) in Calgary this last weekend, so I’d guess he just tuned in a few train folks to 3d printing.  I’m hoping that we start seeing a few more train-related items over at Thingiverse!

The MakerBot section starts at about 3:22, but Neil is visiting a cool train museum in the first half of the show, and I suggest that you check it out if you’ve got any tendency towards trainspotting. Spoiler: there is a really cool postal car.

DocProfSky Gets a Thing-O-Matic

Those of us who had the pleasure of seeing Schuyler “DocProfSky’s” iGNiTe Phoenix presentation “Why I Love My 3D Printer” a few weeks ago are thrilled to see the above photo and an update from DocProfSky’s dad:

Can you say Thing-O-Matic? @DocProfSky now can!

Schuyler, we can’t wait to see what you will do with two 3D printers at your disposal!