One of our community members Phroon stopped by our booth with a MakerBotted C2E2 badge holder!  So we began printing these for the crowds immediately.  Check out Nick sporting his safety orange holder.

Anthony Daniels AKA C3PO became a MakerBot fan at C2E2 and visited the booth a couple of times.  Rather than talking about Star Wars or revealing who he was (we heard his voice as our first clue) he talked with great enthusiasm about The Replicator and told stories of being a Maker himself.  (His favorite tool: his glue gun. He had multiple burn scars to prove it.)

There were endless numbers of attendees visiting the booth dressed as Superheroes, Villains and Video Game Characters.  They all loved the MakerBot.  And those who created their own costumes or costumes for others left with ideas for how 3D printing could help them take these practices even further.

Even the Mario Bros. powered up at the MakerBot Booth!

We had the Xbox Kinect on hand to scan some of our favorite characters.  “I pity the fool who don’t MakerBot!” – Mr. T

After the doors closed on the first day of C2E2 we ventured out to Chicago’s premier Hackerspace, Pumping Station: One.  They have a Tardis!  Also, this is the hackerspace that created the Power Racing Series.

All eyes were on The Replicator!

Another visit that proved to be amazing was with Tom and Holly at the What It Is Gallery.  Their exhibit “Improbable Objects” featured 3D-printed work from MakerBot Artists Micah Ganske and Marius Watz, among others.

Next stop Washington DC!  We’ll be bringing The MakerBot Replicator to our Nation’s Capitol for the USA Science & Engineering Festival.  This is the largest celebration of science in the U.S. and will feature over 3,000 fun, interactive exhibits, more than 100 stage shows and 33 Author Presentations.  The USA Science & Engineering Festival will be held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. on April 28-29, 2012.  Hours are 10am-6pm on Saturday and 10am-4pm on Sunday.

Find out if the MakerBot Events Team is heading to your way; sign up to receive the MakerBot Newsletter!

Wheel repair by mrbenbritton

Thingiverse citizen mrbenbritton clearly put a lot of thought into this simple toy stroller wheel repair.  While admitting up front that the entire stroller was probably not even worth $6, mrbenbritton designed and printed this replacement wheel for a previously repaired stroller. ¹  Even if this was a $6 toy, the value to a kid is sometimes entirely out of proportion to the intrinsic value of an object.

About six months ago I fixed a very small foam sailboat for my daughter when she lost the mast. ²  To this day she will come up to me randomly and thank me again for having fixed her boat with a piece of black ABS filament as a mast replacement.

I suspect that mrbenbritton will be happy to find out that his daughter will probably remember her dad would always fix her toys long after the $6 stroller is forgotten.

Wheel repair by mrbenbritton

This is my first thing. A new wheel to replace one that broke on a toy stroller. The stroller was only worth $6 and is already held together by bamboo and gaffer tape so not really worth repairing but I did it anyway and my daughter loves it!

This thing brought to you by

1. I love this so much that I think a new slogan for MakerBot may just be in order.
   • “MakerBot.  When duck tape and bamboo just aren’t enough.”
   • “Even Macguyver has an off day.”

2. Actually what happened was that she found a hole in one of her larger molded plastic toys, pulled the mast out of her sailboat, inserted it into the hole to see if it would fit, and it disappeared forever.  I wasn’t about to chop apart a large plastic toy to get a thin black plastic stick.

Thanks to vik for the image!

To all of you who are celebrating the popular winter holiday today, from all of us at MakerBot: Merry Christmas.  We hope that you all are enjoying it in health and prosperity.

If you’ve just unboxed a brand-new Thing-O-Matic kit, welcome to the MakerBot community!  You’ll most likely want to have a look at our build instructions and Quick Start Guide to get started!  I know it’s all very exciting, but make sure you read and understand those instructions before starting your build.  If you do have issues you can’t resolve on your own, make sure that you email us at support@makerbot.com and we’ll get back to as soon as we can.

And to all of those who have just given the gift of MakerBot: enjoy a nice, quiet day, and make sure that your loved one doesn’t forget to feed him or herself.

Happy Holidays!

In a Hackerspace, somewhat far away, is a man named Dave Langkamp. A retired industrial designer of 33 years (twenty years designing at John Deere), Dave hasn’t rested on his laurels. One of his creations is this 50′s style UFO (printed on a MakerBot Cupcake) which contains an astonishing 133 parts! It now awaits its finishing coats and killer paint job.

In addition to the UFO, Dave is working on a 1/24th scale Semi tractor and trailer (which will carry the UFO), as well as a glider with a 54 inch wingspan! You can check out Dave’s blog for updates on his projects: http://thetinkersworkshop.blogspot.com/

We’re big fans of Hackerspaces here at MakerBot, and without one, Dave’s projects might have had some trouble getting off the ground. The Quad Cities Collaboration and Hackerspace located in Davenport, Iowa is a haven for for designers, technologists, educators, hobbysits, and anyone who wants to experience a great sense of community. If you’re in the Davenport area, it just might be worth looking up.

Thingizen deeeep conducted a Project Shellter workshop at TEDxYouth@Flanders last week. The enthusiastic kids envisioned all sorts of fantastical shells for hermit crabs. Now they need to be modeled so they can be printed and introduced to the crabitats!
Will the Karshellians like a multi-room shell? Will Paris Shellton dare to wear a shell adorned with wings? There’s only one way to find out: empirical science!

Are you a Blender ninja or a Sketchup wizard? Maybe your Maya-fu is legendary. If you’re looking for a unique challenge please consider helping out by modeling one of the drawings produced at the workshop.

Drop a comment here if you take on the challenge then upload a finished model to Thingiverse and tag it with shellter.

The kids and crabs thank you!

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• @ShellterEast
• @ShellterWest
• Thingiverse
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterVideos

TEDxYouth@Flanders Project Shellter Workshop Sketches by deeeep

On Sunday 20th November 2011 we did a workshop for 30 kids about 3D printing and while they were there we asked them to draw out their ideas for a shell for the hermit crabs. Some amazing designs came in, but we had no people available with CAD skills to convert these sketches into 3D models. My appeal to all of you in the thingiverse community is to see the sketches and convert some of them into workable printable 3D models, so that we can have them printed and put in the East and West coast Project Shellter aquariums. This would mean a lot to the kids who poured their imagination onto paper to help out the hermit crabs! Some other ideas were put up by some participants whose drawing skills were not as rich as their imagination: one girl wanted a shell in the shape of a plant-pot, which could grow seaweed for camouflage, another shell was in the shape of a piece of coral reef so that when the crab hides it looks like coral reef debris. Also look at thingiverse.com/thing:14046 for a rendition by MagicDan...

This thing brought to you by

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

iPhone dock created in Shapesmith and printed on Thing-O-Matic

How can I model the thing I want to print?

As the population of 3D printer operators continues to grow, answering that question will become more important than ever. Combining parametric modeling and a clean UI, browser-based Shapesmith hopes to provide an open source answer.

The developer, MakerBot operator, and Thingizen Benjamin Nortier tells us all about it.

Q: Who are you and what is Shapesmith?

I’m a software developer with an Engineering background and I’m also a 3D printing enthusiast. Shapesmith is a browser-based 3D modeling tool that I’ve been working on, and am very excited about. It is aimed at users who want to create high-quality parametric models for 3D printing, but who don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on expensive 3D CAD software.

I wanted to design an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) after being inspired by DIY Drones. I realised that it would be very attractive to 3D print aeroplane parts and I was using tools like Blender and Sketchup to design some airfoils or wings.

Because I had worked on a 3D CAD tool for electromagnetic simulation earlier in my career, I was very dissatisfied by the free design tools that were available. This dissatisfaction was reinforced when I bought a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic and started to design some models. So I decided to try and make something better.

Q: Why did you decide to open source it under the Apache license?

Two of my favourite open-source projects, Riak and CouchDB, are licensed under Apache. They have vibrant communities and also have profitable businesses around them. I hope that I can build something similar around Shapesmith in the future. Restrictive open-source licenses like the GPL put off commercial users, and the success of Shapesmith will depend on having a good balance between non-commercial and commercial use.

Q: Your technology choices are interesting. Why are you using Erlang and Riak?

And Javascript! I’m a polyglot and I’ve worked professionally in 11 languages, and there is no platform that can hold a candle to Erlang for writing robust, distributed, back-end applications. For example, because of the B-Rep modeling used behind the scenes, the geometry operations will have to be farmed out in future versions to machines with lots of processing power. This is to ensure a reasonable quality of service for many users in the future. This is very easily encapsulated by wrapping the C++ processes inside Erlang processes, and it’s very robust. The choice of Riak is an extension of that desire for robustness and the ability to scale out to many users. Riak is also written in Erlang.

Q: There seems to be a trend in WebGL-based 3D modeling tools: 3DTin, TinkerCad, CloudSCAD. How do you see Shapesmith within this landscape?

Yes, and it’s great for everyone involved. Each has different trade-offs, and I would say Shapesmith is positioned somewhere between CloudSCAD and TinkerCAD – I’m trying to balance the power of parametric modeling (CloudSCAD) and a usable, intuitive interface (TinkerCAD).

Q: The open source desktop modeler, Wings3D, is also written in Erlang. Do you have plans to either collaborate with its developers or to incorporate some of its code into Shapesmith?

Not right now, but there is certainly scope for that in the future. The focus at the moment is the B-Rep modeling and the user interface. Wings3D is a mesh modeler, and mesh modeling can become complementary to parametric B-Rep modeling. This could provide more artistic abilities such as sculpting to Shapesmith.

Q: What can we expect in future versions?

At the moment, the focus is on the storage mechanism for models, and doing it in a way that facilitates sharing between users. The design is based on the way git works, so it will enable users to incorporate and modify models from other users in their designs. This will also enable exporting to Thingiverse and other sites that have upload APIs.

Thereafter, I would like to add 1D and 2D operations, plus extrusions and chamfers. These kind of operations are very powerful, so I will finally be able to design a wing for my UAV!

Apart from that, the user interface will keep evolving to try and keep the balance between intuitive ease of use and powerful, parametric modeling.

Q: How can others contribute to its development?

Shapesmith is on Github where I welcome patches and issues. There are also two mailing lists, one for users and one for developers. I would really like to hear from people about bugs, and about what features they would like to see in Shapesmith.

If you have a WebGL capable browser, you can try Shapesmith now!

Thanks for your time Benjamin! We look forward to seeing Shapesmith’s continued progress!

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

Recently Possible: Objects of the Future

The new art exhibit “Recently Possible: Objects of the Future” at the Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis features designs and prints from one of Thingiverse’s most accomplished designers – Emmett Lalish.  On display, you’ll be able to see his Screwless Heart Gears, Screwless Cube Gears,  Puzzle Sphere, Ellipsoid Puzzle, and Matlab Knot.  But, you’d better hurry – the exhibit ends December 2, 2011!

It’s not unusual for us to receive requests for DXF files for our MakerBot machines and Scott Hunter did just that – asking for the files that would enable his group of students the ability to replace the wooden components of his school’s Thing-O-Matic with various colors of acrylic. What caught my attention was that his students were 12 year old girls, from Scotland, with a penchant for designing the future of Formula 1 cars. Yep.

The students, involved in the F1 in Schools Technology Challenge, are using CAD/CAM(Computer Aided Manufacture) software to communicate their vision. The participants are encouraged to consider everything from physics, aerodynamics, design, and manufacture, to branding, graphics, sponsorship and more. It’s a comprehensive competition with wind and smoke tunnels, culminating with a race down a 20 meter track with the cars going as fast as 60 kmh (over 37 mph!).

The competition permits the use of 3D printers for the front and rear aerofoils of their miniature gas powered balsa wood F1 cars (manufactured on a CNC machine), and Scott’s team chose the Thing-O-Matic to help them get to the finish line. As you can see from the photo above, it’s looking great! With an international field of contestants (34 countries) aged 9-19 (for a total of 12 million(!) students), and fierce competition, the Challenge is more worth following…if you can keep up.

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.

This thing brought to you by

Sylvan Heumann, or Syl by those who know him, has always been at the forefront of designing, using, and adapting new technology. Like many MakerBot operators, he was born “with an intense curiosity about how stuff works.” This insatiable appetite just had to be fed. And fed. And fed. From acquiring his Ham Radio license in 1950, to building his very own computer (IMSAI 8080) in 1976, he’s never shied away from the latest and greatest. It’s no surprise that he just added a Thing-O-Matic (assembled it himself of course) to his workshop.

Syl’s journey into the world of fabrication did not begin in school. Studying Business Administration, and pursuing a career outside of the sciences, Syl relied on his own devices to get his creative fix; he built up his workshop, which in addition to his Thing-O-Matic, consists of a beautiful lathe, a CNC mill, electronic test equipment, and a plethora of other gizmos and gadgets. He’s taken on photography, boating, and even flying.

Over the years Syl has designed and built engines, argon lasers, and countless other projects, but his long term interest has been telescope design and accessories. He’s taken some absolutely gorgeous images of the moon with a telescope and digital camera.

So what does he have in store for his MakerBot?

[My] main motivation in building the Bot was to understand the technology. But I have amazed some of my friends with a few of the items from Thingiverse! Right now, I am making Coke can holders for a friend’s boat.

Less than two weeks ago, Syl turned 86 years young (can anyone top that?), and when he’s not working on his next project, he can be found cruising down the highways of California in his Ferrari F430. What does he have to say to all of those tinkerers, hobbyists, inventors, and designers out there?

My advice – when something doesn’t work or you don’t understand it, never quit trying. Put it aside for a short while, but come back and try again until you dominate. Never shy away from getting help. The satisfaction will erase all the frustration!

It’s quite clear that Syl has put an enormous amount of time into educating himself and pushing the limits of DIY. He is an inspiration to us all and we thank Syl for being a MakerBot Operator and friend to the community!