MakerBot Industries

MakerBot’s R&D all-stars have been printing up a PLA storm on our MakerBot Replicators and getting impressive results! Last night we did an overnight time-lapse of this skull and it turned out beautifully!

We’re excited to announce that we’ve started carrying Sugru in the MakerBot store. This air curing rubber is just plain fantastic! It feels like modeling clay, and you simply hand mold it into the shape you need – that’s pretty much it. It cures in under 24 hours, taking on the characteristics you expect of rubber – it’s soft, flexible, grippy, waterproof, and can withstand extreme temperatures. It’s a fantastic way to improve everyday items in your life – The first thing I did was fix my fraying laptop power cable.

But that’s just the tip of what’s exciting – it’s all about what happens when you attach Sugru to one of our favorite filaments. It turns out Sugru bonds particularly well to ABS, making the two completely inseparable buddies. Want proof? Check out the video at the bottom.

We have a lot of cool ideas for tricking out Makerbot Prints with Sugru – In fact our very own Annelise has kinda fallen in love with the possibilities, so she’s been making all sorts of fun things that we’ll show you in the next few days.

We’re also planning on hosting a Thingiverse design challenge to see what kinds of interesting uses for Sugru our talented community can come up with. I have no doubt awesome things will happen with Sugru and Makerbots. Basically Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Sugru comes in large pouches of 12 minipacks in multiple colors for $18 or black and white for $20 on our store starting today.

That’s right kids!  The glow is back in 3 mm, and, is now available for the first time in 1.75 mm!!

If you’re like us, you love using your MakerBot for decoration, and this is the sine qua non for all your Halloween-related prints.  Why print a ghost when you can print a glowing ghost?  Or isn’t a glowing skull better than one that, you know, doesn’t glow?  And best of all, now you can print glowing objects with your Stepstruder® MK7!

We are seriously excited that this shipment is here in time to get it to you by Halloween — grab it now and have the scariest, glowiest Halloween party on your block!

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!

The Stuff of Invention

Today we are launching the third round of our ABS and PLA plastics as they switch to being supplied on spools in Kilogram weights. The last of our classic colors and styles are now available in both 3mm and 1.75mm filament formats, and some previously unavailable formats are now up in the store! I am happy to report that our crowd-favorite UV reactive “Nuclear” green is now in our classic 3mm format, so Plastruder MK4, MK5, and MK6 3mm users rejoice! Also notable is PLA 4043D filament is now available in 3mm and 1.75mm formats- so hop to it if you want some of this great print stock.

Here’s the full selection of new plastic offerings!

Nuclear Green ABS 1kg Spool 3mm Filament

Blue ABS 1kg Spool 1.75mm Filament

Blue ABS 1kg Spool 3mm Filament

MakerBot PLA 4043D – 1kg spool -1.75mm

MakerBot PLA 4043D – 1kg spool -3mm

Yellow ABS 1kg Spool 3mm Filament

Fluorescent Red ABS 1kg Spool 3mm Filament

Red ABS 1kg Spool 3mm Filament

Check out our full variety of plastics in the MakerBot Store here!

After months of intensive research and development, MakerBot Industries is proud to announce a newly realized capacity of the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D Printer- the ability to print listenable vinyl records from the desktop.

“The process of transcribing an audio file into a vinyl record is so simple, anyone can do it.” Said Chief Audio Engineer Isaac Dietz. “Right now, I’m using the Automated Build Platform to rip my entire MP3 collection to individual records!”

“It’s an exciting innovation for MakerBot, as we all grew up listening to vinyl. We all wish that more records were available with the latest hits,” said Audio R&D Associate Marisol Murphy. “I can never get enough Justin Bieber or Rebecca Black until I listened to them on my turntable.”

The process utilizes the MakerBot 96khz AudioNozzle™ technology to print audio waveforms in real time. Using the MakerBot Generation 4 Electronics microstepping capacity, the AudioNozzle™ modulates the amount of plastic deposited to create a high-fidelity waveform. The results often surpass the dynamic range of 24-bit recordings and can contain frequencies up to 57khz — even higher than the Nyquist frequency for 96khz digital recording. You can even record directly to your 3D Printer by attaching a microphone to your computer, and singing into it.

Says Ethan Hartman, Vice President of Audio Operations: “MakerBot’s pioneering spirit has always hearkened back to early inventors like Thomas Edison. We are honored to be able to re-invent the audio record for the personal manufacturing space in the burgeoning 20-teens.”

Pre-orders for the 96khz AudioNozzle™ will be available shortly.

MakerBot 3D Printed Vinyl Records can be downloaded from Thingiverse here.

In this episode, Ethan prints the Space Shuttle as a multi-colored object, and Matt demos “Party Mode” for your Bots! Robot Hospital! Episode Four!

This weeks Robot Hospital! Episode Two is truly reaching for new heights of pre-production here at the BotCave! Those crazy live-stream days are fading into memory~ We have a great instructional segment from Ethan, who teaches you proper Stepper Driver Calibration, and later he covers the 3D Printing blogosphere in his weekly “Blog Rap.” Griffin and Marty demonstrate connecting the Unicorn to the Thing-O-Matic in fine style, and Matt details some great, and not so great, ideas for finishing techniques to use on your printed objects. We have a second interview with Marek from BeatBots, and the Keepon stops by and teaches robots everywhere how to hold space on the dance floor. Isaac drops in to discuss MakerBot Water Soluble PVA, and debuts version one of the Robot Hospital! intro! We’re going for it with this episode, it’s a new benchmark for what’s to come! Musical intro chops from “The Insider”

We love days like today, where a new product comes along that opens up so many doors for MakerBot Operators around the world. We’ve been incubating this material for about six months and it’s ready to be unleashed. A quote from Zach, co-founder of Makerbot- “Soluble objects are a holy grail of 3D Printing since our early days!” With MakerBot PVA filament you can now print 3D objects that dissolve in water. We at the BotCave have come up with some pretty great uses for this material, but I expect that our users will truly be the masters of invention for water soluble plastics. Just to get your gears turning, imagine these possibilities for objects printed with MakerBot Water Soluble PVA Filament!

• soluble molds for poured materials
• removable support structures
• science demonstrations for the classroom
• biotechnology applications
• art and design objects
• time-lapse video and visual effect displays
• smooth finishes on products without the use of solvents
• biodegradable 3D printed objects
• robots that melt

As you can tell, this stuff has an incredible future when it reaches our users. Pick up some MakerBot Water Soluble PVA filament at the MakerBot Store now!

Aircraft Carrier by Tasslehoff_Burrfoot

My first thought when seeing the above picture of Tasslehoff_Burrfoot‘s Aircraft Carrier¹ was, “What amazing Z axis resolution!”  After reading the description of this thing it became clear he had printed the two halves vertically to minimize warping as the ABS cooled.  I’ve finished lots of printed parts with an exacto knife, putty knife, pliers, and sandpaper – but I had never thought to use sandpaper as Tasslehoff suggests:

Sand down the two conjoining pieces to get a better fit, best way to get perfectly flat is to place a piece of sandpaper on a table and put a piece of 2×4 down perpendicular to the table. Then place the flight deck against the wood and sand down. Same thing with the flight deck. This is if you do not have a heated build platform.

Sanding the printed object on a flat piece of wood results in a flat piece of sandpaper.  Unfortunately, I’ve created unintentionally uneven edges on prints by just using sandpaper without any supportive material underneath.

Thanks for the pro-tip Tasslehoff!

1. Would two be Burrfeet? [↩]