MakerBot Industries

Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Lutz-R. Frank via Compfight

How amazing would it be to be able to have a balloon in any shape?  What would you want?  A piano?  A cartoon character?  A giant bouncy house?

The New Scientist just reported that a team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Disney Research has developed a method for taking any desired 3D shape, then using their research on how a rubber balloon stretches as it inflates, reverse engineers the deflated shape that would most closely lead to the desired inflated balloon.  Then, once they have the model for the deflated balloon, they create a mold for it using a 3D printer!  If you just can’t wait to learn more, they’re presenting their work at the Eurographics conference in Italy next month.

Thanks to Luis Rodriguez for the link!

Posting about the Light It Up Blue logo design yesterday got me thinking: what if I did want to print out four or five of these at a time? What if I were a teacher and wanted to modify and multiply this awesome badge for a Wild West unit with my students?

As it happens, my colleagues in Support have just today published a new tutorial addressing this exact question. It’s a quick read, and you can find out how to divide your build platform for a designated number of copies of your object. So you can have two three headed tigers, or three four leaf clovers, or four five fingered salutes.

Speaking of tutorials, the Support team wants to hear from you. What tutorial would you really like to see? Is there something you’ve had to teach yourself that you think we could cover with a good how-to? Let us know! Comment below, or submit your ideas to support@makerbot.com at any time.

Now, go forth and multiply!

Three Headed Tiger by pardasaniman

Like the title says! Be warned though, it's my first time editing a mesh in Blender and has a few rough spots.

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Clover Shaped Shotglass by Boort

Created a couple of Shot glasses with the profile of a 4 leaf clover to Celebrate St. Patricks Day. One has a twist and a rim, the other is a straight extrusion.

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Fist Sculpture by nathan

another successful 3d scan. I took a plaster cast of my hand and through using my3dscanner.com came out with a decent mesh. My real break-though on this project was using meshlab to re-sample the mesh making it much more uniform and achieving a nice manifold

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In case some of you have been pinging us with your support queries, or simply reaching out for a nice chat, you should know that MakerBot Support is down today while we move boxes and desks. Everything will be back up and running tomorrow, March 29, 2012.

This one’s for you.

MakerBot’s own Tony Buser has put together this helpful video tutorial showing how he uses a variety of programs to fix 3D objects and scans to make them more printable.  There are a lot of ways for things to go wrong with a 3D object.  You could have a flipped triangle, internal structures,  or there could be a hole in the mesh.  Tony’s video provides a great overview and takes you step-by-step through the most popular 3D mesh fixing programs.  Even though this video depicts a 3D scan being fixed, the programs and methods shown could be used to fix any problematic 3D object.  Give it a shot!

Yesterday we posted about the Innovative Humanitarian Products Organization, the brainchild of Auburn student Grant Moore. Today we have a bit more background to Grant’s cool story and how he’s using his MakerBot to charge ahead on some of the developing world’s problems.

During a summer internship in 2010, Grant saved up for a Cupcake CNC in order to be able to prototype various ideas. He hadn’t yet thought of a water purification system, but says the “power and flexibility that Makerbot offered caused me to search for new uses of the machine.” Grant even has a patent pending for a special ratcheting mechanism he perfected on his MakerBot.

The idea for a water purification system grew out of a recognition of the “truly staggering” water crisis worldwide. He tells me his group now has two systems.

ALPS (Advanced Liquid Purification System) and SaL (Salt and Light). Both operate on the same principle however one is powered by a hand-crank while the other is powered by a solar-cell. The technology is effective at eliminating the majority of all viruses, bacteria, and protozoa to safe levels.

Grant and his student organization IHPO, now 130 members strong, use Grant’s  MakerBot Cupcake  to print the casings for the ALPS as well as the parts for their newest “Hybrid Purifier.” They’ve even tested these systems on the ground in Uganda! You can see a short video of the casing being printed on their Facebook page by clicking the links above. He says the organization has grown into a 501(c)3 non-profit and is “working to establish strong lasting partnerships with other non-profits.”

We are so glad Grant and his colleagues have been able to use MakerBot for global good. Do you know of anyone doing similar work, or have you had ideas for a humanitarian project that you’d like to prototype on a MakerBot? We’d love to hear your stories, too!

If there is one thing we love, it’s hearing about amazing students doing great things with a MakerBot! There is a student-led organization at Auburn University using MakerBot to solve the potable water crisis in the developing world.

Our support team here in the BotLair got a service request yesterday, and after digging around, we’re intrigued. The Innovative Humanitarian Products Organization is a group born out of a project by Grant Moore, who was a student in the Business Engineering Technology program at Auburn. Grant used his Thing-o-Matic to prototype his group’s Advanced Liquid Purification System (ALPS). Apparently, having a MakerBot on hand meant he could print a box to hold all the parts of the system he envisioned. Looking at some Facebook pictures, it seems IHPO may have used their 3D printer for more parts than just the box.

Here’s a slideshow to give you some more background on the group. We’ll update more as we get additional information about this great project!

Come see limited edition Project Shellter shells at the Wonderloch Kellerland Gallery in Atwater Village, Los Angeles. Opening is tonight from 7-11PM and there will be music, live portraiture, and looping shell adoption videos. If you can’t make it tonight, the show runs through February.

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter or the shellter tag to let others know you are participating in this crowd-sourced science experiment!:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterShells
• youtu.be/​ProjectShellter

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

Project Shellter - Oxystele by TeamTeamUSA

UPDATE 2011-12-13 07:23Kylie Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here with annotations and music: youtu.be/LtvlLBQnEc0UPDATE 2011-12-07 21:35Kendall Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here: youtu.be/QpCusZ_q0wwUPDATE 2011-12-04 19:11The original oxystele.stl had spiral holes in it. After running it through cloud.netfabb.com the holes are gone. If you downloaded the file before, please re-download it. Another one of M. B. Cortie's greatest hits sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009784939390054D! Modeled on the shell of the Oxystele sinensis sea snail, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxystele_sinensis, will Coenobita clypeatus - "Purple Pincher" - hermit crabs like this? Only experimentation will tell! It was created using Maya's shellNode plugin, which is based upon Cortie's model, and thickened using Blender's Solidify modifier blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-256-beta/solidify-modifier/. The goal is a workflow using open source tools, but this shell surface required a commercial tool. Thanks to a tip from thingiverse.com/mesheldrake, the conversion to a solid is now handled by an open source tool. :) Cortie's model and many of its resultant shells have been written in Maple maplesoft.com/applications/view.aspx?SID=3851&view=html. Porting them to an open source tool such as Sage or Blender is the last step in creating a complete open source workflow. Any python ninjas up to the task‽ Follow Project Shellter progress here:projectshellter.comtwitter.com/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterCamsbit.ly/ProjectShellterVideos

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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!

A picture is worth a thousand words – here are a few more…

Kendall, one of the five “sisters” living at the Shellter West crabitat, seems happy in her Project Shellter shell. She’s one of two crabs sporting printed Oxystele sinesis shells in the crabitat.

Here she is adopting it for the first time:

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter or the shellter tag to let others know you are participating in this crowd-sourced science experiment!:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterShells
• youtu.be/​ProjectShellter

Tip o’ the hat to Greg at Dropcam for the “Holy Crab!”

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

Project Shellter - Oxystele by TeamTeamUSA

UPDATE 2011-12-13 07:23Kylie Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here with annotations and music: youtu.be/LtvlLBQnEc0UPDATE 2011-12-07 21:35Kendall Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here: youtu.be/QpCusZ_q0wwUPDATE 2011-12-04 19:11The original oxystele.stl had spiral holes in it. After running it through cloud.netfabb.com the holes are gone. If you downloaded the file before, please re-download it. Another one of M. B. Cortie's greatest hits sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009784939390054D! Modeled on the shell of the Oxystele sinensis sea snail, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxystele_sinensis, will Coenobita clypeatus - "Purple Pincher" - hermit crabs like this? Only experimentation will tell! It was created using Maya's shellNode plugin, which is based upon Cortie's model, and thickened using Blender's Solidify modifier blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-256-beta/solidify-modifier/. The goal is a workflow using open source tools, but this shell surface required a commercial tool. Thanks to a tip from thingiverse.com/mesheldrake, the conversion to a solid is now handled by an open source tool. :) Cortie's model and many of its resultant shells have been written in Maple maplesoft.com/applications/view.aspx?SID=3851&view=html. Porting them to an open source tool such as Sage or Blender is the last step in creating a complete open source workflow. Any python ninjas up to the task‽ Follow Project Shellter progress here:projectshellter.comtwitter.com/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterCamsbit.ly/ProjectShellterVideos

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Kendall Karshellian adopted a printed shell!

After nearly 2 months of ongoing experimentation by the Project Shellter teams, on Wednesday December 07, 2011 at approximately 04:23 PM PST at the Shellter West crabitat in Los Angeles, Kendall adopted a printed shell!

Similar to the shells suggested by hermit crab caretaker and commentator wodosorel, the shell is modeled on that of the Oxystele sinensis sea snail.

Watch the entire fascinating process as she examines, switches, and adopts a 3D printed shell!

Got red/blue anaglyph glasses? Click the “3D” below the playback bar to see it happen in the third dimension!

Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild! Use the hashtag #shellter or the shellter tag to let others know you are participating in this crowd-sourced science experiment!:

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterShells
• youtu.be/​ProjectShellter

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

Project Shellter - Oxystele by TeamTeamUSA

UPDATE 2011-12-13 07:23Kylie Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here with annotations and music: youtu.be/LtvlLBQnEc0UPDATE 2011-12-07 21:35Kendall Karshellian adopted a print of this shell today! See it happen here: youtu.be/QpCusZ_q0wwUPDATE 2011-12-04 19:11The original oxystele.stl had spiral holes in it. After running it through cloud.netfabb.com the holes are gone. If you downloaded the file before, please re-download it. Another one of M. B. Cortie's greatest hits sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009784939390054D! Modeled on the shell of the Oxystele sinensis sea snail, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxystele_sinensis, will Coenobita clypeatus - "Purple Pincher" - hermit crabs like this? Only experimentation will tell! It was created using Maya's shellNode plugin, which is based upon Cortie's model, and thickened using Blender's Solidify modifier blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-256-beta/solidify-modifier/. The goal is a workflow using open source tools, but this shell surface required a commercial tool. Thanks to a tip from thingiverse.com/mesheldrake, the conversion to a solid is now handled by an open source tool. :) Cortie's model and many of its resultant shells have been written in Maple maplesoft.com/applications/view.aspx?SID=3851&view=html. Porting them to an open source tool such as Sage or Blender is the last step in creating a complete open source workflow. Any python ninjas up to the task‽ Follow Project Shellter progress here:projectshellter.comtwitter.com/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterbit.ly/ProjectShellterCamsbit.ly/ProjectShellterVideos

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