MakerBot Industries » Science

The MakerBot Replicator™

annelise — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:19:48 +0000

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!

Holy Crab! Hermit Crab in Printed Shell!

Miles — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:30:22 +0000

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:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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!:

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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Printed Shell Adoption! – Project Shellter

Miles — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:04:14 +0000

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!

Click here to view the embedded video.

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

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

Project Shellter - Oxystele by TeamTeamUSA

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Secret PLA Repair Tech

MakerBlock — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:47:07 +0000

Success!

Thingiverse user arkatipe recently posted their designs for a “device to repair plastic hangers.” The device itself is little more than a hollow plastic cylinder. However, the way arkatipe used this simple PLA cylinder is particularly interesting.

This is intentionally a little bit smaller than the hanger diameter. I’d recommend that you clean it up, drop it in a cup of water, then stick it in the microwave for a minute or so. After it’s softened up, press it on the hanger and hold it in shape until it hardens.

PLA softens at a much lower temperature than ABS and tends to hold the heat a little longer, staying malleable. Having a little plastic part that can be printed very close to what you need, softened, molded, and then left to cool and harden could be incredibly useful. It really opens up a world of possibilities. If there were a particular shape that one could foresee being very useful, you could print up several of them and keep them on hand. When you’re read to use them, moisten, nuke, mold, harden.

Thanks arkatipe!

Device to repair a plastic hanger by arkatipe

Because hangers cost $1.00, and the plastic to fix them is less than $0.01. Design is intended for PLA. Additionally, this can be used to justify the expense of your 3D printer to your significant other, provided you have several hundred broken hangers.

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How You Can Participate in Project Shellter!

Miles — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:35:07 +0000

Photo credit

Project Shellter welcomes various levels of participation based upon interest and skill. Here are six ways from casual to dedicated in which you can participate:

Interested but don’t have a lot of time?
Participate on a casual basis by observing the time-lapse videos of the crabitats and logging any crab encounters in the comments. Who knows, you might be among the first to see a crab “try on” a printed shell! New crabitat videos are available every day at youtube.com/ProjectShellter.
Have 3D modeling skills? You can review Dr. Bulinski’s interview to get guidelines on what makes a great shell and then upload yours to Thingiverse.com so it can be printed and tested in a crabitat. You can see what others have created at bitly.com/ProjectShellterShells. Remember to tag your shell with shellter so everyone can find it!
Interested in programming or advanced mathematics? Sweet! Help convert these shell formulae from the commercial Maple software to the open source Sage, Blender, or Shapesmith software to allow more people to design, explore and print sea shells. Hermit crabs the world over will chirp your praises!
Are you a hermit crab caretaker? Fantastic! You can help test the shells. Just introduce yourself on the MakerBot Operators Group and let the community know you can help test shells. MakerBot Operators are friendly, helpful and located around the world.
Got a 3D printer? Great! Print out any shells at bitly.com/ProjectShellterShells, and then post to the MakerBot Operators Group to let the community know you have shells to test.
Have a 3D printer and hermit crabs? Awesome! You’re a self-contained Project Shellter machine! Please print out the shells at bitly.com/ProjectShellterShells, introduce them to your crabs, and share your observations and experiences at projectshellter.com or @ProjectShellter!

However you choose to participate, your contribtions are encouraged and welcomed!

This guest post is part of Project Shellter.

MakerBot Electronics in a Pick and Place Machine

MakerBlock — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:50:54 +0000

Mark Sproul of the Rutgers School of Engineering has his students putting together their senior design projects in Industrial Engineering using MakerBot electronics! For those of you who remember the very early days of MakerBot¹ probably recall that our electronics have been used in everything from RepStraps, to home-brew 3d printers, to CNC mills. Right now, one of Mark’s students have begun construction of a CNC pick-and-place robot and the other is working on a CNC cutter for vinyl or leather.

A pick-and-place machine is a robot that picks up very small surface mount electronics and places them in the appropriate location and orientation. Having such a device allows a user to quickly create electronics using smaller and cheaper surface mount electronics parts. A DIY pick-and-place machine is a pretty big deal because commercial machines are incredibly expensive – in the tens of thousands of dollars for even a used machine. Here’s a short video of their prototype pick-and-place machine going through some calibration steps.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Keep up the awesome work guys!

Which is really funny given that we’re less than three years old!

Project Shellter at TEDxYouth@Flanders

Miles — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:53:28 +0000

Thingiverse citizen deeeep is organizing a workshop around Project Shellter at TEDxYouth in Flanders, Belgium on November 20:

We are organizing a workshop for kids from 11 to 18 year old during the TEDxYouth@Flanders event in Belgium.
The idea is that the kids will sketch out their ideas for the shells and then some of them will get picked and made in CAD and printed. I will try to post the sketches and CAD files on thingiverse once they are done, so everybody can enjoy them and the kids can see their models online and see people liking them and printing them.

Thanks for the interest and support deeep!

We can’t wait to see what shells the kids create! Upload them to Thingiverse and we’ll print them out put them in the @ShellterEast and @ShellterWest crabitats!

If you’re in Flanders on November 20, go check out the event!

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

This guest post is part of Project Shellter.

Community Support Forum for Experimental DualStrusion

Ethan — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:24:32 +0000

As many of you know, the recent release of ReplicatorG has introduced some of the software features that are necessary to use your Thing-O-Matic with two extruders, a process we like to call DualStrusion.

DualStrusion is highly experimental right now, and we’re all learning about it — engineers, developers, and tech support agents included. While it’s a very exciting process, don’t expect DualStrusion to work right out of the box without some serious troubleshooting: that’s the cost of being on the cutting edge.

In light of that, we’ve just created a new support forum for DualStrusion experimenters to share their learning and experiences. And so, I give to you: the DualStrusion experimenters support forum.

Thing-O-Matic Pro Tip: Extra USB Cable

MakerBlock — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 03:36:02 +0000

Guess what?! I got a fever, and the only prescription is more USB cables!

One of the coolest features of the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer is the enclosed electronics contained entirely within the base of the machine. Not only does it help keep the cables organized and electronic bits out of the way, but it makes for a more polished and clean looking machine when sitting on your desk. Once your bot is assembled, you’re going to be having too much fun making things to ever want to open it up again.

…which is the source of inspiration from today’s Thing-O-Matic pro tip courtesy of resident MakerBot software developer Matt Metts. Matt suggests running an extra USB cable, A to B, to the extruder board inside and leaving it there. That way you won’t have to keep opening your Thing-O-Matic each time you want to update your extruder’s firmware!

Standing on the Shells of Giants

Miles — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:55:50 +0000

This is one of several guest posts I’ll be making during the Project Shellter residency.

While Project Shellter is new, it did not emerge from a vacuum. Exploration into the mathematics of sea shells dates back decades, and the desire to help out hermit crabs, years. Project Shellter benefits from these investigations and innovations.

In chronological order, here is a partial list of precedents that inform the project.

Mathematics

In the 1960s, interest in the beauty and mathematics of sea shells held the attention of computer graphics pioneers. One of the first to publish his findings was David M. Raup. His landmark papers have informed generations of researchers since, serving as canonical references within the fields of both biological and computer science.

Alternative Material

Photo credit

Glass blowers have created shells that are beautiful and photogenic. However, due to cost and the rambunctious nature of happy healthy hermit crabs – a broken shell could be fatal – glass shells are a seldom-used novelty. This image by photographer Frank Greenaway was created in 2004.

Alternative Design

Photo credit

In 2005, Dr. Elizabeth Demaray and a group of engineering students at Rutgers University explored alternative hermit crab shell designs. The Hand Up Project was the culmination of their research and it was the first project to use rapid prototyping materials and processes to manufacture hermit crab shells.

Project Shellter

Photo credit

Building on these and other precedents, Project Shellter aims to engage the community of 3D printer operators to crowd-source the science and resources necessary to design and manufacture viable hermit crab shells for domestic use. The goal is to reduce harvesting of natural shells as a way to address shortages in the wild.

It is an open source, pragmatic, social investigation into hermit crab behavior as a means to create 3D printable shells. The public nature of the project is designed to encourage simultaneous investigations.

The first prototype shell model has been placed in the public domain and is available now.

Project Shellter is social! Follow, share and contribute to help save hermit crabs by keeping natural shells in the wild!

For those wishing to dig deeper, here is a partial bibliography of research informing Project Shellter.

Computer as Aid in Describing Form in Gastropod Shells

Geometric Analysis of Shell Coiling: General Problems

Population Consequences of Shell Utilization by Hermit Crabs

Competition and Mechanism of Coexistence in Three Sympatric of Intertidal Hermit Crabs

Modeling Seashells

Hermit Crab Shell Design

Shell-selection behavior of the hermit crab Pagurus granosimanus in Relation to Isolation, Competition, and Predation