Skylar Tibbits is an architect and MIT fellow who worked with molecular scientist Arthur Olson to create a huge spinning device that demonstrates how particles can be attracted to one another when they move and come into contact, usually resulting in the creation of larger and more complex structures.  This movie by Karen Eng shows the model, named the Self-Assembly Line, in motion.

What I particularly like about Skylar’s demonstration of the shaken-chain-link creation is it’s similarity to those tiny pill sized foam toys you see in the grocery store aisles. These are the cardboard-backed packages hanging off the sides of the grocery shelves which promise instant-dinosaurs or instant-sea-creatures. You drop one of those colored pills in warm water, the capsule dissolves, and you have a tiny foam dinosaur.¹ With Skylar’s chain designs, one could “pre-program” a chain, hand it off to someone who would then shake it, and then the “pre-programmed” dinosaur² shape would then emerge.³

How awesome would it be to pre-program little surprise toys that could be shaken into being? Interestingly, with some dissolveable PVA and a dual-extruder 3D printer, you could actually print the entire design as one solid piece, dunk it in water to remove the connections, and then hand it off to play with.

1. Or sea creature [↩]
2. Or sea creature [↩]
3. Shake-a-saurus? [↩]

With so many amazing resolution and reliability advancements in MakerBotting technology, it can be easy to forget that 3D printed objects don’t belong in every kind of application.

Please do not use ABS or PLA near any kind of heat source or flame including fireworks or even incense.  ABS will catch fire and keep burning with a thick black smoke. ^1 2  PLA becomes very soft even at low-ish heat and can deform and melt, losing it’s stability and structural integrity. ³

So, this Fourth of July, please be safe and keep your awesome MakerBotted goodies away from flame or heat!

Remember, only you can prevent bunny fires.

That said, Tealids’ incense holder IS pretty awesome. 

Untitled by tealid

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1. Which, of course, is never a good sign. [↩]
2. Plus, I have to think that smelly smoke would negate any good smells generated by incense… [↩]
3. That’s one of the reasons PLA is never used as a hot beverage or food container. [↩]

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!

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!

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!

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!

Untitled by edmo

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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.

Keep up the awesome work guys!

1. Which is really funny given that we’re less than three years old! [↩]

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 Alternate Front Panel by dougkeenan

Sometimes a simple hack is all it takes.  Just look at dougkeenan’s “Thing-o-Matic Alternate Front Panel.”

Why would you want a front panel that has a little divot in the left side?  Well, if you’re rocking a MakerBot Automated Build Platform, you already the know the answer.  The MakerBot ABP has gears that advance the conveyor belt so that it can keep printing part after part.  However, those gears on the side rob the operator of a few precious millimeters of build space in the X direction.¹  My making a little cut out, dougkeenan has effectively increased the build area for his Thing-O-Matic.  One of the cool things is that you could even just cut this little piece out of your front panel and gain the extra build area too!

Untitled by dougkeenan

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1. Left and right. [↩]

Those of you who got a chance to stop by Maker Faire this weekend (or read our earlier blog post) are probably wondering when you too can experiment with dual extrusion heads. The answer is: now! We’ve integrated tools into ReplicatorG that simplify the process of creating a two-material print. They’re not in the released version of ReplicatorG yet, but they are available in a git branch for experimenters who want to get a jump start on the future. And who doesn’t want to get a jump start on the future? Details for the bold below!

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