MakerBot Industries

If this sounds familiar, I apologize. You wash your pots and pans carefully, and on the rare occasion, even use soap. With your dishtowel, you dry off the last remnants of H20 and with any luck, you have a clean, water-free, cooking tool…with no home. The top of the stove looks convenient, until your last night’s sauce pan gets in the way of your cast iron skillet for your daily ostrich, bacon, and cheese omelet.

I’m a sucker for practicality and to this day have been looking for a good place to store my pots and pans. The cabinets work, until I have to stack one item on top of another, inevitably dirtying the bottom pot or pan. PolygonPusher‘s hook is brilliant: Strong, functional, and cheap. I’ll be printing some of these today to hang underneath my kitchen side table.

What’s particularly interesting about this Thingiverse item is the conversation about the, well, practicality of printing out such an item, when it would seem that these hooks could be sourced locally. PolyGonPusher gives a great explanation for why he did what he did, and it’s yet another example of what makes Thingiverse a fantastic forum for 3D design and printing.

Hook for hanging pots and pans by PolygonPusher

In this project I build a set of shelves for hanging pots and pans in my kitchen. For that I needed 27 hooks. In my local hardware store I did not find any suitable hooks so I decided to design and 3D print my own! :) This also saved me some money since a simple hook in the store costs $4 a piece, making the total $108!

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If you’ve been following the GE Air Show on Facebook, you might be interested in the Grand Finale, posted above. Tons of new models, and as always, funny animation.

All the models shown will make their way to the GE page on Thingiverse shortly, so keep an eye out.

It was really fun to work on this. The teams from Impact Media and Evolution Bureau were smart, creative, talented and great to work with. I’d like to highlight the participation of Gabriel Bentley from Impact Media, who basically taught himself Sketchup and Makerbot operations in the space of weeks, and was running a one-man model airplane factory by the end of the project.

Also, one more thing: the observant amongst you may have noticed that there was never a Week 2 video. Well, fret no more – that footage was discovered, and is posted below:

Another video from the GE Air Show project, this time featuring helicopters. The client (GE) has discovered what most of us already know: that watching a Makerbot print is hypnotic! The creative direction has been to emphasize the design and print process, so you’ll be seeing more timelapse takes of the print.

This is likely to be the penultimate video of the project: they are taking submissions for the grand finale right now on the Facebook page.

Horseshoes. Urban Style.

With Labor Day just about 60 hours away, it’s a great time to start practicing your long-toss in preparation of perhaps your last BBQ of the summer (and for some of you, the last time to wear white for quite some time). Thanks to PolygonPusher‘s printable horseshoe, we can play the ancient (over 2,000 years old!) game with modern technology! I do not recommend using the shoe for your beloved pony.

So get outside and enjoy the long weekend!

To avoid backyard arguments, please be sure to consult with The National Horseshoe Pitchers Association (NHPA) for proper game rules.

Horseshoe by PolygonPusher

Simple 3D-printable horseshoe. - 90x90x7 mm

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The GE Air Show continues, with a third episode of user-submitted designs featuring classic airplanes. As always, the printable files can be found on the GE Thingiverse page.

It’s a challenge to respond quickly to user submissions: the list of ideas is received on Sunday evening, and then the team works on it during Monday and Tuesday, starting to print on Monday afternoons. After that, the production crew puts together the video and it is usually online by Thursday or Friday. In order to work so fast, the team is using a number of techniques: some models are made in OpenSCAD, others in Sketchup and and other tools from scratch, and some are based on models from the Sketchup 3D warehouse. Netfabb is useful for slicing a model into different parts. After a few weeks of doing this, we’ve now evolved a series of useful tools and techniques, building up common part libraries (eg. for propellers) and a streamlined workflow for making objects printable (ie. almost everything is designed to print in sections, in order to avoid overhangs and support material).

A question that has come up a few times is “what is GE doing on Thingiverse?”  The answer is, a lot of things:

• Demonstrating support for innovative new companies and technologies, such as Makerbot and 3D printing
• Connecting with the community of makers, innovators and DIYers
• Learning about social media, and the kinds of things that will engage social media users (the number of “likes” on the GE Facebook page has gone from 15,000 to more than 90,000 since the Airshow started!)
• Experimenting with very fast turnaround marketing, highly responsive to users (this project involves doing in less than a week what would usually take months, and doing it repeatedly)

The exciting thing about this is that it is an experiment, everyone (including GE) is learning as it goes along. Suggestions and contributions are most welcome, via the GE Facebook page, or comments on the Thingiverse page.

UPDATE: Anna Galovich has been generous enough to translate this fantastic blog post into Estonian. You can find the translation right here.

For a recent project, I had to print this awesome crocodile skull from the University of Texas Digimorph project. At first it looked daunting, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy to print. I really like this print because it is a complex organic shape, and it is really impressive that it came from a Makerbot.

Crocodile skull, printed on a Makerbot

I used Netfabb Studio and ReplicatorG to prepare for print. I’m not posting the print-ready files because a) not sure if UT will let me and b) the following process is easy and you will learn a lot. I basically used Netfabb Studio to re-orient, repair, scale and split the model, in order to get it ready for print. The procedure I followed is generally applicable to all kinds of complex prints.

Keep reading for instructions on how to do it.

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On June 6th a team from MakerBot scanned the head Stephen Colbert and put the 3D model online, but we didn’t stop there. Hackers, bloggers, artists, musicians, comedians and anyone one else we think is notable stopped by our Brooklyn workshop to get immortalized.

Well, the week of the event is upon us! Come see the results, and hear a brief art talk by current artist-in-residence Jonathan Monaghan who performed scanning, digital clean-up, and printing for all of those lovely notable heads.

Thursday June 30th, 2011   7PM-10PM

314 Dean St

Brooklyn, NY 11217

Not a floor. Nor a bed.

Without question, my favorite findings on Thingiverse are items that I need (right now), and will save me money!

I recently moved apartments, and have been struggling to find a  place to put wet towels. The floor has been the most popular destination, with my bed a close second. Of course nobody likes grimy towels or wet sheets. Watwood‘s towel rack has made my day. Simple, elegant, and effective, it’s the epitome of practicality! Since I already have an extra 1/2″ wooden dowel lying around (thank you AC installation), this will cost me next to nothing. I anxiously await its installation this evening!

Towel Rack by watwood

I looked on Thingiverse for a towel rack and did not find one. It's a quick sketchup project. My first upload. I've printed these for the kitchen, garage and workshop. My wife was almost impressed!

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The Colbert Report June 8, 2011 with Bre Pettis

In case you missed it live last night, here is Bre’s appearance on Colbert. The show is really funny and Stephen is clearly excited about 3D printing and all his new mashup objects! Watch the whole show, or skip to Bre’s part at 15:48.

There is an experiment I’d been meaning to try for a while, and my Thing-O-Matic is now printing well enough that I felt I could try it. It is to take files from a site such as the 2001 Model Archive, and see if I could print them with little editing. The result was a qualified success: you can do amazing things with the Thing-O-Matic and support material enabled, but trying to remove delicate parts from the support material can be a real challenge. Some degree of editing of the source files is a good idea, to make them print-ready.

Space Pod printed, cleaned and partially repaired

For the first attempt, I chose the Space Pod from “2001: A Space Odyssey”. I loaded it into Meshlab and had a look. Keep reading after the break for a longer description of the process.

Space Pod file seen in Meshlab

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