Robotic Moth-Bee by Gwygonik

Thingiverse citizen Gwygonik published a post on his website to accompany the above robotic moth-bee designed by his wife.  From his post:

“So once I started printing things, my sci-fi loving wife’s eyes sparkled (more than normal) and she had a ‘we can replace every plastic piece in the house with something custom’ moment. What I love about her is this was immediately followed by ‘you could drive someone mad with real subtle changes, too.’”

Of all of the potentially mischievous uses of a 3D printer, this is the most creative I’ve heard to date.  This could even be automated to a certain extent.  It would be fun to shrink someone’s office supplies.  Heck, it’s not inconceivable that someone could scan in someone else’s objects, then scan the objects they will morph into, create a stream of intermediary 3D models, and slowly replace someone’s beloved coffee mug with a sculpture of a jackalope.

MothBee by gwygonik

This is a "robotic moth-bee" loosely based on a sketch by my wife. Story and more pictures here: gwygonik.posterous.com/66358440

This thing brought to you by

http://myplasticfuture.com/66358440

We created Thingiverse to be the digital design sharing utopia of our dreams. Thingiverse.com integrates with open licenses that encourages Thingiverse users to let others copy and change their work so that others can stand on their shoulders and create the products of tomorrow and the solutions for the next generation. Every day I look on Thingiverse and say “Wow!” when I see the new things that have been shared. People who upload designs to Thingiverse are my heroes.

Things, and digital designs for things, are very different than other types of media. Copyright doesn’t work the same way on things as it does with music, movies, and books. If you’re into exploring the intellectual property landscape of things, you need to read “It will be awesome if they don’t screw it up” by Michael Weinberg.

The Pirate Bay announcement of a new category for digital designs is interesting because it’s another place where people can share digital designs for real things. As a technology, torrents are particularly great for super mega giant files because they distribute the downloading load and I’m curious to see what kinds of things will begin to show up in that category. Because The Pirate Bay takes a bold, no-holds-barred approach to sharing, I’m sure there will be controversies as companies and people who long for the proprietary days of the 20th century come to terms with the raw power of contemporary sharing technology. Cue squeaking of the world’s tiniest violin.

In the contemporary age of sharing, those who share will be the leaders of tomorrow. The sharers will be the ones who will emerge in the 21st century as winners in the rapidly changing innovative landscape. I’ve consistently advised individuals and companies to push their comfort level and share more. If you have a company that feels threatened by the idea of someone sharing digital designs for your products, I suggest you join the sharing community and share those design files yourself on Thingiverse.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 10, 2012 (Brooklyn, NY) – MakerBot Industries is excited to announce the launch of its latest product, The MakerBot Replicator™, which will debut at CES in Las Vegas, NV on Tuesday, January 10th. Available in the MakerBot store for pre-order today!

The MakerBot Replicator™ is the ultimate personal 3D printer, with MakerBot Dualstrusion™ (2-color printing) and a bigger printing footprint, giving you the superpower to print things BIG! Assembled in Brooklyn by skilled technicians, the MakerBot Replicator™ is ready within minutes to start printing right out of the box. Starting at $1749, The MakerBot Replicator™ is an affordable, open source 3D printer that is compact enough to sit on your desktop. Want to print in two colors? Choose the Dualstrusion™ option!

With a build envelope that’s roughly the size of a loaf of bread, The MakerBot Replicator™ gives you the power to go big. Make an entire chess set with the press of a button. Friends, classmates, co-workers, and family will see the things you make and say “Wow!”

The MakerBot Replicator™ creates anything you can imagine with the new MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK8, the extruder is the part of the machine that turns raw feedstock, like ABS (what Lego® is made of) or PLA (a biodegradable material made from corn), into the objects you desire. You can order your MakerBot Replicator™ with single or dual MakerBot Stepstruders on it. By choosing the dual extrusion option, you’ll print with two different colors at the same time. MakerBot Dualstrusion™ unlocks the ability to make beautiful combinations of colors and opens the door to experimenting with with multi-material objects.

The MakerBot Replicator™ is ideal for personalized manufacturing, providing a new way to make the things you want and need. It is also an essential tool for children and students; parents and educators with a MakerBot Replicator™ offer the next generation an opportunity to learn the digital designing skills required to solve the problems of the future. Students with access to a MakerBot have an edge in the future job market. Just like the youth of the 1980’s, who had access to computers, children with access to a MakerBot Replicator™ will become the leaders who make a better tomorrow.

The MakerBot Replicator™ is the tool from tomorrow, today. In the two years since the company was founded, the capabilities of a MakerBot have grown from printing cupcake-sized objects in 2009 to printing things as large as an entire loaf of bread today on on the MakerBot Replicator™. MakerBot Industries continues to demonstrate its dedication to putting the tools of creativity into the hands of the those brilliant and bold enough to bring their imagination into the physical world.

Press Kit: View and download photos of The MakerBot Replicator™

View product specs and pre-order your MakerBot Replicator™ today!

Thingizen deeeep conducted a Project Shellter workshop at TEDxYouth@Flanders last week. The enthusiastic kids envisioned all sorts of fantastical shells for hermit crabs. Now they need to be modeled so they can be printed and introduced to the crabitats!
Will the Karshellians like a multi-room shell? Will Paris Shellton dare to wear a shell adorned with wings? There’s only one way to find out: empirical science!

Are you a Blender ninja or a Sketchup wizard? Maybe your Maya-fu is legendary. If you’re looking for a unique challenge please consider helping out by modeling one of the drawings produced at the workshop.

Drop a comment here if you take on the challenge then upload a finished model to Thingiverse and tag it with shellter.

The kids and crabs thank you!

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

• projectshellter.com
• @ProjectShellter
• @ShellterEast
• @ShellterWest
• Thingiverse
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellter
• bit.ly/​ProjectShellterVideos

TEDxYouth@Flanders Project Shellter Workshop Sketches by deeeep

On Sunday 20th November 2011 we did a workshop for 30 kids about 3D printing and while they were there we asked them to draw out their ideas for a shell for the hermit crabs. Some amazing designs came in, but we had no people available with CAD skills to convert these sketches into 3D models. My appeal to all of you in the thingiverse community is to see the sketches and convert some of them into workable printable 3D models, so that we can have them printed and put in the East and West coast Project Shellter aquariums. This would mean a lot to the kids who poured their imagination onto paper to help out the hermit crabs! Some other ideas were put up by some participants whose drawing skills were not as rich as their imagination: one girl wanted a shell in the shape of a plant-pot, which could grow seaweed for camouflage, another shell was in the shape of a piece of coral reef so that when the crab hides it looks like coral reef debris. Also look at thingiverse.com/thing:14046 for a rendition by MagicDan...

This thing brought to you by

This guest post is part of Project Shellter

The New York Times addresses the issue of copyrighting physical objects on their Bits Blog, and of course, mentions MakerBot. In what they he calls Industrial Revolution 2.0, the Times’ Nick Bilton looks at the impact of 3D printing on the future of manufacturing, and on the idea of ownership in general.

Unlike music, movies, or books, printed objects typically cannot be copyrighted because they are useful items rather than simply aesthetic ones. Bilton uses the example of a coffee mug to illustrate his point. Who knows what the future holds, but for now, keep printing those coffee mugs! Trust me, I went to Ikea yesterday, and I would rather print my own mug any day than wait in that line!

Here at MakerBot, we believe that children are our future. Imagine what your life would be like if you had owned a MakerBot as a kid!

The media is picking up on this idea too. Check out this piece in Forbes, and this one in the Wall Street Journal, covering MakerBot’s mission to get Thing-O-Matics into the hands of the next generation.

MakerBot is already in a number of schools around the U.S., including New York City public and private school teachers and NSF funded GK12 fellows from NYU-Poly University. Want to get MakerBotting on the curriculum at your or your child’s school? Email education@makerbot.com and check out our sample curriculum here.

Miles Lightwood, AKA, TeamTeamUSA is in town doing an artist in residency in the MakerBot Industries workshop. He arrived into town and we wandered over to check out Occupy Wall Street and we got a chance to hear Tom Morello, who’s part of Rage Against the Machine and is righteous. They are using the human megaphone technique since they aren’t allowed to use electric amplification. The way it works is speaker says MIC CHECK and everyone who can hear them repeats it and one sentence at a time gets repeated so that the speaker can be heard.

Miles was inspired to make MIK CHK, a megaphone to extend the range of the human microphone technique. Miles modelled up a clip that connects a coffee cup and two manilla folders and adds a comfortable grip. Viola! You’ve got yourself a MIK CHK megaphone that will extend the range of the human microphone technique.

Download it and go be heard!

MIC CHK by TeamTeamUSA

Share your voice. Save your voice. This thing is part of a DIY megaphone to acoustically amplify your voice. It's great for gatherings where electronic amplification is forbidden. All you need is a coffee cup, some card stock, and the printable MIC CHK (microphone check) clip. Once assembled, like the movie directors of yore, you can make yourself heard loudly and clearly.youtu.be/hlzPJrGIbTo Print out a bunch and bring them to your next gathering! Share your voice. Save your voice.

This thing brought to you by

What would you do with a bionic eye?

Tony Buser posted his own take on the “MakerBot Goggles” phenomena where you see everything as DIY 3D printable:

I think I’ve discovered a corollary to MakerBot Goggles – Spinscan Goggles. Now everything I see I wonder if I can scan and MakerBot a copy.

Making a rote copy and merely duplicating an existing object can definitely be useful.  What I find more interesting is being able to scan a physical object in the world around you and manipulate the 3D image to be remixed into something even more useful.

So, if you were wearing your own Spinscan Goggles, what would you want to scan and duplicate?  What would you want to scan and mashup or remix?

Erik Beck is a video making machine! We had him by with Justin Johnson, another video-otron to the MakerBot Botcave to immortalize them in 3D by scanning them with the Polhemus 3D scanner!

Download Erik here and Justin 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.