MakerBot Industries

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.

Nylon Bicycle on BBC

Take a look at this coverage of a Bristol-based engineering outfit that have released a nylon, 3D-printed bicycle to demonstrate the strength of 3D printed products to British manufacturing industry. The vid contains an excellent demonstration of selective laser sintering applied to a much classier model than you typically see supplied by the industry.

The discussion at end about the potential role for 3D printing to bring manufacturing back to the UK by closing the gap between innovation and end product is also worth a listen. And it mirrors conversations I’ve had with DIY 3D printing evangelists about the economic opportunities offered by local, small scale 3D-printed manufacture as a way to eliminate off-shore manufacture and boost local economies.

I’d also like to mention that I have received a number of support emails today asking when a MakerBot designed affordable selective laser sintering product will be available…..

Anthony Atala: Printing a human kidney

Well, we have been hearing about the 3D printing of organs for a while — and there are reports that a MakerBot Operator with a heavily modified Cupcake is engaging in this very work: printing plastic scaffolding for stem-cell “curing” of organs.¹

Here is a great talk about the present practice and future potential of 3D bioprinting.

And here is a great link to read more about the program exploring this technology.

1. Or as Marty in the Botcave has just said it — “rafting an organ on a 3D printer.” [↩]

Check out Michael Fonda’s Blog post about his experience at the BotCave: “Democratization of Manufacturing”

As it sometimes happens, I am working at my desk, and one of my coworkers taps me on the shoulder, and I hear a now familiar phrase- “Isaac, we have guests!” This is my cue for me to give a walk through tour, and run down as many salient points about MakerBot as I can pull from memory. Last Friday I walked up to the front of the BotCave and was greeted by Michael and Tyler Fonda, who were on a quest to learn about the 3D Printing sphere, and visiting Brooklyn.

They had both recently read The Economist’s cover story on 3D Printing, and wanted to gauge for themselves the possible impact 3D Printing will have on manufacturing. Michael works for Avison Young, a real estate company that often caters to manufacturing industries. His son Tyler, is a Director of Strategy for Gotham and was doing his strategic due diligence on 3D printing.

Michael wrote a post about his experience at the BotCave, and it’s an interesting perspective on their experience, and his view of the potential impacts of 3D Printing.

“Suddenly, the future came into focus as I visualized how my sister-in-law and her husband would utilize 3D printing in their sunglass business Centerline Optics. They would no longer have to source product from China. No more ordering months in advance of their selling season. No supply chain risk of political upheaval in China, of a lost TEU on the Pacific Ocean, of a longshoremen’s strike at the Port of Long Beach, a diesel fuel spike that drives up the cost of transporting the product across the North American continent. All design, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, and sales would happen out of the Centerline “headquarters” in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Centerline’s customers are all within four hours of the “headquarters”. Talk about efficient allocation of resources.”

Check out Michael’s original post here.

Tony Buser’s Thingiview.js is an in-browser 3D file viewer powered by WebGL.  If you have a WebGL-enabled browser, you can view 3D files in your browser almost as fast as viewing them with a desktop application.

Now, Thingiview.js is available on Thingiverse! Just look for the little  cube icon next to the thumbnails for any STL file.  For example:

As a bonus, and as shown above, you can embed Thingiviews into your own pages! Each Thingiview page has an “Embed This Thing” button, which gives you the HTML to copy-and-paste into your site. You can even customize the colors!

If your current web browser doesn’t support WebGL, you might want to try the latest Google Chrome, which has WebGL support built in, or check out the latest Firefox and Safari betas.

The ability to preview 3D files in-browser has been on our wishlist for a while so it is great to be able to get this feature into the hands of the citizens of Thingiverse!

Please keep in mind that Thingiview is an experimental feature. If you run into any files that don’t work, please let us know!

Desktop Equipment Tilt / Angle Foot by aaronkondziela

This Desktop Equipment Tilt / Angle Foot by aaronkondziela is one of my new favorite things on Thingiverse.  Here’s his explanation:

I needed something to tilt my desktop music synths up at an angle, so that I didn’t have to lean over them to see all the controls. Normally, I’d throw a chunk of wood under them, but I didn’t have any suitable pieces. This foot is the result.

Believe it or not, we now live in a world where it’s easier to design some custom footie-bits for your personal robot crank out than it is for you to go look for a chunk of wood on which to prop your equipment.

I mean, this is the kind of no-brainer Star Trek characters face.  “You want me to what?  Look for a piece of wood?  Are you kidding me?  Ugh – that seems like such a hassle.  Why don’t I just whip something up?  I mean, the machine is right there…”

Nophead's plate of Huxley RepRap parts

A little while ago I asked what would you do with double the printing capacity of a 3D printer.

Here’s a better question, what would you do with more than a 100 times the printing capacity?  Nophead, author of the excellent HydraRaptor blog, recently announced he printed 101 full sets of RepRap Mendel plastic parts over the course of the last year.  He’s essentially also answered an interesting practical question – how fast can a RepRap 3D printer replicate plastic parts under human supervision? ¹ While he used his CNC mill with a printer head, HydraRaptor, this hardly diminishes the accomplishment.  Printing that many sets of parts takes a lot of dedication and time.

Now that we’ve thought about what is possible with two 3D printers, Nophead’s achievement raises so many new and wonderful questions:

• What would you do with 102 printers? ²
• What would you do with 1 printer and 101 friends who also had printers? ³
• What would happen to 101 brilliant start-ups if they were each given a printer, a computer, and a pile of plastic?
• What would happen to 101 brilliant and disadvantaged students if they were each given a printer, a computer, and a large pile of plastic?
• What would happen to 101 poor villages across the globe that suddenly had access to a printer, a computer, and a large pile of plastic?⁴

1. He states that these 101 sets were printed over about 4800 hours, so perhaps 47.5 hours per set? [↩]
2. The original one plus the 101 children. [↩]
3. Don’t have 101 friends?  Pssh.  I’ve seen your Facebook profile. [↩]
4. I think the transformation could be on par with something like the Universal Sheller from the Full Belly Project [↩]

When we first started MakerBot, we were most interested in what individuals would do with access to a 3D  printer. Thingiverse shows everyday that amazing things are possible with this new tool. The question I’ve been asking myself is what can a community of 3000 MakerBot Operators do together? Last night on my personal blog I made some predictions for 2011 and two have to do with MakerBot Operators.

1. The community of more than 3000 MakerBot Operators will do something on a global scale. I’m not sure what, but I feel it coming.
2. Someone will upload a digital design to Thingiverse that will have an impact on lives in places where there isn’t a daily postal service. Not sure what, but got a feeling about this one too.

My predictions are pretty vague, but I can feel the potential energy of the community. I just know that the MakerBot community is going to do some special things in 2011. Got any ideas for giant collaborative or world changing projects? Post them in the comments!

This morning Joris over at i.materialize posted eleven predictions about 3D printing on TechCrunch.

1. Makerbot will sell more than 10,000 3D printers in 2011.
2. Bre Pettis will appear on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine in 2011.
3. A designer will have revenues of over one million US dollars with a single 3D printed product in 2011.
4. Both Stratasys and Objet will release $5000 desktop 3D printers at Euromold 2011.
5. Zcorp & EOS will be the only major 3D printer manufacturers not to offer a desktop 3D printer in 2011.
6. 3D Systems will launch a 3D printing service for consumers in 2011.
7. At least five 3D printing startups aimed at consumers will launch during 2011.
8. Adobe will buy Autodesk in 2011.
9. Microsoft buys Dassault Systemes in 2011.
10. 3D modeling software vendors will start to offer “light 3D printing” versions of their products
11. 3D printed products will win at least two Red Dot Design Awards in 2011.

In 2009, we sold 750 MakerBots and in 2010, we’ve sold 2300 MakerBots. 10,000 more MakerBots is a pretty wild prediction, but it might just happen if 3D printing keeps going the direction it’s going! Joris’ predictions match up with my feelings that 2011 will see a lot of action in the 3D printing space!

I’d love to hear what your 3D printing predictions for 2011 are. Drop a note in the comments!

Youssef Tayeb's full-scale model of a trans-tibial socket, printed on a MakerBot

I was joking earlier when I referenced the OLAF as an MakerBot printable prosthetic for frogs.  Youssef Tayeb has clearly taken the idea of printable prosthetic very seriously.  He designed this full scale trans-tibial socket to be printed as 16 separate pieces, glued them together, and then reinforced them on the outside with fiberglass.  Youssef has also started an OpenProsthetics.org project group for publishing and getting feedback on his designs.  If you’re interested learning more about printed prosthetics, be sure and check out OpenProsthetics.org, the Trautman Hook uploaded to Thingiverse by Erik de Bruijn¹, and the Prosthetic Hand Kit uploaded by SpedZero.

Besides being of noble purpose, Youssef’s designs demonstrate an interesting way to build larger forms out of smaller MakerBot sized print jobs.  With a set of calipers and a 3D printer, making one’s own prosthetics could soon become a reality.

(Thanks Make!)

1. Erik is one of the inventors of the Ultimaker! [↩]

"Why I <3 MakerBot" by Adam Moon

There have been a number of comparisons between early Apple DIY computers and the MakerBot Cupcake DIY 3D printer.  Well, an Apple 1 just sold for more than $210,000. ¹

This begs the question – setting aside issues of historical significance and nostalgia, what is a functional obsolete machine worth?

I’m of the opinion that as long as a computer can (1) run word processing software (2) connect to the internet and (3) run a modern web browser² it’s still worth at least $100.  With those few features you could do any number of useful tasks including programming, staying in communication, and even bootstrapping/starting up a business.  Admittedly, you’re not going to want to use such a computer for long.  As soon as you’re able, you would probably want to move to faster machine – but that old slow machine sitting in your garage could actually be useful right now to someone who does not have a computer.  An old “obsolete” computer is still tremendously useful as a catalyst for future innovations.  After all, our current technology is constantly being used to develop the next generation of technology.

A functional “obsolete” 3D printer is an entirely different matter.  An operational “out-of-date” printer can always print useful parts or even the parts for a better 3D printer.  In 34 years from now, anyone with a Cupcake CNC could just download a slew of upgrades from Thingiverse to trick out their machine.  Right now Thingiverse has dozens of upgrades, large and small, that will make a Cupcake CNC easier to use, more accurate, and more reliable.  Most of these upgrades require little more than plastic, extra nuts and bolts, and perhaps some off-the-shelf parts.

34 years from now what would your NIB³ MakerBot Cupcake CNC fetch at auction?⁴

1. Image courtesy of Adam Moon and the A.M Project [↩]
2. Even IE 6 <shudder> [↩]
3. “New in box” [↩]
4. I am hopeful that in 34 years there are no unopened kits.  I like to think that by then every single Cupcake kit is assembled, operational, upgraded, and hacked to the point that it is still running and cranking out whistles, open source violins, and other brand new inventions. [↩]