MakerBot Industries

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. [↩]

An awesome movie follow up to the earlier Dead Drops post — we had a reporter from France come investigating the dead drop outside so there is some pretty widespread interest in the Dead Drop phenomena –  the movie is really nicely done, too!

Dead Drops ‘How to’ – NYC from aram bartholl on Vimeo.

Big ideas

The guys over at PublicKnoweldge.org have just released a new white paper covering current legal intellectual properties issues and discussing how they relate to developments in 3D printing and DIY tech:¹

Today, we at Public Knowledge launched a whitepaper about how copyright, patent, and trademark apply to 3D printing, and how incumbents might use those laws to stop it from going mainstream.  While I urge everyone to check it out, I also know that there is a bit of confusion about how copyright, patent, and trademark apply to the things coming out of 3D printers.  Hopefully, this post will give you some general rules of thumb about how to think about copyright, patent, and trademark.  Before I begin, the lawyer in me needs to say that this is deliberately simplified, and should not be readas specific legal advice.

Copyright

For the last ten years or so, copyright has been the intellectual property issue online.  There are at least two reasons for this.  First, copyright attaches to all original, creative works.  Second, copyright attaches to a work automatically.

It just so happens that networked computers are really good at copying and distributing the types of works (music, movies, books, photographs, ….) that are protected by copyright.  Since just about everything that is written down (or recorded, or filmed, or photographed) is protected by copyright, and when computers transfer information they make copies of that information, rights in these works are implicated when computers exchange information.  So, copyright has always been kind of a big deal online.

However, copyright applies less frequently in the world of physical objects, and as a result in the world of 3D printing.  With the noteworthy exception of purely decorative objects, copyright does not really attach to “things.”  That means that most of the things on thingiverse, the whistles and the gears and the bricks and the ball bearings, are not protected by copyright.

Patent

While the things are not protected by copyright, they might be able to get patent protection.  Patents protect “useful articles,” a category that includes things like whistles and gears and bricks and ball bearings.  Unlike copyright, however, patents only protect things that are actually novel in the world.  Also, and this might be the most important part, patents are not automatic.  In order to get a patent, you need to apply to the Patent and Trademark Office, and then actually have your patent approved.

As a result, far fewer things are going to be protected by patent than by copyright.  Just about every recording online is protected by copyright automatically.  Only a small percentage of the objects in the world are protected by patent.

Trademark

Trademark was originally intended to be a form of consumer protection and protection of goodwill earned by a business.  A trademark on a product meant that there was a company standing behind the product.  It was important to protect the integrity of the mark so that consumers did not buy a product thinking that it came from one company, only to find out that it came from another.

This means that trademark primarily is about logos, and much less about product design.  Although there is “trade dress” protection for particularly memorable product designs (think the curved Coke bottle), in general trademark focuses on logos and brand names.  The specificity of 3D printing makes this easy to work around.  As long as you leave logos off of your objects, you can generally avoid trademark trouble.

Obviously, this is a very brief tour through IP law, and there are plenty of caveats that I skimmed over.  As I mentioned before, there is more detail in our report.

Perhaps more importantly, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that IP law is a kind of law, and laws can change.  Just as the DMCA expanded the scope of copyright law, once incumbent industries wake up to the disruptive force of 3D printing they may try to pass a DMCA-style law aimed to curb its growth.

The makers who helped build the Internet were not really ready when entrenched industries started to push back against them.  One of the things that my organization, Public Knowledge, is trying to do is to make sure that the makers who help build 3D printing are ready to prevent industries who feel challenged by 3D printing from stopping it.

Definitely check out their white paper for a friendly and readable opinion on intellectual property!

1. Photo courtesy of Cayusa [↩]

A MakerBot 3D Printer makes a cameo appearance in this video (@2:16) about eliminating waste through upcycling.

It’s great to reuse, reduce, and recycle to minimize our impact on the environment. But is there a way to make trash a thing of the past? Graduate students at Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity University think so. Taking lessons from nature, where nothing is wasted, ever, the team dreams of a society where trash is reborn, just as in nature things die and decompose, providing nutrients for new living things. They call this closed-loop process of material renewal the upcycle.

So where do MakerBots fit in? Do-it-yourself 3D printers like MakerBots promote distributed manufacturing. The centralized manufacturing processes we currently rely on are wasteful because products spend 90 percent of their lifetime in transit, according to Singularity U speaker Kausar Samli. That means that for most of their inanimate lives, they are traveling on a boat, in a truck, or flying through the air on a plane, pouring carbon dioxide into the air.

If everyone had their own personal manufacturing facility, the environmental and economic costs of transporting those goods would be virtually eliminated. Although it may be a while before such a considerable change in the manufacture and distribution of goods is implemented on a mass scale, the Upcycle team dreams of bringing 3D printing technology to communities in developing countries as soon as possible. Locals could print their own goods with environmentally friendly bioplastics, making things that were previously economically out of reach newly accessible.

Projects such as the Fab Lab–a mobile manufacturing facility produced by M.I.T.’s Center for Bits and Atoms–are already doing just that. There are 45 labs in dozens of countries around the world, from South Africa to Afghanistan to Austria.

So democratizing manufacturing with 3D printers like MakerBots will not only allow everyone equal access to stuff, it could also help us all be better upcyclers.

It worked for Moritz Bappert. His essay “How Personal Fabrication Might Change the World” helped land him a seat at Stanford’s Summer Session, where he took courses on programming and astronomy, and had the opportunity to meet Mark Zuckerberg.

Bappert envisions a world where people skip shopping entirely and instead rely on their own DIY 3D printer to make their own custom products. Of course, no essay on the 3D printing revolution is complete without a quote from one of its DIY pioneers:

“It’s a really great time to subvert the dominant paradigm of centralized corporate manufacturing.” -Bre Pettis

How do you think at-home 3D printing can democratize manufacturing? What are ways that cheap 3D printers are changing the world right now? Do you think there will be a day when every home has its own 3D printer? What would an average day be like for someone in this 3D printing utopia?

Write your own essay about 3D printers and regale the college admissions committees. If you end up publishing it on your blog, tell us about it!

In this segment of Bad Universe on the Discovery Channel, Zach says,

If you’re in the middle of traveling between galaxies and something breaks on your space ship, you’re going to want to be able to fix it right there.

It may sound like science fiction, but 3D printers in space is a concept that’s actively being researched at research institutions right now!