A store-bought postage scale might set you back anywhere between $10-$20. This amazing design from Maakit creates a working letter/postage scale you can build yourself and use with a minimal amount of calibration. If you’re not sure if you need one of these – you might want to check with that special knitter in your life. Besides using our postage scale for determining correct postage, my wife uses a postage scale all the time to weigh yarn when she’s designing knitting patterns – so she can give people a sense of how much yarn is needed for a particular design.
It may actually surprise you how many special mothers in your life might appreciate this exact gift. You’ll have fun building it for her and she’ll love using it. 1 (You really should call her more, you know?)
For those in need of a letter scale.
I really like the real-world-use-things and couldn't find a letter scale on thingiverse.
Thought about adding a scale, but it will be too dependant on printer settings, material and counter weights, so just use a (semi-) permanent marker for this.
For the small scale I used mr alligator as a letter holder: thingiverse.com/thing:13612
Had to "fix" it using Netfabb before I could import it in OpenSCAD.
I've also uploaded a version2, the largest I can get it with my 180x200mm buildplate. I've made three stl's with all the parts to print.
The black & yellow scale is version 2. I recommend to make the weighing platform a little thinner, so it won't need as much counterweights.
Made it a work in progress again, I think it's better to shorten the arms holding the letter plate.
I would like the big scale to be good for 250 grams.
Make the scale more stable by moving the foot to the heavy side.
For the final version 3 I added some stability by moving the legs to the heavy side of the scale and making them bigger. I added another arm to hold counterweights so these are balanced. Smaller connecting arms so it can take more weight, but also makes it much more stable.
This is the ultimate MakerBot Font for OpenSCAD!
Now tagging and versioning (!) your OpenSCAD models is as easy as writing label("v1.0"). Give it a try! Just put an ID on every print and never lose track of your rapid prototyping evolution!
Features:
* variable-width characters (eeeevil OpenSCAD hack!)
* using new OpenSCAD string-functions (no more array ["m", "a", "d", "n", "e", "s", "s"])
* font metrics
* text alignment functions
* self-contained in one single file
* higher and lower resolution fonts are available
This file was created with my tool svgFont2scad, which takes care of all the transcoding, bezier curves, compression etc. I plan to release it later this year (currently in PHP, but I want to port it to Python).
If you have fonts you would like to have converted: Just drop me a line!
The font you find here is called Designer Block by K-Type (http://www.k-type.com/?p=296). It's free for personal use but K-Type require a paid license for commercial use.
This thing supercedes previous fonts:thingiverse.com/thing:19484thingiverse.com/thing:6844Current limitations: Only ~64 characters at once.Reason (Caution! Geeky stuff!): Since OpenSCAD does not support stateful variables, I use recursions within functions to store variables on the stack. So when entering too many characters, OpenSCAD will just go up in flames!
(Maybe someone should inform OpenSCAD's Clifford or Marius about this...)
Yesterday’s New York Times had an interesting piece about a group of people in Amsterdam who help people fix things instead of throw them out; like an old iron that doesn’t steam or a skirt with a hole in it.
Founder of the Repair Cafe, Martine Postma:
“In Europe, we throw out so many things,” said Martine Postma, a former journalist who came up with the concept after the birth of her second child led her to think more about the environment. “It’s a shame, because the things we throw away are usually not that broken. There are more and more people in the world, and we can’t keep handling things the way we do.”
Exactly! This is how Makers see the world. Sure, something breaks, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready for the trash can. Look at all the things that have been saved with the mindset that Ms. Postma talks about:
Wrist Watch Back by Renosis
Thingiverse user Renosis saved a family member’s beloved wrist watch by making a replacement for the lost battery cover. He wrote, “I don’t expect anyone has the same watch and if they do, I wouldn’t expect that they lost the back to it. This is more of a proof of concept. I wanted to post it because I was so amazed that it worked and hopefully, it will inspire someone else to use this temporary fix one day if their watch breaks.”
Dishwasher Lock Mechanism by rbckman
rbckman made a replacement lock mechanism for his buddy’s dishwasher. The manufacturer of the dishwasher wasn’t shipping that part anymore, so they either had to fix it with a custom part or throw out the dishwasher. The choice is clear!
Blender gear by lazlo
lazlo‘s blender broke, and the solution was to simply make a new gear. Why throw out an almost perfectly good blender? Good as new.
The other day, Brendan Dawes saved a mop from going to the garbage by just making a couple new clips.
Annelise talked about her own fix to the drain plug in her kitchen sink. If you don’t have a handle to remove that plug, it’s gotta go. That handle broke, so she just made a new one, and avoided a trip to Home Depot.
Even better: these are all available for free for anyone! Sometimes people wonder, “why should I make more stuff out of plastic?” But a lot of times it’s more about the waste you’re not creating by keeping old things in good condition!
On Teacher Appreciation week, I’m remembering my elementary school teacher Ms. Harrelson, who said nothing has to be perfect; just give it a shot and see what happens.
Unfortunately for Ms. Harrelson, I made something on Monday and it’s basically perfect. This was really exciting because it was one of the first things I made with my new Replicator, I barely changed the default settings, and it printed flawlessly the first time. Behold, my apple.
Apple by jbakutis
This started with the purely awesome Original Apple logo in 3D by acen. I wanted to photograph some of our people here offering an apple to a teacher they really liked. But acen’s has a bite taken out of it. First I discussed with the design guys how we could change this into a dualstrusion model, with a red peel, and natural colored fruit on the inside. Jason suggested another route: why not split acen’s model in half and mirror it to get a whole apple?
Bing, bang, boom.
I made this on a Replicator at 0.27mm layer height, feed rate of 55, 5% infill. I wanted something that would look good from a distance in a picture, but I’m telling you this thing looks beautiful. No cracking, no irregularities, and honest to goodness practically no effort. In Replicator G, under Scale, I clicked on “Fill Build Space!” – or in other words, I Keith-ed it1 . This made the model 6” tall, so I scaled down by 0.7 to get an apple that’s just over 4 inches tall. For this, we made the leaf a separate piece, so this isn’t a dualstrusion file.
Sminnee asked on Thingiverse if I used any support material, but the answer is no. I might add another shell if I make it again; I just used one this time. I wonder if the very top, right where the leaf piece fits snugly into the apple itself, would have looked smoother with a little more structure in that area. One of our modelers, Jason, thought the model should have a hole all the way through the center of it. This gives the stem area, which dips down, a little beam of internal support.
But on account of the hole all the way through, this is also now a possible jewelry piece.
There are several fruit pieces, fruit bowls, and other accessories on Thingiverse (listed below). So here’s one more for your collection, or perhaps you think your mom would want a fruit bowl on Sunday. Enjoy!
This is a design for a platter that I came up with for my first attempt at 3D printing. Its made on a SLS 3D printer out of Nylon. It is very durable and looks great when you stack some fruit on it.
Second file is another iteration.
With such elegant form, this fruit bowl will entice you to take a bite from its sensuous fruits.
This design offers the opportunity for individuality and creative design in every day-use objects. Sparking the commentary for customization of common elemental objects with a predisposition form which then allows for a more engaging lifestyle through design and self-manufacturing. The form of this particular example is derived from the idea of a net holding fruits together; the solidity of the surface created expands and is varied to retain the different shapes of the fruits as they are placed in the bowl. The physical realization of this and many other objects is achieved through 3D printing, opening the doors for more people to design-build.
Bre Pettis' head adapted to match the Bioloid bracket system and artfully grafted onto a new, superior, robot body.
I for one welcome our new robotic CEO...
Video of Bre Bot in actionmike-ibioloid.blogspot.com/2011/09/brebot-10.html
Bre Bot is a derivative of:thingiverse.com/thing:9010
&thingiverse.com/thing:5192
Is a collaboration of:
Michael Curry (Skimbal)
Michael Overstreet (I-Bioloid)
&
Luis E. Rodriguez (Luis)
And is brought to you by the letter:
C
DISPENSINATE!
Show that pesky Davros what his Daleks are really good for - dispensing candy!
The Dalek thingiverse.com/download:23816 is just one topper that can be printed using the attached dispenser_insert.stl; virtually any thing on Thingiverse can be turned into a topper with the correct transformations and support material (so sharpen your support-fu)!
This is a modular Dalek that uses pin connectors from thingiverse.com/thing:10541 to make dalek mashups. It also has a version of the legs with a slot to fit a MakerBot windup walker! I've made the slot deep so that the legs are enclosed inside the body. This "skirt" around the legs of the walker makes it MUCH more stable (at the expense of not being able to walk as far) when you attach tall things on top. Without a skirt, these walkers tend to fall over very easily. Even when I attach my big fat head on top, it shuffles along and doesn't fall over: flickr.com/photos/tbuser/6609202223/
The Dalek body is from: Doctor Who New Series Dalek Body by InnovationByLayers thingiverse.com/thing:1600
P.P. S. Okay. You got me. I’m not really that worried about the coming robopocalypse. I really just wanted a post highlighting awesome Doctor Who-themed things on Thingiverse so I could post THIS:
As soon as I saw this printable non-lethal grenade by Beardface, I immediately thought… There is NO way any self-respecting TSA agent or air marshal would ever let you board a plane with such a thing. There is simply nothing you could say to anyone in an airport that would be soothing enough to make them forget you’ve got a grenade-shaped object in your luggage. Yes, with great power comes great responsibility.
Thingiverse just featured this incredible MakerBotted model of a root structure. Thingiverse user TSDF used the iPad app iDough to model the shape above. I can’t explain the coolness any better than he did.
25 years after art school, 22 years after learning CAD, and 10 years after learning gcode, I would have never conceived that it would be possible to model complex organic geometry on a handheld device and hold a physical output in my hand 90 minutes later at such a low cost.
The app is $6.99 but holy moly does this look well worth it. It has brushes to “push, pull, smooth, move, pinch, spread, [and] flatten” your virtual clay. You can export your .obj from the app (email it from your iPad to your computer, says TSDF), and convert to an .stl in Netfab.
Simple and stylish, this is dragon bookmark by roland is definitely up as my next print in the queue. One of the cool things about intricate flat prints such as this dragon is that they should, for the most part, take about the same amount of time to print as a flat rectangular plank of the same volume of plastic. Sure, some settings – especially those that include extra layers at the edge or ones that slow down the print speed for the outlines – might decrease the overall print time. However, with such a thin piece the time differential is basically negligible.
For most product having a more intricate design means more creation time, more machine time, more production resources. This is one of the reasons that 3D design and printing are so very exciting. With 3D printing, you basically get all the intricate designs and features you want without any additional cost! Your imagination1 is your only real limitation.
The first thing that struck me about this cookie cutter was that it is so incredibly specific it is. The universe may only ever contain a small handful of these things. 1
So, EdinKali, I just have to know… Why an Acura NSX???
Are any of you participating in this? The New York Times is hosting an everyday innovation challenge that several of you may be interested in.
They write:
For a special issue on June 3, we invite you to share an innovation that you have made in your daily life. Maybe you’ve figured out a way to make waking up more pleasant by jury-rigging your alarm clock. Or maybe you’ve invented a foolproof method for shining your shoes, or for finding time to exercise. It could be a gadget you’ve fashioned, or something less tangible. We want to hear what you’ve come up with.
Yes, but more importantly, we want to hear what you’ve come up with.
You all have submitted thousands of things to Thingiverse that would knock readers’ socks off. In fact, Thingiverse is a veritable catalog of relevant submissions for this challenge. Perhaps you have favorite things from Thingiverse that you think ought to be recognized! If you leave a comment here, I’ll get in touch with that Thingiverse user and urge them to participate.
