I have a confession to make.  I freaking LOVE Sandy Noble’s drawing robot project called Polargraph.  The Polargraph is a very simple to build, simple to operate, open source drawing robot that produces absolutely stunning results.  The entire robot is little more than (a) an Arduino (b) a motor shield or one of Sandy’s awesome Polargraph shields (c) some USB and power cables (d) two motors (e) some printed parts and (f) string, twine, wire, fishing line, or something similar you might have lying around the house.  You may even have many of these parts lying around your work area or hidden in an old printer right now.

Sandy has been constantly improving his Polargraph design, firmware, and software.  The latest iteration of his Polargraph kit includes a custom designed Polargraph Shield which includes a touch screen and operation from an SD card.  Even cooler, he’s using a 3D printed case for the drawing robot brain, featured above.  Having built a basic one myself, I was able to purchase all of the parts for about $100. ¹

Importantly, my MakerBot has enabled me to customize the project and drastically reduce the cost.  Instead of beaded cord and sprockets, I designed and printed my own spools for using fishing line, motor mounts, Arduino mount, and gondola.  What would normally require specially machined parts or the use of a lasercutter, basically just cost me less than $1.00 in plastic. ²

Since the size of your drawing is basically limited only by the size of your canvas and the amount of string you have, the drawing possibilities quickly become staggering.  I was able to take a picture of R2D2, convert them into a single-line-drawing, and draw a three foot tall poster for my daughter.  Not only did she love the picture, she demanded it be put up in her room immediately. ³

If you’re looking for a very beginner friendly project that your kids will absolutely love, you should definitely try this one out. ⁴

1. Had I been a little more patient and even slightly more competent, I could have built it for even less. [↩]
2. And my daughter got to choose the colors.  Which is why the fishing line spools are pink. [↩]
3. A few hours later I began to wonder why she had been so quiet.  It turned out she had spent the entire time coloring the poster in with her markers and crayons. [↩]
4. If you’re interested in such things, I’ve got about 50+ posts on my personal blog about my adventures in building and operating my DrawBot [↩]

How did we miss this?! This artist builds up 3D-painted (not a typo) sculptures with paint and resin. With that technique in mind, this post at Leigh Davies calls Riusuke Fukahori the “human MakerBot.” Enjoy.

Besides being super entertaining, this video from PBS’ Idea Channel is a great explanation of how the post-scarcity economy plays out in Minecraft. Host Mike Rugnetta talks about MakerBot’s place in this.

Do we agree with Mike that 3D printing organs in the home might not be a good thing? I’m all for it. Why not?

 

I was just reading the latest entry from Brain Pickings’ Maria Popova, where she highlights what people would absolutely save from their home if it caught on fire. These photographs of small collections of very important things (like the one above) come from Foster Huntington’s project The Burning House: What Would You Take?

At the bottom of her post on the topic, Maria includes her own small bunch of treasures. Check out #7.

1. Wallet (recycled newspaper and plastic bag, fromHOLSTEE)
2. 1935 edition of Ulysses with sketches by Henri Matisseand 22-karat gold accents (Sure, the hefty tome would weigh me down — but I decided against the replaceable iPad and pair of giant Canon cameras in its favor.)
3. Glasses
4. Passport
5. MacBook Air
6. Phrenology bike helmet hand-painted by artist Danielle Baskin
7. Makerbot-printed space invader, a gift from a dear friend
8. Two-finger yellow LEGO ring from C+
9. iPhone
10. 1993 edition of Gertrude Stein’s 1938 children’s book,The World Is Round
11. Owl necklace from the 1950s, found in a middle-of-nowhere California vintage shop en route back from TED
12. 1 TB external hard drive with all my personal data, 15 years of photos, 100GB of music, and just about every piece of digital content I’ve ever owned (Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 3.0/2.0, for the record)
13. Original drawing of Paula Scher, one of my big design heroes, by my friend and illustrator extraordinaireWendy MacNaughton. It reads: “Impossible happens.”
14. My Vibrams

MakerBotted gifts are special.

 

Here’s Hack a Day’s love letter to all the night-owl hackers out there, with the help of The Replicator.

Background: Red Bull has become the patron saint of hackers and makers, so it makes total sense that they host the 72-hour Red Bull Creation contest. Selected teams submit functioning entries which have to make use of the Bullduino.

The Hack a Day team’s entry is an ingenious Red Bull delivery system, for those weary troops in the field. No, literally. It’s a cannon that shoots Red Bull cans, which gently parachute down to the ground. How do you get a skinny Red Bull can to fit into a 3-inch diameter cannon?

You MakerBot a custom sabot for it. (Duh.)

MakerBot’s Tony (IWorkInPixels on Thingiverse) joined up with the Hack a Day team recently to help the creation, and designed this piece, including the Hack a Day logo on each bottom piece. He’s shared the design with some detailed instructions on attaching the parachute and an LED for nighttime location.

This is insanely cool. Watch the video above to see the whole system in action and hear an explanation of the contest entry.

 

Tomorrow is a big holiday in the United States and this app is the perfect way for anyone with a MakerBot to make it special. And delicious.

The company dreamforge has put up a genius custom cookie cutter app for all to enjoy. Introducing Cookie Caster.

It’s web-based, and sits right inside the homepage. You can draw your cookie cutter freehand, or trace an image that you upload from your computer. As you work, the app lays down two end points to each line that you draw, with one point in the middle that you can drag to create curve. That means you really don’t need too many points in your shape if you’re tracing. Just get the basics down and add curvature later.

Once you’re finished, you can save the file to the Cookie Caster gallery (you can see my test triangle, labeled “Pelkertron” because I don’t understand naming things, or my truly terrible Dollar Sign shape). But even better,  you can download the .stl for free and make it right away. If you have a MakerBot, this means you can make custom cookie cutters in minutes. If you don’t have a MakerBot, you can pay a fee to have the Cookie Caster folks send you your finished product. Sweet!

Let’s be sure to give credit to the awesome cookie cutter work of Guru, which inspired Cookie Caster. They say in an email that their app has just made some simple updates to Guru’s and put it on the web.

One possible enhancement to Cookie Caster that stands out would be the ability to add interior shapes to my cookie cutter, like the hole in the middle of a doughnut. Try out the app and throw your feedback in the comments below.

If you come up with any good 4th of July designs, or designs for your own country’s holiday, share them in the Cookie Caster gallery and on Thingiverse!

 

Massimo Banzi, one of the open source heroes from Arduino, gives a great rundown of projects and technologies using Arduino boards in the TED Talk below. Watch for a nice shout out to the MakerBot community at the very beginning, and Massimo’s really simple explanation of why open source rules:

You don’t need anybody’s permission to create something great.

 

Here’s a morning treat for you!

Marco from Pensa has posted a new how-to video for building your own DIWire, including a parts list and all the code (on a Google code site). Best news yet: the files for the parts you can MakerBot are all available on Thingiverse!

We posted about the DIWire a few weeks back with a lot of enthusiasm for Pensa’s goal of bringing down the costs of a CNC wire bender. It is so awesome to see that they’ve gone the extra mile and shared all the files and know how with everyone. And best yet, they’ve noted ways that people can help improve the project:

There are many ways to improve it. For instance, the wire straightener was good enough for now, but if you google wire straightener, you’ll see how its usually done. Also, the motors we “spec’ed” are the ones we found in a bin in our shop. They are pricey because they are real accurate, but not so powerful. Right now, with these motors can only bend 1/8” aluminum rod, and the 3D printed parts also would need to get stronger in order to bend more substantial material. So, if you make one and improve upon it, let us know, we’ll post your improvements for everyone else to see.

Check out the Pensa blog for more details on the project, and some other nice videos.

 

Okay, this poster tweeted to us by @caygreen admittedly has some very interesting interpretations. Give us your best caption in the comments, or tweet to @makerbot.

This video courtesy of a pioneering yo-yo master @yochu, who throws down some dope spins on this MakerBotted yo-yo! Get Eric Chu’s yo-yo files for yourself on Thingiverse (link below!)

Note: I’m sorry for saying “dope spins”. I don’t know yo-yo lingo, even after I googled “yo-yo lingo”.