MakerBot Industries

Do not fear this robot!

Nothing about the above robot strikes me as particularly weird.  Then again, I have a robot in my home and grew up reading books and watching TV shows about robots.  Last week that little robot stopped traffic in Denver when authorities called in the bomb squad to investigate this “suspicious object.”  I think there are several take away lessons from here:

• Make sure your robot looks friendly, or at least not too menacing
• Robots cannot introduce themselves¹ , so you’ll need to do that for them²
• Don’t leave your robot unsupervised
• You don’t need to blow up a robot to make it safe

1. Yet [↩]
2. For now [↩]

Alien Head by bgcop

You may have heard about NASA’s big announcement yesterday:

Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.

Okay, I get that this is a cool demonstration that life is possible in environments that would be utterly toxic to (almost) all other lifeforms on Earth.

Here’s something that would really get me excited – a life form that substitute ABS for arsenic or phosphorus in its cell components.  Just think – printed pets!!!  You could back up a pet to Thingiverse or download a new pet.  Then again, I do feel conflicted.  I’m not sure how I would feel about recycling them.  Either it’s mean, green, evolution, an upgrade, or  reincarnation.¹

It’s not as crazy as you think.  Remember the Pet Rock?

1. Imagine having such choices for the afterlife! [↩]

And we’re back! Another episode of our live stream with the MakerBot Support Team. This time we discuss connection errors, null versions, the Unicorn Pen Plotter Design Challenge, the speakers list for Botacon 0, and Mitch Altman’s Brain Machine! Oh yeah, and the Thing-O-Matic 3D Printer!

Our live streaming support show Robot Hospital! is up to it’s epic 3rd episode today on UStream! Come check it out and chat us your questions- We’ll be discussing Robots, Botacon 0, and offering assistance to MakerBot Operators and bringing you the latest developments from MakerBot in chilly Brooklyn! Talk to you then!

Check out our previous episodes here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-from-the-makerbot-botcave

Scan of a lighter

While there are already a number of open source scanners out there.  There’s the MakerBot 3D Scanner which uses structured light, the milkscanner which uses a little tub of milk to detect the outline of an object as it sinks into the milk, the chess board and laser level scanner, and now Mark Moissette has invented a way to use his own 3D printer as a limited scanner.

As best as I can understand, he’s using a laser line with some cheap optic electronics to turn his print head into a light emitter and sensor.  Even if the scan area is relatively small and the resolution limited, it’s an incredibly cool idea.  It also sounds like with some know-how, some custom software, and cheap parts (€5.00 or about $6.61) this is a reasonable solution for low resolution scans.

I'm sorry Captain, that's just impossible...

Scotty is the engineer on the first Star Trek series. Friday afternoon I was chatting with a friend about what it means to be the kind of person, like Scotty, who fixes things.  These are the rules we arrived at:¹

• Scotty Rule #1: Telling people it’s impossible, and then doing it anyhow is always a good idea.
• Scotty Rule #2: You’re the only one who can wear a red shirt and survive.
• Scotty Rule #3: People appreciate fixes more when you speak with a Scottish accent.²
• Scotty Rule #4: You can always tweak the tolerances to +/-5%. The warp drive will always give you just a little more even when you say, “I’ve given it all I’ve got”. She’ll hold.
• Scotty Rule #5: Real engineers don’t work in cubicles.³
• Scotty Rule #6: You only absolutely need to get the job done enough to rescue everyone and fly home.

1. Image property of Paramount Pictures [↩]
2. Or when they can’t understand what you’re saying. [↩]
3. May there never be cubicles in space! [↩]

Today was a big day for the MakerBot Support Team, with the debut of our live streaming Q&A show – ROBOT HOSPITAL! We will be doing this weekly starting today, so tune in next week and hopefully we’ll have a smoother start and all new topics- Check out the BotCave Store opening on the next show!

Hey everybody!

Here at the Botcave, we recently decided to “up our game” as regards customer service.  As you can see, there is now more than one person answering emails here.  So now, when you send email to support@makerbot.com a veritable team of highly-qualified technicians will respond to your requests.

From left: Isaac, our team leader, is an electronic music enthusiast who is known to have a collection of highly valuable (?) comic books.  Ethan once worked in the wine industry and tutors Latin.  Matt’s background is in film and creative writing.

Even more exciting, this afternoon, you’re going to have the chance to talk to all of us, LIVE and IN PERSON on the MakerBot UStream feed at http://bit.ly/dv23P3

We are starting a new event, tentatively titled called “Robot Hospital.”  In addition to taking questions over live chat, we are going to do a roundup of support-related issues over the past week, or whatever cool, robot-related stuff you need to see.

So, dial us up and send us your questions!  We’re here to help.

As many of you are aware, for various reasons, the Cupcake CNC Ultimate kit has evolved over time to become the dynamic, amazing robot that it is today.  We’ve recently gone through the documentation and made some changes to make building it easier and eliminate some guesswork.

The Ultimate builder has a few challenges that he or she needs to address in their build.  First and foremost, the MK5 Plastruder doesn’t have a place to mount the extruder board, unlike the MK4.  This means that our builders need to find a new place to mount the board.   We recently added this page to the instructions on the wiki to help out, in response to a few folks who were having trouble because of the missing instructions.

Most people are now aware that they might have to drill a few extra holes somewhere to accommodate the MK5. Are there some other issues you’d like to see documented a bit better?  Let us know in the comments or send us an email at support@makerbot.com

Shooting for 300

Josef Průša is giving a talk at the TedX event in Prague on November 20th.  You may recognize his name from his contributions to the development of the next generation RepRap printer, the Mendel.  Josef has been working to simplify the parts and reduce the print time for the parts necessary to create a RepRap printer.  In order to demonstrate the possibilities of DIY 3D printing, Josef is looking to give away 300 printed whistles at this event.

As of yesterday, Josef still has 250 more whistles to go.  Can you help Josef spread the word by sending him some whistles to give away?