MakerBot Industries

Cylinders stretching as far as the eye can see.

After my earlier posts, I would be seriously remiss if I didn’t mention sirmakesalot‘s latest conquest: the V-12.

Having a car with 12-cylinder engine is well beyond the means of most of us; it’s the type of engine that powers bespoke Ferraris and 1970s Jaguars.  It’s basically what you get when you add your Toyota’s four-cylinder to your Cadillac’s eight — and it has as much power as both of them together.

It also uses as much gasoline as running them both at the same time, so there’s another reason most of us will never have one.  But now, we can print this one out and just admire it…thanks again, sirmakesalot!

V-12 motor by sirmakesalot

Someone said V-12 and I heard you! This one is very simmilar to my V-8 but with the addition of a modular section that allows you to make any size; want a V-24? no problem, want a V-6 ? You got it! Perhaps something strange like an in line-8 or 6...weird! Motor on demand! There is a complete single tray file for those who have the printer footprint for it other wise single part types per tray for colour printing and I have added the source file so you can play, enjoy! I am printing one today (started 11:30 am Sunday) I will have pictures tonight! All done! 7.5-8 hours of printing time and 15-20 minutes to assemble. UPDATE I have added a larger piston. It should fit a bit tighter but requires good settings.

This thing brought to you by

Are you a teacher or educator interested in bringing a MakerBot into the classroom? Did you miss last month’s introductory workshop? During this 4 hour session you will be introduced to 3-D printing with the MakerBot Thing-o-Matic. We’ll walk you step-by-step through the process of creating a 3-D computer model and preparing it for printing with the MakerBot. You will be given an overview of various 3-D modelling software tools that are available for free online. In addition, you will be shown a set of lesson plans that you can use with your students over the course of a semester. No prior knowledge of 3-D modelling or 3-D printing is required. Please bring a laptop computer to the workshop.

When: Saturday, September 10th, 2011, 10AM – 2PM
Where: Bot Farm, 314 Dean Street, Brooklyn
Cost: Free! (You must also email a brief statement describing your work with young people).

Only 15 slots are available, so sign up as soon as possible! You can register
via Eventbrite.

Dutch Design Week

Jakajima is organizing an international conference focused on home 3D printing to take place on October 25, 2011 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, during the Dutch Design Week. From the organizer, Pieter Hermans, the topics will include:

1. Patent/IP Issues
2. 3D Content Publishing
3. The technical expertise required for 3D design
4. Trends in 3D printing materials
5. Trends in 3D printing
6. 3D printing in the home, social and cultural implications
7. 3D printing in the home and new business opportunities

For more information, check out their website!

I’ve been working on an exciting project lately: the GE Air Show. The idea is to get people to submit models, sketches, concepts or ideas for weird and wonderful flying machines, print them on a Makerbot, and then have them star in a video set in a miniature air show of the imagination. At the end of the month we’re hoping to have the airport crowded with all kinds of aircraft – so please submit your ideas.

We’re looking for submissions regardless of 3D design skills: you can submit sketches, mockups or just your brilliant idea to hello.social@ge.com, and you can check out other comments and submissions at facebook.com/ge. The models that are being built will be listed on the GE page at Thingiverse, thingiverse.com/GE, so keep checking back for updates.

I’ve been working together with Andrew Rutter on building the Makerbots, and getting 3D models ready for printing. It’s been very interesting so far: both Thing-O-Matics were up and running within a day – in fact, one of them was put together in only three and half hours! The new cartridge-based extruder is much simpler to assemble, and the Thing-O-Matic can certainly produce great results with a lot less tuning than was required for previous models.

This project is interesting because it highlights how quickly you can go from a concept to a physical object through 3D printing. By offering to model sketches or ideas that people have sent in, it makes it possible for people unfamiliar with 3D design to see their ideas made real. A lot of requests are for models of existing aircraft, but we’d really like for people to submit ideas for original and fanciful designs.

This is good stuff — intrepid Thingiverse user Joakim has modeled a knob for the interior of a a legendarily rugged Land Rover Series II.  This has presumably broken after fifty years of running the vechicle in the Serengeti or somewhere equally exotic and treacherous, during one of the many ventilation changes necessary in this punishing environment.

Ok, so we’re not printing replacement camshafts quite yet, but this is still pretty cool.  After all, there are thousands of plastic parts in a modern (or, as we see here, not-so-modern) car.  Is anybody else using a MakerBot to fix them?

Extra points for including the manufacturer’s part number — well done, Joakim!

Landrover Series II Ventilator Knop by Joakim

This is part of spare part 337970 The one in the pencil square is the orignal boken one.

This thing brought to you by

I wanted to use a metal spring for a new design.  However, the problem with metal springs is trying to find something that is useful, ubiquitous, and cheap.  However, I was shocked that I simply could not find any pictures anywhere on the internet of the inside of a Pez dispenser!  After a little help from Chris Connors, I decided that the metal spring from inside a Pez dispenser would be absolutely perfect for my application.  After locating a Pez dispenser of my own, I disassembled it and found it was, indeed, just what I needed.

If you’re interested in taking apart a Pez dispenser in a minimally destructive way, here’s how you do it:

The reason you need to tilt the Pez candy platform down is because it has two small prongs on the front and back, making it slightly too long to come out of the colored plastic Pez case easily.

Notice the bumps along the side of the white plastic slide.  The bumps at the bottom prevent the slide from coming out of the colored case easily.  The bumps at the top prevent the white plastic slide from coming out of the bottom.

In case you’re curious, I was using my Pez dispenser for a Pez Powered Disc Shooter.

This week’s amazing Robot Hospital adventure features a tip from Sam on mold-making using Matt’s support settings, (complete with Pykrete smashing) a patriotic Thingiverse round-up with cameras and planes, and a complete time-lapse last night’s New York Notables party.  Happy Canada day, y’all!

UPDATE: Anna Galovich has been generous enough to translate this fantastic blog post into Estonian. You can find the translation right here.

For a recent project, I had to print this awesome crocodile skull from the University of Texas Digimorph project. At first it looked daunting, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy to print. I really like this print because it is a complex organic shape, and it is really impressive that it came from a Makerbot.

Crocodile skull, printed on a Makerbot

I used Netfabb Studio and ReplicatorG to prepare for print. I’m not posting the print-ready files because a) not sure if UT will let me and b) the following process is easy and you will learn a lot. I basically used Netfabb Studio to re-orient, repair, scale and split the model, in order to get it ready for print. The procedure I followed is generally applicable to all kinds of complex prints.

Keep reading for instructions on how to do it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bre had a chance to show Chris Hardwick around the Botcave. Check out the video!