MakerBot Industries

Today we have a 10 new products in The MakerBot Plastics section. Our ABS filaments are now available as 1 Kilogram spools! We have been preparing to transition our plastic offerings to spools for some time, and now we’re ready to let them out of the bag. We have the first group of spooled ABS plastic online today, including two new colors available in both 3mm and 1.75mm formats.

New Safety Orange and Fruit Punch Magenta are here, along with resupplies of our classic colors in 1.75mm width on industrial strength spools for easier use. We’re really happy with spooled filaments, they are more compact and a lot cleaner to use. They are handy to mount in your workspace and are stackable too.

Charles Pax created a great printable spool mount that screws right onto your Thing-O-Matic too.
Check them out!

MakerBot Operator Stewart Starbuck let us know about his experience last weekend at the inaugural UK MakerFair. He’s provided a nice pack of photos from the event to check out. In the tradition of MakerFaire, it looks like a good time was had by all, and there was an abundance of 3D Printers!

Here’s a snip from Stewart’s report.

“I’ve completely worn out, but here they are, some of the pictures taken
from MakerFaire: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewartstarbuck/sets/72157626113449241/

It was an amazing event, which I would recommend to everyone.  I was really pleased to see such a huge interest in 3d Printing. There were a number of stands with printers, including a strong contingent from the RepRap folks, and all reported having had lots of positive feedback
from the public….We were printing out keychains (taking around 3 minutes each) that proved to be very popular. We couldn’t print them fast enough to keep up with demand. Seeing peoples faces when they watched the MakerBots print a piece all the way through then to take it with them was just simply awesome.

The wealth of other projects at the faire is just too great to put into words. There are lot of amazing people out there with some truly remarkable ideas, many of which will hopefully go on to change the world for the better!”

We hope so too, and thank you Stewart and Nick, and congratulations to everyone at UK MakerFaire!

Check out Stewart’s photostream here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewartstarbuck/with/5527788486/

Ok, we’ve talked about printable chess sets before…but this one is a step up, if you ask me.  First off, it’s from a cool, early-20th-century design, and second, Le Garage has it  all set to print in just a couple of passes.  Pretty impressive.  Kudos also go to TeamTeamUSA for the original Thingiverse version of the design.

There are a lot of great designs that have lapsed into the public domain, and when they make their way to Thingiverse, it’s good for everybody.  Keep up the good work, community!

Bauhaus Model I 1922 Chess Set by Le_Garage

TeamTeamUSA said : "Always wanted a Bauhaus chess set but couldn't afford one? Here ya go!" Inspired by Josef Hartwig's Model I chess set created in 1922 at Bauhaus Weimar. This set is at the ~original size, and need an big board to be played ! ^^ It was done as an Blender learning exercise based on MOMA picture and the globals dimensions they gave and we gess the others with proportions and eye. Exercise supervised by LeoM [ thingiverse.com/LeoM ] for Le_Garage.

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In this episode, Ethan prints the Space Shuttle as a multi-colored object, and Matt demos “Party Mode” for your Bots! Robot Hospital! Episode Four!

As we all know, successful colonization of other planets is necessary for long-term survival of the human species.  So, obviously, it’s high time we start printing spaceships, like this model of the soon-to-be-defunct Space Shuttle, by Thingiverse designer BonsaiBrain.

You may need some glow-in-the-dark ABS to print it and have it glow.

printable glowing in the dark space shuttle by BonsaiBrain

This afternoon I was looking for some nice space shuttle to print. I found one here thingiverse.com/thing:1966 , but it seemed to be a bit to smooth. So I googled a little and found some fitting object in the 3D galery. I resized it and repraired it using netfabb and after a short time I printed one with a length of about 105 mm. The upper wing is a bit too thin to be printable precisely, but it is a little more detailed than the mentioned space shuttle. But the real cool feature: It is glowing in the dark using phosphorescent PLA. The model you can download here is scaled up to a length of 135 mm hoping that this size is big enough to print a better wing. Greetings BonsaiBrain More about this and where to get the glowing in the dark PLA: ifeelbeta.de

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We love it when a plan comes together.

As huge fans of technologies converging, I am happy to say this latest addition to Thingiverse is like a big hug from one awesome, future pushing device to another. Kinect, meet your new best friend, a 3D printable tripod bracket! It’s love.

Check out Michael Fonda’s Blog post about his experience at the BotCave: “Democratization of Manufacturing”

As it sometimes happens, I am working at my desk, and one of my coworkers taps me on the shoulder, and I hear a now familiar phrase- “Isaac, we have guests!” This is my cue for me to give a walk through tour, and run down as many salient points about MakerBot as I can pull from memory. Last Friday I walked up to the front of the BotCave and was greeted by Michael and Tyler Fonda, who were on a quest to learn about the 3D Printing sphere, and visiting Brooklyn.

They had both recently read The Economist’s cover story on 3D Printing, and wanted to gauge for themselves the possible impact 3D Printing will have on manufacturing. Michael works for Avison Young, a real estate company that often caters to manufacturing industries. His son Tyler, is a Director of Strategy for Gotham and was doing his strategic due diligence on 3D printing.

Michael wrote a post about his experience at the BotCave, and it’s an interesting perspective on their experience, and his view of the potential impacts of 3D Printing.

“Suddenly, the future came into focus as I visualized how my sister-in-law and her husband would utilize 3D printing in their sunglass business Centerline Optics. They would no longer have to source product from China. No more ordering months in advance of their selling season. No supply chain risk of political upheaval in China, of a lost TEU on the Pacific Ocean, of a longshoremen’s strike at the Port of Long Beach, a diesel fuel spike that drives up the cost of transporting the product across the North American continent. All design, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, and sales would happen out of the Centerline “headquarters” in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Centerline’s customers are all within four hours of the “headquarters”. Talk about efficient allocation of resources.”

Check out Michael’s original post here.

Available in limited quantities now!

We have released a limited quantity of Generation 4 sets for those of you who have been waiting so patiently- Thank you!

http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-generation-4-electronics-kit.html

Dave Durant - DIY 3D Printer Vertical Resolution World Record Holder

With Dave Durant’s magic printer calibration program I was able to just specify what layer height (vertical resolution) I wanted – and it just worked.  This is a totally new experience for me.  Before playing with this program I spent time dialing in each version of ReplicatorG to my specific 3D printer’s settings – with different settings for my Cupcake than for my Thing-O-Matic.  Now I can just choose my desired vertical resolution and FIRE THE MAKERBOT!  If you’re planning on playing limbo with your computer too, there are a few practical concerns:¹

1. Careful measurement of the filament is important. Printing by laying down 0.2mm thick layers of plastic means your printer has to have a very good idea of how much plastic is coming in and going out.  Dave’s magic program will figure how much is going out, so all you have to do is carefully measure your filament.  I suggested my method the other day.  You don’t have to use my method, but I would suggest that you can’t take too many samples in getting this right.  Printing at 0.2mm layers means that over or under measuring will have a pretty big impact on the amount of plastic deposited at each layer.
2. Attention to the build height is important. Printing at 0.2mm thick layers of plastic means that if your starting build height is off by as much as 0.1mm, you’re basically compromising half a layer of plastic.  Being off by 0.1mm in starting build height just isn’t that much of a problem when you are printing at 0.4mm per layer – there’s plenty of room for the plastic to squish around and find a place to go.  Make sure your Z maximum endstop doesn’t have a lot of wiggle, your platform is hitting the Z maximum endstop in the same area reliably, and that there’s not much wobble or wiggle² in your Z stage that could cause a big variance in your starting build height.  Also, be sure to check your printer’s auto-homing features several times before printing at this level. ³  If you’re not sure about how to calibrate the proper print height, follow these calibration directions.
3. Having a perfectly flat build surface is important. Since you’re printing at such thin layers, inconsistencies in your build surface will be magnified through the layers as you print.  You’ll want to make sure your build surface is totally flat – or flat to within about 0.1mm.  If you’re very close to having a level surface a good way to test it is to print a large flat object.  When that first layer goes down you’ll see the filament fuse together where the platform is at the proper height and either become individual strands where the platform is too low or it will start pushing plastic around where the build platform is too high.  I would suggest calibrating your starting build height for the highest point on your build surface and, if you’re using an automated build platform, you can just slightly adjust the lower points by adding a piece of Kapton tape.  Putting it under the belt in the lowest spots will raise your build surface very very slightly.

Next time – more about Dave Durant’s magic printer calibration program!

1. How low can YOU go!?! [↩]
2. Or wibbly wobbly [↩]
3. A printer head crash isn’t catastrophic, but it is a pain. [↩]

Schuyler St. Leger’s iGNiTe Phoenix presentation was such a hit here at the BotCave and around the world, that it deserves a repost now that it’s in HD quality and edited to enhance the experience! Schuyler’s presentation was so successful he received a first ever iGNiTe Phoenix standing ovation, and the original video went viral and now has over 56,000 plays. Check it out- Thanks Schuyler and iGNiTe!