Are you guys watching the Thingiverse blog? There’s some new activity on there.

I noticed this one earlier: a little hut for your garden that traps slugs and — hmm… — kills ‘em. I’m with Greg on this one, I kinda like slugs. They’re peaceful. But if they’re a nuisance for your garden, make one of these things today and set it out.

If you look at the Thingiverse page for this Slug Trap, you’ll see a little conversation about alcohol and plastic. Since this trap is supposed to use beer to attract the slugs, one commenter wondered if it might degrade over time.

I asked one of our resident materials experts and got an answer: as long as the beverage is less than 8% alcohol by volume, all should be ok! So go on, get rid of some Bud Light and some slugs at the same time.

In case you missed it, our own Michael Curry gave a great interview to Engadget this weekend. Find out why we decided to make a Robot Petting Zoo, and what we plan to do with it now.

Where Lluis, Ferre, and Kamil MakerBot

Also, in case you missed it, Jamie and Adam Tested had a featured video of those planetary gears in all their glory. This is one cool Tinkering Dad.

The photo booth was a big hit this year at Maker Faire Bay Area. After visiting the Robot Petting Zoo, we gave everyone the chance to take a few shots with one of the robots or express themselves with monster gloves and googly-eye headbands. See the full set in the slideshow below, or find them here on Flickr!

I’m still buzzing from Maker Faire, which Annelise captured beautifully in the last episode of Season 2 of MakerBot TV. I met thousands and thousands of people at the MakerBot tent, including people who were discovering us for the first time and people who had all three generations of bots at home.

And then there were people in the middle, like Jason Huggins, or hugs on Thingiverse. Jason was part of the Grid Beam booth just down the path from our tent, and stopped by during set up on Friday to say hello. When I asked him whether he was a MakerBotter, he said no, but that he was a part of the community and had a good Thingiverse success story. Incidentally, Jason is the founder of Sauce Labs, a cloud version of the website performance testing services Selenium that he also started. But he is an enthusiastic open source hardware guy, too.

Last fall, Jason started his project Bitbeam, which he explains this way on his blog:

Bitbeam = Lego + Grid Beam = Awesome

To clarify: Grid Beam is a construction system created by Phil and Richard Jergensen, and Bitbeam is a miniaturization of that concept to just the right scale that it’s compatible with Lego, and especially Lego Technic.

Jason added Bitbeam to Thingiverse last September as a file for laser cutting, and before the day was out, there were two derivatives including a version you can make on a MakerBot. He was really excited to tell me about that, and I was excited to hear it. One person put an open source hardware idea into the community, and someone else, a total stranger, took it from one way of making things into another in just a few hours.

And here’s how Maker Faire chapter of this story makes it more awesome. When Jason told me at our tent on Friday that he had still never seen his Bitbeams made on a MakerBot, I said I could easily run the file through ReplicatorG for him. I did that in a spare moment that same evening, which took me all of two minutes, and finally caught up with Jason on Sunday to show him the final product. This was the look on his face.

A Happy Hugs

And this was his tweet to me:

@pelkertron Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! /cc @MakerBot @bitbeam

— Jason Huggins (@hugs) May 21, 2012

It’s nice when a grown up can be genuinely surprised and delighted by something. Jason told me that he has no real interest in laser cutting the Bitbeam pieces in balsa wood — although, I have to say I really think they’re nice looking — and would rather just tell the world to get a MakerBot and make all the pieces themselves. He twisted and bent the ABS parts in his hand and said the durability was better than the wood. Just to be sure of the quality of the design, we linked one up to one of his Bitbeam constructions on display. Perfect fit!

MakerBotted Bitbeam attached to laser cut Bitbeam

I was thrilled to meet Jason and to give him a little confirmation that his idea of making his designs on a MakerBot was a great one. This was really easy because we were at Maker Faire together, but this is exactly the kind of thing that happens in hackerspaces all the time. If you own a MakerBot, I hope you give yourself the thrill of making something for someone, and letting them tell you their ideas that could take over the world.

This stuff never gets old.

Any brick?!

This last weekend I had the good fortune to be able to help out with the MakerBot booth at the 2012 Maker Faire Bay Area in San Mateo. ¹  So many people had so many interesting questions that I’d like to just can’t help sharing a few of them here on the blog.

One of my favorite series of questions came from two boys who were at the booth with their father.  After watching half a squirrel being printed out, they asked what material the MakerBot was using to make objects.  I explained that it was the same ABS that went into Legos.  All of a sudden the pairs of eyes that were watching the Replicator were now on me with laser focus.  They had to know if the robot could make Legos.  I told them that people had, indeed, shared designs for Lego compatible bricks on Thingiverse and they were no longer constrained to only have those bricks they could find in stores – they could have any brick they could design.  Now, that got their attention.

Their father, ever the savvy and wary consumer, wanted to know just how expensive it would be to make those bricks.  I responded with my own question – how many plastic building pieces could they buy for $50?  The father and both kids agreed that it wasn’t much – $50.00 might buy you a medium sized Lego set.  I reminded them that those boxes were also mostly empty – you buy a lot of air when you buy a box of Legos. ²  Hefting a spool of ABS plastic in their direction I told them that $50.00 would buy enough plastic to make more than two pounds of bricks – bricks of any size and shape they could imagine.  That definitely got the dad’s attention.

[simple_series title="Questions from Maker Faire 2012"]

Openscad Lego-Like brick by jag

I don't know if this should be considered a derivative of thingiverse.com/thing:591 or not. It was inspired by it but I started from scratch because I wanted to do it in openscad. You can adjust the size and tweak the dimensions of the various parts of the lego in the openscad file. There are probably bugs, it's a work in progress. A real lego snaps into the bottom pretty well, not as well on top.

This thing brought to you by

1. Near San Francisco
2. Don’t get me wrong.  I love Legos and own a LOT of them.

Well, it’s Monday morning after Maker Faire Bay Area and I’m already wishing the festivities could go on a bit longer. There’s just so much to learn and see, and so many makers to meet in such a short amount of time. We brought a ton of Awesome to this year’s faire including a MakerBot BotFarm, as well as a Robot Petting Zoo, a Photo Booth and Awesome Toss’Em (a MakerBot carnival game). In this special Maker Faire edition of MakerBot TV, R.Maker takes you on a tour of the faire and then we chat with a few of the many MakerBot Operators we ran into over the weekend. Thank you so much to everyone who joined in the fun! Keep it awesome!

Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 has been an incredible event, not just for the 100,000 or so people who came through here — still waiting for the official figures! — but also for the Makers. It’s been a weekend full of weirdness, magic, and…drama!

Here’s the scene: a middle school boy goes to a fantastic summer day camp, Galileo Learning, in Hillsborough, CA. He builds a great go-kart as his final project. But when Galileo transports the go-kart to Maker Faire, the steering wheel is dangling by a single bolt. Missing a nut!

The boy in our story, Adam, is a maker. He saw this problem and went out to fix it. When you’re at Maker Faire, you can probably find someone with the right size nut, right? Surely Tech Shop has one on hand.

Nope! Adam walked around the floor looking for a solution, and then… OH YEAH!

You can make the things you need! Over at the Tinkercad booth, Adam discovered that company’s incredible web-based design platform, and worked with the brilliant Henrik to draw out the right part. And since Tinkercad had a MakerBot right there on the table, he was able to make it on site in a matter of minutes. Shino writes over at the Tinkercad blog that the whole process took 45 minutes, beginning to end. Whoa.

Adam watches as The Replicator makes a part for his go-kart

Installing the nut, designed on Tinkercad

Thanks to the cooperation of friendly people in the Faire, Adam was able to slap the new part onto his go-kart and show his finished product how it was meant to be seen. As soon as we heard the story, we zoomed over to find him and decked him out with a MakerBot t-shirt and Awesome Award.

This is one rad kid, and I was so happy to hear his story, and he was happy to talk about it. Any teachers or parents out there wondering if kids really understand the power of being able to make things for themselves on a MakerBot, here’s a great example to remember.

Thanks for making our Maker Faire, Adam! And thank you to our great friends at Tinkercad for empowering kids the way they do.

Common Sizes

Width and depth vary, but the height of common furniture pieces is fairly constant.  Online catalogs are a great source for photos that are accompanied by dimensions.

Building code and human proportions have changed over the centuries.  Common architectural dimensions like door width and railing height are typically wider and higher in modern buildings than in older architecture.

Considerations for Playsets

If you’re working on a toy, playset, or miniature without human figures, the rules change.  Objects in the real world are perfectly suited for human beings, but if your character has a bulky helmet like a MakerBot astronaut, four legs like a My Little Pony, or odd proportions like a Lego Minifig, you need to make up your own rules.  Start by comparing your character to a six foot tall human in the scale of your choice.

A MakerBot astronaut might look a lot like a person at first glance.  The astronaut is almost exactly 6′ tall in scale, but compared to a human being, there are some definite differences.  The helmet is large, his shoulders are wide, and the jet pack will make sitting down tough.  Make the same comparison with the character in your playset.  Based on what you discover, make up your own rules and measurements for the world you are creating.  Perhaps your doorways will be shorter to accommodate a stout character, or chair seats will be extra wide to accommodate a four-legged creature.  Make note of the rules you establish, so you can keep your measurements consistent throughout your project.

Example Project: The Control Room

When I was working on the Rocket Ship Playsets, there were several factors to consider.  I was working in 1:18 scale.  I decided to work directly in scale so I had better control over the details, and more easily share my design files.  I wanted to create designs that had nearly real world proportions, but accommodated the astronaut’s dimensions.

For each key measurement, I translated a common height measurement into 1:18 scale and the metric system using the charts I introduced in last week’s post.  Here are some things I considered.

The Navigation Console:  I decided the console would be counter height, at 36″, which translates to approximately 51mm in scale.  I also made sure the astronauts arms would reach and rest near the steering wheel.  I made the steering wheel big enough to accommodate one of Tbuser’s pin connectors.

The Chair:  I decided the chair should have a typical seat height of 18″, which translates to approximately 25mm in scale.  I expanded the seat width and depth, because the astronaut is wider than a typical human.  He also has a jet pack on his back, so I lowered the seat back so he could balance on the chair.

The Desk: Usually a desk would be 30″ high, which translates to 42mm in scale.  Unfortunately, the astronauts legs wouldn’t fit comfortabely under the desk at this height, so I raised it a few millimeters to 45mm tall.

Other considerations included the dimensions of the top room of the rocket, including the diameter of the room and the angle of the walls.

Wrap Up

Common heights are a good place to start.  These rules help maintain consistency across your designs so your miniature looks cohesive.  Make a decision when you start about how accurately your scale model reflects the real world.  Some modelers pride themselves on strict reproduction, but some projects require you to break the rules and establish your own reality.

Be sure to check back next week for the next post in this series!

Kacie Hultgren is a scenic designer in New York City using MakerBot 3D printers to explore her craft.  You can find her on Thingiverse under the handle PrettySmallThings.  Visit her online shop at www.prettysmallthings.com.