MakerBot Industries

Step right up!

The MakerBot booth at Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 is taking shape. For all the updates on where we are and what we’re doing, watch our twitter @makerbot. There will be lots of reasons to keep an eye on us tomorrow, if you catch my drift (…prizes!).

If you are headed down to the San Mateo Event Center, I’ve doctored some maps to help you find us.

 

 

We’ve already gotten some visits from other Makers who are setting up today, including the MakerBot superfan Schuyler St. Leger.

Banners are being unrolled:

And the dance floor is installed:

 

We’re almost ready to roll. Come join us!

 

I’ve shared the video before of Toronto agency Teehan+Lax making its first thing on a MakerBot. Now they have a new video focused on a smart milk carton that alerts you when you’re running low on milk, and they prototyped it on a MakerBot.¹

 

On one hand, having a MakerBot gives you the power to create things for yourself, and Thingiverse is filled with thousands of examples. But then you have people who use it to create things for others, especially the first-through-tenth versions of a new thing. Teehan+Lax is not just making pretty things, but also real world products, with The Replicator. Sweet!

I would say, “this is going to become a trend,” but it already has. I just saw this post from twitter: the Swedish design group People People now have a Replicator, too.

We are finally up and running with our Makerbot Replicator! It will be a great tool for us making prototypes in the various stages of the design process.

 

Look how they’ve marked their Left and Right extruders. Let’s hope People People will be showing us some sweet Dualstrusion sometime soon! Speaking of, I’d love to know what colors design agencies use the most when they’re MakerBotting.

 

1. hat tip Shapeways Blog [↩]

It’s a testament to the wonders of 3D design and MakerBotting that a 3D printer is just so dang useful.  You can use it to whip up a toy, broken latch, and now… keep kitty litter in it’s proper place.

It may seem like a small matter, but it’s never a good thing to see kitty litter outside of a kitty litter box.  Thingiverse citizen Triskite’s cat litter trap takes care of this problem with aplomb.  While many kitty litter boxes even include similar litter traps, not all of them do.  This is such a simple and useful modification to a litter box or home that no cat lover should do without it to keep the rest of their home free of pesky pet particles.

It’s going to be a big weekend for everyone attending Maker Faire Bay Area. Here are a few quick ideas for what you could make to be fully prepared for the festivities.

 

Business Card Holder with Top by eM5

I saw one of these on Annelise’s desk the other day, and I have to have one. If you get a card from me at MakerFaire, it’ll be from one of these suckers!

But here’s why you should have one for MakerFaire. Trading cards! Shawn  Wallace at Make Magazine has designed these awesome 3D printer trading cards for this weekend. There’s no word on whether there will be actual cards – looks like these are just designs right now – but in case some enterprising person turns these into cards, you’ll be prepared with your card holder!

 

Disguise!

Are you supposed to come into the office on Saturday, but you’re planning to sneak over to Maker Faire instead? You need this Mustache and Monocle by chefmaki, just in case your boss shows up. Also, if I see you walking around Maker Faire with this thing, I will feature you on the blog, no questions asked.

 

A Whistle, either this one by Zaggo, or this slightly modified one above by madkite. If you’re bringing your kids to Maker Faire, and if they have a tendency to run off, you can use your whistle to get their attention. Or perhaps you can use it to referee some robot basketball. These are just ideas; a whistle is always useful.

 

A beautiful Nepentheses Planter by Ecken. One thing I want to do at Maker Faire if I get the chance is visit some of the gardening booths. I like the idea of making these Guerilla Garden bombs full of wildflower seeds and throwing them around my neighborhood. Maybe you could leave the planter at home, but it would be a great home for some of the flora you might pick up over the weekend.

Trebuchet

When does one need a reason to make a trebuchet? Make this and launch things; at Maker Faire. Case closed. Here’s one from jam4ar.

 

Anyone who has ever used Apple earbuds knows that they look nice and feel terrible. Honestly it seems like those earbuds are made for robots. I’m going to go test a pair on R. Maker in a minute.

If you’re not a robot, Thingiverse user and industrial designer J.C. Karich has solved this problem very elegantly. An adapter for Apple earbuds to work as over-ear headphones.

 

There are two awesome things here.

1. If you want to use your in-ear headphones, you still can. There’s nothing permanent here.

2. Because you’re making these on your MakerBot, you can adjust the strap around your head to be the exact right size by printing more or fewer parts. Or, I suspect, since the curve of each section is constant, you could slice one piece at any point, as long as the angle of your cut is right.

This is a Work-in-Progress on Thingiverse, but here’s more of J.C. Karich’s work. I particularly like the G.I.P.S., a 3D-printed global positioning system which gives you an indirect path toward your destination based on different kinds of “intuition”. A perfect tool for the wanderer, and it looks like a rock that you might pick up on a stroll through the woods.

 

On his blog my plastic future, Gregg Wygonik lays out why Bonzai 3D (B3D) is a good tool for modeling for your MakerBot, and maybe better than SketchUp Pro. Gregg says he wanted to find an alternative, in case SketchUp goes through some changes after Trimble takes it over from Google.

Sketch Up Pro and B3D run about the same in terms of price (just under $500 for both). However, he says his files from SketchUp occasionally have some problems when you try to slice them in ReplicatorG. No such problems in B3D:

Half the time I would have to rework parts I made in SketchUp that had holes or other simple design bits due to errors with slicing in RepG; no such issue with the many things I threw at it from B3D. Interestingly B3D has the ability to “diagnose” various potential problems when you export a STL file, but even with it reporting issues with a few of my objects, I had no problems with slicing/printing.

Here’s Gregg’s Pro/Con list for Bonzai 3D.

Things I liked:

• ability to draw lines and primitives as walls (think: no need to draw an extruded hexagon followed by another one a little smaller and push/pull to remove the middle, just draw an extruded hexagon with a set wall size and done!);
• some pretty sweet additions to regular booleans (slicing, object and surface splitting);
• NURBS with some really cool blending tools, in a much more approachable interface than Blender;
• 4-up “old school” view (top, left, right, perspective all at once);
• helix creation (screw tops!!);
• rounded or faceted edges with myriad settings;
• right-click on any tool and set a keyboard shortcut;
• and my new favorite: thicken, which takes any non-solid and turns it into a solid of a specified width

Things I didn’t like:

• some features require the setting of custom workplanes while some don’t and you don’t know until it throws an error dialog (workplanes are all new to me, but I like overall);
• inconsistent workplane handling (“lock workplane” sometimes doesn’t lock, and you have to use “save custom workplane”);
• adding dimensions to a part is hit-or-miss whether or not it will measure between the points you click or the entire edge you’re touching, while “measure distance” works perfect but doesn’t leave the dimensions on screen;
• too much reliance on hovering to open up tool groups and additional options (small gripe)

More here.

If you enjoyed that delightful scone cutter video a little while back from TheNewHobbyist, whose work we’ve also featured here, here, here, and here, perhaps you’d like to see where this Thingiverse genius does his work. Looks like a happy home for a MakerBot, and this picture really gives a feel for the room. Chris seems to MakerBot by lamplight.

I’ll share these in the mornings now (that’s New York Time!), just as long as you all keep sharing them with me.

If you will be volunteering for MakerBot as a booth volunteer this weekend, or if you are a MakerBot Operator or Thingiverse Maker, we invite you to join us Friday evening, after setup is done and before the festivities begin on Saturday, for a get together at our booth. Come and enjoy! Please be sure to let us know you’re joining us by registering here.

Turning kids’ silly drawings into physical toys. What a beautiful idea!

 

via i09

 

If you are a mover, a shaker, and a Maker, let us stamp your passport! We’ll have our passport stamps at Maker Faire this weekend, including a special edition Robot Petting Zoo stamp. If you don’t have your passport yet, you can grab one from Adafruit. Collect stamps, prove your cred.