MakerBot Industries

Mutang bug by addy

This is the very first Thingiverse design from Thingiverse citizen addy’s 9 year old son – a mutant bug designed with the help of 3DTin.com.  As you can see from the comments, addy’s son has really taken the Thingiverse spirit to heart by making changes to the designs based upon feedback from other users.  Designing an object, managing constructive criticism, and revising designs – these are important lessons for anyone, let alone a 9 year old.

And, lest we not forget his contributions…  A special thanks to addy for helping his son share these designs and making Thingiverse a better place for it.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16545

Mutant bug by addy

My 9 year old son, Joel's first design, created using 3d tin.

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Parametric Boltless Hook for keyhole shelving units by Timmytool

As I’m gearing up for Thing-A-Day this year, I thought others might be interested in more OpenSCAD tutorials. ¹  Is there something you would like me to cover in another tutorial?  What would you like to learn?

While I’ve more or less written these tutorials right up to my level of competency, there are a few additional things that we could cover – some of the additional variables for previously covered functions, hull, Minkowski, and for loops.

OpenSCAD Tutorial Series

1. OpenSCAD Basics: The Setup
2. OpenSCAD Basics: 2D Forms
3. OpenSCAD Basics: 3D Forms
4. OpenSCAD Basics: Manipulating Forms
5. OpenSCAD Intermediates: Combining Forms
6. OpenSCAD Intermediates: Mashups
7. OpenSCAD Intermediates: Modularity
8. OpenSCAD Intermediates: Extruding 2D Objects
9. OpenSCAD Intermediates: Fixing Design Problems

Parametric Boltless Hook for keyhole shelving units by timmytool

Turn the unused keyholes in boltless shelves into practical hanging space. Using 2 keyholes in the uprights this thing sits and provides a hook for things like scissors, headphones (I use 2 half shelves and a laminated MDF as a PC desk, huge desktop), pots and pans and a whole thingiverse of items. Make your own custom 3d prints that are held up with this print. Yes it’s completely parametric so it will work with any brand of keyhole style boltless shelves The bridge in the model might sag, as long as it minimal it should add to prints snug fitting. (Yes it works better without a perfect bridge) Some of the pics are of the non parametric version; it has a smaller wedge in the hook but otherwise is near identical to the openSCAD’s uploaded stl

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1. As always, if you go through these tutorials and publish something on Thingiverse, I’d love to feature your designs in my OpenSCAD tutorial posts! [↩]

Electro Wire Stripper by bjbsquared

Check out Thingiverse citizen bjbsquared’s “Electro Wire Stripper.”  This little baby lights up, thanks to an LED, resistor, and two small batteries, when you’re stripping wires to let you know you’re making contact with the actual metal cores so you won’t accidentally slice the wire.  I could easily see this taking a place in every electrician or hacker’s toolbox.

Electro Wire Stripper by bjbsquared

This is one of the best wire strippers I have ever used. If setup correctly, it can be very precise and give feedback telling when the blades have cut deep enough. Use: Sight down the blades. Align the blades with where the wire should be stripped. Move the wire into the blades having the blades cut into the insulation. When the blades cut through the insulation and contact the wire the LED will light. Spin the wire or the tool to cut the insulation completely around the wire. Remove the wire from the tool and pull off the insulation.

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MakerBot Industries has partnered with 3D Artist Magazine in the UK for an exciting design contest! Our challenge is to design your own pet monster – whether it’s an adorable companion or a fearsome crittter, use your imagination to create the pet you wish you had. Each design will be judged on its creativity, character and ‘MakerBot-ability’, by a judging panel of 3D Artist and MakerBot Industries staff. The winner will receive a custom, fully-assembled MakerBot 3D printer, and the top 3 runners up will have their models printed, photographed and mailed back to them.

How to enter

You can submit as many designs as you like. Simply:

• Create a free account at Thingiverse
• Upload your original design files and ready-to-print STLs (under an Attribution – Share Alike – Creative Commons license) plus at least 3 non-textured renders
• Tag your creation with ’3D Artist mag’
• Submission deadline is 1 March 2012

Use any tools you like to design – 3ds Max, Blender, Maya, modo, Rhino, SketchUp or ZBrush, for example. The goal is to generate a manifold (watertight) mesh model (STL file) that can be printed on a MakerBot (consider that thin elements like feathers, amll joints, thin clothing etc are difficult to fabricate on a MakerBot). See a tutorial here from 3D Artist Mag on how to make a model for 3D printing.

Your character design can be made up of one or multiple parts, but must be smaller than 100 x 100 x 120mm when assembled. Different parts can be made in a variety of colors.

The ‘MakerBot-ability’ of your model will be an important factor in the judging – the challenge is to be innovative within a small footprint!

A few notable things about February:

• Always the shortest month (even during Leap Year).
• Often too cold to play outside much (well, maybe not this year).
• Contains Valentine’s Day, a day focused on sharing the things you love with those you love.
• Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays, actual and observed.
• Time for the annual Thing-A-Day challenge!

If you have never participated in Thing-A-Day before, here’s the quick summary: this is an opportunity to join a vocal crowd of Makers who are seizing the day, each day for a month, as an opportunity to make something new and then share it (or evidence of it) as part of their community posting effort. Several of us at MakerBot are planning to participate on our own time with a wide range of tools — and encourage you all to not only consider signing up and sticking with the challenge, but also posting your creations to Thingiverse for all of our community to savor.

A few tips. Aim … um … simple. Like 45min from idea-to-thing kind of simple. And push a bit ahead towards the next day whenever a little extra time falls your way. Oh, and take those things that you have to do anyway and twist them into opportunities to share something that, frankly, people really will appreciate anyway.

Inspire all of us and help populate Thingiverse with new and exciting things that have never been shared there before!

And don’t forget, the Thingiverse tag you should use for your posts is: “thing-a-day”

The Atlantic just posted a piece pointing to MakerBot and Thingiverse as a trend setter that tech innovation giants such as Apple should be following closely — and threaded throughout the piece is an excellent profile of Thingiverse maker Brendan Dawes that really does a good job of giving a glimpse of how many of us are using MakerBots in our everyday lives:

I asked Dawes if the MakerBot had changed him; if it had altered his perspective in some unexpected way. “What’s exciting to me is the opportunity to look at industrial design –a very difficult, very sophisticated craft– with fresh eyes. I’m able to approach these problems from crazy angles, because I haven’t spent twenty years immersed in the culture of industrial design,” he said.

“That and it’s sort of magical to have this thing sitting at home, this thing that makes physical objects out of nothing,” he said. “It’s just amazing.” (link)

Check out the entire article here.

Back in September, hot on the tail of World Maker Faire 2011, the MakerBot Marketing crew teamed up with ArtStar.com to help gifted artist and (at the time) recent MakerBot Operator newbie Micah Ganske develop and edition a small print-on-demand series of sculptural works for the Affordable Art Fair in New York. These pieces drew much attention around the time of AAF — including articles in The Wall Street Journal and a piece in Modern Painters magazine – even before becoming part of Ganske’s solo exhibition Tomorrow Land at RH Gallery, which closed only a few weeks ago.

Following a lead established by past MakerBot Artist-in-Residence Marius Watz, Ganske has just now released several of his projects on Thingiverse with a Creative Commons license that permits MakerBot Operators all over the world to make his sculptures for themselves. Like Watz, Ganske sees no difficulty offering both supervised and signed pieces of his work in a limited edition for a collectors/gallery setting and also offering a version for download for  those with 3D printers who wish to execute their own non-commercial replicas of his work.

The collaboration with Ganske — himself now quite an accomplished, enthusiastic MakerBot Operator — didn’t stop with his first pieces: he was commissioned by MakerBot to create illustrations, including what MAKE described as that “awesome poster annoucing the launch of The Replicator 3D printer“!

Check out Ganske’s releases here!

James Tiberius Kirk #1 by MicahGanske

This is a sculpture from my recent solo show, "Tomorrow Land"! You can read all about the meaning of the work here: rhgallery.com/site/exhibitions/tomorrowland/tomorrowland_pressrelease.pdf What's important is this sculpture features the silhouette of William Shatner cut out of a landscape. It's art so it's not "for" anything other than to impress your friends with your well-developed cultural palette.

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James Tiberius Kirk #2 by MicahGanske

This is a sculpture from my recent solo show, "Tomorrow Land"! You can read all about the meaning of the work here: rhgallery.com/site/exhibitions/tomorrowland/tomorrowland_pressrelease.pdf This is a variation on the first sculpture (also on Thingiverse). What's important is this sculpture features the silhouette of William Shatner cut out of a landscape. It's art so it's not "for" anything other than to impress your friends with your well-developed cultural palette.

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Shuttle R.I.P. by MicahGanske

This is a sculpture from my recent solo show, "Tomorrow Land"! You can read all about the meaning of the work here: rhgallery.com/site/exhibitions/tomorrowland/tomorrowland_pressrelease.pdf This sculpture commemorates the end of the shuttle program. The shuttle silhouette is cut out of a cemetery. Pour one out for this retired work-horse! It's art so it's not "for" anything other than to impress your friends with your well-developed cultural palette.

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We are looking forward to seeing Micah’s work appearing in homes and other settings around the world, and you might catch a glimpse of Micah’s posters in a city near you….

Keff's Weeping Skeleton Vampire Mummy Earphone Winder

Thingiverse citizen Keff just shared this awesome “Weeping Skeleton Vampire Mummy Earphone Winder.”  The earphone cord works perfectly as a faux-bandage around the mummy’s head.  This is absolutely my favorite earphone winder of all time.  Keff says of his creation:

I got a little carried away making a winder for my new earphones.

Hey Keff – if this is you carried away, don’t ever let anyone carry you back!  This is AWESOME!

Keff's Weeping Skeleton Vampire Mummy Earphone Winder by keff

I got a little carried away making a winder for my new earphones.

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Check out the the NY Times’ Gadgetwise blog, or yesterday’s print issue of the Times, for a quick FAQ on The Replicator! Warren Buckleitner wrote the piece, “A 3-D Printer for Under $2,000: What Can It Do?” after visiting the MakerBot booth at CES. He answers such burning questions as “What does a 3-D printer use?” and “How long does it take to make a plastic chess piece?” For more info, watch the video interview above that Buckleitner did with MakerBot’s  John Dimatos.

Are you up to date on MakerBot’s newest videos? If you missed the Replicator Music Video or the Thing-O-Matic Assembly Time Lapse be sure to check them out now! And while you’re on our YouTube page go ahead and subscribe to our channel so that you won’t miss the launch of Season 2 of MakerBot TV next month!

Or subscribe to our video podcast on iTunes!