MakerBot Industries

MakerBot is still looking to add to its team.  Are you made of the right stuff to be a Productor?  To work in the glamorous Botcave in fabulous Boerum Hill, Brooklyn?  If so, you’ll be in the trenches putting together the kits that go out to become MakerBots, and that makes it a very important position.

The position requires lots of attention to detail, but MakerBot is a blast to work for if you’re up for the challenge.

Here is the scoop on the open positions:

Duties & Responsibilities:
- Manual assembly of small products and kits
- Maintaining accurate inventory counts in our computer system
- Restocking supplies from warehouse

Requirements:
- Detail oriented. You pride yourself on getting it right every time.
- Self-motivator with a strong work ethic, and able to work in a fast paced environment
- Rock solid computer skills (e.g. Windows, Office, Internet)
- Able to lift 35 lbs

Bonus Qualifications:
- Experience using different types of shipping software (e.g. DHL, Endicia)
- Past experience or interest in robotics and 3D Printing
- Experience in shipping products for a large company
- Experience picking, packing and shipping customer orders

This position is full time 40 hours per week at $12 per hour.

We offer a fun working environment, a steady paycheck and the opportunity to be a part of the next manufacturing revolution.

If you’re interested, please email us your resume along with a brief explanation of why you want to work with us and how your qualifications & experience will add value to our company. hiring (at) makerbot.com

MakerBot Industries is back from MakerFaire Detroit 2011 — where Matt and Keith shared cool Space Month things from Thingiverse, met many incredible people, and found their fellow exhibitors Awesome. Check out our slideshow for highlights from the weekend.

Detroit is a special place, and the each year we make it to the Faire here it feels more and more essential that we do so. See you all at World MakerFaire NYC 2011 in September!

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.

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Colbert Head Gears by emmett

Thingiverse citizen Pattywac recently organized a “MakerStrong Mashup Design Challege.”  The winner was to receive $60.00 from Pattwac himself with MakerBot kicking in another $100.00 in store credit!  And now it is time to reveal that winner…

Despite the difficulty of working with and not ruining such a flawless bust, there were some great entries to the Makerstrong design challenge.  Entries ranging from the beautification of my favorite childhood claymation show (Gumbert by JamieClay), to a tool for the next Colbert wannabe/stalker (Large Stephen Colbert Head by ALxD) made the judging process entertaining.

In the end emmett was able to claim the prize with a “decidedly creepier derivative” of his Heart Gears, which he called the “Colbert Head Gears.”

Congrats to emmett, the first repeat winner of these design challenges!

Thanks to everyone who created an entry and hope to see you next time!

Emmett, make sure to send Pattywac your paypal info!

Colbert Head Gears by emmett

Colbert Head Gears by emmett

This is my tribute to the twisted mind of Steven Colbert. It is also a decidedly creepier derivative of thingiverse.com/thing:6291. Print, assemble, and twist Colbert's head to your heart's content.

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Here’s a dead simple but ingenious print: a watering spike to put on those ubiquitous two-liter bottles.  Maybe it’ll help keep your plants from getting too dry during these super-hot summer days.

eagleapex‘s version is derivative (or perhaps a parallel development of) another watering spike by arkatipe.  It’s nice to see great minds racing to the same conclusion — that we need more printable gardening implements!

If you’ve got a gardening-related item, make sure it’s properly tagged with the word “gardening.”  Or, if you’re still in the planning stages, we’re excited to see it, so please model it up and share it to Thingiverse!

Watering spike for 2L bottle by arkatipe

I'm leaving for my honeymoon in a couple of weeks, so I needed a way to keep my plants alive between the times when the neighbor will stop in to water everything. So I made this watering spike. My bit of testing showed that it took about 12 hours on average for the water in the 2L bottle to drain. It lasts a little longer if the ground is wet to begin with. EDIT 7/26/11: Spike with Threads added. This one also includes 3 "fill layers" in the middle of the spike, which makes a sort of filter at 90% fill. It slows down the drainage a little bit, and keeps particles from being sucked up into the bottle.

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Watering spike for 2L bottle with threads by eagleapex

I started working on this before arkatipe uploaded his spike with threads. This is the difference(); of his spike and my 2L bottle threads: thingiverse.com/thing:10489

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A few weekends ago, Sheila Dharmarajan from Bloomberg’s “Innovators” series came to the Botcave for a visit — check out the great piece that resulted!

A few favorite moments:

• Sheila Dharmarajan’s lead in: “I’m about to become a plastic toy.”
• Bre’s explanation why printing a small plastic household good you know you want on your MakerBot is a heck of a lot more environmentally conscious than purchasing something off-the-shelf that travels across the world, guzzling up fossil fuels, just to sit in climate-controlled retail store waiting for you to need it.
• MakerBot Operator Chris Anderson (incidentally, also Editor-In-Chief of WIRED) talking about the Thing-O-Matic as an example of democratizing technology.

Photo Credit: Steve Garfield

Those of you living in the Greater Boston Area might want to pick up a Boston Globe this morning. Flip to the Business section to read a great piece about MakerBot from Mark Baard:

You’ve seen the cliché beginning to a technology story a thousand times: “It sounds like science fiction . . .’’ But the sci-fi lead is irresistible when it comes to describing a gadget that automatically manufactures single copies of everyday objects, like a replicator in Star Trek…. What you manufacture with the Thing-O-Matic is limited only by your imagination, or what you can find among the plans posted at MakerBot’s Thingiverse.com website. (Read more.)

Baard talks about the fun you can print with a MakerBot, and then tells of “serious projects” Professor Audrey Lee-St. John and her students are accomplishing at Mount Holyoke with their Thing-O-Matic — including modeling to predict how proteins might move and a potential collaboration with roboticist Dan Barry.

For those of us lacking a Boston Globe today… check out the rest of the article here!

Michael Curry's display at Detroit Maker Faire 2011

It’s little wonder that Michael Curry, of the Cowtown Computer Congress, was the recipient of an Awesome Award at this year’s Detroit Maker Faire for showing off his Mario Cart racing cars (with remotes!), Christmas Lego men, Bathtub U-Boat, and a Portal sentry turret.

Thanks to Jon Speicher for the photo!

Northrop Grumman RQ-4 UAV Drone - (the coolest drone photo I could find!)

Using a 3D printing technique for nylon laser sintering engineers at the University of Southampton designed, printed, and flew a printed unmanned aerial vehicle¹²

No fasteners were used and all equipment was attached using ‘snap fit’ techniques so that the entire aircraft can be put together without tools in minutes.  The electric-powered aircraft, with a 2-metres wingspan, has a top speed of nearly 100 miles per hour, but when in cruise mode is almost silent.

With no need for special tools, tooling skills, equipment and no extra expense or time “penalty” for complex structures, they were able to produce wing structures that would have been extremely expensive and difficult to manufacture in any other way.  This is a truly amazing demonstration of the versatility of 3D printing and snap-fit designs.

Via Slashdot

1. Think drone airplane. [↩]
2. Photo courtesy of gordontour [↩]

This week’s installment of the wackiest weekly webshow about 3d Printing with MakerBots includes a demonstration of one of the Thing-O-Matic’s lesser-known properties, a timelapse of us printing a super-cool comedian, and a reminder from Matt about the new Thingiverse t-shirt.