MakerBot Industries

Brooklyn Borough President, Marty Markowitz, stopped by MakerBot HQ this afternoon to chat with MakerBot CEO and co-founder, Bre Pettis.

Markowitz admires a giant 3D-printed chess piece

Bre explains how The Replicator works

Roger Yu explains the explosive growth of 3D printing among entrepreneurs and hobbyists in USA TODAY Tech.

Bonus: This awesome video interview with Bre Pettis from inside the Botcave!

Crain’s New York Business just featured MakerBot in an article on the growing presence of 3D printing in NYC. The story looks at the expansion of the industry and the potential that it offers the city.

A sneak peek from the article: “The technology is transforming industries such as jewelry-making, medical devices and architecture. New York City, with its robust design trade, may be a natural home for 3-D printing. Indeed, the Bloomberg administration is betting that the technology will create new businesses and help existing ones be innovative and more competitive.”

The press are weighing in on MakerBot’s NYFW collaboration with Asher Levine…

CNN’s Laurie Segall says “3D printed glasses are Fashion Week’s hottest accessory” - Read the article

MTV Style exclaims “Yay, 3D printing for everyone!” – Read the article

BlackBook Magazine calls The Replicator a “highlight of the show” – Read the article

Portfolio.com ponders, “Can 3-D printers revolutionize fashion?” – Read the article

The new issue of The Economist has a nice piece on Maker Faire, which includes mention of MakerBot and Arduino as players in the future of the maker movement. You may recognize our booth (and maybe some familiar faces) from this year’s NYC Maker Faire, in the photo above! Hit up your local newstand for a copy or read the article online here.

Children's Tent Joiner by darthcarter

Thingiverse citizen darthcarter has shared their designs for this Children’s Tent Joiner.  Darthcarter’s friend’s children had broken a corner bracket for their play tent and this quick printing fix is the solution.

What struck me about this fix is that I remember fixing a friend’s kid’s tent about two years before I had purchased my first 3D printer.  Unlike the elegant fix¹ above, my solution was a mess of tape, plastic cut from a 2-liter bottle, was frustrating to create, and didn’t work very long at all. ²

What would you have fixed if only you had a 3D printer at your disposal?

Children's Tent Joiner by darthcarter

A friend of mine has two young kids, and, as is normal some of their toys aren't indestructible. 3D printing to the rescue, and there is now a compatible corner part for "Free Time 4 Kidz" Tent. She also suggested the excellent category of "Replacements for stuff that kids break"

This thing brought to you by

1. Seriously, that’s probably seven lines of code! [↩]
2. Then again, not much works for very long once you toss a 2-year-old inside… [↩]

Check out this book trailer for bestselling author and Internet pioneer Steven Johnson‘s The Innovator’s Cookbook (on sale October 4, 2011).  Helen Yentus, the designer of the book cover (featured in the video), worked with our team to 3D print the letters on a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic. This video documents her process from first sketch — to MakerBotting the letters — to photo shoot — to printed book. Cover photo and video are by YDESIGN.

Here are some details about the book from the video description.

The Innovator’s Cookbook is an essential book for anyone interested in innovation: the key texts on the topic from a wide range of fields as well as interviews with successful, real-world innovators, prefaced with a new essay by Johnson that draws upon his own experiences as an entrepreneur and author.

Dutch Design Week

Jakajima is organizing an international conference focused on home 3D printing to take place on October 25, 2011 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, during the Dutch Design Week. From the organizer, Pieter Hermans, the topics will include:

1. Patent/IP Issues
2. 3D Content Publishing
3. The technical expertise required for 3D design
4. Trends in 3D printing materials
5. Trends in 3D printing
6. 3D printing in the home, social and cultural implications
7. 3D printing in the home and new business opportunities

For more information, check out their website!

Wow, just one short week after I issued the challenge (or request, really…) sirmakesalot comes through with this amazing print.

Ok, so this doesn’t have a fully-working valve assembly or intake/exhaust manifolds, sure.  But the thingiverse community (sirmakesalot anyway) knocked this one out pretty quickly…and that makes my head dance with ideas about fully-printable, crowd-sourced engine upgrades.  Sure, we can reprogram ECUs, and there are even some intrepid souls out there converting their hybrids to plug-in…but this is really exciting stuff.  Want to bore out your engine?  Just print a new block and some new cylinders.  Taller cruising gear?  Print it out!  I bet there’ll be parametric scripts to generate custom transmissions.  The only question is…who will have them?  Just your mechanic, or will your Tesla econobox come with the source code?

Ok, we can’t run gasoline through these ABS models (yet), but this is amazing work.  Her’s a big tip of the cap to sirmakesalot and his inspiring work.

4 cylinder motor by sirmakesalot

Like my single cylinder motor? Well here is a four cylinder demonstration model. I like to make mechanical things and this was something I wanted to model in 3d. The printable v8 is on the way! It was brought to my attention that the STL files weren't all they could be so I have fixed them, no more Skieinforge errors! I have added a larger set of pistons but it requires really good settings.

This thing brought to you by

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 [↩]