A pride of ten mighty MakerBot Replicators have been striding about the country since mid January. And my, have they been busy:

• Meeting hundreds of thousands of people at a certain trade show in Las Vegas.
• Guest appearing on Live! with Kelly.
• Furiously printing out a time-scripted dualstrusion logo for The Endgadget Show.
• Representing for the “science fact” robots for science fiction/fantasy/video game/comics lovers at MEGACON.
• Producing fine sculptural pieces on display at the Affordable Art Fair in Los Angeles.
• And svelting about among the fashion elite as models for Asher Levine’s New York Fashion Week show.

But there remains a public debut that we at MakerBot are even more excited about: the shipping launch of pre-sale MakerBots out to our most eager and enthusiastic MakerBot Operators so far. A sprinkle of hundreds and hundreds of new and veteran Operators across six continents¹ who have seen what our new machines can do and are eager to invite The Replicator into their homes, schools, and businesses.

To make this tremendous boost of productivity possible, the entire MakerBot team has been leveling up. We’ve been adding staff, training and encouraging each other, and turning our Brooklyn facilities inside out to accomodate all of the new moving parts necessary to make our Replicator launch the smoothest MakerBot BotLaunch of all time.

I’d like to introduce you to a team of real heroes — the men and women working full-tilt to make the launch of The MakerBot Replicator as a fully-assembled kit a reality. A team that germinated from Colin’s one-man Fully-Assembled Thing-O-Matic operation a year ago into a deeply-integrated Productor/BotBuilder/Tester commando task force today. A task force laboring deep in the belly of the BotCave like a team of tough-as-nails sandhogs moving the earth under Manhattan.

Our machines have the word “Brooklyn” laser-etched into the back left corner, just above the unique MakerBot serial number: a real point of pride for our Brooklyn-based company. If you have ever had any question as to why that word is there, here’s your answer: our robots are assembled, tested, and shipped by a crew of remarkable humans, right here in Brooklyn, New York.

Watch Annelise’s video and then check out this slideshow for more portraits of some of the heroes of MakerBot.

1. Antarctica, we have our eye on you. [↩]

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!

Untitled by MicahGanske

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by MicahGanske

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by MicahGanske

This thing brought to you by

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….

Thingiverse is filled with useful items from the pig salt & pepper shakers to an array of cookie cutters. And who can forget the episode of MakerBot TV where Annelise MakerBotted her entire kitchen?

Jenn Garbee from LA Weekly’s Squid Ink food blog visited MakerBot at the Affordable Art Fair last week and was surprised to learn that “you could buy a 3-D printer for less than the price of dinner for four at The French Laundry.” (Yep, that’s $270 a person without alcohol or tip!) After perusing Thingiverse she blogged about the “Fun Food Things You Can Make on MakerBot’s New 3D Printer.” Check it out and start printing a hamburger press of your own!

If you are in the Greater Los Angeles Area, stop by the Affordable Art Fair this weekend to catch Keith and myself as we introduce the brand new MakerBot Replicator to the West Coast!¹ The remaining hours are today until 8pm and tomorrow (Sunday) from 11am until 6pm.

We have been running “Keith It!”² versions of 3D scans of people like Laurie Anderson, Bre Pettis, Keith Ozar, Phill Niblock, and others, as well as a few other favorites such as a (newly revised v18!) Barrel of Octopi, giant chess pieces, cows, work by Micah Ganske, and others.

We have been visiting with AAF neighbors and presenters such as ArtStar.com, the filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, and the LA-based Toy Art Gallery. We are even making 3D printed versions of vinyl art toys by awesome Art Toy heroes Luke Chueh and Dave Bondi for the Toy Art Gallery staff, work the gallery hasn’t yet had the opportunity to produce.

Quite a few MakerBot Operators such as Miles Lightwood (TeamTeamUSA), Theron Trowbridge and the crew at CRASHspace, and MakerBot’s Taylor Goodman (based in LA) have spent a lot of time with us at the booth, sharing things for us to print and generally introducing us to the wonderful design and DIY community here. We are hoping that Cliff who designed Chess Set I (that we are making giant) and other Thingiverse superstars will stop in also.

At night, we have been running all over town, introducing the machine to CRASHspace, UCLA’s engineering students, galleries and museums, and other hackerspaces. We have also been printing “Keith it!” busts of a cleaned up Beethoven model at night and placing them on the Thomas Organ in the lobby of The Standard – Downtown. To date, these custom 3D printed sculptures have been either stolen or disposed of by the hotel staff within a couple of hours of appearing. But we have photos to document.

Check out our photo gallery below!

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Wanna visit for free? drop a request to griffin at makerbot dot com by 11am on Sunday and he’ll see about adding you to the list with a comp’d ticket! [↩]
2. The software engineers working on revisions of ReplicatorG for our new machines created a button called “Keith It” to created maximum-sized objects to suit the new three-times-Thing-O-Matic build volume by Keith’s request. This name will only persist if you request it… [↩]

These awesome  sculptures were created by artist Micah Ganske as part of collaboration with MakerBot for Art Star gallery.  The Wall Street Journal wrote about this fantastic union of art and technology on their Metropolis culture blog, calling MakerBot the “latest hit on the art fair circuit.” Check out the entire post here.

Micah’s limited-edition designs were sold at last week’s Affordable Art Fair. Visit Thingiverse if you want to print one of your own!