It’s been a very busy early summer here at the BotCave.  As many of you may know, shipping has been working around the clock (literally) to greatly reduce our lead time!  Software has just pushed out a huge update that enables new features!

For these reasons (and, OK, because the holiday falls on a Wednesday) we’ve decided to do something almost unprecedented in MakerBot history: we’re going to take a summer vacation. We’ll be spending our time doing totally legal things and eating health food.

What does this mean for you, our esteemed customer?

• Orders for The Replicator™ will still ship within the 30-day lead time!
• Shipping will be closed from July 2nd through July 6th.
• Shipping resumes July 9th.  Please allow us a few days to get through our backlog.
• There will be no phone support this week
• Email support will be available every day but July 4th.  Email [email protected] just like always!

Thank you for your patience while we take a well-deserved vacation!  We’ll come back refreshed, so we can continue help you turn your dreams into reality, print by plastic print.

Michael and I have successfully reached the Twin Cities from Madison, WI, in our 10-gallon-tank rental car, learning a little bit about Wisconsin history at each and every rest stop. Tonight we have the pleasure of co-hosting TWO Twin Cities maker meetups to share our pair of MakerBot Replicators: one at the relatively new makerspace The Mill and the other at the hackerspace Hack Factory with TC Maker. If you’d like to learn more about these great places, check out this great piece that came out today in the Twin Cities StarTribune detailing them and the maker movement that has very much exploded in this community.

THE MILL: 6pm-8pm

2300 Kennedy Street NE, Suite #130
Minneapolis, MN 55413
(651) 592.3372
http://www.mnmill.org/

HACK FACTORY: 8:30pm-11pm

3119 E. 26th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55406
http://www.tcmaker.org/blog/hack-factory/

There are MakerBot Operators in both spaces that we can’t wait to spend time with. The two places cater to a different slice of the very makery and inspiring community here, so I’m very much looking forward to the two-event night despite the road weariness and confusion about reality that comes from waking up in a different motel every day for a week.

I’ve been dreaming of visiting Minneapolis for years — and have a few friends here who I’m hoping will help me locate the ideal Capture Your Town challenge sites for the Minneapolis Maker MUG to tackle. (Anyone up for a CaptureSession tomorrow in the Twin Cities?) Also, I’ve been told by many American poets (95% of which are published or funded by some foundation, publisher or org in the  Twin Cities area) that this is one of America’s most cosmopolitan communities. Take that provincial New York City (with the demise of funding for individual artists and poets)!

The enterprising will join Michael and me to both events — and perhaps to a late night CaptureSession should we find a suitably lit public art piece to #capture! At any rate, as our evening shifts from entertaining to hacking, feel free to dive in to the Capture Your Town processing and uploading that we will be doing to share back the spoils of our rather intense-but-awesome tour.

This past weekend, Michael Curry and I verified that “everything is up to date in Kansas City” spending time at Hammerspace and Maker Faire Kansas City with the KC Fabricators MUG  and a bunch of the CCCKC crew. Well, we also got a chance to spend time with members of hackerspaces and makerspaces from all over the region, and have now embarked on a mini-tour to visit the home bases of handful of these great folks.

We are particularly aiming to connect with local MakerBot User Groups (MUGs) to introduce the Capture Your Town project — sharing tips and tricks from the field to help each group level up quickly and start sharing things they love about their towns on Thingiverse. Check the slideshow above for the latest snaps from our journey — and read below for chances to meet up with us on our travels this week!

ChiMUG CaptureSession — Chicago, IL — Monday, June 25th, 10am-1pm

Michael and I will be joining Mike Moceri, Tom Burtonwood, and other members of ChiMUG to hit the Art Institute of Chicago Museum and/or The Field Museum to perform some Chicago-focused Capture Your Town. This visit will be fast and furious: definitely an exciting day, all before lunchtime!

Milwaukee Makerspace — Milwaukee, WI — Monday, June 25th, 7pm-11pm

After completing the CaptureSession, Michael and I will head 2hrs north up to Milwaukee to spend an evening with the Milwaukee Makerspace crew sharing the MakerBot Replicators and printed objects we are bringing, and checking out this awesome space and community.

Sector67 — Madison, WI — Tuesday, June 26th, 6pm-8pm

Now, I’ve been excited about attending Sector67 for a couple of months now, after seeing images of Nathan Davis’s MakerBot/Arduino music project. We have heard that there are some awesome MakerBot Operators at this space and I certainly had a good time hanging out with members of this space in Kansas City. When they weren’t elbow (wrist?) deep into repairing their Power Racing Series vehicle, that is.

The Mill — Minneapolis, MN — Wednesday, June 27th, 6pm-8pm

Our first stop in Minneapolis is The Mill, a new educational industrial arts/maker space. The rumor on the streets of Maker Faire KC are that a gaggle of educators will be racing over to join us at The Mill for The Replicator demo as well as to learn about MakerBot’s curriculum resources and opportunities for the classroom. Also, there are a bunch of MakerBot Operators who orbit around this space: I’m looking forward to meeting them!

Hack Factory — Minneapolis, MN — Wednesday, June 27th, 8:30pm-11pm

After hanging out at The Mill, join us for “hacker hours” (i.e. late!) with Twin Cities Maker @ the Hack Factory for BBQ, beer, and all sorts of project show-and-tell and socializing. TC Maker has had MakerBots since the early days so I am looking forward to checking out what sort of 3D printing activity is going on here — and to see who’s running their MakerBots lately!

On Thursday, myself and three of my MakerBot colleagues Michael Curry, Tony Sherwood and Dave Neff, headed to the great midwestern metropolis that is Kansas City, Missouri, to prep for Maker Faire: Kansas City this Saturday.

Sticking to (what we were told to be) strict KC greeting traditions, we hosted a huge Oklahoma Joe’s MakerBot BBQ+Hackathon at Hammerspace last night, joined by a gathering of KC Fabricators MUG and other CCCKC & Hammerspace regulars, all itching for a chance to see a small herd of The MakerBot Replicators in action.

This town has a very special place in MakerBot’s (mechanical) heart – Michael and Tony in particular have spent a great deal of time here — and it has become over time the undisputed US midwestern Paris of the 3D printing world. Actually, it just might be the 3D printing “Paris” of anywhere in the world — take that Paris, France! — with more passionate 3D printing enthusiasts than just about anywhere you’ve heard of.

Maker Faire: Kansas City: Delights for Makers and Minions

Between the MakerBot booth and the tables of MakerBot Operators from all over the country, there will be quite a few 3D printed and 3D printing delights on hand for this “Show Me State” crowd — including sneak previews of MakerBot’s new colors of plastic, a tremendous printed Heart Gears to melt yours, a gorgeous data visualization of the Makers of Thingiverse created by Tony Buser, and Michael Curry’s robot Minion table.

What’s more, MakerBot’s Jeff and RJ have flown out to join us today and they have a handful of Replicators for visitors to purchase on-site, only the second time in history that this opportunity has been possible.

Capture Your Town: Kansas City Style (i.e. Slow-Smoked)

A “special mission” has been declared by the KC Fabricators MUG team: a call for anyone with pride in Kansas City to help capture or model a few of the many distinctive elements of the Kansas City skyline and get them up on Thingiverse.com with the tag “captured” and “kcfabricators“. The options proposed so far (that I have heard) have included the gigantic Shuttlecocks (see below) at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Liberty Memorial, the Power and Light Building, and (perhaps meant less sincerely?) 3D scanning the many merry locals staggering from location to location in the Power and Light ”drinking district.”

I’ll be on hand all weekend to help any of you who wish to dive into capturing tools like Autodesk’s 123D Catch – and keep your eye to the Community Capture Your Town project page for information and advice. I have promised to Craig and Luis that if KC Fabricators get KC monuments and other delights up by Friday or Saturday night at 10pm, I’ll download and take a look at printing the KC landmark at the MakerBot booth during the weekend.