Almost two and a half years ago, Wade Bortz (aka Wade on Thingiverse) uploaded a machine titled Wade’s Geared Nema 17 Extruder. Here is the simple one-line description:

A printed spur gear driven extruder for Mendel or Darwin.

This is one of only two things Wade has uploaded to Thingiverse, but sometimes it’s quality, not quantity. Take a look at the graph below — made by mad data scientist tbuser — that shows  all the derivatives this single upload has sparked.

The yellow circle in the center is Wade, and the two blue dots are each of his uploads. The other Thing, a Projector Ceiling Mount, was derived just once and the family tree stops there. But the Wade Extruder sparked 17 derivatives, which in turn sparked derivatives of their own, etc.

If this Thing were a person, it would have 17 children, 8 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren, 14 great-great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great-great-grandchild. And since each of these things can have “copies”, which aren’t shown in the graph, there are a bunch of clones floating around out there, too.

This is a big, happy Thing family, and it all came from one person sharing a good idea.

Sharing is caring.

Mark Durbin's Busy Modeling Station

Recent MakerBot Operator Mark Durbin (MakeALot at Thingiverse) has been shaking up the Thingiverse scene with a tremendous number of models and prints uploaded since January of this year when he put together his MakerBot Thing-O-Matic kit. In particular, we have him to thank for a number of the now iconic braided and knotted vessels, statuettes, and bracelets that he has been coaxing out of OpenSCAD. His more intricate designs have become key models MakerBot Operators with Stepstruder MK6s use for challenging their stepper extruders to print multiple disconnected regions: reversal techniques for string-free printing to the max!

I emailed Mark around the time he released his second spiral cup to ask him about his working process and tools.

A Study in Spirals

Looking at the linear and rotated extrusions in the OpenSCAD manual, I thought it might be interesting to combine both of these, imagining a wavy line going round in a circle, but of course, “twist” isn’t available on the rotated extrusion.  I tried to create one with a section of linear extrusion, laid it on its side and rotated copies of it about 360 degrees, but it didn’t look good. While playing with this, the idea of the pencil cup came to me, originally with all the spirals going in the same direction, but then I thought of flipping each alternate one to link them, so I fiddled about with the distances and the angles of rotation for a while and when it looked right, I added a cylinder for a base and a torus for a top edge. The spirals themselves intruded into the centre and out of the cup a long way, so I flattered them using the scale command. I was so pleased with the result, I set it printing and published it at the same time.

Untitled by MakeALot

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Much more interview, after the fold! Read the rest of this entry »

Who has been rocking Thingiverse and doing cool and amazing stuff?  The Thingiverse All-Stars!

Most Derivatives - Syvwlch

Thingiverse citizen Syvwlch has uploaded an amazing 13 derivatives works.  The ability to make, remix, and improve upon the hard work of others is part of what makes Thingiverse and open licensing great.  Without the original designs, perhaps Syvwlch wouldn’t have thought to make some of his derivatives.  And, without Syvwlch we would have far fewer choices of things to print out from Thingiverse.

While capturing media for a new “Meet the MakerBot Operators” profiles series, I have been microphoning MakerBots in the BotCave while printing objects. As an unexpected fruit of my labor: I am  issuing “MakerBot Sound Library 001: The Pulley” @ Thingiverse to encourage attention to the bots’ sound/music-related properties. This #001 edition focuses on the sounds associated with printing the pulley object.

What does your print sound like? Does your bot have a voice, a lisp, a rattle that you want to share with the world?

• Pulley part 7.
• Y-axis shift.
• Z-axis shift.
• Finished printing “bark.”

The community is encouraged to make use of these sounds in video/sound/music/etc projects associated with their print projects — and share back by issuing compositions, shaping sounds and beats, creating beat loops/battle breaks and instruments, etc, as derivatives of the pertinent Sound Library edition. Or how about sharing your MakerBot recordings as a Sound Library of your own so that others can take a listen? (Grab the next consecutive Sound Library edition number and go for it.)

Over Memorial Day weekend, MakerBot MakerBot staffer Isaac has been evangelizing the MakerBot as tool for sound at Movement: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival, and I am exciting about the possibilities. I simply have no idea yet what need or use exists for MakerBot sounds, and I count on you to grab the samples and go for it — create Ableton Live instruments, chiptunes-friendly encodings, ringtones, startup-tones, pbx voicemail menu trees …

• X-axis long cross.
• Tweezers.
• The Raft.
• ABS filament extrusion.

The original recordings are largely mono, 48k, 24bit .wav files using a boom microphone, contact microphone and Marantz handheld recorder. This edition being the first audio-only thing @ Thingiverse, please share feedback about what sounds and media format (bit rate/sample rate/format/codec) you need with me.