It’s about to get really Maker Faire-ish on this blog! The MakerBot team is gearing up for our trip to San Mateo this week, where we will be throwing down some awesome with Makers from around the globe. Whoa-I-can’t-wait-why-isn’t-it-Saturday-yet?

If you’re going to be a part of Maker Faire this weekend, please stop by and say hello to us. But be prepared for MakerBot staff to be super interested in you and what you like to make.

Lots more info to come, but here are our Top Five Makers this year that we can’t wait to visit. Notice: this list is subject to change before the day’s out.

Cory Soto’s Dalek — building a “Dalek Mutant Vehicle…on a Yamaha G9 gas engine”. He’s been documenting his progress here.

Christian Ristow’s Face Forward — oh come on you have to be kidding me! A 12-foot tall robotic human face controlled by a bunch of joysticks. “Members of the public may operate the levers and play their part in the orchestration of an ongoing “river” of facial expressions.”

Wearable Computing Fashion Show by Lynne Bruning – “A fashion show that features wearable computing, soft-circuits and eTextiles from multiple designers, innovators and makers.” What more can I say?

Andrew Kaye’s 8x8x8 LED Cube — MORE LEDs!!!!! Filling a giant box with 512 LEDs is one of the best things one person can do for another person. Awesome.

Evil Mad Scientist’s High Tech Pumpkins – electronic, robotic pumpkins this Halloween. This is the world we want to live in. Evil Mad Scientist is going to show us how.

MakerBot Industries collaborated with The New Museum Store to construct a very different kind of holiday window display than you’d find at Macy’s. A sci-fi fanatic’s fantasy, the window display is a science-fiction-meets-holiday-window mashup. Little green elves in Star Trek-like outfits fight with lightsabers while automaton snowmen resembling the Daleks out of Dr. Who scan the horizon. Another pair of elves circle a gigantic stack of presents (shaped like the silhouette of the New Museum) on the back of a train powered by an Iron Man-inspired arc reactor, pushing a DeLorean time machine. 3D-printed gifts burst from a New Museum-edition MakerBot Thing-O-Matic right into the back of a Cylon-Santa’s sleigh, pulled by X-Wing reindeer.

The printed elements from the New Museum window will be documented at our MakerBot Workshop page and available for free download at the beginning of December from MakerBot’s online community website, Thingiverse.com, where users can post digital design files, document their designs, and collaborate on open source hardware. MakerBot Operators can download and print their own sci-fi holiday scene!

Visitors to New York wishing to see the window should head over to the New Museum at 235 Bowery this holiday season to check it out.

Dalek Edition - Candy Dispenser Topper by TeamTeamUSA

Having known a few Pez dispenser collectors in my time, I have always figured it was just a matter of time before the addiction showed up on Thingiverse. Even better than a model of a Pez dispenser, here’s a thing-post that instructs you how to create “toppers” for existing Pez dispensers using any item on Thingiverse:

The Dalek is just one topper that can be printed using the attached dispenser_insert.stl; virtually any thing on Thingiverse can be turned into a topper with the correct transformations and support material (so sharpen your support-fu)!

As I have been researching support for a week or so, I’m particularly excited about this challenge, and am hunting through Thingiverse for potential candidates.

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Panoramic Egg (parametric too!) by MakerBlock

Basic Egg Cup, printed by Mark Cohen

I talked with Keith, MakerBot’s Marketing Manager, last week — he had a theory why so many great things went up on Thingiverse around Easter / Passover: ”This season is already really crafty, like Halloween. You are expected to create decorations while drawing families together — so this is a great Thingiverse season.”

So much awesome¹ went up after my Stanford Bunny post last week that I wanted to highlight a few more favorites. A number are egg-focused, including MakerBlock’s incredible parametrical panoramic egg.² So another reason must certainly have something to do with eggs, eggshells, egg-bots, and the things you can do with all of these things.

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1. Keith’s favorite word [↩]
2. Mashups are no longer just hijinks, they are becoming some of my favorite designs on Thingiverse. I cannot wait to have the time to try to print MakerBlock’s design, as well as Chick In Egg by nicholasclewis [↩]