MakerBot Industries

Not for your Spanish Omelet.

For those who thought to themselves, “I want an Egg-Bot, but it won’t work for me on my ostrich farm,” this one’s for you. The Ostrich Egg-Bot kit is a special, extra large version of the original open-source Original Egg-Bot kit with a chassis that fits larger objects, up to 6.25″ in diameter(!) – perfect for ostrich, emu, and your run-of-the-mill jumbo chicken eggs.

It can tackle wine glasses, Christmas ornaments, mini pumpkins, and more, so vegetarians can get their paint on, guilt-free!

The Ostrich Egg-Bot is equipped with CNC cut plywood, and laser engraved calibration and assembly marks. With high-torque precision stepping motors, this bot means business. Get one today!

Eggbot omelet recipe by dnewman

If you thought an egg sporting it’s own nutritional information was awesome, it’s time to check out Dan Newman’s egg with a recipe for omelets written on it by use of an Egg-Bot.¹

Eggbot omelet recipe by dnewman

...or "omelette" if you prefer. These files are for plotting an omelet recipe on eggs using an Eggbot. Use the file omelet.svg or omelet-1-serving.svg if you park the "pointy" end of your eggs at the egg motor cup. Use omelet-flipped.svg or omelet-1-serving-flipped.svg if, like me, you park the fat end of your eggs at the egg motor's egg cup. (Less slippage when you do that, eh?) Note that the text is sized such that you don't need a nano sized pen tip: I used a Sharpie Ultra Fine for the pictured egg. So how many servings for omelet.svg and omelet-flipped.svg? Those two files have a "2 serving" recipe which calls for two eggs. If you desire a more self-contained recipe, then go with the "1 serving" variants. And, if you need nutrition info, well just see thingiverse.com/thing:7232 and then mentally add in the 2 or 1 Tbsp of cream and 3/4 or 1/2 Tbsp of butter. (Butter is about 100 calories per Tbsp and there's about 50 calories per Tbsp for heavy cream [the yummy stuff].) Bon appetit!

This thing brought to you by

1. On a slightly related note, I really love how unpredictably meta Thingiverse has become. [↩]

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.

Portal Turret by EggyWeggs

Easter and finishing Portal 2 inspired me to make this basic turret template for use with the Egg-Bot. The back of the design has one of the famous quotes by everyone's favorite, child-like home defense product. Watch it being printed here: youtube.com/watch?v=U4bl18mVOv4

This thing brought to you by

Ether Egg by linuxwrangler

Diethyl Ether diagram to make "ether egg". Happy Ether!

This thing brought to you by

Egg TARDIS by pmcall221

It is an TARDIS in egg form. A must have for any doctor who fan. This is in honor of the season preimer of Doctor Who April 23rd at 9 / 8 Central on BBC America.

This thing brought to you by

Read the rest of this entry »

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 [↩]

Brass Stanford Bunny, printed by Isaac Dietz

As with every holiday calendar event that rolls through the T-verse, the approach of Easter this coming Sunday has been the inspiration for a number of outstanding seasonal objects contributed to Thingiverse.com. Ethan featured Zydac’s cute Eggbunny last week¹, but check out some of the other great offerings. (Thingiverse-tagged as “easter.”)

HASENFRANZ Easter Bunny Cookie Cutter by elk

There are a few cookie cutter options, including Elk‘s Easter Bunny Cookies and brettjones Easter Bunny Cookie Cutter. (Make your own cookie cutters by using guru‘s Cookie Cutter Generator v2!) Stage your stained/painted/chocolate eggs in bpijls‘s BunnyCup – Bunny Footed Egg Holder. Of particular usefulness to those of you working with OpenSCAD to design Easter-flavored objects, you’ll want to grab nicholasclewis‘s Parametric Egg and take a look at TeamTeamUSA‘s impressive Virtual Easter Eggs color/multi-print assembly project for ideas and parts for your OpenSCAD or MeshMixer masterpieces. Also, if your Easter egg hunt actually involves firearms, don’t forget vik‘s Egg-Shaped Target.²

And this doesn’t even get us started with the t-verse’s prolifically breeding colony of Standford bunnies….

Stanford Bunny

Stanford Bunny, printed by mah_digilife

The Stanford Bunny model has a venerable computer visualization pedigree previous to becoming one of the more iconic Thingiverse first objects for printing or mashing-up. The bunny is but one of the more popular models from the Stanford 3D Scanning Repository, a collection of high resolution scans made available by Greg Turk and Marc Levoy in 1994 to assist computer scientists working with mesh tools who do not have access to high resolution scanning hardware. According to the Bunny’s Wikipedia article, the Bunny was scanned from a ceramic figuring, and “consists of data describing 69,451 triangles.”

Here’s an intriguing note from the scanners about their models:

As you browse this repository and think about how you might use our 3D models and range datasets, please remember that several of these artifacts have religious or cultural significance. Aside from the buddha, which is a religious symbol revered by hundreds of millions of people, the dragon is a symbol of Chinese culture, the Thai statue contains elements of religious significance to Hindus, and Lucy is a Christian angel; statues like her are commonly seen in Italian churches. Keep your renderings and other uses of these particular models in good taste. Don’t animate or morph them, don’t apply Boolean operators to them, and don’t simulate nasty things happening to them (like breaking, exploding, melting, etc.). Choose another model for these sorts of experiments. (You can do anything you want to the Stanford bunny or the armadillo.)³

Well, thank goodness for this, as the Stanford Bunny, as brought into Thingiverse very early on from Operator archiveman and then cleaned up for easier printing by phooky, has become along with the Gangsta one of the most frequently mashed-up and manipulated base models. It is even a base model in Ryan Schmidt’s wildly useful MeshMixer app.⁴

So when you are looking for treats to print this week (or this year, given that this is the Year of the Rabbit), don’t overlook gpvillamil’s Tron bunny, mrbug’s Bunny Trouble game or Optime Bunnyus, mifga’s Rabbitsta, and of course phooky’s printable-classic Stanford Bunny. My favorite Standford Bunny print involves simply taking phooky’s model and scaling it to 0.4 or 0.5 in ReplicatorG for execution with a Stepstruder MK6.

The Original Egg-Bot

While the Original Egg-Bot kits are currently back-ordered at Evil Mad Science, we still have a number of the kits in stock. Finding chocolate Easter eggs hidden in the backyard is one thing … but what if your love ones discovered a kit for building a robot to plot artwork on egg-shells on their Easter egg hunt?

A t-verse catalog of several compelling Easter-related models follows after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. an instant “I must print!” design [↩]
2. A note from Vik’s Thingiverse post: “Unlike real Easter Eggs, you should only practise on these targets with plastic Airsoft BB’s – Unless you just get a kick out of blowing things to smithereens” [↩]
3. Ed. My emphasis. [↩]
4. MeshMixer is back in active development now — grab the latest version for Mac or PC and add some literal Easter eggs to your other models [↩]

Eggbot Nutrition Label by dnewman

Have you noticed the recent marketing of prepackaged produce?  I’m not talking about washed, bagged lettuce here.  I’m talking about a prune or a banana in a single serving plastic wrapper.  The prune, okay, maybe.  Unless you’re buying prunes individually this just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort.  As for bananas, pineapples, oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, avocados, kiwi, mangoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, and any other fruit where you do not consume the exterior…  I just don’t get it.  Perhaps it’s more pushed by a desire to utilize more marketing space on produce?

Dnewman’s solution is beyond elegant.  Why not just print the nutritional information right on the produce using an Eggbot??  I just LOVE this idea!  I would absolutely buy eggs from any producer that did this.  Not only is this idea so so so cool, but it opens the door to all kinds of other food labeling robots.  I mean, who wouldn’t want a Mangobot 2000?  Oh, and if you’re going to buy an apple, pear, or other fruit or vegetable where the exterior is consumed, why not just print with an edible ink? ¹²

Eggbot Nutrition Label by dnewman

In need of nutrition information for your large eggs? Then this drawing is just what you've been looking for! This is a 3200 x 800 pixel plot intended for plotting with the Eggbot. P.S. The text was rendered using the new Hershey Text extension by Windell Oskay and distributed with the latest Eggbot software release. It may be found in Inkscape under Extensions > Render > Hershey Text (after you update to the latest Eggbot software). The utility of that extension is not limited to just the Eggbot. Among other things, it provides nice, non-filled, single stroke fonts ideal for use in CNC and CNC-related applications.

This thing brought to you by

1. I suppose this would cause an infinite regression of trying to then print the ink’s own nutritional information on the ink itself…  [↩]
2. Wibbly wobbly… [↩]
3. I’m just letting it be known I had to restrain myself from using a number of other adjectives here. [↩]
4. Frankly, this is the mark of incredible self-control [↩]
5. I didn’t use the words extraordinary, example, or exemplary. [↩]

Thingiverse citizen Pattywac recently launched two design challenges – a Holiday Design Challenge and a MakerMe Design challenge.  Each winner gets $40.00 from Pattywac and an additional $100.00 in MakerBot store credit from MakerBot Industries!  Without further ado, here’s Pattwac’s announcement of the winners!

Holidays Challenge

Nicholas C. Lewis' print of Kliment's Holiday Prusa Mendel Set!

There ended up being 21 holidays-tagged items to judge, many of them being closely evaluated to each other.  Thingiverse citizen Kliment ended up winning with the Holiday-ized Prusa Mendel design, in part, due to the huge response from the community.  This design was able to incorporate the holiday spirit and will continue to give for years to come by allowing others to print other Things and hopefully other 3-D printers.

MakerMe Challenge

Nutcracker by psync

There were only two entries to this contest but they were both pretty cool.  Citizen psync was able to fit his Holidays Nutcracker into the MakerBot for some z-axis walnut smashing action while citizen Nickames was able to create an egg-bot style attachment for the Makerbot.  Nickames ended up taking home the W with the egg-bot attachment due to the response from the community and the fact that it will allow a whole new range of designs to be posted on and printed from Thingiverse.

Congratulations Kliment and Nickames!

Earlier this week, Andy put together our newest kit – Evil Mad Scientist’s Egg-Bot!
Before we got ourselves all yolky, we decided to try some light bulbs.
I was hoping we could get a cool gobo-effect from printing on the bulb.
The light effect didn’t work so well, but they do look great, especially if you have ‘em on a dimmer!

Here’s a video of it printing a demo pattern that we found on the website.

Check out Matt Griffin's Poe Portrait on Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/image:23744

Getting in the spirit of the season is so much fun with open source robots! If you need some help, take some inspiration from Edgar Allen Poe. Get yourself a Unicorn and print yourself your own Poe. The design was uploaded to Thingiverse by Matt Griffin. Nobody sends Halloween cards. Why is that? I would love to get one. My suggestion: hand print your own Halloween cards. Put Mr. Poe on the front, and put this quote inside:

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” -Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven