MakerBot Industries

MakerBot Operator Stewart Starbuck let us know about his experience last weekend at the inaugural UK MakerFair. He’s provided a nice pack of photos from the event to check out. In the tradition of MakerFaire, it looks like a good time was had by all, and there was an abundance of 3D Printers!

Here’s a snip from Stewart’s report.

“I’ve completely worn out, but here they are, some of the pictures taken
from MakerFaire: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewartstarbuck/sets/72157626113449241/

It was an amazing event, which I would recommend to everyone.  I was really pleased to see such a huge interest in 3d Printing. There were a number of stands with printers, including a strong contingent from the RepRap folks, and all reported having had lots of positive feedback
from the public….We were printing out keychains (taking around 3 minutes each) that proved to be very popular. We couldn’t print them fast enough to keep up with demand. Seeing peoples faces when they watched the MakerBots print a piece all the way through then to take it with them was just simply awesome.

The wealth of other projects at the faire is just too great to put into words. There are lot of amazing people out there with some truly remarkable ideas, many of which will hopefully go on to change the world for the better!”

We hope so too, and thank you Stewart and Nick, and congratulations to everyone at UK MakerFaire!

Check out Stewart’s photostream here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewartstarbuck/with/5527788486/

The answer is “better than the original.”

Better than the original

I had first seen Ian Johnson‘s Soap Dish on Thingiverse months ago, thought “cool,” and moved on.  A few days ago I stumbled upon Ian’s Flickr photostream and finally got the full story.

This is the original soap dish from Pottery Barn. It rests in a fixture attached to the wall, from which it has fallen many times and broken. It can’t be replaced because the line has been discontinued, but I want to continue to use the fixture, since the pedestal sink doesn’t really have room for a soap dish.

Ian designed a replacement soap dish in halves, so it would fit on the MakerBot print platform and asked Will Langford to print the parts for him.  He then glued the two halves together with black ABS drain pipe cement from the hardware store, dipped the dish in an ABS cement/acetone bath to smooth out the texture, sanded it smooth, painted it with his ABS dip to give it a glossy finish, and then gave it several coats of white liquid plastic.  For more information on Ian’s exact process as well as his photos of the intermediate stages, check out his photostream.