That’s right kids!  The glow is back in 3 mm, and, is now available for the first time in 1.75 mm!!

If you’re like us, you love using your MakerBot for decoration, and this is the sine qua non for all your Halloween-related prints.  Why print a ghost when you can print a glowing ghost?  Or isn’t a glowing skull better than one that, you know, doesn’t glow?  And best of all, now you can print glowing objects with your Stepstruder® MK7!

We are seriously excited that this shipment is here in time to get it to you by Halloween — grab it now and have the scariest, glowiest Halloween party on your block!

Apologies for the delay in the Halloween charm challenge announcement.  I was in Washington, D.C. this past weekend showing hundreds of children how to fold paper airplanes for the USA Science and Engineering Festival and did not have a free moment!

Thanks to everyone who submitted Halloween inspired designs. There are now dozens of spooky 3D printer projects up on Thingiverse. There were many creative entries, and choosing a winner was not easy.

We have two winners!

Onneksi Olkoon PaSuTX:lle ja sen Bat Mobile. That means “Congratulations to PaSuTX and his Bat Mobile,” in Finnish. The Thingiverse user is from Finland, and I happen to know a little big of the language and I always love any excuse to use it. PaSuTX submitted several awesome designs, which is interesting considering they don’t celebrate Halloween in Finland. But we appreciate the Halloween spirit! Actually, in Finland Easter is sort of like Halloween because little kids dress up like witches and do a form of trick-or-treating. So there’s some bonus trivia for you about Finland. We hope to see this Bat Mobile printed in glow-in-the-dark ABS very soon.

The other winner is nicholasclewis, creator of the parametric spider web. We love that it’s fully configurable, and it prints very nicely.

Congratulations to the both of you. Please send along your shipping addresses for your free glow-in-the-dark ABS! Happy Halloween and keep posting your Halloween projects to Thingiverse.

John Abella, operator of MakerBot #1136, made a nice video of his Cupcake CNC printing a red fluorescent spider. He printed the spider to test some upgrades, including the new Plastruder MK5. The print took about 28 minutes, but he sped it up so you can see the full print in 7 minutes. Pretty!

Be sure to submit your own Halloween-inspired 3D print design to Thingiverse for a chance at some glow-in-the-dark ABS.

The temperature is dropping, and so are the leaves. That can only mean one thing – Halloween is ominously looming. To get you in the spirit of the season, we want you to design Halloween things – anything ghoulish, spooky, creepy, and cool. Be creative! Blow us away with your innovations.

A few parameters

1. Must be .stl file uploaded to Thingiverse and tagged with “Halloween”
2. Must be a new design as of 8 October, 2010
3. Deadline is Monday, October 18th at 11:11 p.m.
4. Must be innovative, spooky, and and printable with a MakerBot
5. Bonus points for requiring the Makerbot 3D Scanner v1.0 Kit, Unicorn, or Automated Build Platform

The best designs will be judged by our expert panel of holiday spirit guides, and creators of the best designs will receive a one pound roll of ABS!

Looking for inspiration? Check out some of these spooky designs already up on Thingiverse:

Whoodoo Box by Whystler

Spider ring by builttospec

Halloween smilie bob by deherzog

Ghost Bookmark by Mark A

Eyeball Monster by Zomboe

Chooch's Pfierce Z-axis extenders

Chooch is the current record holder for the MakerBot Hall of Fame Tallest Print with his print of the Sears Tower.¹ He’s been kind enough to share his designs for a Z axis extender with everyone. ^2 34

One of the most common questions and concerns about a MakerBot relate to the build volume.   I would tend to doubt most people ever find the build volume is much of a constraint. The larger an object is, the longer it takes to print. At a certain point it just makes more sense to use custom plastic parts mixed in with stock parts – pieces of wood, metal, or other cut pieces of plastic.

Chooch’s solution for more Z axis room is simple and elegant.  Having seen this, I would think there are ways to extend the X and Y axes slightly.  Then again, if more build area is what you require, there’s no reason you couldn’t just build a whole new printer out of MakerBot parts.  There’s no special magic to the MakerBot design.  If you had access to a laser cutter or wanted to cut the parts out of large sheets of plywood, you could build a Cupcake CNC ten times the size of a standard model – and still use a stock MK5 and electronics.

So, how are you going to hack your ‘bot?  Are you going to try for a height record?

1. You should see the list of scrapped blog post titles lying on the cutting room floor.  Most would not have been appropriate for a family blog. [↩]
2. And all it took was a minimum of cajoling. [↩]
3. I find it hilarious that anyone would think *I* have the ability to make anything “famous.” [↩]
4. I also find it amusing that this post is about a Thing that was uploaded after I mentioned it in a blog post about a new thing created by a guy who made a prior thing I had written a prior blog post about. [↩]

"Time is the fire in which we burn" - Delmore Schwartz

The future, according to William Gibson, has arrived – it’s just not evenly distributed yet. ¹  That’s why you, gentle reader, may already have a MakerBot Cupcake CNC while your envious neighbor does not.  So, it’s going to be a few years before you’re able to knock on your neighbor’s door and ask to borrow a cup of ABS.

27% of MakerBot’s entire stock of glow-in-the-dark ABS sold in the first 24 hours after it was put in the store.  I don’t know this for a fact, but I strongly suspect that this plastic is not going to be a regular item in the store.  If you think there’s any way for you to use glowing ABS in the next year, you should definitely pull the trigger now and justify it later.²

1. Photo courtesy of Leoo [↩]
2. Besides, the day before Halloween I’m going to knock on your door and say, “Hey man, do you have any spare glow-in-the-dark ABS?  I’m fresh out and I’m halfway through this print when I totally realized I forgot to buy the glow ABS I needed to finish this Jack-O’-Lantern for the kids at the children”s hospital who were all really excited about seeing some toys made by an open source robot, because if there’s one thing sick kids like it’s open source robots – not like those closed source robots we see every Christmas, so in a way you’d really be helping fight commercialism and expand the minds of youngsters who are going to be the ones who continue to develop our open source robots with their new ideas and build our open source robots with their tiny fingers, fingers, by the way, that are really useful for finding all those fiddly bits that you drop, but they shouldn’t be playing with the bits that heat up or use dangerous amounts of electricity, because that’s just not safe for kids, what kind of a monster are you wanting to put kids to work building robots???  So… Can I borrow some glow-in-the-dark ABS, or what?  I’ll only need a pound or so.  I promise to buy you another roll as soon as they’re back in stock.” [↩]

So... apparently scorpions glow under UV lights. Who knew?

Some things are just better in glow in the dark plastic than others.

10.  Things tagged with jewelery¹²

Basically any kind of jewelery would be better if it glowed in the dark.

9.  Firefly bracelet by neurothing

I suppose this is technically included as jewelery – but it deserves a spot of its because it’s a firefly.  I like fireflies.

8.  Spider Plus Ring by builttospec

There are few things more Halloweeny than a spider.  Unless you’re talking about a spider ring. 

7.  Glasses by langfordw

Imagine – glasses that make you see even better – without any change to your prescription!

6. Clip on reading LED by Conrad2468

You’ve only got the power of one little button battery.  If you’re doing something critical, say disarming a bomb with your light duty pliers, and the battery goes out.  Well, if you have Conrad2468′s clip on reading LED, you’ve got a few more precious seconds.

5.  Printable Key Rings by catarina

Anything that makes keys easier to find is a good thing.

4.  Things tagged with dock

Shave precious seconds off your response time to that late night phone call with a glow in the dark phone dock.

3.  Arc reactor prop with led light by dugdug22

This isn’t printable – yet.  When someone creates a printable version, I’m all over that.

2.  Smart Bra Clips by 2ROBOTGUY

This just makes sense.

1.  Skull Throwie by Orion

A skull that you are supposed to throw.  That uses LED’s and magnets.  What could be better?  Maybe if it glowed in the dark.

(Link to glow-in-the-dark ABS in the MakerBot store)

1. Don’t put a UV on a scorpion.  That will hurt it. [↩]
2. Photo courtesy of furryscaly [↩]