Are you a 3D modeler? Our friends at GrabCAD, who sponsored our mascot design competition last Fall, have a non-MakerBot challenge running that several of our readers may find interesting.

This month’s contest, which started Monday and runs until April 18th at the end of the day¹ ,  includes over $10,000 in prizes from 3Dconnexion. The challenge page states:

3Dconnexion wants 3D mouse users to show non 3D mouse users what they are missing by creating a demo video! Why do you like using your 3D mouse? How does the superior 3D navigation and two handed work-style benefit you? Is it easier? faster? more comfortable? Something else? When do you get the most value? Creating parts? Mating assemblies? Client presentations?

How many of our users have or are interested in this technology? We look forward to hearing your entries and sharing them with the MakerBot community!

1. and we really mean end of the day: “11:59 PM in the last Time Zone.” [↩]

Above is just a quick screenshot of some of the latest robot mascots to roll in to the GrabCAD challenge. With over 75 entries so far — and enough correspondence suggesting another thirty or so robots soon to debut — the competition is no longer just heating up, it is passing through a state change.

If you are still putting the final touches on your entry, make sure to check the entry deadline time and requirements carefully. With this many incredible entries, there is no chance GrabCAD will be extending the deadline. And it would be a terrible tragedy for this entry window to close with your (robotic) baby tapping its fore-limb against the porthole of the GrabCAD MakerBot Challenge airship.

Toy Robot Toolkit by tbuser

There are now 21 entries in the MakerBot Mascot GrabCAD Challenge with just 9 days to go!  You can check out the hopeful robot mascot competitors here.  There’s still time to design and upload your own!

We really want — really need — a 3D printable cute robot mascot.¹ So when we heard that GrabCAD wanted to collaborate with us, we took this opportunity to create a challenge on their site and put up a brand new MakerBot Thing-O-Matic kit as stakes for the engineer who blows our minds and warm our hearts.

The concept of the robot is wide open so feel free to enter creatures of all shapes and styles. Inspired by the lunchbox on wheels that rolled around on the Death Star in Star Wars? Great! You’re a fan of humanoid robots like the B9 from Lost in Space? Super! All shapes of robots’ designs are expected to participate. The winning entry will become the lead MakerBot Robot Mascot. It is very likely that most, if not all entries will be filmed for MakerBot.TV videos. The finalists will have their robots 3D printed on a MakerBot at MakerBot HQ and sent to them.

You may submit as many robots as you like, just don’t wait around! This competition ends on September 28th.

The inspiration for this challenge is Tony Buser’s “BOB” robot. We saw this and all we could think of was “MORE!”, especially considering the popularity of robot models in the Thingiverse, on GrabCAD’s Library, and elsewhere in the Internet kingdom.

Bob is built from a toolset of robot parts that include joints for arms and ears. This toolset gives you a nice set of components that you can use to make your robot design have pose-able parts. The toolset also includes the MakerBot M logo design to make it easy to badge the robot with it. Using the toolset is not required, but we wanted to make the functioning side as easy as possible for people to express their robo-creativity, so some of the components are offered up front for optional use in this challenge.

We’re doing this with GrabCAD, a great community and platform for engineers to collaborate and get hired to make things. Head on over to GrabCAD to read the rules and requirements, and get started with our challenge. We hope that you will post your projects on Thingiverse as well as GrabCAD so that both communities can benefit from your creativity!

1. Yeah, we said “cute.” [↩]