MakerBot Industries

Lightsaber for a 2-year-old by bryanduxbury

If Halloween has snuck up on you this year, there’s still time for a costume – especially if you have a MakerBot 3D printer!  Check out these awesome and quick to print costumes:¹

1. A Mustache.  Sometimes all you need for a little bit of anonymity is a simple disguise – such as a mustache.  There are at least a dozendifferent variations on mustaches on Thingiverse.  My personal favorite is the Mustache Ring for it’s silliness and simplicity.  You could probably print a Mustache Ring in less than 10 minutes.  Bonus points for printing extras for friends who have forgotten their costumes.²
2. Autobot or Decepticon Ensigna.  Those tricky robots can hide as just about anything…  So why not a human?  Affix to a shirt and proudly display your robotic affiliations.
3. A demon tail.   With little more than a forked tail and perhaps some makeup, you could be a demonic attendant.  For bonus points, carry around a contract for the purchase of souls and a bag of empty promises.  If a tail is too understated, why not go for horns?  You have your choice of double-horn or the  single horn unicorn variety.  Again, this print might be so quick you could carry extras – or use them to adorn shoulders, elbows, and knees.  These little ghost figurines might even make excellent horns to round out the costume.
4. A brain slug.  Printed in nuclear green and glued to a simple hair clip, these little guys are a fashion statement, indispensable accessory, and an instant geek-cred costume.
5. Star Trekcommunications badge.  With nothing more than a communications badge, you’re totally ready for an away mission!  Bonus points for wearing a red shirt.
6. Green Lantern mask.  The only problem with this printed mask is that in order to get it to conform to your face, you’re going to need to mold the print while it is still warm.  You need nimble fiberglass fingers to do it properly or you risk becoming cast in the title role of an Alexander Dumas or Gaston Leroux novel.  If you’re committed to this one, don’t forget your Green Lanternring options!
7. Pirate hook.  A hook by itself is very persuasive evidence of one’s pirate-status.  If you need a little more flare, don’t forget the eye patch.  If you’ve still got time before the Halloween festivities start, you could also print up a nifty telescoping tube set for use as a spyglass. ³
8. Light Saber.  While there are some really intricate light sabers on Thingiverse, you can definitely crank out this little one for that padawan in your life.
9. Sonic Screwdriver.  Don’t believe in weapons but do believe in technology?  Me too.  Well, with just this little prop you too can be a madman with a box.⁴  Triple bonus points for printing your own TARDIS.  If someone points out that it is too small, just assure them they are just very far away.
10. Arc Reactor.   There are several excellent arc reactor designs on Thingiverse.  If you don’t have time to wire one up, you can always print it in glow-in-the-dark ABS or flourescent yellow.

What’s your favorite printed costume?

1. I figure most, if not all of these items could be printed in about 15 minutes or so. [↩]
2. And who obviously don’t own a Makerbot! [↩]
3. And, a tiny treasure chest for itty-bitty booty [↩]
4. How could I NOT do this?! [↩]

Hey everybody – it’s the big day, so I sure hope you have your costume all sorted out!  We’ve been ready for awhile now, as you can see in this special Make Live segment, which features many MakerBotters showing off their finery, and a real Space Kitty!

Not too impressed?  Wow, you must have something really super all lined up.  Well then –  you’d better share your amazing costume with us in the comments!

This week on MakerBot TV hear all about how MakerBot Industries and Miles Lightwood are using 3D printing to help out hermit crabs, also find out how you can use your makerbot to prepare yourself for halloween and get a tour of NYC with MakerBot’s new mascot!

Special Thanks to Thingiverse user Fido for the evil eyes earwear and ghost keyring designs, daviddotshaw for the bat, ghost and pumpkin magnet designs, builttospec for the spider ring, colehard for the pumpkin, Wajazn for the MB/RepRap jack-o-lantern, nicholasclewis for the spider web, lampmaker for the glasses, and SuperAmi for the pirate hook. And a special thanks to Kevin MacLeod and Alan Bjorklund for the music.

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!

Pirate Hook by SuperAmi

Thingiverse citizen and MakerBot dad SuperAmi has shared what is sure to be a Halloween favorite – a parametric pirate hook!  One of the most amusing things about this picture is that it really looks like SuperAmi’s son is running at top speed.  In my family the refrain of “You’ll put your eye out!” has been passed down through generations.  I can just picture this pirate tyke responding, “No I won’t!  I’m wearing an eyepatch!”

Parametric Pirate Hook by SuperAmi

This is a parametric pirate hook I made for my son's birthday party. It fits the paw of a 4-5 year old very well. It consists of three prints, the cup for around the hand, the hook, and then the grip and joining piece. My son really likes it, although the hook is a little primitive. I've included the SCAD. The cup file is parametric, and while not greatly laid out, it should be easy enough to scale up or down. Its also relatively tall, and could easily be shortened by a centimeter or two. The other files are not parametric, because I was in a hurry, but they should be easy enough to adjust.

This thing brought to you by

Halloween Hero!

This was a big weekend for a MakerBot dad like myself.  My daughter wanted to be a witch for Halloween and so we got her a costume, complete with small plastic broom.  The broom came in two parts that screwed together.  While letting a kid play around in their costume even when it’s not actually Halloween is part of the fun, it wasn’t long before she managed to break the broom right in the middle.  The plastic screw had broken off the one side, while still stuck in the other.

No problemo!  I measured the broken parts, thought of a fix, and created a workable digital model in less than five minutes.  The part took about 30 minutes to print (in PLA, since that’s what I had loaded in my 3D printer).  It consists of a plastic cylinder with notches where the pins in the broom would fit.  This would keep the part from rotating or sliding out of place.  Fitting the part, wrapping it in duct tape for strength, and then again in black electrical tape to smooth out the wrinkly duct tape and blend in with the color of the broom took less than minutes more.

Sure, I could have fixed that broom with little more than just the duct and electrical tape.  However, I would be virtually guaranteed that it would have been bent at that join before the morning was out.  I’m pretty sure that particular joint is the strongest part of the entire broom at this point.

Super-hero dad tip: Tape glow sticks up and down the broom handle for extra visibility while trick or treating and for a seriously awesome witch’s broom. 

To Victory!

1. Choose a topic. This Halloween I chose the “Dalek To Victory!” propaganda poster from “Victory of the Daleks“
2. Grayscale and Posterize. I prefer using GIMP – it’s fairly user friendly, has lots of features, well documented on the interwebs, and is free and open source.  Making it grayscale and posterizing the picture will reduce the number of colors for which you need to account.  After all, our pallet is limited – from a bright yellow to a dark orange/red-ish.
3. Print. Print out the picture on a size appropriate for your target pumpkin.  For the pumpkin above I chose a standard 8.5″ x 11″ sheet.  It was a big pumpkin.
4. Wash, Open, Hollow. Wash the outside of the pumpkin to get any excess dirt off.  Hollowing out the pumpkin can go very quickly if you’re doing it right.  I have one of those sinks that has two large sections – one for the sink and one for the garbage disposal.  I could actually fit the pumpkin into one side.  Stab around the stem and lift off the top.  I like making jagged cuts, circles are fine too.  I used a heavy ice cream scooper to hollow out the inside.  It had enough heft that I could really whack away at the inside of the pumpkin and the seeds and guts would just fall away.  I keep a plastic bag on the other side of the sink for collecting the pumpkin guts.
5. Tape. The pumpkin may still be wet, so use duct tape to affix your posterized printout to the pumpkin.
6. Score. I first tried using a pushpin to poke holes along the lines I wanted to cut.  However, this was taking a really long time and leaves you staring at a bunch of dots afterward.  In the end I started using a utility knife and paring knife to score along the lines in the picture.  I would recommend scoring the pumpkin at the really large lines and outlines first.  If your picture disintegrates after that, well, you’ve got a starting point.  My picture remained intact until I peeled it off the pumpkin.
7. Remove picture. Peel off the remains of the picture.  If you didn’t score the skin of the pumpkin deep enough, this is the time to check.
8. Trace. I found it very helpful to trace the major lines with a black washable crayon.  This let me quickly see what I was working on and compare it to the nearby picture, rather than have to peer closely at the pumpkin to make out the score lines.
9. Peel. Peeling away the pumpkin’s skin was the most time consuming part.  For this I traced the lines again with the utility knife and then used either the utility knife (for finer control) or the paring knife (for big areas) to peel up the pumpkin’s skin.  I started with the large areas since that gave me the most sense of accomplishment as I proceeded.  Peeling the skin, rather than carving all the way through, allowed me to have picture details that would otherwise be impossible – such as the lightning bolts or text.
10. Carve. I actually did very little carving on the above Jack-O-Lantern.   The lightning bolts from the gun and antenna/blinkers were the only areas on the pumpkin’s surface that are cut all the way through to the inside.
11. Ventilate. Since there were so few holes in the pumpkin surface I had to make large air holes in the pumpkin “lid” around the stem.
12. Illuminate. Insert candles, then light.
13. Display! To victory!

A few weeks ago, we who populate the Botcave started to think about Halloween. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of us expressed the desire to be a MakerBot.

You would think that living and breathing MakerBots all day, every day (including weekends for some) would make you want to escape from the world of MakerBots when given the chance. But apparently, everyone thinks it’s a great idea to be a MakerBot. So I guess my idea was not that original, considering the company I keep. Initial concern that we might be stepping on each other’s creative costume idea toes evolved into the delightful epiphany: we’ll all go as a MakerBot ‘Botfarm!

Alas, extenuating circumstances such as illness and not-a-minute-to-spare have plagued the Botcave. So there may not be a ‘Botfarm this year. But there will be at least one MakerBot – me!

So for those of you who are desperate for a cool costume idea, have a few hours to spare, and are healthy enough for the challenge, I give you my step-by-step guide to becoming a MakerBot.

Step 1: Find a Box

We have been hiring people like crazy at the ‘Botcave, and we’ve been scrambling to keep everyone comfortably seated. Because of this, there’s a surplus of chair boxes that are the perfect size for a MakerBot costume.

Step 2: Gather Supplies

The foundations for a good MakerBot costume are box cutters, scissors, and tape. I initially was trying to make cuts in the box with scissors when Sam shook his head and told me I needed box cutters. He was right. Cutting out the walls of the box was much easier with box cutters. I used the scissors to cut pieces of brown paper I salvaged from the recycling bin to coat the box with. I used the tape to hold the paper in place. I loved that someone wrote on the tape dispenser “Become what you dream.” It was fitting, considering I was using the tape to become what I had dreamed of being – a MakerBot.

Here I am, just a woman with a vision. A woman wearing an average chair box, but dreaming of becoming a MakerBot.

Step 3: Paper your Box

Covering the box with brown paper was the most time consuming part of this job. It took over an hour. An alternative solution is to turn the box inside out, which would require cutting down one of the sides and potentially compromising its structural integrity.

The paper I found in the recycling bin was the perfect texture for the task. It was soft and malleable. The costume was coming together.

Not yet a MakerBot, but slightly more than a woman wearing a chair box.

Step 4: Get Your M On

At first I had grand visions of an anatomically correct MakerBot. I decided I would be a Cupcake as opposed to a Thing-o-matic, and wanted to mimic it perfectly. But that idea crashed and burned when I absentmindedly cut a hole in each of the four chair box walls instead of three. Had I been true to the Cupcake anatomy, my left side wall would have stayed intact. I quickly realized in the interest of time that I would not be able to make a perfect MakerBot. So I settled for good enough. In that spirit, I managed to print out an M with the help of Matt Griffin, who mercifully tolerated staying later than he should, donating his exacto knife skills for the cause. There was no time to spell out “MakerBot Industries,” or to preserve the bump in the front wall of the Cupcake for the M. I was proud just to have a bright-colored, nicely printed MakerBot logo.

Step 5: Bling Your MakerBot

There’s no doubt about it – people are impressed by LED lights. I was hoping to decorate my MakerBot with circuit boards, plastic parts, and anything else I found lying around the ‘Botcave, but I decided to keep it simple in the spirit of getting it done. If there’s one thing that will make the costume, it’s those bright little LEDs, which we sell in the store to bling your real MakerBot. Although I had lots of ideas about things to add to the costume, I realized that I was almost done.

Step 6: Accesorize

Any good MakerBot costume is all about the final touches. I gathered some ABS, put some blue tape on my belly, wielded an extruder, and appropriated a freshly printed object with the help of one of our talented MakerBot engineers, Nick Starno.

So go forth, and create your own MakerBot costume! Let us know how it turns out. Take a picture, and if we get enough of them, we may be able to make a virtual ‘Botfarm!

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.

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[Photo Credit: oskay's Flikr photo stream

To celebrate the season, and our glow-in-the-dark ABS, we want you to submit things we can make for H-A-LL-O-W-EE-N with our MakerBots! Monday, October 18th at 11:11 p.m. is the deadline to get your designs in for our Halloween design challenge!

We already have a bunch of new Halloween-themed designs up on Thingiverse. Keep ‘em coming for an opportunity to get some free glow-in-the-dark ABS!

A reminder of some guidelines:

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

We will announce our favorite next week!

Also, if you’re looking for things to print for Halloween with your glow-in-the-dark ABS, check out MakerBlock’s Top 10 list.