Almost two and a half years ago, Wade Bortz (aka Wade on Thingiverse) uploaded a machine titled Wade’s Geared Nema 17 Extruder. Here is the simple one-line description:

A printed spur gear driven extruder for Mendel or Darwin.

This is one of only two things Wade has uploaded to Thingiverse, but sometimes it’s quality, not quantity. Take a look at the graph below — made by mad data scientist tbuser — that shows  all the derivatives this single upload has sparked.

The yellow circle in the center is Wade, and the two blue dots are each of his uploads. The other Thing, a Projector Ceiling Mount, was derived just once and the family tree stops there. But the Wade Extruder sparked 17 derivatives, which in turn sparked derivatives of their own, etc.

If this Thing were a person, it would have 17 children, 8 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren, 14 great-great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great-great-grandchild. And since each of these things can have “copies”, which aren’t shown in the graph, there are a bunch of clones floating around out there, too.

This is a big, happy Thing family, and it all came from one person sharing a good idea.

Sharing is caring.