Are you waiting to get your hands on a MakerBot Replicator 2? Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine and the author of the new book pictured above, Makers, is ready to give you one.

Check out the give-away contest over at Instructables, which calls for you to submit your “ultimate 3D design.” The submissions page explains that each entry will have to be in the form of an Instructable, which can be a step-by-step project explanation, a photo, or a video, and it should involve “the creation of a 3D design.”

Okay, that’s a little vague, so allow me to make a few suggestions. When we launched the Replicator 2 just under three weeks ago, Bre wrote a MakerBot Operator Manifesto for BoingBoing. Here are a few ideas that we think could merit the “ultimate” tag.

Where we’re going, there are no limitations: create your working flux capacitor by glueing MakerBotted components together for installation in your DeLorean.

Go big. With the MakerBot Replicator 2‘s 410 cubic inch build volume, you can finally create the trumpet you’ve been dreaming of.

Compete with the industrial machines. With the MakerBot Replicator 2′s 100 micron layer resolution you can create models that will look like they were made on a refrigerator sized machine that costs 100 times the MakerBot Replicator 2.

Make the unreal real. Use your MakerBot to manifest unicorns, dragons, or a functional sonic screwdriver.

Resist buying things that you can make on your MakerBot Replicator 2. There is no deeper nerd cred than MakerBotting frames for your glasses.

Optimize the world. That contraption to hold your microscopes glass slides together in the dishwasher is just waiting for you to design and MakerBot it.

Repurpose everything. The springs in pens and motors pulled from old technology can be used to create the replica of that V8 supercharged hemi you’ve been lusting after.

Repurpose the models in Cornell’s wonderful mechanical library to power your perpetual motion machine.

Prototype your inventions. We’re still waiting for you to align the lasers with your MakerBotted oscillation overthruster.

Use what you’ve got. If you are a programmer, use the openSCAD tool to create parametric gears If you are a photographer, learn to use 123D Catch to scan the greatest works of art at your local museum.

Ignore the naysayers. Your jackalope powered hovercraft is achievable and don’t forget to MakerBot a helmet for the jackalope.

Submit yours before midnight on October 12, 2012 (that’s 11:59 pm on 10/12, for you sticklers), and be sure to select “3D Design Contest” in the check boxes when you do. That will get it in the running, and Instructables staff will let you know if your entry is accepted. At the end of the contest, Chris and other judges will select one grand prize winner, and five runners-up, who will each receive a signed copy of Makers.

A little note from MakerBot: we highly encourage you to share your designs on Thingiverse, too! In the past, many Instructable contest ideas have received good feedback from the community on Thingiverse.

Get started here. Good luck!

This is the coolest thing in the world right now.

Remember those Fisher Price record players that pumped out jams like Mary Had A Little Lamb and, I dunno, the theme from Babar? They’re back, and ready for MakerBotting!

Instructables author fred27 has published a nice set of steps for producing custom records for these machines on a CNC mill. There is also an app for generating the music. It looks fairly simple, just drop in notes.

Here’s the thing: this was all done on a mill, but as Gizmodo points out, this is prime territory for a 3D printer like a MakerBot. Of course, longtime MakerBot community members will remember some of the serious research we have already done into 3D printable vinyl…

I read through the Instructable and noticed this bit of caution:

we will end up creating plastic pins around 1mm in size that trigger the music box hidden in the record player’s arm. I was worried about whether the extruded plastic technique used by most printers would give it the required strength.

Looking at the picture above, I feel confident a MakerBot could make these nubs more than strong enough to resist the music box mechanism. I’d suggest making this with higher infill settings to be sure.

But how to MakerBot this?

The gcode for milling these suckers is available from fred27, and the process would need to be converted. The Instructable provides the design file for the blank disc itself, but in order to be used with a MakerBot, you’d need the entire model with the music added in.

Fred27 says that in order to mill the disc at one time, you should use the gcode file marked “…(Full).nc”.

Aha! Maybe that’s the answer. If that gcode for the entire record, musical nubs included, can be converted back into a model, then that model can be sliced to provide appropriate instructions for the MakerBot.

This is the perfect opportunity to put a modern spin on an old toy, and Fred plans to submit it to the Make It Real Challenge.

So what tunes do you remember from these records, and which custom tunes would you make?

Instructables.com is a fountain of good stuff for the DIYer. Here are a few recent favorites:

Rubber band-powered car toy

This 18-step Instructable from Thingiverse user mrigsby is really straightforward and you get a fun toy to play with at the end! What impressed me here is that this project was Mike’s first experience with 3D modeling software. He used Tinkercad to design the car, and seems to think it was pretty easy.

To make a wheel, you just drag a cylinder onto the workspace.  Set the diameter and the thickness and you’re almost done.  Drag a hole onto the workspace, adjust the diameter and place it in the center of the wheel.  Group the hole and the wheel.  That’s it.

He made this on The Replicator, and shares his tricks, too. For example, to make these pieces with a raft underneath, Mike says he has had the most luck setting the build plate temperature to 115° C, rather than 100° C.

You can find all the files for the Rubber Band Powered Car on Thingiverse!

Tilt-Shift Lens Adapter

Here’s another Instructables/Thingiverse gem, made especially for the photo geek. A tilt-shift lens is “used to create a miniature effect or a very shallow depth of field in your photography,” and if you shoot from a high angle pointing down, the accessory “creates the illusion of looking down at a miniature model.”

What I liked about this project in particular is the cost savings here. Joe Murphy, author of the Instructable, says the professional version is pretty pricey; “we’re talking $1000- 3000.” So I decided to just make one for myself and see how much it costs in ABS.

Answer: at 7 grams, the part costs $0.30. And it took 19 minutes, from digital to tangible. So there ya go.

3D-Printed Circuit Boards

Just as a blog post at Oppino.com noted a lack of experiments with 3D-printed circuit boards, an Instructable showed up from CarryTheWhat, an Open Source Hardware group with a presence on Etsy and Thingiverse.

In this step-by-step, you get careful instructions on making the circuit board itself from files available on Thingiverse. There is a library of files for all the different components and advice on arranging them successfully. The example in the Instructable will output a simple circuit to get an LED to blink.

This is admittedly not complex stuff, but it is remarkable to see a DIY circuit project that involves no soldering or etching. All of these parts have been “thoroughly tested on the MakerBot Replicator, with ABS plastic,” according to the Thingiverse page.

How to: Grow a Portrait Gourd

Apparently, growing gourds in molds is an ancient 500 year old Chinese artform!  By creating a mold of a sculpture and placing that mold around a young gourd, the gourd will grow and take the shape of the mold.  While this artform was almost lost in the 1970′s, the craft was revived by Mr. Zhang Cairi and the basics have now been condensed into this instructable by Make’s Tim Anderson.

This is one of those times when I’m just surfing the ‘net and realize, “Hey, that would be PERFECT for Stephen Colbert!”  I know there are Colbert chocolate mold makers out there.  Is anyone game for creating a Colbert gourd using a 3D printed mold?

From Instructables via Make Blog!

Until May 1st, Instructables.com are offering a chance  for participants to win one of three MakerBot Thing-O-Matic kits by uploading awesome new Instructables to their site.

Here are the details for their posting!

So how do you win the MakerBot Challenge?

Make something awesome. Any project is eligible. Submit a new Step By Step, Photo, or Video Instructable that shows off your amazing skills and creativity, and proves that you deserve a MakerBot 3D Printer. Be sure to document your project with lots of great photos, and provide details so others can learn from your work.

What can you make with your very own Thing-O-Matic?  Check out the Thingiverse 3D library for ideas and inspiration, or share your own digital designs.  Just post an excellent Instructable to the MakerBot Challenge, and you could soon be printing any of these Thingiverse designs at home!

And thanks to Instructables for the shout out to Thingiverse. Create and document your project at Instructables, post design documents and models to Thingiverse — the world awaits the fruits of your imagination¹!

1. and science! [↩]