MakerBot Industries

In the past, I’ve decried the lack of kitchen-related items on the Thingiverse, but previous few of us (myself certainly included) have done much to fill in this gap.

It thus gives me all the more pleasure to share this brilliant, largely 3d-printed solution to one of mankind’s oldest and most challenging culinary problems: the drying of fresh, hand-made pasta.

At one time or another, our less culinarily-oriented partners have all walked in on a horror scene of kitchen chairs festooned with eggy, yellow strands, fresh from our well-loved Marcato Atlas.  If only we had known we were just a few dowels and 3d-printed connectors away from a workable pasta-drying solution!  Think of the pasta-related arguments we would have been spared…

Thank you fma for your thoughtful design!

Pasta dryer by fma

This is a pasta dryer, inspired from ones you can buy. But this one is printable!

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Thingiverse user gaerisl reports a similar situation to the one that exists in my own household: a slight difference between partners about how much sharpened steel should be displayed in the kitchen.  While some people prefer to let the light shine on their damascus, some other individuals like to keep their sharpened items tucked safely away.

This fully printable drawer-format organizer should please the safety-conscious as well as those who are looking for a handy, organized knife solution.  Maybe this would make a nice 3d-printed gift for somebody on your list?

Blade-Enclosing Knife Rack by gaerisl

My girlfriend hates exposed blades, and I really hate reaching into my kitchen drawer, where knives are tumbled every which way waiting to shred my hand looking for a spatula. So, I made this to solve the problem (Love you, baby!). This knife rack holds 2 large knives (Chef's) and 2 small knives (Paring, utility, etc) It has high walls and handle support to ensure that the knives stay in and blades stay enclosed. Looking back, it probably would have been more efficient to CAD a universal knife sheath.

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This week on MakerBot TV – PRINT YOUR KITCHEN!!!! Find out about the many incredibly awesome and incredibly useful items that can be MakerBotted for your kitchen!

Huge thanks to Thingiverse users PolygonPusher for the hooks, tomlombardi for the sponge holder, eM5 for the drain plug handle, jahg for the dishrack foot, hoeken for the funnel design, Fido for the corncob screw, Seanz0rz for the knife design, vik for the rice spoon, deadmeat038 for the cheese slicer, loonix23 for the paper towel holder, emmett for the jet cookie cutters, RobertHunt for the heart cookie cutter, laserdonkey for the donkey cookie cutter and MattChapman for the star cookie cutter.. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

If this sounds familiar, I apologize. You wash your pots and pans carefully, and on the rare occasion, even use soap. With your dishtowel, you dry off the last remnants of H20 and with any luck, you have a clean, water-free, cooking tool…with no home. The top of the stove looks convenient, until your last night’s sauce pan gets in the way of your cast iron skillet for your daily ostrich, bacon, and cheese omelet.

I’m a sucker for practicality and to this day have been looking for a good place to store my pots and pans. The cabinets work, until I have to stack one item on top of another, inevitably dirtying the bottom pot or pan. PolygonPusher‘s hook is brilliant: Strong, functional, and cheap. I’ll be printing some of these today to hang underneath my kitchen side table.

What’s particularly interesting about this Thingiverse item is the conversation about the, well, practicality of printing out such an item, when it would seem that these hooks could be sourced locally. PolyGonPusher gives a great explanation for why he did what he did, and it’s yet another example of what makes Thingiverse a fantastic forum for 3D design and printing.

Hook for hanging pots and pans by PolygonPusher

In this project I build a set of shelves for hanging pots and pans in my kitchen. For that I needed 27 hooks. In my local hardware store I did not find any suitable hooks so I decided to design and 3D print my own! :) This also saved me some money since a simple hook in the store costs $4 a piece, making the total $108!

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Thingiverse user Seanz0rz has done it!  Fully-printable PLA utensils!  Ok, our PLA supply is not food-grade, so I don’t receommend actually eating with these, nor is it the first viable spoon or fork (or spork, for that matter) but nevertheless it’s something of an achievement.  Totally normal-looking utensils! Printable on a MakerBot!

If there were some sort of global utensil apocalypse, wherein stainless-steel implements suddenly vanished from drawers everywhere, those with 3d printers could lead the way toward re-building our utensil culture.  Or something like that.

Even better, it’s a great example of what Thingiverse users can do when they set their minds to solving household problems.  While safety concerns may hold us back from recommending full-scale adoption here, we are clearly not far from a vast selection of print-on-demand household items.  Well done!

Knife, Spoon, & Fork by Seanz0rz

Here are some models of a knife, spoon, and fork. with the exception of the knife, these will need support material. Solidworks files included so you can make changes. i believe these are the first of their kind at least on Thingiverse. hopefully these will inspire others to create different models as well! They turn out to be fragile when printed. I will eventually update the stl's to create more robust utensils. the knife is almost at that point.

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Since this weekend’s Memorial Day holiday is the traditional North American start of the grilling season, I was of course scanning Thingiverse for those last-minute BBQ-related prints.  And I was shocked by what I found: more or less nothing!

KitchenAid Mixers get some love, and there are a good number of kitchen-related projects, but this taco holder and beverage opener are just about the only things that seem to have any relation to a BBQ…and the taco holder is a bit of a stretch if you’re not doing a Tex-Mex backyard gathering.  (Ok, here’s a spork, but he’s eating yogurt in the demo – not BBQ-approved.)

So do MakerBotters just not like barbecues?  I was expecting an organizer for grilling tools and some beverage holders, maybe an assembly for a cold-smoker, at least.  Or is the barbecue already a perfect experience that needs no tweaking by DIYers?

I don’t know about you, but I find that tough to swallow.