MakerBot Industries

The new issue of The Economist has a nice piece on Maker Faire, which includes mention of MakerBot and Arduino as players in the future of the maker movement. You may recognize our booth (and maybe some familiar faces) from this year’s NYC Maker Faire, in the photo above! Hit up your local newstand for a copy or read the article online here.

Polargraphs are basically really cool drawing robots that have been designed by Sandy Noble, a programmer and artist.  If you’ve never seen one in action, now’s your chance. ¹  Imagine a slow spider crawling around a wall and drawing at the same time.  A microcontroller operates two motors which reel in and out a line which is attached to a pen.  As the pen swings back and forth, it draws in a precise pattern to draw whatever you’ve programmed it to draw.  While very slow, it can cover a really huge drawing area that is pretty much only limited by the amount of string you set it up with and the ink reservoir of your chosen pen.

Thingiverse citizen and prolific printer John Abella recently created a printable gondola to hold the Polargraph’s drawing pen.  The Polargraph requires a bunch of stock off-the-shelf parts and some custom lasercut acrylic and wood bits.  By using a 3D printer to create these assemblies, you’re reducing the need for custom lasercut parts, fasteners, and the assembly time that would normally go into their construction.

Noble’s work reminded me of a similar project by Chicago artist Harvey Moon who showed off his work on “The Drawing Machine” at the recent Maker Faire.  Using a similar cable driven microcontroller controlled² pen drawing machine, Moon’s robot draws the same image differently each time!  Thus, each drawing is a unique little snowflake of arbitrary drawing machine coolness!

There are other equally impressive variations on drawing wall robots in the form of the Hektor, which draws with spray paint cans, the Drawbot by AS220 Labs, and Der Kritzler by Alexander Weber.  Alexander’s website provides a number of links to the websites of similar projects, if you’re looking for more information.

Also, thanks to John Abella for patiently answering my questions and pointing out additional resources!

Polargraph Gondola by JohnA

Based on Sandy Noble's Polargraph: polargraph.co.uk This is the first pass at a printable gondola for a Polargraph. It works, but it could use some tweaks. Anyone looking to improve it: the lower section arms are a little thin, and the spot for the captive nut isn't exactly sized right. I'd also beef up the upper chain mounts, as there's not much plastic outside the hole. The motor brackets and pulleys I'm using can be found here: thingiverse.com/thing:12403Lots more photos of the whole process here: flickr.com/photos/jabella/sets/72157627888557352/

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MakerBot Industries had a great time at World Maker Faire this year sharing the Turtle Shell Racers on the MakerBot Raceway as well as twenty Thing-O-Matics sporting brand new Stepstruder® MK7 toolheads. We have put together a few of our favorite photos from the event. Check out our slideshow for highlights from the weekend.

We are particularly proud of our MakerBot Raceway winners — who each more than deserved their MakerBot Awesome Awards! They have their very own winners slideshow below.

I’m sure you’ve all been at the edge of your seats eagerly awaiting the arrival of MakerBot TV’s second episode!
Well wait no more – S01E02 is here!!! And it is, dare I say, even more awesome than the first one!

In this episode we’ll get you hyped-up for Maker Faire, have some behind-the-scenes fun with turtle-building Skimbal, learn about bot calibration with Elliot and get the low down on a brand new and totally rad MakerBot challenge with Bre.

Special Thanks to:
Tony Buser for the use of Bobble Head Bob, 2ROBOTGUY for his alphabet design.
And all these great folks for the use of their music: Doctor Popular, Vim, µB and Trash80.

Update: Bre here, Skimbal is an awesome designer who has just really impressed everyone in the MakerBot community. I’m excited to announce that we just hired him to make awesome projects and document them here at MakerBot Industries full time. He’ll be moving to Brooklyn to design, make, and document awesome MakerBottable things. To say we’re excited at MakerBot to bring him on board is an serious understatement. Be prepared for more Skimbal awesomeness coming soon to a MakerBot near you!

Turtle Shell Racer – High Power Edition by Skimbal

We got a glimpse of Skimbal’s Turtle Shell Racers in a recent photo from the Detroit MakerFaire, but a picture is even better.  If you ever had a doubt about the raw potential and power inherent in the humble MakerBot Cupcake CNC, please allow such misconceptions to be thusly dispelled.  Besides the incredible amount of work that went into designing and printing these, Skimbal obviously put a lot of work into the documentation as well.  He’s included all the STL’s files you’d need to print one, a list of materials, a PDF of how to assemble them, and, of course, a few videos of them in action!  Well done, sir!  Well done!

Go download the files for the Turtle Shell Racers at Thingiverse. Bonus! Download the awesome instructional booklet!

Michael Curry's display at Detroit Maker Faire 2011

It’s little wonder that Michael Curry, of the Cowtown Computer Congress, was the recipient of an Awesome Award at this year’s Detroit Maker Faire for showing off his Mario Cart racing cars (with remotes!), Christmas Lego men, Bathtub U-Boat, and a Portal sentry turret.

Thanks to Jon Speicher for the photo!

Bathtub U-Boat by Skimbal

Michael Curry, also known as Skimbal on Thingiverse, was recently interviewed by NPR regarding his incredible designs on display at Maker Faire Kansas City.  Michael discusses how his MakerBot 3D printer has been a creative outlet and even how it has also helped his career in this down economy.  If you haven’t seen Michael’s work yet, you definitely need to take a look at his “Designed Things” page on Thingiverse.  His designs are usually large multi-print pieces, incredibly intricate, and seem to always push the boundaries of what’s possible with a single 3D printer at your disposal.

Check out the link for the full audio interview along with some photographs from the event!

Dale Dougherty, founder of Make magazine and the organizer of Maker Faire, posted a great video about how making things helps kids learn to be enthusiastic about science.  There’s also a shot of a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic in action @ 9:25. 

Kids watching a MakerBot for the first time

I had the distinct pleasure of helping out at the MakerBot table this last weekend at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011.¹ After watching dozens of kids and adults exposed to a 3D printer for the first time, here’s the main difference:

Adults: “Wait, can you make anything?”

Kids: “You can make anything!”

While adults may find a 3D printer interesting, somehow kids just seem to “get it.”  Somehow seeing the machine run and looking at a few finished pieces next to it, kids seemed able to completely understand that they could use a 3D printer to make anything they wanted.²

1. Photo courtesy of Bre [↩]
2. Check out all the clock parts on the table! [↩]

At the New York Maker Faire a few weeks ago we announced the launch of our newest addition to the MakerBot family: the Thing-o-matic. It is, quite simply, THE top-of-the-line, do-it-yourself, open source 3D printer. The kit comes with all the latest hardware we’ve worked so hard to develop, such as the MK5 Plastruder and Automated Build Platform, which allows you to continuously print as many parts as you have plastic with one stroke of the “Enter” key.

This is what’s included in the Thing-o-matic parts kit:

• The lasercut parts to assemble a Thing-O-Matic CNC machine.
• 3 x NEMA 17 motors
• The hardware to assemble it.
• Belts and pulleys
• Smooth Rods and Drive system components
• Pre-assembled 4th Generation Electronics
• a USB cable to talk to it
• cat5e and rainbow cables to wire things up
• a standard ATX power supply
• a tools kit with all the hex keys, wrenches, and other bits you need to construct it.
• SD card to buffer your prints
• 1lb of MakerBot ABS Plastic to print with

Less than a day after we launched the Thing-o-matic, it was already winning awards. Those three blue ribbons adorning it in the photograph are the Maker Faire Editor’s Choice awards. It got a record three. We’re so proud!