hipsta by pomalin

Thingiverse citizen pomalin is the winner of 9000 internet points and bragging rights for being the first to upload a “moregangsta” challenge mashup! ¹ The one I was really hoping someone would upload first was a HipSTA – and thanks to pomalin  now there is one!

There are still more points and bragging rights to be had!

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1. Pomalin also gets another 9000 points for being the first to upload one of the specific models for the challenge. [↩]

snakesta by cibomahto

Thingiverse’s all time most-mashed up model on Thingiverse has got to be the “gangsta” by Yzorg.  However, there are a number of things on Thingiverse that really should be mashed up with a gangsta.

1. STAtue of Liberty – She stands for liberty and freedom…  and slouching.
2. The ThinkSTA – He’s thinking… about his life as a gangsta.
3. DeathSTAr – The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the potential of the gangsta.
4. NatashSTA the pen holder -  Don’t mess with her.  She’s carrying… a pen.
5. GnomeSTA – Because it would be so cool to have a bunch of GnomeSTAs lounging around a garden.
6. Project ShellSTA – Because even hermit crabs need a gangsta hideout.
7. Bucket of OctopSTA – What has eight arms and is more gangsta than you?
8. SkullSTA – Nothing has more gangsta street cred than an actual skull.
9. STArfish – Sure, there’s already a *sta, but don’t you want a gangsta that’s a little more… fishy?
10. HipSTA – Because I really really really want a HipSTA.  I want to put it on the edge of my desk and wait for someone to ask what it is.  “Oh, it’s this mashup-meme.  You’ve probably never heard of it.”

This challenge is pretty easy with 10 possible winners.  All you have to do is mashup the gangsta with one of the models above.  Tag your entries with “moregangsta.”  Please also be sure to add appropriate other tags to your designs.  It’s also good form to add derivative links to the designs of others’ you use.  9000 internet points, bragging rights, and a blog-nod to the first-to-upload-a-challenge-entry and to each first entry in one of the 10 categories above.

Good luck!

MakerBot’s Tony Buser has been doing quite a few experiments with mashing up the heads we have been 3D scanning lately. He put Bre’s head on the Statue of Liberty, Stephen Colbert’s head on a Teddy Bear, and made a classic statue bust and plinth of his own 3D scan. Well, this line of investigations has lead finally to the inevitable, the highest form of statuary … bobbleheads!

Now, “bobbleheads” (also bobbing head dolls, nodders, wobbler, dashboard nodders, and “those things you get at baseball games sometimes”) have been a quest for MakerBot Operators for a while now — one actually calling up to ask what the “bobblehead setting” was for ReplicatorG.¹ Well, Tony didn’t stop his work at producing one bobblehead, he created parametric tools to help all of us make the bobbleheads we have been dreaming of!

Check out his detailed step-by-step instructions for how to use his negative object or “nega-thing” to punch the bobblehead cavity and spring mount into the base of your own head model! Or a hero’s head model. Or an enemy.

He includes a great “*sta”² base — and you can use his tools to design and share your own base as well. Tony has observed that mounting bobblehead on the turning spool works pretty well.  Bonus points to the first MakerBot Operator to artfully integrate a bobblehead into beatbot’s Spazzi! (Perhaps next to Isaac’s Sign of the Horns?)

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1. True story. [↩]
2. ie the classic Gangsta mashup model [↩]

Colbert Head Gears by emmett

Thingiverse citizen Pattywac recently organized a “MakerStrong Mashup Design Challege.”  The winner was to receive $60.00 from Pattwac himself with MakerBot kicking in another $100.00 in store credit!  And now it is time to reveal that winner…

Despite the difficulty of working with and not ruining such a flawless bust, there were some great entries to the Makerstrong design challenge.  Entries ranging from the beautification of my favorite childhood claymation show (Gumbert by JamieClay), to a tool for the next Colbert wannabe/stalker (Large Stephen Colbert Head by ALxD) made the judging process entertaining.

In the end emmett was able to claim the prize with a “decidedly creepier derivative” of his Heart Gears, which he called the “Colbert Head Gears.”

Congrats to emmett, the first repeat winner of these design challenges!

Thanks to everyone who created an entry and hope to see you next time!

Emmett, make sure to send Pattywac your paypal info!

Colbert Head Gears by emmett

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The raw materials have been there for some time, but,  until now, no one has put them together to create an Octocat!

Listen folks — we love GitHub.  We do.  We have some repositories where we store files and such, and it’s awesome.  But we’re still not sure if it really lives up to its mascot; that’s a high bar to set for yourself, folks.  And I think that BrianEnigma just pushed it a bit higher with this mashup.

But seriously — cheers to GitHub for having such a cool service and mascot, and to BrianEnigma and all of our Thingiverse thing-mashers for all their great work.

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Colbert Corn Screw by fido

Thingiverse, taken as a collective, is an amazing thing.  Sometimes all you have to do is leave a comment saying do or don’t want something…  and someone will upload a printable version of it.

Bre says, “I feel a beard coming on… NOOOOOOOOO!”  And less than a day later, Coasterman posted a picture of Bre with an octopus beard. ¹  Three days ago mattproc asked, “Can we get one [corn cob screw] with Colbert’s head as the handles?”  Less than twelve hours after that request fido uploaded Colbert Corn Screws, as derivative of his own Corn Cob Screws work.

What do you wish someone would upload to Thingiverse?

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1. Hey, Coasterman, can you upload the STL? [↩]

The Head of Stephen Colbert

As a surprise for the recent Colbert Report interview of Bre Pettis, Bre scanned Stephen’s head and asked some Thingiverse users to create mashups of Stephen Colbert’s head.  Within a day the designs started to pour in.  At last count, there’s 28 models tagged with “Colbert.”

What will you do with Stephen Colbert’s head?

If that's not how to America, then I don't know what is.

If you’ve just come from The Colbert Report and are visiting this website for the first time, we’ve got some really great stuff for you starting with a copy of Stephen Colbert’s entire head.  You’ve just seen Bre Pettis, co-founder of MakerBot, talking about and demonstrating our flagship product, the Thing-O-Matic.  It is a small, affordable 3D printing machine you build yourself that can make anything you can dream up out of plastic. ¹  Think of it as Star Trek replicator for your desktop.

It’s useful for designers and artists who can use it to quickly refine their designs, tinkerers who need to prototype their inventions, or anyone who fixes things around the house.  Why not prototype your idea for an iPhone accessory with a MakerBot?  Want a new handle for your window blinds?  Need to replace a broken car key fob?  Maybe you want to use your Duplo blocks with your wooden train set?  Just fire up your printer!

And, if you’re running short of ideas or want to see what other people have done with their 3D printers, don’t forget to check out Thingiverse.com – an free online website for sharing designs.  That’s where you’ll find Stephen Colbert’s head,  which you can print your own copy of, or, better yet, add on to another design!  We call these mash-ups, just like when a musician combines two songs into one.

This is a great way to get started with 3d modeling, and we want you to do it.  Grab Stephen’s head and paste it onto something else!  If it’s related to bears, bald eagles, America, or Freedom, all the better.  We’ve had a few friends get the ball rolling, but there’s plenty to be done yet.

There’s lots of great free software for designing and mashing things up.  MeshMixer is a great app for these mash-ups.  If you want to design something of your own, try 3dtin.com or one of many other free 3d modeling programs.  And if you upload something made from Colbert’s head, be sure and tag your creation with “Colbert.”

I think we’re all pretty excited, so stay tuned to the blog for updates.

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1. And, yes!  It works with Macs, PC’s, and Linux! [↩]

Brass Stanford Bunny, printed by Isaac Dietz

As with every holiday calendar event that rolls through the T-verse, the approach of Easter this coming Sunday has been the inspiration for a number of outstanding seasonal objects contributed to Thingiverse.com. Ethan featured Zydac’s cute Eggbunny last week¹, but check out some of the other great offerings. (Thingiverse-tagged as “easter.”)

HASENFRANZ Easter Bunny Cookie Cutter by elk

There are a few cookie cutter options, including Elk‘s Easter Bunny Cookies and brettjones Easter Bunny Cookie Cutter. (Make your own cookie cutters by using guru‘s Cookie Cutter Generator v2!) Stage your stained/painted/chocolate eggs in bpijls‘s BunnyCup – Bunny Footed Egg Holder. Of particular usefulness to those of you working with OpenSCAD to design Easter-flavored objects, you’ll want to grab nicholasclewis‘s Parametric Egg and take a look at TeamTeamUSA‘s impressive Virtual Easter Eggs color/multi-print assembly project for ideas and parts for your OpenSCAD or MeshMixer masterpieces. Also, if your Easter egg hunt actually involves firearms, don’t forget vik‘s Egg-Shaped Target.²

And this doesn’t even get us started with the t-verse’s prolifically breeding colony of Standford bunnies….

Stanford Bunny

Stanford Bunny, printed by mah_digilife

The Stanford Bunny model has a venerable computer visualization pedigree previous to becoming one of the more iconic Thingiverse first objects for printing or mashing-up. The bunny is but one of the more popular models from the Stanford 3D Scanning Repository, a collection of high resolution scans made available by Greg Turk and Marc Levoy in 1994 to assist computer scientists working with mesh tools who do not have access to high resolution scanning hardware. According to the Bunny’s Wikipedia article, the Bunny was scanned from a ceramic figuring, and “consists of data describing 69,451 triangles.”

Here’s an intriguing note from the scanners about their models:

As you browse this repository and think about how you might use our 3D models and range datasets, please remember that several of these artifacts have religious or cultural significance. Aside from the buddha, which is a religious symbol revered by hundreds of millions of people, the dragon is a symbol of Chinese culture, the Thai statue contains elements of religious significance to Hindus, and Lucy is a Christian angel; statues like her are commonly seen in Italian churches. Keep your renderings and other uses of these particular models in good taste. Don’t animate or morph them, don’t apply Boolean operators to them, and don’t simulate nasty things happening to them (like breaking, exploding, melting, etc.). Choose another model for these sorts of experiments. (You can do anything you want to the Stanford bunny or the armadillo.)³

Well, thank goodness for this, as the Stanford Bunny, as brought into Thingiverse very early on from Operator archiveman and then cleaned up for easier printing by phooky, has become along with the Gangsta one of the most frequently mashed-up and manipulated base models. It is even a base model in Ryan Schmidt’s wildly useful MeshMixer app.⁴

So when you are looking for treats to print this week (or this year, given that this is the Year of the Rabbit), don’t overlook gpvillamil’s Tron bunny, mrbug’s Bunny Trouble game or Optime Bunnyus, mifga’s Rabbitsta, and of course phooky’s printable-classic Stanford Bunny. My favorite Standford Bunny print involves simply taking phooky’s model and scaling it to 0.4 or 0.5 in ReplicatorG for execution with a Stepstruder MK6.

The Original Egg-Bot

While the Original Egg-Bot kits are currently back-ordered at Evil Mad Science, we still have a number of the kits in stock. Finding chocolate Easter eggs hidden in the backyard is one thing … but what if your love ones discovered a kit for building a robot to plot artwork on egg-shells on their Easter egg hunt?

A t-verse catalog of several compelling Easter-related models follows after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. an instant “I must print!” design [↩]
2. A note from Vik’s Thingiverse post: “Unlike real Easter Eggs, you should only practise on these targets with plastic Airsoft BB’s – Unless you just get a kick out of blowing things to smithereens” [↩]
3. Ed. My emphasis. [↩]
4. MeshMixer is back in active development now — grab the latest version for Mac or PC and add some literal Easter eggs to your other models [↩]

Dragon Head Trophy by Tony Buser

A dragon headed printer?!  THIS is why I love DIY 3D printing!!!  Not only is this a great mashup, but it’s also a super sweet looking print.  It’s also a constant reminder that I don’t have enough dragon heads on my stuff. ^1 2 3

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1. Plus, you know, there’s the ecological impact of mounting real dragon heads on printers. [↩]
2. And the smell. [↩]
3. Even dragon pelts are smelly. [↩]