MakerBot Industries

A remarkable message came into the support desk this week: the story of an active-duty soldier who went the extra mile to get and build his MakerBot Thing-O-Matic while on deployment in Iraq.

Here’s a bit more detail from Josh:

The story is taken from a publication called ‘Expeditionary Times’, it was a newspaper that was circulated in Joint Base Balad, AKA Anaconda in Balad, Iraq. It served soldiers assigned to Iraq during the Iraqi Campaign. My roommate just happened to work at the Newspaper and he was intrigued by my build, which took about five weeks (Sometimes you have to be patient!).

It took me forever to find a 240V Solder Gun. I eventually found one in a Iraqi Bazaar. It was obviously not for sale, but I tried anyways. At first the guy totally refused since they use it to fix nicknacks they sell soldiers, but I started haggling. Iraqi men love to haggle more than anything else so he sold it and I got robbed for the outrageous price of $12.00, I’m sure I could have gotten him to $5 but I wanted that iron bad. Keep in mind a dollar there is like ten here, probably 15 in Brooklyn!

My roommates didn’t complain but I didn’t use it quite as often as I’d like, sharing a 12×12 room with three other soldiers requires diplomacy that i wasn’t sure melting plastic could mend. I moved a couple of more places and the MakerBot was always the first thing out.

It generated a lot of interest. The motorpool Sergeant loved it, he even got me a donated travelcase for it. Those things aren’t cheap!

Needless to say, we are quite impressed with the lengths to which the Staff Sergeant went in order to build his Thing-O-Matic.  What’s more, it sounds like he’s got dome fever (a condition we share) — he’s using his bot to protoype geodesic dome connectors as a type of low-cost housing.

MakerBot Operators are generally pretty interesting, but this is definitely one of the best stories we’ve heard in awhile.  Staff Sgt. Rucinski: We salute you for vision and tenacity!

For the complete story, click here: Pdf

In a Hackerspace, somewhat far away, is a man named Dave Langkamp. A retired industrial designer of 33 years (twenty years designing at John Deere), Dave hasn’t rested on his laurels. One of his creations is this 50′s style UFO (printed on a MakerBot Cupcake) which contains an astonishing 133 parts! It now awaits its finishing coats and killer paint job.

In addition to the UFO, Dave is working on a 1/24th scale Semi tractor and trailer (which will carry the UFO), as well as a glider with a 54 inch wingspan! You can check out Dave’s blog for updates on his projects: http://thetinkersworkshop.blogspot.com/

We’re big fans of Hackerspaces here at MakerBot, and without one, Dave’s projects might have had some trouble getting off the ground. The Quad Cities Collaboration and Hackerspace located in Davenport, Iowa is a haven for for designers, technologists, educators, hobbysits, and anyone who wants to experience a great sense of community. If you’re in the Davenport area, it just might be worth looking up.

It’s not unusual for us to receive requests for DXF files for our MakerBot machines and Scott Hunter did just that – asking for the files that would enable his group of students the ability to replace the wooden components of his school’s Thing-O-Matic with various colors of acrylic. What caught my attention was that his students were 12 year old girls, from Scotland, with a penchant for designing the future of Formula 1 cars. Yep.

The students, involved in the F1 in Schools Technology Challenge, are using CAD/CAM(Computer Aided Manufacture) software to communicate their vision. The participants are encouraged to consider everything from physics, aerodynamics, design, and manufacture, to branding, graphics, sponsorship and more. It’s a comprehensive competition with wind and smoke tunnels, culminating with a race down a 20 meter track with the cars going as fast as 60 kmh (over 37 mph!).

The competition permits the use of 3D printers for the front and rear aerofoils of their miniature gas powered balsa wood F1 cars (manufactured on a CNC machine), and Scott’s team chose the Thing-O-Matic to help them get to the finish line. As you can see from the photo above, it’s looking great! With an international field of contestants (34 countries) aged 9-19 (for a total of 12 million(!) students), and fierce competition, the Challenge is more worth following…if you can keep up.

Under the guidance of Professors Alberto Valero PhD and Juan Gonzalez PhD, students at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid have been taking advantage of an optional seminar, which focuses on the study of 3D design and printing. Using Open Source tools, this new program is the first of its kind in Spain, and the early returns have been tremendous.

Studying OpenSCAD for designing, and building a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic (named Madre) for printing, students have been looking at how to create and improve upon robotic mechanisms. Inspired by items on Thingiverse, the students have been printing their designs for over three months, eight hours per day, and to date, have gone through over 12kg of plastic! They have even been using it more than their industrial 3D printer. Professor Valero summed it up pretty well: “THIS IS PLASTIC VALLEY.”

You can see a sampling of their work on Thingiverse, under the tag, UC3M. One of the more challenging projects for now and for the future has been to take obijuan‘s MiniSkyBot and make adjustments to make it capable of moving through a sand box.

After a successful introduction to 3D design and printing, the university will soon be expanding to include even more classes, and MakerBots! One class in particular, “Designing and Printing of Mechanical Parts with Open Source Tools’ for the Robotics and Automation Master program looks very promising. Based on what we’ve seen so far, we have high hopes for the program’s future!

Caterpillator by Olalla

This is a printable caterpillar robot with gear wheels and links -kind of tank-like ;) . This is part a project developed in the UC3M university in which we are designing printable robots. Here, we have together all the pieces that form this robot, but you can have a look at the different parts pages to see some other people modifications -specially at the links. Take into account that this is a work in progress.Though this robot works as it is designed now, it can be improved a lot -and this is in what we are working right now. Some of the pieces -in their own pages- are parametrized, while others are still pending. Designers: Olalla Bravo thingiverse.com/olalla Daniel Gómez thingiverse.com/dannynoc A special thank you to Obijuan thingiverse.com/obijuan for printing us the pieces, providing useful advice and remarking us some obvious design mistakes and, in general, leading us into the nerdy way =p . Another thank you also to our other professor Alberto, for his advice,patience and invitations to have some coffee. Individual pages for the pieces: Gear wheels and links: thingiverse.com/thing:7209 Chassis: thingiverse.com/thing:7681 Parametric gear wheels: thingiverse.com/thing:7794 UPDATE: We've got a video of the robot in motion!!youtu.be/gRsKRrQQHos Update 4/13 23:52 The chassis now includes four drills in order to hold the PIC with the micro that controls the servos above the chassis. Also, the hole that it had so that some material could be saved has been removed in order to sustain better the PIC. Update 4/14 14:08 Added the parametric version of the gear wheels that we are using in the design. Update 4/20 00:28 The comments of the links scad file have been translated into English. I hope this will help to understand better the code and that it will make easier modifications of the file.

This thing brought to you by

While capturing media for a new “Meet the MakerBot Operators” profiles series, I have been microphoning MakerBots in the BotCave while printing objects. As an unexpected fruit of my labor: I am  issuing “MakerBot Sound Library 001: The Pulley” @ Thingiverse to encourage attention to the bots’ sound/music-related properties. This #001 edition focuses on the sounds associated with printing the pulley object.

What does your print sound like? Does your bot have a voice, a lisp, a rattle that you want to share with the world?

• Pulley part 7.
• Y-axis shift.
• Z-axis shift.
• Finished printing “bark.”

The community is encouraged to make use of these sounds in video/sound/music/etc projects associated with their print projects — and share back by issuing compositions, shaping sounds and beats, creating beat loops/battle breaks and instruments, etc, as derivatives of the pertinent Sound Library edition. Or how about sharing your MakerBot recordings as a Sound Library of your own so that others can take a listen? (Grab the next consecutive Sound Library edition number and go for it.)

Over Memorial Day weekend, MakerBot MakerBot staffer Isaac has been evangelizing the MakerBot as tool for sound at Movement: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival, and I am exciting about the possibilities. I simply have no idea yet what need or use exists for MakerBot sounds, and I count on you to grab the samples and go for it — create Ableton Live instruments, chiptunes-friendly encodings, ringtones, startup-tones, pbx voicemail menu trees …

• X-axis long cross.
• Tweezers.
• The Raft.
• ABS filament extrusion.

The original recordings are largely mono, 48k, 24bit .wav files using a boom microphone, contact microphone and Marantz handheld recorder. This edition being the first audio-only thing @ Thingiverse, please share feedback about what sounds and media format (bit rate/sample rate/format/codec) you need with me.