MakerBot Industries

You might have missed your chance to attend the live, pre-sold-out Impossible Girl show at the new MakerBot Workshop space, but here are a few glimpses of the fun.

Check out the live stream archive above and slideshow below!

We’re very pleased to lend our new workshop space to the Impossible Girl this Thursday evening.  I’m afraid that her entire audience has already been pre-booked through a very clever Kickstarter campaign, and thus you cannot attend in person.  However, there will be a live stream of the concert, which will start at around 7:30pm.

Read more about Kim’s awesome project after the break! Read the rest of this entry »

Hey folks!  We just wanted to share a few photos from our booth at Blipfest last week.  Not only did we have a great time, but the blipsters seemed to really enjoy it.  There were a lot of folks who already knew about us (and were excited to see a Thing-O-Matic in action) and a whole lot of other people who got their minds blown up by the future.  I even bought a backlight for my gameboy.  And it was great to see Bubblyfish in action.

I think it’s fair to say a good time was had by all.

This might be a new one for MakerBot: coverage on a gaming website.  Kotaku’s Leigh Alexander took notice of our booth during Thursday’s opening night at Blipfest.

If you’re not familiar with the chiptunes scene, the article gives a great overview of what it’s all about…but doesn’t quite tell you exactly how fun it is.  If it sounds good, or you haven’t seen a Thing-O-Matic printing yet, come on down to Eyebeam tonight!

If you’re out on the left coast, we haven’t forgotten about you — we’ll be at Maker Faire San Mateo this weekend.  We’re active on both coasts!

Oh, and the picture?  A MakerBotted Gameboy earring by Schorhr.  It’ll go over well at either event.  See you there!

For those of you who haven’t been reading our calendar, (bottom right of this page!) we will be doing a demo at Blipfest NYC tonight through Saturday.  If you don’t know about Blip, it’s the premier festival for chiptunes and 8-bit music, with great artists like nullsleep and former MakerBot artist Bubblyfish.  (She was responsible for a lot of the work on musical Cupcakes from last summer, including her own composition, the haunting Lullaby for a Makerbot.)

We’ll be showing off some Thing-O-Matics, printing some objects, and answering questions as best we can considering that the glitched-out computer jams might get a bit loud.  So head on down to Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St, tonight through Saturday!  Hope to see you there!

I have to admit that a lot of my excitement about this object stems from the fact that guitar wall mounts are too large for ukuleles, and my tiny uke looks really ridiculous when I hang it from one of them.  (They might also be filled with too many guitars…)

So, the ukulele has to suffer the indignity of being shuffled from coffee table to desk to shelf when not in use — until now, thanks to rebuilder.  I’m very excited to print one of these out…maybe several if it fits mandolins!

Ukulele wall mount by rebuilder

Having sat on an Ukulele, I decided the best way to avoid pesky repairwork would be to hang the instruments up where I can't crush them. This does the job. I've included two versions of the object as STL. One has a thicker base in case your ukulele head ends up needing to go through a wall if you try to mount it on the thinner one. The thin version looks better, and for my instruments at least, I think would work even if I had mounted them on a wall instead of the top of a shelf as I did. Included is also the Blender file for these, which should be better suited for editing than the STLs.

This thing brought to you by

Recently, I posted an introduction to partymode and uploaded my own sample partymode scripts to Thingiverse to kick things off.

Today, I want to share a few more details to help you play in the ReplicatorG-flavored G-Code sandbox. For those uncertain about the value of creating short movement bot scripts should remember that this is a great opportunity for you to learn just enough about G-code to tweak your prints and personalizing the start.gcode and end.gcode files in your skeinforge profiles for better, more efficient MakerBotting.

Also, why not add a bit of musical hijinx to your prints? Why doesn’t your bot play music after every print? Mine does.¹

I’m going to bribe you to improve your G-code fluency by introducing you to a stupidly simple trick you will want to use every time you skein a model.

MakerBot Operators grumble about navigating down through the ReplicatorG file structure to adjust the Start.gcode files for a Skeinforge profile. But do you know what happens if you don’t do this step? The nozzle drops down to 20mm-40mm above the platform and attempts to print in the air. Not so successfully, as it turns out.

Well, that little snipped of gcode you must change in your Start.gcode file appears again right near the top of the gcode that you generate when you slice a model. Here’s the chunk in question just a little ways down the G-code document I have just generated for an Octopus model I am super eager to print on my bot. Want to make an adjustment? You can punch up the code right in ReplicatorG without touching your Start.gcode document.

(**** begin homing ****)

G162 Z F500 (home Z axis maximum)

G161 X Y F2500 (home XY axes minimum)

G92 Z80 ( ---=== Set Z axis maximum ===---)

G92 X-57.5 Y-57 (set zero for X and Y)

(**** end homing ****)

“Hmmm,” you say. “So this is the Homing section. And Set Z axis maximum lists only 80mm for the height of my build envelope. You’d better change that to your bot’s printing height ( 120.3mm) and then save your file!”

Thank you, bot-friend! You have just shown me how to use ReplicatorG to tune and save g-code!² You can perform this trick right within ReplicatorG or open a plaintext editor and change the file there.

I suggest you take a look at this homing block every time you skein a new model to make sure that the correct value has propagated through. (Sometimes it helps to adjust your z-height by a 10th of a millimeter up or down — that first layer is ultra crucial when you aren’t printing a raft, especially on stepper-driven extruders.)

Do you want to know the handful of G-Code commands every Operator should recognize on sight! Learn more after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Well, my Cupcake prints do. [↩]
2. Most G-code is practically as simple — thanks to lots and lots of commenting in Skeinforge and the user configurable Start.gcode and End.gcode. [↩]