Speaking of whether or not you could MakerBot a “real” product¹ , here’s a fairly thorough little case study of one company using a Thing-O-Matic to manufacture a final product. Conclusion?

3D printers can make “Real” products
As of today, people will pay for 3D printed parts and as we develop new techniques for combining it with digital manufacturing technologies, such as laser cutting and water jet machining, our products will become more complex. We believe that our only limitation is our imagination.

I Heart Robotics, who are also in Brooklyn, give a great breakdown of all the costs that go into making a TriK Tripod Adapter (for a Kinect), which sells on their store for $19.95.

They say the only complaint they’ve gotten so far was when they couldn’t make the adapter in the color a customer wanted. That’s a pretty easy fix.

It’s also cool to see these guys using their Thing-O-Matic to produce a part where they’re not quite sure of the market. You don’t have to do too much market research if you can make the product on demand, and if you only sell 20 of them, you probably don’t want to sink a bunch of money into injection molding costs. They’ve sold 56 adapters since buying their Thing-O-Matic in September, 2011, which nearly pays for the machine itself. As they note in the blog post, with 107 units sold overall, they certainly could never have profited from another method of manufacturing.

1. okay, we were speaking about this a while ago… [↩]

The other day the guys at the Florida-based marketing agency Pixil, represented on Thingiverse by videopixil and ecken, posted their review of a Discovery Daypack bag from Tenba (video below). Now we see through twitter that they’ve added a clip to a Tenba bag for attaching a monopod. Nice!

This also gets a Where You MakerBot, since I saw in their twitter feed that they’ve moved their Replicator into a nice new home. I like that it’s getting some of that good Florida sunshine.

Bokeh-Effector by webghost

For those who didn’t know, such as myself, a “bokeh” effect is the aesthetic quality of the blur in an out-of-focus area in a photograph.  Thingiverse citizen has contributed an attachment for 72mm lenses that will create such bokeh effects.  I would think with a little OpenSCAD magic, one might be able to not only create a parametric derivative of this work, but also create a version that would create blurs and light patterns of nearly any type.

How cool would it be to have a collection of these things?  A lens for dinosaurs, rainbows, unicorns, daleks, fireworks…

Untitled by webghost

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