MakerBot Industries

A few colleagues and I had a truly great time up in Westport, Connecticut last weekend, where we were part of that state’s first ever Maker Faire event. This Mini Maker Faire was held on the giant lawn outside the Westport Public Library. The only downside there was that a bunch of the guests and makers at Saturday’s event probably didn’t get a chance to go inside that gorgeous facility.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank everyone for stopping by to see us. I learned a lot from all the visitors to our table. For example, Dr. Raimund Herzog stopped by to discuss some challenges he was facing with his Thing-O-Matic extruder. He didn’t realize it, but he was giving me an education in the history of extruders.

Ray also shared a really helpful tip that I think bears re-mentioning on the blog: when assembling your TOM, it’s always a good idea to have a magnetic wand on hand, such as the one he received along with his Weller soldering station.

If you’re about to embark on an assembly adventure, get one of these. I assembled a Replicator the other day and found myself wishing I had one on hand. The guys and girls in the Bot Cave use them a lot, in case you’re wondering about the tools of the trade.

Here’s a shot of Ray showing us how useful this tool was in putting together his Filament Spindle Box, and another shot below it from our Support pages showing another angle.

Thanks, Ray!

A Thing-O-Matic station, from Herón et al.

We set it up next to our work table, we have plastic boxes to contain our failed prints, hoping that some day we’ll be able to recycle all that PLA. The ToM is pretty pimped out, with a LED ring light in the extruder, JAG’s filament drive, active cooling for the extruder, feet to easily get to the electronics, and the LM8UU X-carriage, all from Thingiverse.

And in case you were wondering, “that’s a robotic arm on the top shelve with an unfinished Prusa Air and Darth Vader guarding the ToM.”

What’s guarding your TOM?

Where Kat's Thing-O-Matic lives

Kat writes:

You wanted to see people’s Makerbot’s in their home environments, so here is mine! I recently bought my first flat so the study is still pretty bare, but I got a 2m long desk to accommodate all my techie/crafty stuff and of course my Thing-O-Matic has pride of place You can see it here hanging out with some of my other robotic helpers…

Not a very exciting pic right now, but soon as I get time I’ll be printing out a clock for the wall (got my kit waiting), and designing a bespoke plastic spool holder to go on the wall.

“I think it’s really cool how you can actually hold something that you printed out in your hand other than it just being a piece of paper.”

Such a simple thing, but it really is a thrill you don’t understand until you’ve skeined and printed. Am I right?

Thanks for this fun window into your MakerBotting, Collegiate School!

In the it’s-happy-hour-somewhere vein:

I love how these guys print their bottle opener in order to have that emergency beer at the office.

A couple of comments have come in through the blog, our twitter, and our Facebook channels to the same effect: does MakerBot still sell the Thing-O-Matic?

Let’s clear this up!

Kits

Since The Replicator launched in January, we have continued to ship Thing-O-Matic kits. We are, however, now completely out of stock of the Thing-O-Matics. We will no longer be offering the Thing-O-Matic for sale.

Support

For those who already own Thing-O-Matics, we absolutely plan to continue our support efforts for the foreseeable future. Please feel free to contact Support at the email address below with your needs.

If you’d like to get some insights from other community members, check out the forums on Support pages, or for the more advance user, dig into the MakerBot Operators Google Group.

Parts

We do still have several relevant replacement parts in stock that you may be interested in. If there’s something that you need, and you don’t see it on the store, drop us an email tosupport@makerbot.com.  We’ll do our best to find what you need to get you up and running.

Feedback From You

No matter what MakerBot 3D printer you are using, we value your input and participation on this blog and in all community outlets. Got a question about an event? Want to chime in with an idea for a blog post? Feel free to drop a line to tips@makerbot.com.

Sorry for the late notice on this one, but if you’re anywhere near Ithaca, NY tomorrow, Saturday the 14th, stop by the collaborative entrepreneurship space just founded called PopShop. I particularly like their domain name: http://popright.in/.

Tomorrow afternoon, our friend and associate Jeremy Blum will be giving a seminar on digital fabrication, including, of course, 3D printing. It’s an intro to the concepts of 3D printing, and there will be a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic and Replicator on hand to look at. Jeremy really knows what he’s talking about, so it should be a great talk!

While PopShop is really geared toward students, the talk tomorrow is open to the public.

I love the title that these guys at South Florida Hack and Tell have given themselves! Looks like they’re doing great work with their Thing-O-Matic. Check out the video from MiamiHerald.com.

UPDATE: View the video above here at WSJ.com.

The exhibit is open to the public, and runs from 9 AM to 6 PM, Monday through Friday.

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Material ConneXion
60 Madison Avenue
2nd floor
New York, NY

NYU-Poly's Lunabotics Team shows off MakerBots at MakerDay

NASA’s third annual Lunabotics Mining Competition is a mere 52 days away. I know that because the NYU-Poly Lunabotics team has a countdown clock on their page. That team is working its way toward a submission for the contest using Thing-O-Matics and Cupcake CNCs to prototype the robot parts! (UPDATE: this really brings to mind tbuser’s Mars Rover on Thingiverse. It’s been copied 19 times, and someone should probably round that off to an even 20 before the end of the day. Just sayin’.)

That is exciting in itself, but we were happy to receive a quick update yesterday — we lurve updates — and find out these guys are spreading the knowledge to other entrepreneurs in the NYC area. Team member Jack Poon posted that the group brought TOMs and a Cupcake over to NYU’s MakerDay last week.

…we were showing entrepreneurs a tool that can really help their businesses jump off the ground. A lot of them had a lot of ideas sparking. Instead of waiting forever for something or contracting out prototyping to machinists, now they could do it all themselves cheaply after a initial investment of $1999. There are even free tools online to help them get started with designing such as Google Sketchup.

It was also nice to hear that the obvious evolution from Cupcake to Thing-O-Matic was inspiring for the entrepreneurs. In case you missed it, there was a cool picture up this week showing those two next to our latest darling, The Replicator.

For more info on the NASA competition, look here. We cannot wait to see what the NYU-Poly team comes up with!

Mars Exploration Rover by tbuser

Articulated, snap together, Mars Rover! No screws, glue, or support structure needed (although some glue in a few places wouldn't hurt). All the parts can be posed, turned, twisted. The wheels turn and the legs even pivot like the real thing to go over obstacles! Unfortunately, it is not autonomous.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover2011-07-19 Update: V3 fixes a problem with plate 5 that was causing some pieces to be too close together and get merged, makes the axel holes in the body a little tighter, half the panels in the plates have been flipped so that the shiny side of all pieces printed on a HBP can be on top, I made the dimples on the panel tabs larger so they hold together better, and I also added squares to the panels to make them look more like solar panels.2011-07-16 Update: I uploaded a new version of everything with a few changes like dimpled tabs for the solar panels (thanks to gpvillamil) and slightly larger holes to make it easier to snap bolts into. I also added a variable to the openscad script called tolerance that you can use to make those holes slightly larger. If you print the tolerance_test.stl you can use it to help find the right tolerance for your printer. The holes range from a tolerance value of 0.0 to 0.6 in 0.1 increments and the files I uploaded are 0.2

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