Thing9 by Zomboe

I find myself printing Zomboe‘s Snake model essentially every time I calibrate a bot or want to offer a quick wow to someone who hasn’t experienced 3D printing before. That model is truly one of the most popular hits of the T-verse as printed in the BotCave.¹

Seeing his outstanding Thing9 yesterday it occurred to me that I haven’t been singing my praises for his ThingSeries, which he has been adding to for nearly a year now. Now, here is a modeler unafraid to let his imagination run wild and to keep pushing the limits of what he can model and print on a regular basis. I find myself challenged and inspired by this series. And while he didn’t design these for the Thing-O-Matic, the latest developments with the Stepstruder MK6 on a Thing-O-Matic allow for more satisfying scaled-to-build-envelope prints of Zomboe’s pieces than were previously possible.

Somewhere between tech experiments, contagious nightmares, and cute and cuddly Tim Burton-esque figurines, Thing1 through Thing9 are worth examining again in the order of release to get a sense of the progress of his experimentation. I can’t get enough of Thing9 — it feels to me like a set-piece for a stopmotion HP Lovecraft children’s movie.² These models are also great tests for tweaking Skeinforge : Reversal settings. Or try turning Reversal entirely off for a few of these to create models that actually benefit aesthetically from stringing.

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by Zomboe

This thing brought to you by

1. At CES and MakerFaire this past year, I watched individuals sit for the entire ~15min print just so she or he could be the one to grab it as it rolled off the front of the ABP. [↩]
2. And makes me want to make such a movie! [↩]

A Gangsta War A-Brewing

On December 30th, 2010, Thingiverse user Yzorg uploaded his Gangsta model as a work-in-progress, with the unassuming description: “the lowpolyest Gansta in woorld.”

From the beginning, his part was a popular model to print — with rumors of the mustering/printing of Gangsta armies running rampant throughout the Botcave.¹ But it took nearly a month before user Cibomahto² mashed-up the head of the popular Snake model by Zimboe with Yzorg’s Gangsta body and ignited the Thingiverse community-wide practice of vivisecting and mashing up the Gangsta with his model Snakesta.

World of Gangstas

There are BrainyWaltDisneyStas, Primestas, Rabbitstas, a tribute to Belgian statuary, StaStas, and even now a Lowresta. What will be appearing next? The Gangsta model is currently giving the historical 3D model Stanford bunny a run for its money as a starting block for 3D designers and mashup maniacs. Join the mania and tag up your Thingiverse model as a “gangsta.”

And while you’ll notice that a number of users now grab Cibomahto’s cleaned-up, base-flattened model as the source for the Gangsta part of the mashup, it is only due to the current limitations of Thingiverse’s inheritance model that the new derivatives don’t twist their way back down the alley to finger the part modeled by Yzorg as the one and original gangsta.

Untitled by yzorg

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by cibomahto

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by yzorg

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by TeamTeamUSA

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by mifga

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by yzorg

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by mifga

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by mifga

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by mrbug

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by cibomahto

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by whosawhatsis

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by JohnA

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by JohnA

This thing brought to you by

Untitled by tbuser

This thing brought to you by

1. I still see four fluorescent red Gangsta’s at Zach’s desk, vs the a blue army of Gangsta’s and mutant gangsta’s at Matt Mett’s station. [↩]
2. MakerBot software engineer Matt Mets [↩]