Want to share your own MakerBot Replicator 2 story for a chance to win $250? Find out how here.

Want to share your own MakerBot Replicator 2 story for a chance to win $250? Find out how here.

This year, we at MakerBot are thrilled to share space with one of the hands down leaders in 3D design software, Autodesk. Our partnership was first announced at SXSW, where we showed off 3D printed figures that were masterfully designed in Autodesk’s 123D Creature app and made with a MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer. This month, the integrations and collaborations deepen, and Maker Faire is the place to see it all.

Come join us at the Autodesk booth, #120, to see what’s new. There will be a showcase “Fix It” wall of some everyday things designed with Autodesk software and printed on MakerBots. You’ll also see a special edition MakerBot Replicator 2, with a custom faceplate and build plate designed exclusively for sale through Autodesk. It looks awesome!

MakerBot and Autodesk products have gotten closer, too. Now you can design something in Autodesk 123D Design, 123D Make, or 123D Catch and use the “Print to MakerBot” button right inside the app. This is a huge step for a 3D modeling program. We’re excited it will be even easier for people to design great things and hold them in no time.

Autodesk is offering sweet membership packages for the 123D apps that include discounts on a MakerBot purchase, or even the custom MakerBot Replicator 2 shown above. Here’s how the memberships break down.

123D Premium membership – Buy a membership to the 123D app suite and get a promo code toward purchasing a MakerBot Replicator 2 via 123Dapp.com.

1 year membership, includes $40 promo code toward MakerBot purchase – $99.99
2 year membership, includes $90 promo code toward MakerBot purchase – $189.99

123D Premium membership Bundle – Bundle your 123D Premium membership with the custom Autodesk edition of the MakerBot Replicator 2, and get additional MakerBot PLA filament with your purchase.

1 year membership, includes MakerBot Replicator 2 and one additional 1kg spool of PLA – $2,249.99
2 year membership, includes MakerBot Replicator 2 and three additional 1kg spools of PLA – $2,299.99

Get started here: www.123Dapp.com

We’re proud to announce that some 3D-printed pieces from the MakerBot Design Team have been chosen for a special collection at the MoMA Design Store called Destination: NYC — Made in the USA. For those who don’t know, MoMA is the Museum of Modern Art here in New York. The organization has been shining a light on local designers in cities around the world in its Destination: Design series.

Sometimes pieces in the series become top selling items at MoMA Design Stores. At MakerBot, we hope the innovative artists and designers who see our items will be inspired to use 3D printing in their own work. Here’s the set of items all together, including a customized MakerBot Mix Tape and MakerBot Watch designed just for MoMA, along with a bunch of pieces reflecting iconic places and objects in NYC.

Get your hands on these now! The whole Destination: NYC series, including pieces from other amazing local designers, is available from now through August only at MoMA Store locations in New York and Tokyo, as well as online at MoMAstore.org, MoMAonlinestore.co.kr, and MoMAstore.jp.

The full press release is available at the end of this post.

Prepared by:      MakerBot

Makerbot.com                                                                                 

Contact:               Jenifer Howard
jenifer.howard@makerbot.com
203-273-4246

MakerBot® Joins MoMA Design Store for Destination: NYC – Made in the USA

MakerBot Offers A Dozen MakerBot-Made NYC Iconic Products Plus MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printers in MoMA Design Stores – May 15 – August 2013

Brooklyn, N.Y., May 15, 2013 – MakerBot® made with “Brooklyn pride,” is proud to be one of the selected New York City-based designers to be highlighted at the MoMA Design Store Destination: NYC – Made in the USA, that launches May 15, 2013, at the MoMA Design Stores in New York.

As part of the MoMA Design Store Destination: NYC – Made in the USA, MakerBot will showcase its MakerBot® Replicator® 2 Desktop 3D Printer (retailing for $2,199), as well as unique and iconic NYC-themed 3D printed novelty items ($7 each), such as the New York Public Library Lions “Patience and Fortitude;” the Statue of Liberty; the Empire State Building; the Chrysler Building Skyline; the Empire State Building Skyline; the Guggenheim Skyline; the Statue of Liberty Skyline; a New York City Subway Car; a New York City Taxi Cab; and iconic New York City street scenes of a subway entrance, a hot dog cart, and a Central Park Bench.  There will even be a retro-inspired MakerBot-made MoMA-branded “Mix Tape” MP3 player ($45) and a cool MakerBot-made MoMA 3D printed watch ($68).

Destination: NYC – Made in the USA is MoMA Design Store’s 11^th event in the Destination: Design series.  The collection features approximately 200 lifestyle products by 75 New York designers including home accessories, furniture, paper goods, 3D printed items, and jewelry. All products are designed in one of the five boroughs of New York City and manufactured in the United States. Muted colors, graffiti art and pop culture iconography are a few elements of New York’s culture that will be celebrated in the product collection. 

“MakerBot is very proud to have been invited to participate in the MoMA Design Store Destination: NYC – Made in USA program,” noted Bre Pettis, CEO of MakerBot.  “MakerBots are made with Brooklyn pride and this is a great venue to showcase how 3D printing is helping fuel the Next Industrial Revolution – right here in New York.  And the 3D printed MakerBot-made iconic New York scenes are something special to take home.”

Pettis noted that MakerBot is helping fuel the Next Industrial Revolution by offering desktop 3D printers that are used for rapid prototyping and personal manufacturing by engineers, architects, industrial designers, artists, educators, and people that just like to make things.  MakerBot’s 3D Ecosystem makes the design and 3D printing process even easier by offering tools and services that bring the design and 3D printing process closer together, such as MakerBot’s website Thingiverse.com, that has more than 80,000 3D designs available for sharing and printing.  Thingiverse.com has had more than 17 million downloads of items from its site.  MakerBot’s 3D Ecosystem is also made up of its MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer, the MakerBot Store, MakerWare, MakerCare, the MakerBot 3D Photo Booth, Bre Pettis’ book “Getting Started with MakerBot,” classes and workshops on 3D printing, the soon-to-be-released MakerBot Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner, and strategic partnerships with like-minded companies, such as Autodesk and its 123D family of design products, OUYA, Nokia, Printcraft, MoMA, and many others.

“We are so impressed by the depth of local talent submitted during our Open Call for New York designers last year,” says Emmanuel Plat, Director of Merchandising of MoMA’s retail division. “The innovative products and unique designs truly reflect urban living and led us to create our largest collection to date.”

The Destination: NYC product collection will be available in MoMA Design Stores in New York City (11 West 53 Street, 44 West 53 Street, 81 Spring Street) and Tokyo and at MoMAstore.org, MoMAonlinestore.co.kr, and MoMAstore.jp beginning in May 2013 and running through August 2013.  Destination: NYC is made possible by the generous support of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair® (ICFF®).

MakerBot will also showcase the capabilities of its 3D desktop printers in the MoMA Design Store, and the MoMA Design Store will be an authorized retail outlet where MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printers can be purchased on-site.  The two locations offering MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printers will be at the New York City MoMA Design Store locations at 81 Spring Street and 44 West 53^rd Street.

About MakerBot

Founded in 2009, Brooklyn-based MakerBot has grown to be a global leader in desktop 3D printing. There are more than 15,000 MakerBot Desktop 3D Printers in use by engineers, designers, researchers, and people who just like to make things.  The MakerBot Replicator Desktop 3D Printer has been named Popular Mechanics “Overall Winner” for best 3D printer and has numerous awards, including being honored as one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2012; “Best Emerging Tech” at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show; won Popular Mechanics Editor’s Choice Award; the Popular Science Product of the Year; and recently was awarded a TechCrunch Crunchies Award for best hardware start-up; a Gold Edison Award for Best Design; and a Fast Company 2012 Innovation by Design Award, as well as being named by Fast Company as “One of the World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Consumer Electronics.” The company has been featured on the cover of WIRED, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Inc., Worth, The Colbert Report, Fast Company, Engadget, Make: Magazine, Rolling Stone, Time.com, IEEE Spectrum, CNN, Financial Times, NPR, Vogue Italia and many others.  Follow MakerBot @MakerBot.

About Destination: Design

Destination: Design began in 2005 with the following regions explored: Finland, Denmark, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Japan, Seoul, Brazil, Portugal, Istanbul, Mexico and now New York (in that order). Destination: Design reflects MoMA’s mission-related commitment to educate the public about innovative items of design, and also fosters other important goals. Products sourced often help local artisans by celebrating traditional craftsmanship and interpreting this work in interesting, new presentations. Sustainability in materials and production techniques are important factors for consideration of all items included in Destination projects. Some of the MoMA Design Store’s best selling items are a result of the Destination series including the Kangaroo Desk Organizer (Buenos Aires), Pig Cooking Lid (Japan), Wooden Fishing Play Set and Tea Mug (Seoul), and Chalkboard Vase (Brazil).

About MoMA’s Retail Division

MoMA’s Retail Division furthers the Museum’s mission of educating the public about modern art and good design. What began in 1939 as a small sales desk in the Museum’s lobby now features three store locations in New York and one in Tokyo; e-commerce sites for U.S., Japanese, and Korean markets; a mail order catalog; and a wholesale division. The retail division works with the curatorial departments to select and develop products and publications that reflect MoMA’s programs and collections. It offers the public thousands of products, from publications and art reproductions to a varied selection of design objects, jewelry, and personal accessories, and larger design items such as furniture and lighting. In addition, any net revenues generated by the Museum Stores are used solely to advance the Museum’s mission, which includes supporting the Museum’s programs and exhibitions.

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Want to share your own Replicator 2 story? Find out how here.

Want to share your own Replicator 2 story? Find out how here.

It’s been seven months since we started shipping the MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer. In that time, we’ve heard countless stories of what people are doing with this powerful machine. From a toothbrush that helps kids brush properly to a simple accessory that speeds up credit card purchases, we’ve heard it all.

In light of that, we are sharing a series of stories here on our website called #MBME: MakerBot & Me. Some of the stories we hear are practical, some are sweet, some are totally genius. In every case, they’re inspiring. We’ve collected some examples so far, and you can see them here.

Now the fun part: we want you to supply the rest, for a chance to win a $250 Gift Certificate to our online store.

How to Win

We want great stories that help the world understand what’s so cool about owning a MakerBot. It should be a story of what you yourself have done, with some pictures to show off your work:

•   Photo of you, the thing you made, and your MakerBot Replicator 2. (optional, if you’re shy)
•   Photo of the thing you made and your MakerBot Replicator 2.
•   Photo of just the thing you made.

Before you get started, here’s a note from our lawyers:

By submitting an electronic mail entry to the address below, you certify that you are eligible to enter and agree to be bound by these official rules.

Simply email your story to mbme@makerbot.com with photos attached. Bonus points if you have a video! We’ll select one per day for our blog, and at the end of the series, we’ll give everyone a chance to vote for their favorite story here on the blog and in social media.

Want to get inspired? Read all the stories so far, and check back every day for more.

Getting Started

MakerBot heard about the Robohand project in January 2013. Richard had been trading ideas with Ivan Owen, a collaborator in Washington State, for several months. Ivan used his prior experience with mechanical prop hands to make design suggestions, while Richard attempted to replicate the designs in his workshop.

The process was taking weeks and months per cycle. For us here at MakerBot, that was too much wasted time. We knew our 3D printer, the MakerBot Replicator 2, could take this important work to new heights. We saw their collaboration and the work they were doing as groundbreaking, and we asked Ivan and Richard to accept a donation from us: a MakerBot Replicator 2 for each of them, one in Washington, and another in South Africa.

If the tool was useful to them, we hoped they would share their work on Thingiverse.com for the world to download. It turns out the MakerBots were incredibly useful, and the guys have followed through on their promise. Just hours after they received their packages from us here in Brooklyn, the two collaborators were sharing files back and forth, testing the design in one place and doing another iteration on the other side of the world. Richard says it took the prototyping process down from weeks to just 20 minutes.

But that’s only half the story.

Giving A Hand

Robohand has grown far beyond the goal of making a set of fingers just for Richard. When the power of desktop 3D printing and MakerBot entered the picture, Richard began to realize how quickly he could refine a design for other people who have lost their fingers, or who were born without fingers. After posting his own story, he received emails and Facebook messages from parents whose children were candidates for a Robohand of their own. One of these children was five-year-old Liam.

The condition Amniotic Band Syndrome is poorly understood, but the effects of it are pretty clear. Children are often born without extremities, especially fingers and toes, when fibrous bands in the womb prevent these parts from developing normally. It’s this condition that caused Liam to be born with no fingers on his right hand. The cost of purchasing a traditional prosthesis was far too much for the family, especially since Liam is a young and fast growing boy who would outgrow a prosthesis in a few months.

Liam was given a Robohand just days after Richard and Ivan received their MakerBots in January, 2013, and he has already been fitted for his second. The word spread, and other kids in the Johannesburg area like Liam with Amniotic Band Syndrome have received their own Robohands, sized just for them. The files, including the assembly instructions, have been posted online at Thingiverse, and they have been downloaded over 3,800 times by people around the globe.

What Is A Robohand?

A Robohand is a set of mechanical fingers that open and close to grasp things based on the motion of the wrist. When the wrist folds and contracts, the cables attaching the fingers to the base structure cause the fingers to curl. Nearly all the parts of a Robohand are 3D printed on MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D printers.

Ivan, who played a big part in the initial design stages of Robohand, says he studied the anatomy of crab legs and human fingers to get the basic muscle and tendon structure. The result is a simple assembly that Richard believes anyone can make themselves. While a full set of prosthetic fingers may cost thousands of dollars, all of the Robohand parts that are made on the MakerBot Replicator 2 add up to roughly a few dollars in material cost, with the total mechanical hand costing around $150 (USD).

Who Needs A Robohand?

Amniotic Band Syndrome affects 1 in 1,200 live births.

About 80% of cases of Amniotic Band Syndrome involve the loss or malformation of fingers and hands.

Finger amputations are the most common amputation in the US, accounting for over 90% of all amputations, according to various reports.

How Do I Get A Robohand?

Robohand was not imagined as a service or a product. Instead, Richard has shared the design files and instructions for creating a Robohand on Thingiverse so that people around the world can download, customize, print, and assemble Robohands for themselves or for others.

So far, we’ve heard stories of Robohands being made for children and adults in the US, Canada, and Thailand. Are you a MakerBot owner who can give this incredible gift to someone in your community?

Get Involved

There’s still a lot to be done. Richard has given hands-on help to a few of the people within his reach, but Robohand needs your help in order to get to the people who need it most.

● Want to spread the word? Share this video with your friends on Twitter or Facebook.
● Looking to to support the cause? Check out Robohand’s Indiegogo campaign.
● Are you an occupational therapist or prosthetist? Leave a comment below!

Make a Robohand

The design files and assembly instructions for Robohand can be found on Thingiverse.

Robohand’s creators would like to empower others around the world to use their files and create and print in 3D Robohands of their own, and they are not in the mechanical hand business. They created Robohand out of the goodness of their heart. Now it’s time to provide the files to the world and see what other good can come from them!

Robohand uses the following tools to make their mechanical hands:

● MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer
● MakerBot PLA Filament
● Stainless steel hardware
● Thermo-forming orthoplastic
● Elastic bands
● Nylon cable

The full bill of materials is listed here.

I just put two new videos up there today that are chock-full of useful information.

The Discover: Support Material video will tell you just how shallow of an overhang a MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D printer can handle and offers some tips for how to deal with different overhangs.

The Discover: Dual Extrusion 3D Modeling video will explain just what a dual extrusion is and demystifies the concept of creating a dual extrusion 3D model.

If you have any suggestions about videos or resources that you’d like to see on the Discover pages you can email us at thoughts@makerbot.com.

Our central goal with the Digitizer is to make an affordable 3D scanner that works perfectly with our Desktop 3D Printers. We don’t want scans that you have to clean up and cut flat surfaces into. Off the scanner, into the printer. We know that’s what you want, so that’s what we’re working toward.

Here we go! The first couple of models we have to share are both pretty famous at this point: our Garden Gnome and the Stanford Bunny.

We’re getting some pretty good detail on the scans. The gnome’s beard and suspenders show this off nicely. Again, this is the scan directly from the MakerBot Digitizer, without any repairs to the outer surface.

And here’s the Stanford Bunny.

This is an exciting scan. The bunny’s ears were captured perfectly, with no extra material between them. We look for good results like this that show deep crevices on an object.

Stay tuned for more updates on the MakerBot Digitizer. We also have an email list that you can sign up for at makerbot.com/digitizer. When you’re there, be sure to tell us what you’d scan, and keep your feedback coming in the comments.