Wow, check out this great MakerBottable robot with the perfect human dimensions! Nice work Jrombousky!
This is the Leonardo Robot. I based his measurements off the ideal measurements of a human to try and give him realistic proportions. Enjoy printing.
Download and print at Thingiverse!
Last night, MakerBot put the call out for a printable ocarina. In less than 12 hours, Thingiverse citizen Pattywac responded with a design! Check it out! Pattywac promises to make it more printable and we can’t wait to see the first print and hear the first mp3 of this thing screaching. Zelda doesn’t have anything on Thingiverse!
This kind of call and response on Thingiverse is very exciting. It reminds me of a neighborhood feeling where you can fix my plumbing and I can bake you cakes!
PLA is a material that we sell that is made of corn. It’s in the experimental stage, meaning that we did a bunch of tests and found it to be the best, but we haven’t found the best settings for it yet. One problem folks have been having is keeping it flowing!
Nick McCoy has solved one problem by coating the PLA with oil as it goes into the extruder. He’s put a piece of cotton and soaked it with oil so that it coats it as the filament goes into the extruder. Cool! We haven’t tried this out at the Botcave yet, but it’s refreshing to hear a cool solution! Learn more about PLA on the MakerBot wiki.
I am using engine oil, 10W-30, I believe. I bought the wrong stuff for my car once and so I have a quart of it lying around. I thought about using vegtable oil, but I think it would smoke at my working temperatures and I don’t need my reprap smelling more like waffles than it does just running PLA.
Ok, so a little bit of background: I was a school teacher for a long time. I taught in the arts, one of the last subjects that hasn’t had it’s creativity smothered by the testing trend of the past 10 years. I was lucky, I had the best job at the time. This student, writing for his High School newspaper, Garfield High School in Seattle Public Schools, describes an even better job! I have to say that if I could go back in time, I would have begged, borrowed and stolen to find a way to get a laser cutter and 3D printer for my class!
Three-dimensional printer: $18,900. Laser engraver: $24,000. The irony that they’re both locked up and collecting dust at Garfield: priceless.Originally, both pieces of equipment were supposed to be part of a new pre-engineering class at Garfield: Project Lead the Way PLTW. Theoretically, the class would offer Garfield students a uniquely engaging, hands-on introduction to engineering.“The district picks and chooses what programs it wants to invest in,” says Principal Ted Howard II. “When the building was renovated, it was decided that Garfield would implement Project Lead the Way, so [the district] went out and bought all the materials.”In addition to purchasing the 3D printer and the laser engraver, the district also invested in a robotic arm, nearly 30 robots, and other costly technology.“We have a whole bunch of equipment that’s ostensibly to teach students about beginning engineering concepts,” says Helene Martin, who teaches the new creative computing and computer science classes at Garfield.According to Martin’s estimates, the total value of the equipment may exceed $200,000.Unfortunately, PLTW never became fully operational at Garfield. The curriculum demands a teacher with a strong engineering background.“We couldn’t find anyone that would actually teach PLTW,” says Howard. “We ended up going through five or six teachers.”
I know how schools work. There isn’t enough money to cover the needs of teachers and students and every year the money gets shifted in the hopes that it will be a better balance. Still, I hope that these machines get to be used and abused by young people before they are sold off by the school district at auction.
Is there something that could be done? Yes! Find a teacher who teaches engineering who wouldn’t mind having access and get them to teach an after school class could be put in place to use the tools. Only students with an interest would go and they would learn to build the future!
Laser, 3D printer, and an onion, OH MY!
I found this about a year ago and then lost the link before I could blog about it. Thankfully, the gentleman Douglas Repetto sent a link today to the Thingiverse group and now I can share this project’s beauty with you!
It’s a glorious machine that runs on very old-skool early reprap technology. Zach designed and shipped those boards two years ago. If I was an art collector or MOMA, I would buy this. It’s awesome!
This system uses lasers to scan an onion plant from one of three angles. As the plant is scanned a fuse deposition modeler in real-time creates a plastic model based on the information collected. The device repeats this process every twenty-four hours scanning from a different angle. After a new model is produced the system advances a conveyor approximately 17 inches so the cycle can repeat. The result is a series of models illustrating the growth of the plant from varying angles.
Priya Ganapati wrote a great article about the spider/lego/makerbottable contraption over on the Wired blog.
Weller, a machinist and technician at the McCoy School of Engineering at Midwestern State University, combined milled plastic pieces with the basic Lego Mindstorms set to create a robotic spider that can crawl and turn.
“I wanted to open students’ minds to go beyond ‘let’s put the parts together and program the robot,’” he says. “This project is more than sticking the wheels on a Lego set.” The school uses Lego Mindstorms to introduce freshman students to robotics.
The spider robot’s legs are based on a concept called the Klann linkage. A single leg has a six-bar linkage with a frame, crank, two rockers and two couplers connected with pivot joints. This transforms rotating motion into linear motion.
Weller says he created the spider’s legs from 3/8-inch plastic sheet stock on a 3-axis CNC mill. But it can also be made by a 3-D printer such as Makerbot and RepRap.
As the video shows, the robotic spider moves with grace and turns around with flair, even on a smooth surface. Weller has posted the details of his Lego spider project and says he hopes 3-D printing enthusiasts will try it out.
via Robotic Spider Melds Legos and 3-D Printing | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.
MakerBot is on Mark’s Citizen Reporter podcast!
Bre Pettis envisions a future where people don’t just go out and buy things when something is needed or breaks. He envisions a future where people will once again make things themselves, at home. During one of our legendary breakfast sessions during the 26C3 in Berlin on the last day of 2009, we talked about his vision and his company – Makerbot Industries.
Give it a listen! (mp3 link)
Marc de Vinck is bringing it with the next stage of his Cupcake building documentation! It’s great!
via Make: Online : CupCake CNC build, part 8: Building the X stage.
Check it out! Via @lasern! Would it be possible to make your own corn based filament?
On 02/08/2010 18:00 there will be a workshop at the tokyo hackerspace taught by Yusuke Yumae of HotProceed.
Learn about the revolution in home product manufacturing using affordable desktop 3D printers!
The CupCake is a commercialized kit based upon the open source RepRap 3D printer. It can make parts, models, and machines using plastic fiber that has been melted and deposited by its robotic hand.
Yusuke will demonstrate the part design and build process from start to finish. Watch as a simple part is created using open source CAD software, then translated into commands to drive the machine. In a few minutes, a REAL plastic part comes out of the machine!
Its better than an Ez-Bake Oven!!!
Learn more at the tokyohackerspace blog.