Colorbroken on Thingiverse just uploaded a 120 Film Advance Crank. Replacement cranks and knobs are nothing new to Thingiverse. Replacement cranks and knobs probably the first repair people think of when looking at a MakerBot. They’re easy to model, small enough to print without too many problems, and relatively easy to print.
What makes this particular knob special is how colorbroken designed it. A typical knob design would include a thin cylinder sitting atop a flat… knobby bit. Using Skeinforge, you would then set the desired fill ratio of plastic. However, there are different benefits to different fill ratios. ((Fill ratios aren’t rocket science. I use 20% fill on all of parts unless I absolutely have to change that setting.)) The problem with a heavy fill is that the part uses more plastic, takes longer to print, and is heavier – the upside being it will be a more sturdy part. The problem with a low fill is the part is more sparse and potentially weaker ((Although, I’ve printed amazingly sturdy parts using a fill as low as 10%. It’s really a testament to the strength of ABS.)) , but it prints much quicker and conserves plastic.
But what if you need one area of the part to print quickly and another area of the part to be extra sturdy?
Well, colorbroken thought of an interesting way around this problem. By putting a hollow core inside the axle for the knob, the MakerBot printed a thick ring inside the axle. The end result is the knob is whatever fill he specified, but the axle has a thick sturdy hard core running all the way through it providing additional strength and durability. I love this design tip for it’s simplicity and effectiveness.
I am very excited to announce that MakerBlock will be joining us as a blogger here on the MakerBot blog. You may know MakerBlock from MakerBlock.com where he’s been posting around 1.5 posts per day for the last year or so. We didn’t just hire him because almost everybody says we should… the guy can actually write and his writing has a great voice and he has been dedicated to sharing his thoughts about MakerBot. Please join me in welcoming him to the MakerBot blog!
The botswarm is expanding. We’re looking to hire on a new person for our team, and this time we’re looking for someone to help us on the virtual side of things. Besides making Thingiverse an awesome place for the 3D printing community, there is a lot of backend software needed to run a hardware company. We’re looking for a talented and brave soul to help us continue rocking the free by democratizing manufacturing.
Is this you? Is this someone you know? If so, check out our job posting for the job requirements.
As a part of making the debut “Meet the MakerBot Operator” profile video, I worked with the Nick and Winter to co-create the “MakerBot Operators Tips” video released here.
When downloading objects from Thingiverse.com, Nick and Winter take time to repair manifold (“water-tightness”) issues with models in blender before feeding them into Skeinforge to create printable gcode.
After Nick and Winter fix the model to make it well and truly manifold, they take the time to re-post the fix back to Thingiverse as a derivative to help others print the object more easily. This is, in my opinion at least, a pretty awesome community service that helps everyone print objects more easily.
What would happen if video game consoles had awesome 3D modelling programs? What if the people in the picture above was an image of folks designing things? Open3DP is asking that question and they may be on to something! Click through to read their post
For the first video in the Meet the MakerBot Operators series, I talked with the brilliant Brooklyn teacher and NYC Resistor member Liz Arum about the students working with “Lola,” the MakerBot her school purchased for class and student use at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn. I recorded this video earier this year when Nick (then a senior) and Winter (then a freshmen) were still in school.
This is an experiment and I’m planning on making more of these kinds of videos. I’d love to get your feedback. Tell me what you think about the video in the comments!
(Music: composed for and performed on a MakerBot by Bubblyfish, used with her permission.)
When talking to friends about MakerBots, I often get the question “What are most people looking to print with it?” With the list of potential uses long enough to boggle the mind, those asking me this question are looking for a sense of the culture of printing: what are people in the community of operators doing with their MakerBot?One exciting factor about working in a new frontier is that there is no cut and dry answer to this question. If you are designing and/or printing objects for the MakerBot, you are contributing to this discussion-in-progress. And the rapidly expanding community of people leaping into personal desktop fabrication are laboring everyday to broaden the list of possible answers.
Take a look at the thousands of objects up at Thingiverse.com, with all of the new custom “truders,” printheads, and other modifications: how do I answer the question “what is the MakerBot for?” without skipping over a number of purposes that are the very reason operator x or y assembled her MakerBot in the first place?
In the series Meet the MakerBot Operators, I am attempting to give a suitable, practical answer to this question by taking it directly to the community, by visiting this new breed of “MakerBot Operators” to meet their bots and do mini-interviews right there in their printing nooks. Most will be printed interviews posted here (with photos), but with every once in a while I plan to work on more videos: “Meet the MakerBot Operators” (profile) and “MakerBot Operators Tips” (collaboratively co-created with the subject).
And along with any activities I do (limited, at least at first, to the northeastern United States), consider this an open call for the community to jump into this discussion by introducing yourselves. Post your own “Meet the MakerBot Operators” and “MakerBot Operators Tips” blog entries, photographs, and videos and drop me a note about it at griffin at makerbot dot com.
I learn a lot from the internet, but sometimes it’s great to meet up in real life and swap stories! Check the Regional Groups page and if there isn’t one in your area, start a mailing list and post the url on the wiki!
Erik is an innovative force in the world of open source and is doing amazing things in the RepRap community. He visited MakerBot HQ earlier this year and it was great to hang out with him and get to know him IRL. Now he’s designed and 3D printed something very special! A wedding topper!
I’m getting married!!! Our guests get a piece of cake. But on every decent cake, there should be a cake topper! I wanted a personal cake topper. While looking on the Google 3D warehouse I found several, but none were satisfactory. I wanted a simpler model that was solid and which had a personal touch. The result is this (parametric) model with the following modules: bride, groom, arm, leg and hat.
The Crashspace MakerBot crew out of LA put on an amazing performance at the handmade music night there.
From the MakerBot Music Google Group:
We had a Handmade Music event at CRASHSpace in Los Angeles. We currently have three MakerBots and had a performance of a piece written specifically for them by Frank Capodieci.
One thing that I discovered while processing the MIDI files into gcode – mid2cnc.py does not seem to handle rests/silences. The three MIDI files play back on the computer the same duration. The three gcode files had vastly different build times. The ppi setting did not affect the overall playback time, just the pitch of the individual notes.
This is a fantastic off-label use of a MakerBot! We designed the MakerBot with hackability as our top priority because we knew that if we made it so that people could hack it that they would do things with it way beyond what we could imagine. This is an amazing example of hacked excellence… the hacking just sounds so good!
Bubblyfish is working with us this summer researching the musical capabilities of the MakerBot and as far as I can tell this is the first original composition of music made specifically for the MakerBot. If you like this make sure to check out the rest of her videos.
