MakerBot Industries

The answer is “better than the original.”

Better than the original

I had first seen Ian Johnson’s Soap Dish on Thingiverse months ago, thought “cool,” and moved on.  A few days ago I stumbled upon Ian’s Flickr photostream and finally got the full story.

This is the original soap dish from Pottery Barn. It rests in a fixture attached to the wall, from which it has fallen many times and broken. It can’t be replaced because the line has been discontinued, but I want to continue to use the fixture, since the pedestal sink doesn’t really have room for a soap dish.

Ian designed a replacement soap dish in halves, so it would fit on the MakerBot print platform and asked Will Langford to print the parts for him.  He then glued the two halves together with black ABS drain pipe cement from the hardware store, dipped the dish in an ABS cement/acetone bath to smooth out the texture, sanded it smooth, painted it with his ABS dip to give it a glossy finish, and then gave it several coats of white liquid plastic.  For more information on Ian’s exact process as well as his photos of the intermediate stages, check out his photostream.

MakerBot is looking to expand. The next person we’re looking to hire is an electrical engineer. We’re looking for someone with a deep and masterful understanding of the workings of electrons and how to control them. If you are the type of person who ends up boring people at dinner parties talking about Boron and other doping agents, you may be our person! This position will be focused on building the latest and greatest open source electronics for MakerBot, so we’re really looking for someone with experience in mechatronics. The role will primarily be electronics based, but they will be controlling things such as motors, relays and other mechanical beasts.

If this is not you, but describes someone you know, please send them our way. If you refer us someone we end up hiring, we’ll hook you up with 5lbs of plastic.

Check out the craigslist posting for full details on the position and details on how to apply.

Nirmal Thapa, pictured above working away at the MakerBot Botcave is going to be with us this summer helping on the blog and exploring ways to get more MakerBots in the hands of teachers and students. I’m looking forward to his posts!

I love the sight of fresh cardboard

This week we’re finishing up shipping out batch 12. This spring we’ve had some challenges getting all the bits and pieces for this batch but things are moving right along. We’ve had a few experiences lately where we’ve literally bought out all the stock in the world of a part and had to get the parts custom manufactured for us which takes time. It may just look like a pile of boxes to you, but for us, these boxes are bundles of potential creative energy waiting to be opened, built into MakerBots and used to make almost anything. We really can’t wait to see what you do with them and we’re working hard putting these kits together and keeping them going out the door to you!

There is a big demand for Gen3 Electronics and everytime we put them in the store, we increase the amount we put in the store and they still sell out very fast! Right now we have some in stock and I’m sure that shortly after I post this, they will all be gone.

How will you know when they will come? As soon as they ship, we’ll send you tracking information!

We’ve got 1500 sets of Gen3 on order and they’ll be delivered as they are manufactured. To make things fair, we’re putting them up for pre-sale so that you can get in line without having to check back everyday to see if they are for sale again! Keep in mind that if you order other items from us with in the same order as the Gen3 electronics that the entire order will be sent out when the electronics arrived. Having pre-sales will also help us understand demand for these so that we can continue to keep these in stock.

The cool thing is that with every Gen3 electronics sets, we know there is another CNC machine or RepRap machine being born. Up until January, we rarely sold Gen3 sets, but this year, things are really taking off, and we’re excited to get them to you to do amazing Gen3 electronics projects!

You can find the Gen3 electronics in the MakerBot store!

Do you have a unique project that you’ve got planned or have built with these electronics? Drop us a note in the comments. We’d love to hear more about what people are dreaming up!

Pictured above: Charles Pax created a custom lasercut case for his MakerBot that holds all the Gen3 electronics in bottom of the machine!

Zach and his botcave made slippers

Adam and his botcave made slippers

Nothing can stop us! Soo what!!! there is some wicked slush outside that completely gets into what ever footwear you have on- here at the botcave we have an invention for everything.

Introducing: The Botcave Slippers v1.0 & v1.1

v1.0 Includes: 2 pieces of 14″ stylish Salmon colored foam (Zach is modeling this lovely version)

v1.1 Includes: The same as v1.0 but also adds a bit more support to the foot with 4 12″ x 12″ x 12″ pieces of bubble wrap (Adam is modeling this lovely version)

We will begin taking orders soon

Our designer, James Provost, came up with these initial designs. James came up with this awesome set of style choices and we didn’t go with any one of them, but you can really see the way we were going and what he was thinking. James is a great designer and was flexible and driven enough to come up with the way the name MakerBot would look and designed the site for us.

A year ago we started making the first MakerBot prototype. It didn’t work, but isn’t it cute?

Joris over at shapeways interviewed Bre. Make sure to read far enough to get to the time-traveling antique hunters.

Joris Peels: What’s a Makerbot? Bre Pettis: A MakerBot is an affordable, open source 3D printer.

Joris Peels: And a Cupcake is a Makerbot?

Bre Pettis: Yes, the Cupcake is our flagship personal fabrication device! It makes things that are a little bigger than a cupcake!

Joris Peels: Who is the team behind Makerbot Industries?

Bre Pettis: Adam (Adam Mayer) has his head in the software, Zach has his hands on production, I’m making waves and we all start prototyping at 6pm when we stop answering emails, packing boxes and taking care of business.

What was the first thing you 3D printed?

A shot glass. Promptly filled with a deadly Scandinavian concoction.

Your favorite thing so far?

Everyday I wake up and check out what’s new on Thingiverse and I’m never let down. Lately there has been a trend to make tools to do other things with a MakerBot like the MicroLathe. When folks are using the tools we design to make other tools to make other things it gets me excited. We make things that make things that people use to make things that make other things that make things. Try saying that 3 times fast.

Who came up with the idea for Makerbot Industries?

Zach (Smith aka Hoeken) had been obsessed with 3D printing for a while and infected us with the personal manufacturing bug. Making things that make things is fun so it’s contagious.

How long did it take you guys to get the company going, to get the first bots out the door?

We started on Jan 17. Had the prototype done by Mar 17, and then had the first batch of MakerBots out the door on April 17th. There wasn’t a lot of sleep in those months. We actually ate 2 cases of ramen in those months so we wouldn’t have to go out and eat. That was a bad idea. Don’t do that, it’s not healthy.

What are the differences between a Cupcake and a RepRap (Open source 3D printer project)?

The main difference between a MakerBot Cupcake CNC and a Reprap is how much time it takes to make one. The Reprap project is an academic research project and it can take a few months to gather the materials and then put a reprap together and then a lot of experimentation to get it to print. The MakerBot CupCake CNC is a kit and can be printing things out after a weekend of assembly with a friend.

Are you really going to try to tackle 3D scanning too?

Yes. Having a MakerBot 3D printer and MakerBot scanner is the washer/dryer combo of replication. Who doesn’t want to print out portrait sculptures of their family and friends?

And what new materials will you introduce?

We just launched PLA, PolyLactic Acid, and it’s flying off the shelves. It’s clear and it’s made from corn. It smells a bit like butter when you print with it. We’re finishing up prototypes of the frostruder which is a syringe based extruder that can print with frosting and anything squishable like UV curable silicon. And clay! We’re in the market for a kiln so we can fire our own MakerBotted tea set.

What is a typical Makerbot customer like?

A lot of our customers are time traveling antique hunters which brings up all sorts of shipping problems. Most people think that all MakerBot customers are seriously geeky, but the truth is that even though lots of designers and architects and engineers buy them, most of our customers are just clever people who are sick of waiting on other people for their jetpack.

Will everyone have a desktop 3D printer? If so when?

When the Altair came out, people criticized it and said there wasn’t a need for more than 10 computers in the world. We’re in that same kind of place with personal manufacturing that personal computing was back then. MakerBots will be an absolutely totally common thing to see on a desktop within 10 years.

Why is Thingiverse important?

We built Thingiverse because we needed a place to share our designs so we wouldn’t lose them and so our friends could make what we had made and then modify those designs and make them better. The community is amazing and supportive, and it’s also a lot of fun. There is no other place that you can share a design for a physical thing and people around the world will make their own copies within minutes (NB: mmm we might need to do some more work in promoting our 3D parts database). It’s that kind of sharing magic that makes Thingiverse the closest thing to teleportation that we’ve got in this solar system.

What are the mayor challenges for you guys?

It can be hard to find time to eat and sleep. There is way too much stuff to do in this world right now. If you’re bored in this day and age, you’re doing it wrong. Turn off the TV, pick a ambition and start spending your free time working on it. Besides 3d printing, there are all sorts of open source collaborative hardware projects to work on.

A while back you had an experiment in crowd sourced manufacturing with having people produce parts for Makerbots for you. How did that work out? Will you be doing this more often?

We were the first company to ever do crowd sourced manufacturing and it worked out great. It was so cool to have MakerBots in the wild making parts for unbuilt MakerBots. We’ve got some ideas to do this again that we’re going to announce later this year.

How important is your community to you? What do they do for the company?

The MakerBot community is awesome. Because we’re open source and the community is so smart, we’ve seen a lot of participation in the research and development sector. For example, MakerBot Operator Tim Myrtle ripped the guts out of our temperature control code and replaced that section of code with some serious PID math which made the temperature of the nozzle much more stable. Because we’re open source, our users know that the code and designs are theirs to hack on. They also know that if they improve their machine, they can share their improvement and everyone in the community benefits.

Can I download a Makerbot and print it out using Shapeways?

Go for it! There was talk a while back on the MakerBot Operator google group to replace all the lasercut parts with printable parts. Progress is being made and already there is a printable extruder!

Are Makerbots going to be able to self replicate?

One step at a time. Self replication is cool, but our first step is actually to get the machine so that it can be an autonomous manufacturing factory. I want to be able to go to sleep and wake up to a pile of MakerBotted things next to my MakerBot!

Why did you guys start Makerbot Industries?

We felt compelled. We decided to live the dream. We followed our hearts.

Shouldn’t you guys be making the next YouTube or something (Bre used to work for Rocketboom, Etsy & MakeZine as their video producer)? Why 3D printing?

We love the internet, but web apps are very 90’s. Personal Manufacturing the new black. We see the future and it’s full of flying cars, replicators, and moon colonies. You can watch videos of the MakerBot Operators popping our collars from the moon colony on youtube when we get there.

You used to be a teacher, is that still kind of your job? To ‘teach’ 3D printing?

My mission in life is to be able to develop infrastructure that lets humans be creative. I feel that very tangibly inside my self. When I taught school that’s what I did. When I made tutorial videos that’s what I did. Adam, Zach and I are taking creative infrastructure to a new level by putting the tools of manufacturing into the hands of creative people. Everyday, even the long days packing boxes, we get excited about empowering people around to world create amazing things with our machines.

The gang who does the Radar series over at Babelgum came by the BotCave and made this video. They used Nikon d90’s and it turned out beautiful! Go to their site and check it out big.