MakerBot Survey
Mar 4, 2010
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.
One Step Closer to the True MakerBot Factory
Aug 20, 2009
We’ve been printing tons of pulleys recently and have started to notice that little delays, like waiting for the test extrusion, really start to add up.
Some very quick GCode modifications can seriously up the production capabilities of your MakerBot. All of the sudden pulleys that would take 20 minutes pop out in 15. Checkout the write up on the wiki and start pushing your bot to the production extremes!
MakerBot is pioneering distributed manufacturing! Get paid to make parts for future MakerBots.
Aug 6, 2009
Problems are opportunities
At MakerBot, we have a problem of production. You see, our CupCake CNC is made of a variety of components: electronics, lasercut parts, machined parts, and printed parts. To be specific, there are 4 idler pulleys that are printed by the machine, for the machine. Currently, we produce all of the idler pulleys on our own bank of MakerBots in our Brooklyn factory. This worked smoothly when we were shipping 20 bots a month. Lately, demand is increasing so fast that we’re ramping up production to be able to ship 50 to 100 bots a month. Our next production bottleneck is printing enough pulleys for the kits. We could switch back to lasercut pulleys, but we’d rather not have to.
Crowdsourced manufacturing
In the conversation about cheap, ubiquitous 3D printing, people talk a lot about distributed manufacturing The concept is simple: instead of having a centralized factory that produces parts and then distributes them to the people that want them, individuals have the tools they need to build the things they want and distribute them without a central hub. Here at MakerBot, we fully support this vision of the future–we’re actively building tools that support this revolution. We want to take a first step toward that future by starting crowdsourced manufacturing, where production is distributed, but distribution still uses the hub model.
That is where you, the MakerBot Operator comes in. If you have a MakerBot, then you have the means of production. We want you to take part in our grand experiment in crowdsourced manufacturing. We want you to use your MakerBot to produce the next wave of MakerBots. In essence, we want to distribute pulley manufacturing to you. Since this is just the first step, we want to make it easy and simple. You build the parts, we handle distributing them.
Be a part of it
We will pay $1.00 / pulley for 608 Idler Pulleys. Download the linked file for the 608 Idler Pulley and print it out. When you have at least 30, mail them to us and we’ll either send you a check or pay you by Paypal. When we make them, the bearing press fits into the pulley and yours should too! Don’t forget to check the pulley for bearing fit before sending them off, because we certainly will! We need 150 of these pulleys before September 3rd and if this experiment works out, we’ll ask for folks to print out 625 Idler Pulleys too!
This is a new and exciting adventure for us. As far as we know, crowdsourced manufacturing is just something people have talked about, not actually done. We’re looking forward to the results, and we hope that you will take part. If this whole thing goes well, then it means we will be able to crowdsource other parts as well, and gradually turn our MakerBot design into a 3D printable design and fulfill the RepRap dream of a 3D printable 3D printer.
Being able to collaboratively create MakerBot kits with the help of MakerBot operators is going to be an awesome future, and we want you to be a part of it.
MakerBot Operator: Keith
May 19, 2009
Keith is taking great photos of his MakerBot build and he’s got great tips and tricks!
Just one noteworthy item — I meticulously lined solder paste on every IC pad, and then during the “soak” period of reflow (also known as “the time it takes my 500W heater to creep the plate up to 185°C”) the paste all slumped together anyway. (Forgive the poor focus in the picture; my camera’s not very good and that’s the best I could get.)
When the solder paste reflowed, surface tension pulled it all into nice little fillets anyway.
Lesson: Don’t bother tracing every IC pad with solder paste; just run a bead perpendicular to the leads and trust surface tension.
Also, I had one solder bridge during reflow. I took a small screwdriver and poked it between the leads, breaking the surface tension and the bridge. Nice trick, and a quicker (and cleaner!) fix than anything you can do after the solder cools.