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.
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.
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.
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!
Belakor saw my tweet about pscht’s upload to the MakerBot music page on the wiki and promptly made this video! Now you can play tetris on your MakerBot!
Joel Miller created the amazing MakerBot Transformer and will be the proud new owner of a MakerBot! I asked him some interview questions to learn more about the man behind the STL files!
It looks like you are an industrial designer or mechanical engineer. Can you tell a little about yourself, what you do for a living and what you do for fun? Yes, I’m an industrial designer for a high-end consumer electronics manufacturer in Framingham, MA. I went to Pratt Institute for industrial design and spent most of the last 10 years doing ID consulting in and around NYC. As a designer I’ve gotten to work with some very sophisticated prototyping tools (and extremely talented makers), and see my creations come to life.
Taking a corporate job in the suburbs meant finally getting my two-car garage workshop and having time for personal projects. I’ve gotten into a lot of different stuff, from welding and woodworking to electronics and programming. Whenever possible I try to combine these interests into fun projects, like the Arduino-powered, Tom Selleck-themed hi-striker with light-up eyes and fireballs for our annual mustache-themed keg party.
What is the story behind this transformer design? Seriously, what’s cooler than a transformer? It’s mechanical, it’s part puzzle, part robot, and it evokes an emotional reaction (I still giggle out loud when I watch that animated gif). Plus I thought it would be a fun design challenge that would push the limits of the Cupcake CNC.
Can you tell me a little about your workflow with making this piece? I started by sketching out the basic functionality on paper — how the arms and legs would fold up into the cube shape and how the joints might work within the limitations of the MakerBot’s capabilities. I then started roughing out the design in CAD, but as the assembly took shape I went back to sketching frequently to work out the details. I built the model in the closed position, but broke the parts out into separate part files, then re-assembled them into a new assembly, hinged to each other so I could move the limbs around. Switching back and forth between these two assemblies, I could design the transformer in both the open and closed positions at the same time.
What kind of software and hardware do you use for designing things? I always start out sketching, either on paper or digitally on a Cintiq. For modeling I mostly use Pro/E or UG NX6, but for simple things I want to share I sometimes use Sketchup. For rendering color and material options I use Luxology Modo, and for 2D work I use Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, etc.). Physical models are invaluable to the 3D design process, even simple foam or paper mock-ups for scale & proportions. More and more we are using rapid prototyping for this, but I still like to get into the shop and get dirty/dusty/sweaty whenever I can.
What are you looking forward to designing and making on your MakerBot? As an industrial designer I’m used to using RP technologies as part of a prototyping effort, where RP parts are finished to simulate mass-production processes like injection molding. But I’m interested in exploring this as an end-product process, where the consumer downloads and prints products at home. I can foresee the nature of product development changing in big ways as a result of this. Without the high capital costs of tooling and manufacturing, products can be designed into dozens of variations, even parametrically custom-tailored by consumers themselves. If this is to be the future of manufacturing, then I suspect that industrial designers (who currently design around high-finish processes like injection molding, painted parts, etc.) will need to re-calibrate themselves to the strengths and weaknesses of these processes. At the same time these new technologies will need to improve dramatically, as even the highest-end RP parts are of significantly lesser aesthetic (and often functional) quality than even the low end of injection molded parts. I’m excited about the open-source nature of the MakerBot, and I hope to start contributing to the improvement of the technology.
For right now though, I think I’ll start working on another transformer…
Michael Overstreet posted two videos featuring a Sumobot chassis created using the Makerbot 3D printer, and the results look really professional. For a complex, relatively large, part taken right out of the Makerbot, Michael’s chassis is surprisingly good, even without any additional clean-up, sanding, or other finishing processes.
And the Makerbot cranking out the Sumobot chassis:
