MakerBot Industries

colorbroken's Film Advance Crank

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.

Thanks for the idea colorbroken!

Firefly Bracelet by neurothing

I love everything about this thing.  It’s jewelery, it’s a bug, and it’s got an LED.  What’s not to like?! While this isn’t the first insect on Thingiverse, it is easily the shiniest.  It’s a four-part print – bracelet, two wings, and body that are assembled with hot glue.  I rather like the contrast in textures created by the different build orientation of the four printed pieces.

As with any multi-part print, I wonder whether this design could be modified to print all of the parts in a single plate and assembled without tools or glue.  Given that the body is printed upright (Probably to accommodate the cavity for the LED, battery, and leads) , I’m fairly confident all of the parts could be arranged to be printed as a single STL file.

Neurothing mentions his plans to sell these at the upcoming Maker Faire in New York.  Just imagine – if this design could be assembled without additional tools or glue, nuerothing could print them before your very eyes, peel the raft off the build platform, drop the parts into a bag with the LED and battery, and send you on your way.  The production of the thing could become part of the sales experience, rather than just a precursor to the transaction.

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.

Some stories really show how having a MakerBot can make a difference. Thingiverse user Peter Harris, AKA colorbroken created this tripod mount, but it’s more than that. Read on.

This was designed specifically for one of my photo customers who has a degenerative condition, Late Onset Taye-Sachs disease. He experiences muscle fatigue and problems with grip and steadiness, so he uses a smaller point-and-shoot camera with a table-top tripod for a hand-grip.

The problems are multi-fold. One is that the tripod has to be removed every time he changes his batteries, or when he puts the camera away, and he disassembles the whole setup for storage and transport. Two is that when he does this, it wears out the 1/4-20 tripod mount in the camera, which is plastic.

Instead of ordering a steady supply of new tripod mounts, which would only solve one problem, we agreed on an offset platform so we could move the tripod mount towards the center of the lens axis, and allow the battery door to open and close with ease. The two-fingered offset on one side allows a 1/4-20 bolt to lock down into the camera, with the intention of it no longer being removed regularly. We agreed to modify the camera a little so it could support a second mount on the far side, so I disassembled and bored out the hole for the body panels.

The center hole supports a standard 1/4-20 nut to interface with whatever you connect the camera to. This should prove much more reliable than any type of plastic could.

Don stopped by the shop today and picked it up, and was very pleased with the results. I’m posting it just because it’s my first serious design project, and I’m pleased too. We put a Joby Gorillapod quick-release plate on the bottom of it, locked up nice and tight, and set him up with a monopod with a Joby ballhead, and a Gorillapod SLR Zoom with the same. Now he has one plate mounted full-time, and two methods to support it. Testing will tell if it flies long-term, and we can just print another one!

Check it out and download the files and print out your own over on Thingiverse.

Zornik has created the Reddit Alien and uploaded it on Thingiverse. Isn’t it adorable? Now create you own little mascot of the Reddit community!

We don’t see a lot of animal designs on Thingiverse but now we have some cool frog designs by owenscenic. He made the frog for his daughter and now we can all have our own sets of little frogs.

If you have a 3D model for an animal, upload it to Thingiverse so everyone can make it!

Calling all Thingiverse Citizens, MakerBot Operators, and Engineers around the world!

Fact: The Deepwater Horizon Unified Command (DHUC) is inviting alternative technology responses to stop the spill either at the spill or the source level.

Fact: The current oil spill in the Mexican Gulf is threatening or killing thousands of wildlife everyday.

Fact: Many Thingiverse citizens think of creative solutions to problems on a daily basis.

Junior Tan contacted me this last week. He had put together an idea for plugging up the oil flowing into the Gulf and he had submitted it to BP and didn’t get a response. He emailed me willing to give $100 the person who could design something that might get a response with the hope that an idea from the Engineers of the world might just be the right thing to solve the problem. I told him that MakerBot would put in $100 as well and so the total is now $200 for someone who can get a response and, not even joking here, save the world.

This is a two week all-hands-on-deck-ideas-fest call to action! Let us instead focus our minds on saving the world.

We are offering a bounty of US$200 to the following:

1. The first person who actually gets a response from DHUC specifying interest and/or requesting more information, or
2. Even if there is no response from DHUC, we will hold a judging exercise on June 20th when the two weeks are up based on the following criteria:
-       simplicity of solution (is it easy to build, deploy and maintain?)
-       viability of solution (can the solution be feasible considering the high fluidic pressures, depth of the water column and the extreme low temperatures at depth?)

Call for volunteer judges:

While some of us here are comfortable working with ABS, PLA and M3 socket bolts, we may not be totally familiar with fluid dynamics or Young’s modulus. We would like to open a call for volunteer judges. Catch is, as a judge, you cannot qualify for the bounty even if you win. Please contact MakerBot should you wish to help verify the first response from BP or figure out who to paypal the money to if BP doesn’t respond.

Call for bounty pledges:

The bounty here is a mix of volunteer pledges from Thingiverse citizens as well as Makerbot Industries. So even if you don’t solve the problem of fixing the oil leak, you can throw down and pledge to throw more moolah in the pot to make things more interesting, drop a note in the comments and when it’s all over, we’ll send you the winner’s paypal address and those pledges can be paypalled. Yes, you can still join the Call To Action, and qualify for the same bounty! We can’t be sure everyone who pledges will pony up, but the $200 is real money!

You can start at the DeepWater Horizon response page and you can submit your designs to BP here. Remember to upload them to Thingiverse too! (Tag: deepwaterhorizon). If you want to contribute to the bounty, just drop a note in the comments and we’ll shoot you an email shortly after June 20th.

Update: According to the comments, the bounty is up to $1100!

$100 Junior Tan
$100 MakerBot
$100 Gl33p
$200 Ponoko
$100 Jerri Chou
$200 ifixit
$100 David Ten Have
$100 Frank of Monochrom. (Pledged via twitter)
$100 Matt O’Rourke Pledged via Twitter

Inspired by this cover of the book Godel, Escher, Bach, tshannon has created MIT Shadow Sculpture using three orthogonal shadows in the shapes of the letters: M.I.T. Now choose your favorite three letters to do the same! Wanna represent your college, school, or university? Upload your school pride in the form of clever things to Thingiverse!

Candy machine made on a MakerBot + Candies = Total Win

Candy Dispenser by Matthew LaBerge.

via Candy Dispenser on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

While capturing media for a new “Meet the MakerBot Operators” profiles series, I have been microphoning MakerBots in the BotCave while printing objects. As an unexpected fruit of my labor: I am  issuing “MakerBot Sound Library 001: The Pulley” @ Thingiverse to encourage attention to the bots’ sound/music-related properties. This #001 edition focuses on the sounds associated with printing the pulley object.

What does your print sound like? Does your bot have a voice, a lisp, a rattle that you want to share with the world?

• Pulley part 7.
• Y-axis shift.
• Z-axis shift.
• Finished printing “bark.”

The community is encouraged to make use of these sounds in video/sound/music/etc projects associated with their print projects — and share back by issuing compositions, shaping sounds and beats, creating beat loops/battle breaks and instruments, etc, as derivatives of the pertinent Sound Library edition. Or how about sharing your MakerBot recordings as a Sound Library of your own so that others can take a listen? (Grab the next consecutive Sound Library edition number and go for it.)

Over Memorial Day weekend, MakerBot MakerBot staffer Isaac has been evangelizing the MakerBot as tool for sound at Movement: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival, and I am exciting about the possibilities. I simply have no idea yet what need or use exists for MakerBot sounds, and I count on you to grab the samples and go for it — create Ableton Live instruments, chiptunes-friendly encodings, ringtones, startup-tones, pbx voicemail menu trees …

• X-axis long cross.
• Tweezers.
• The Raft.
• ABS filament extrusion.

The original recordings are largely mono, 48k, 24bit .wav files using a boom microphone, contact microphone and Marantz handheld recorder. This edition being the first audio-only thing @ Thingiverse, please share feedback about what sounds and media format (bit rate/sample rate/format/codec) you need with me.