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 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.
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.
You can still see the faceting on one end that was a result of my not creating my model at a high enough resolution. I could have smoothed that out with enough filling and sanding, but didn’t want to bother. It’s only a soap dish after all. An indestructible soap dish.
Until I saw Ian’s finished product, I had no idea just how good a MakerBot printed object could look. You can bet I’m going to use this process in the very near future.
I made an L series wide angle pinhole for my canon last night with my makerbot. had some leftover super red plastic in there when I loaded the black. It put down 2 rings of the red before the black started coming out.
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.
Paul Wasson over at lasermego.com has MakerBotted up an Apple II+. Wow, does this make me happy. I played wizardry endlessly on a machine like this!
The model was printed out on my Cupcake 3D printer and painted using Krylon Fusion beige paint. I then made several stickers from various images of the Apple II. It measures about 1.5 inches wide and 2 inches deep. Coming soon, a monitor and disk drives. Plus I’ll make a Lost Dharma Initiative version.
I’m from Seattle and so it makes me particularly happy to hear that the fantastic music scene there now includes MakerBots as musical instruments!
this is a excerpt from the first performance of object Object, an experimental music project staffed by EFFALO collaborator mogden (drums) and principal mfelix (3dprinter management). performed live on 7/11/2010 @ chop suey in seattle.
the sounds of the makerbot are captured with contact microphones and paired with live drums. as an object (in this case a pyramid) is printed, layer-by-layer, its inherent form is recontextualized into an interpretive sound-geometry.
MakerBot Operators are connoisseurs of low res and decimated objects. There is just something so beautiful in things that have been simplified and made into triangles. The geometry is sublime, the lines are profound! My eyebrows went up when I saw this lamborghini and decimated shoes!
The Lo Res Project by United Nude, is an innovative design method using computer software to automatically create design options to choose from. By lowering the resolution of 3D models of products, the object becomes more and more fragmented, changing its character in the process. They’ve used this technique on a Lamborghini Countach and the result is quite nice. The United Nude Lo Res Shoe is the first product available at the United Nude stores.
I love seeing things transformed from complex to simple geometric shapes! More more!
As if that isn’t enough, today I also ran into a decimated geometric dog on the internets! Check it!
Back in the day, I made a video about using Blender and Pepakura to make a decimated turkey.
You got any good tips for sweet looking decimated geometry or favorite triangle saturated models? Link em up in the comments!
When we made MakerBot we made it so it would be hackable so that you could buy the pieces for a MakerBot and make different things with them, including different 3D printers. Chris Meyer has done just that. He’s put together a cool mill/reprap style design that utilizes the mostly assembled electronics to control it. AWESOME! Hackable MakerBot components for the win!
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!
Some stories really show how having a MakerBot can make a difference. Thingiverse user Peter Harris, AKA 
