Calling all NYC MakerBot operators! We’re building a bot farm and we need your help! Today (Thursday, September 2nd) at NYC Resistor (map) we are throwing a build party. The goal: assemble three MakerBots in four hours. Drinks and snacks will be provided.

A bot farm is a group of MakerBots available to a group of people ready to print whatever is wished. We would love to print more of the great things popping up on Thingiverse, but here at the bot cave our machines are mostly used for developing future hardware and software. To increase the awesome we need to increase the number of bot hours available for printing. We need more bots and we need your help building them.

Everyone is encouraged to attend. There will be three or more kits for assembly. Just let us know you came for the build party and we’ll get you started on a task. If you’re thinking about buying a Cupcake CNC, this is a great opportunity to experience the build process. Feel free to bring your own MakerBot and work along with us. Several MakerBot employees will be in attendance, building bots and ready to help. We’re looking  forward to seeing you there.

Location:
NYC Resistor, Floor 4
87 3rd Avenue,
4th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11217

Time:
September 2nd
6 – 10 pm

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.

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.

I am very excited to announce that MakerBlock will be joining us as a blogger here on the MakerBot blog. You may know MakerBlock from MakerBlock.com where he’s been posting around 1.5 posts per day for the last year or so. We didn’t just hire him because almost everybody says we should… the guy can actually write and his writing has a great voice and he has been dedicated to sharing his thoughts about MakerBot. Please join me in welcoming him to the MakerBot blog!

Check out the beautiful red rings on this pinhole camera lens!

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.

Designed by thingiverse user chriswoebken, this is a nice print by tmo-photo! Check out all the things he’s designed on Thingiverse. Lots of great photography stuff!

Today is the last day to submit for the MakerBot Teacher Giveaway. If you’re submitting, make sure you’ve included a lesson plan!

With the advent of the new Plastruder MK5, we have a lot of MK4 parts here at the botcave. We’ve decided to take 50% off the MK4 Plastruder to make room for the MK5 parts.

We’ve also got lots of lasercut parts for the MK4 and we’ve dropped those down to $29 which is more than 50% off!

If you’ve wanted an extra extruder or a backup extruder or frankly, if you just need spare parts, here’s your chance to get an extruder for cheap. At this point, if you need spare parts for your MK4, you might as well buy a whole new extruder!

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.