I’m a big fan of bar codes. 1 I really like the idea that you can have something physical instantly transformed into something digital. 2 In a way, a bar code is the opposite side of a MakerBot coin. I realize that print resolutions, thing shapes, and QR code size requirements would preclude this, but it would be so cool to have each object printed from Thingiverse to have a little QR code built into its side. If you wanted to give a copy to your friend – just flash the QR code on the bottom at their phone/webcam/MakerBot and they can have one too.3
An interesting factoid about QR codes is that the size of the QR code box is related to the amount of information being encode into it. The longer the URL, the larger the QR code needs to be. By using a URL shortening service4 on a Thingiverse URL5 along with a QR code generator you can essentially compress the data required to reach a Thing on Thingiverse into a smaller QR code.
Using a 3D scanner to duplicate an object will basically guarantee the digital version of that object will be rougher than the original. However, using a built-in QR code, you could have duplication without generational degradation. It would be like stamping everything on Thingiverse with the DNA necessary to build a duplicate.
Semi-random thoughts:
Can all of the DNA in a human be expressed as a long string of text?
If so, it would be very interesting to me to try to encode that long string of text as a QR code. I wonder how large it would have to be?
One way out is to link to the Human Genome Project, run their link through a URL shortener, and then create a QR code from that. Now you can print people!
Then again, at that point it might be easier to use image recognition software to match the printed thing with the Thingiverse catalog. [↩]
I like YOURLS, but that’s because I like open source stuff, rolling my own versions of things, and the idea of having my own URL shortening service. [↩]
Colorbroken on Thingiverse just uploaded a 120 Film Advance Crank. Replacement cranks and knobs are nothing new to Thingiverse. Replacement cranks and knobs are 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. 1 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 weaker2 , 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 its simplicity and effectiveness.
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.
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?
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 …
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.
