Posts tagged Makerbot
Venezuelan artist Pedro Morales relies on his MakerBot Cupcake extensively for his new installation, De Redes and Cadenas, using it to transform brief poems by Rafael Cadenas into sculptures made up of machine-readable cyphers such as QR codes and Microsoft Tag.
What you’re looking at is actually the crystalline configuration of diamond, which is also the exact same configuration of the atoms in silicon semiconductors. In semiconductors, different atoms are pushed into the lattice, replacing silicon atoms, to alter the local average number of electrons, which in turn makes it possible to build diodes and transistors in high densities through a combination of technologies related to photography and, well, clay firing, which enables complex but inexpensive circuits like microcontrollers, which in turn enables low-cost 3D printers, which is where we get models like this one…
(via Thingiverse)
Matt Griffin at Makerbot Industries was kind enough to interview me about the MindWave Cat Ears.
My ego is not large enough to directly quote myself here, but if you’d like to read a bit about the project, I can’t help but point you at the finely-crafted link above.
And until there are further real developments (such as, for example, a second prototype, or build instructions), I promise to stop talking about it.
Well. I’ll try.
Prototype 0.5 assembly on Flickr.
Assembly instructions are the hard part of a project like this.
Good news: I’ve got a backlog of pictures from making the thing.
Bad news: I’ve got a BIG backlog of pictures from making the thing. And a short attention span.
As promised, the ears are now printable. Still working on the video, code, and instructions.
via Shapeways | blog: Makerbot MK7 Extruder Does Bowie the Bunny
The picture on the left shows the relative quality of a Makerbot Cupcake, with a Mark 4 extruder. Just like mine when I first assembled it. For comparison, it’s next to the output from a much more expensive commercial FDM printer. The Makerbot and RepRap printers are additive printers using the exact same process as FDM. Except FDM is trademarked, so they call it something different. Whatever. The point is, that left picture shows the vast difference in quality between a $900 hobbyist device, and a $20,000+ piece of professional hardware.
The picture on the right compares a Makerbot Thing-O-Matic with a Mark 7 Extruder to the same commercial FDM printer. As the Makerbot blog says, we’ve come a long way.
An interesting detail: I assumed, when I saw the black print on the right, that it was the result of some careful calibration by an expert user. But in his blog post, Bre claims that it was produced using “stock settings right out of the box.”
Most impressive.
Magnet Toy by DrWeidinger - Thingiverse
This magnet toy is great for exploring geometric shapes and the awesome power of MAGNETS. It is inspired by natural geometry and buckyballs, which are way too much fun. Unless you eat them. DO NOT EAT THE MAGNETS.
What to make my nephew for his 10th birthday: sorted.
The makerbot cupcake doesn’t always make the prettiest objects, but when you’re just trying to mount a motor on a headband quickly, that doesn’t matter much.
Volumetric Tentacle Key Hook by schmarty « MakerBot Industries
On the one hand, this is excellent and funny. I’m going to print one for myself, as well as the octopuses1.
On the other hand, I find myself a bit bemused by the fact that I often use my Makerbot as a means for the consumption of trivial toys, rather than a creative tool for expression. Even if all I buy is a cheap spool of plastic. The “hey, let’s print a TARDIS now” impulse is eerily similar to a child’s thoughtless lust for novelty and toys.
On the third pseudopod, though, I’ve already used the Makerbot to experiment and learn to build things that were difficult or impossible before. So it’s a mixed bag, in all.
Anyway. Tentacles? Yes, please.
the plural of “octopus” is problematic: it’s not a Latin word, as it comes from the Greek, so “octopi” is wrong. But the accurate plural, “octopedes,” is awkward and ugly. So: octopuses. You wanted to know that. I could tell. ↩
Tube Squeezer by Starno - Thingiverse
This is a printable device to squeeze paint or toothpaste out of a tube.
When printed out of red plastic, the design seems to suggest something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…
Eberhard Rensch crashed his radio-controlled quadrocopter.
He salvaged the copter’s components and rebuilt it from scratch, printing all the custom parts on his Makerbot.
Z Axis Extender Kit for Makerbot Cupcake by Zydac - Thingiverse
Here we have a hardware upgrade that significantly modifies the capabilities of an open-source robotic 3D printer. Which is designed to be printed on that printer. And is uploaded to a social-software site for sharing fabricatable designs, forking them, and resubmitting improvements.
Let’s say that again: this is a downloadable hardware upgrade for an affordable robot that can fabricate its own components. Which I am linking to, because it’s been shared on a kind of Flickr for fabricatable objects.
If that isn’t mind-blowing, I don’t think I can unpack it in a way that catalogs why it’s amazing.
Extra Shell Comparison (by Matthew LaBerge)
As a Makerbot owner, I worship at the altar of Skeinforge, and will tithe to the priesthood who can translate its incomprehensible scripture.
Beautiful Modeler is a software tool for gestural sculpting using a multi-touch controller such as an iPad. Each finger is used to control a single touch point in the model, with multiple layers working to build up 3D volume. As the controller is connected over the wireless network, it can be moved freely to change the viewing angle of the model.
The finished mesh can be exported as an STL file (thanks to ofxSTL), meaning the sculpted form can be fabricated immediately. In the video above, the positive mesh has been post-processed to create a negative form for fabrication with a plaster-based 3D printer (thanks Zach!).
