I had a dream last night

One of my favorite songs has this line in it, so I just like saying and writing it.  So much so that I’ve used that same exact title for three posts, including this one.

Okay, so, in this dream a huge package arrived from MakerBot.  It contained a bunch of spools different colored plastics, a brand-spanking new Replicator, and a galvanized steel industrial strength sewing machine as big as a saw horse.  I’ve never seen a sewing machine that big, so it was entirely an invention of my mind.  And, now that I think about it, I don’t even know how it would even work.  I recall thinking, in my dream, that the thing was strong enough to sew a stack of denim jeans together.

Um, there’s not much else to this post.  I suppose the dream was probably about my excitement over a new delivery from MakerBot so I can finish my DrawBot and the prospect of getting a Replicator one day. 1

  1. I think now that we have two 3D printing robots, Bender the Cupcake CNC and Flexo the Thing-O-Matic, an Egg-Bot, and I’m in the process of building a drawing robot my wife has caved to the sense of inevitability that whatever new robot MakerBot produces I will buy. [↩]

DrawBot – Giant Unicorn?

As you may know, I’ve got a MakerBot Cupcake named “Bender” and a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic named “Flexo“.  There’s really no doubt in my mind I’ll be springing for a Replicator with dual extrusion. 1  Thankfully, I think there’s a way for me to make use of each of my robots, in its own special way.  I figure I can keep the Cupcake rocking a Unicorn Pen Plotter, use my Automated Build Platform in my Thing-O-Matic for mass production of smaller parts, and put a Replicator to work printing new, wacky, and/or large designs.

But, why am I talking about giant unicorns?!  Sandy Noble, the creator of the Polargraph,2 just posted about how he has created a vector graphics importer for the Polargraph software.  This is some pretty amazing stuff.  The MakerBot Unicorn has several software toolpaths that take vector graphics to GCode for printing through ReplicatorG.  The end result is that a Polargraph rocking a vector graphic importer should be able to draw arbitrary shapes, without the need to draw scribbly bits.

I think it would be particularly awesome to have a DrawBot draw a frame/border and then fill it with a scribbly/pixelated drawing.  Or, perhaps, draw the outline of an object and then fill it in with scribbly/pixelated shadings.

Posts in the DrawBot Adventure Series
  1. Wanna make a DrawBot?
  2. DrawBot Resources and Links: Updated 2012/01/30
  3. DrawBot, the Adventure Begins
  4. DrawBots for the slow learner
  5. DrawBot - Parts Ordered!!!
  6. DrawBot - The Breakdown
  7. DrawBot - Parts Shipped!!!
  8. DrawBot - What would you draw?
  9. DrawBot - The Plan!
  10. DrawBot - The Hacks
  11. DrawBot - Giant Unicorn?
  12. DrawBot - The Delivery?
  13. DrawBot - The Delivery, Part II
  14. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part III
  15. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part I
  16. DrawBot – The Software, Part I (and an existential conversation)
  17. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part IV
  18. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part II
  19. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part III
  20. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part IV
  21. DrawBot – Design Considerations
  22. DrawBot – Halp!!! No - seriously, a little help?
  23. DrawBot – The Face Palm
  24. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part V
  25. DrawBot – The Silver Lining of Failure
  26. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part VI
  27. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part V
  28. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VI
  29. DrawBot – Printed Parts
  30. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VII
  31. DrawBot – The Operation, Part I
  32. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VIII
  33. DrawBot – The Breakdown, Part II
  34. DrawBot – Printing!
  35. DrawBot – Printing, Part II
  36. DrawBot – Why are you crying?
  37. DrawBot – Calibration
  38. DrawBot – Pen Selection
  39. DrawBot – How to Recover from a Stalled Print!
  40. DrawBot – Drawing Success(ish)!!!
  41. DrawBot – Pen Selection, Part II
  42. DrawBot – Onwards and Upwards!
  1. Will my extravagance know no bounds?! [↩]
  2. Which is probably the best documented DrawBot on the internet [↩]

Making a MakerBot make a MakerBot

Not a MakerBot Replicator

Not a MakerBot Replicator

Thingiverse user Webca has uploaded a printable MakerBot.

Back in February I thought it was audacious to hope someone would design a printable Y stage.  Later that day I realized that if you had a MakerBot Cupcake Deluxe kit, you’d have all the tools plus much of the materials to build another MakerBot – suggesting the second MakerBot would only be about $500.00 or so of extra components.  More the fool was I when I thought I had published a comprehensive list of the MakerBot printable components of a MakerBot.

Webca clearly dreams (and designs) so so so much bigger than I.  I am in awe of the awesomeness of that MakerBot made MakerBot.

150 plus printed parts, a month of solid printing, and more than 5 pounds of plastic.  So, what’s the final cost of a second MakerBot made MakerBot?  Setting aside issues of shipping and tax, it sounds like it would be about $50.00 worth of plastic plus all the bits from the $575.00 laserless MakerBot kit, plus some cables, cords, and power supply.

It’s a testament to MakerBot’s rock bottom pricing that a mostly-printed $625.00 MakerBot is not a tremendous discount off the $750.00 basic MakerBot Cupcake kit.  But, cost-savings is almost certainly not why he designed and printed this.  A month of printing and $50.00 of plastic is far more than it should take to print all the parts for a Mendel.

Yes, an unbelieveable amount of work, but now I want a PLA MakerBot…

Replicators

Did I ever mention I have already printed up a MakerBot version of a Stargate SG-1 “Replicator” cell?  Well, I did.  I basically “borrowed” someone’s Sketchup file from the google 3D warehouse, saved to STL, and printed it up!

In any case, it made me think of a cool T-shirt idea.  The back side of the shirt would have a Stargate Replicator with a red circle slash over it, labeled “Bad Replicator.”  The front could have a picture of a ‘bot saying “Good Replicator.”

I’d wear it.