Monthly Archives: February 2010

Printing mendel parts

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I’m not even sure I would build a Mendel if I had all the plastic parts.  But for some reason I still want to have all of those parts.  I have no idea why.  :)

I printed up a single spring out of PLA before my extruder got clogged up.  It’s my one and only Mendel piece.

Having this one piece languish next to my MakerBot strikes me as funny.

I think there’s a haiku in there somewhere.

RepRap Log Phase round up of RepRap hardware sources

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RepRap Log Phase has a great post on some great deals for plastic, metal, electronics, and other stuff for building a RepRap, MakerBot, or anything in between!

His post reads like super efficient catalog with reviews.  I’m mostly posting this so that I’ll have a permanent bookmark of his page.  :)

New design in progress: Dalek components

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I think it would be great to have a printable Dalek with a movable eyestalk, ray gun, and suction cup arm, and rotatable head.  I’m working on building such an animal.  I see the small eyestalk, gun, and arm to be the big challenges here.

I’ve got a reasonably rotatable head – by lopping off the head from the digital design files, adding a little stump, and putting a hole into the Dalek.  More as this progresses.

Plus, since I’ve recently really improved my print quality (and increased print time!) I’m looking forward to re-printing this thing.

Upload right now!!!

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Do you have an idea for a printable object that’s been kicking around in your head?  Perhaps you even designed a digital object and you’re patiently1 waiting for your MakerBot to arrive.  Sure, it might be untested or even unprintable.  I discovered that no matter how obscure one of my designs might be someone else is going to be interested in it.  Someone is going to print it, improve it, or give you some feedback.

So, upload the design files and see what happens!

  1. or impatiently [↩]

Dremel Flex-Shaft Mount

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I don’t own a dremel1 but I particularly like Andrew Plumb / Clothbot‘s Dremel Flex-Shaft Mount for the MakerBot.  This thing will turn your MakerBot into a mini-drill press or mini-CNC mill.  But that’s not the reason I like it.

I like this thing because the design is totally functional and completely nuts.  It’s just not the kind of thing you’d ever find in a store.  And yet you can just whip one up in about half an hour with a MakerBot.  Amazing.

  1. Yet [↩]

11 year old builds 3D printer

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Um.  Wow.  Justin, you rock.  This 11 year old kid apparently designed and built his own 3D printer.

Forrest Higg’s vision has just come true!  He’s written several times about how he wants to design and build a system that a reasonably bright 12 year old could build.  I guess we should have known it would have taken a 12 year old to design such a system in the first place.

Thanks to Fabbaloo for the link!

I trust my life to open source

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I use open source software for nearly everything.  Now I get to use an open source robot too!

I stopped using MicroSoft Office, Eudora, CuteFTP, TextPad, Internet Explorer, and ASP and other proprietary products about four years ago in favor of Open Office, Thunderbird, FileZilla, Notepad++, Mozilla, PHP/MySQL,  etc.  I’m still on a Windows box… for now.

But, damn, some days you get your ass handed to you too.  Today’s been one of those days.  In the last twenty four hours I’ve spent a LOT of time unscrambling two of my WordPress installs.  They were SO messed up that they were offering anyone who cared to look the option to enter a new blog name and administrative address.  Yeah, that’s not good.

Admittedly, this can happen with any software.  But, today man.  Today I feel like I’ve been run over by an open source Humvee.