Monthly Archives: February 2010

Too much information

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Have you read The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy?  Of course you have.

You remember that bit where they put Zaphod in the machine designed to drive people insane by showing them the entire universe all at once?  Well, that’s how Google Wave feels to me.  There’s a LOT of freaking information there.  I made the mistake of looking directly at the MakerBot wave.  It was like falling into the gaping maw of eternity.  I’ll stick to RSS feeds, MakerBot Operators group, and Twitter, thankyouverymuch. 1

  1. You can find it in your Google Wave account by looking for “with:public makerbot”…  If you dare! [↩]

Marco!

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Polo!

I’m always curious to see where other MakerBotters are located.  Sure, I could always check out the RepRapMap. 1  However, sometimes I may want to know where just the MakerBot are.  Someone on the MakerBot Operator’s group was looking for some pulleys for his homebrew MakerBot – and was pleasantly surprised to find out there were so many semi-local MakerBotters.

This morning I created a collaborative open MakerBot Map.  Stick a pin in it and let everyone know where you are!

P.S. Party at your house.  We’ll be there at 6.

  1. Gotta love the alliteration [↩]

And I’ll form the head!

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I remember buying saving up to buy a Voltron toy as a kid.  It was a very small model with plastic lion limbs that did not transform or detach.  It was basically a toy robot with lion slippers and mittens.

Still, I thought it was the greatest freaking thing ever.  Unfortunately, I have no idea where the heck it could be.  Anyhow, I can’t wait to try modeling and printing a replacement.  I really like Tony Buser’s idea of modifying the Leonardo Robot as a starting point.

Making Blocks II

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Lego nubs and underbits

Lego nubs and underbits

My lego prints connect slightly better to other printed legos than real legos.  I suspect this is in part to the ridged texture to both parts.  This also makes me think that printing legos is a fool’s errand.

While lego nubs are circular, the parts they fit into touch the circular nubs tangentially.  For instance a nub fitting into a corner piece would be held in place by two straight sides and held against a circular tube.  The picture to the right shows the underside and nubby bits for several lego (lego compatible?) pieces.  This system probably works because of the exacting tolerances of real lego parts.  I’m guessing they tested the nub heights and contact points to find an optimal mix of most of the same criteria I have for an interconnecting building block system.

Without tighter printing tolerances, I don’t think three tangential points are going to be enough to hold printed parts together.  Thus, it may make sense to have taller nubs on printed parts.  Then again, the ridged nature of printed parts may allow them to better fit together without having taller nubs.

One benefit to having circular nubs is that you can make interesting components where pieces pivot.  But, this is more of a lego-hack than an actual useful feature.  I’m not as concerned about this particular usage because I could always design a printable pivoting part.

So, other than that one narrow usage, why circular nubs?  Why not circular nubs with circular holes?  Why not square nubs with square holes?  Or circular nubs with notches in them?

Making Blocks

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The design question I keep coming back to is “How do I create a reliable interlocking system for blocks?”  My criteria for a robust and useful system are:

  1. The interlocking system should allow interconnections in three dimensions.
  2. The pieces should snap/interlock together reasonably well/easily.
  3. The pieces should stay assembled reasonably well.
  4. The pieces should snap apart reasonably well/easily.
  5. The pieces should not require additional tools to be assembled and disassembled.

Why make blocks?

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Making blocks with a MakerBot is almost counter productive.  Why would you want to make something out of plastic that can be used to make other things out of plastic?  Why not just print the final plastic object as a single piece all at once?

I like the idea of being able to physically play with the design of something.  Sketchup is easy to use, but legos are even easier.  I never worry about an operation that I can’t Ctrl-Z my way out of.  Plus, it’s even easier to go from idea to objection with physical building blocks.  I think it would also be a very interesting way to get around the overhang and size limitations of a CupCake CNC.

What would you print with colored ABS?

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I was trying to think about what I would print with new ABS colors from MakerBot.  Here’s my list:

  • Green: Little green army men, dinosaurs, a green lantern ring?
  • Yellow: Yellow safety whistles, a yellow ring to defeat the green lantern ring
  • Red: Red clown noses, red dice, replacement monopoly houses
  • Blue: Naked smurfs

Yeah, I suppose that last one was unnecessary…