I’ve posted about other people’s MakerBot work space set ups,1 but not much about my own yet.

Right now there’s a bunch of junk2 in the way so no pictures of the setup for now.  My MakerBot – “Bender,” a laptop3 , and a large long cardboard box with a wooden dowel running the length with badly cut cardboard spools holding what was once a 5 pound coil of black ABS4 , a very nearly 5 pound coil of clear PLA5 , and a full pound of white ABS I’ve never used. 678

All of this resides in our living room on an enormous former-library card catalog.  For those of you youngsters out there, a library card catalog is the kind of thing you see in the background scenes of Warehouse 13.  Imagine a huge chest about four feet tall that has lots of small, deep, drawers.  It is what libraries used to use to store information about their collections – an analog database.  Frankly, I didn’t realize the one I bought was quite so large. 9  It’s literally big enough for about six identical MakerBot/laptop/plastic coil setups to the one I have. 10  The drawers beneath the area where my Makerbot resides are devoted to tools and spare parts.  Right now the surface is covered in a number of unfinished projects and some totally finished projects.

Library card catalogs are super handy and useful ways to incorporate storage and a raised level surface for working.  The only problem is that these things are absolutely enormous and way way heavier than they look.

1. Mattpr’s MakerBot cart , Tony Buser’s “Tea” #481 [↩]
2. FYI, junk = stuff waiting to be made into other, more useful or more amusing stuff. [↩]
3. Named Bleys, if you must know. [↩]
4. I would guess I’ve used about a pound over the last 8 months.  5 pounds is a LOT of plastic.  Dear faithful ABS, oh how I love thee… [↩]
5. Polly!!!!!!!!! [↩]
6. Though, I have very specific and immediate plans for it. [↩]
7. More on this later if you remind me.  I have a tendency to get lost in nested footnotes and parenthetical references. [↩]
8. Seriously, just imagine what my PHP code looks like.  Yikes! [↩]
9. Or far away.  Or would become so expensive.  That’s a story unto itself. [↩]
10. I best get printing more MakerBots, no?  Hmm…  I might have to print more laptops too… [↩]