MakerBlock – MakerBlock

The Patents for disc shooters [12/10/2010]

[There’s no secret I’ve always loved the old “disc shooters” that could be picked up in a grocery store aisle. These were called the “Rayline Tracer Gun“, sold from the 1960’s to 1980’s, and then kind of disappeared. Much more recently, someone started selling replicas on Amazon. Once I had a 3D printer, this was one of my ideal prints. It was easy to blow through a pile of the discs and lose them all in an afternoon. But, the little discs look very printable.

A year after the below post, I’d go on to post about a contest for a design of a disc shooter. I started building some of the components for the disc shooter and the disc cartridge, but never end up building a reasonably functional shooter.

This is a project I’d still like to come back to and resurrect. ¹ I’m confident with enough trial and error, I could design something that would work in a similar fashion. Anyhow, below are links to the patents for these toys which I’d found as part of my research into building one for myself.]

PDF of Patent # 3515114: DISC PROJECTING TOY PISTOL, Filed 9/22/1967, Issued 6/2/1970
Link to Patent # 3515114 on Google Patent Search
PDF of Patent # 5613482: Disk shooting toy gun, Filed 1/27/1995, Issued 3/25/1997
Link to Patent # 5613482 on Google Patent Search

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Get in line! [↩]

Skein them all and let ‘Bot sort them all out [11/24/2010]

[Just a bit of silliness that was left at the bottom of my drafts bin :) This was in response to a blog post on Thingiverse asking about user’s printing anxiety.]

I think I’m finding these questions to be funnier than perhaps they were intended to be.

“Broad Flat Bottoms”? Sign me up!

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The nuances of time travel [10/31/2010]

[Ah, Botacon! You can watch the introduction from Bre here and catch the listing of the talks here. Mine wasn’t listed in that post, but the presentation was about being a dad and making stuff for his family, getting kids involved in the process. There were several blog posts on the MakerBot blog at the time discussing some of these items. :) ]

As I plan out my travel to Brooklyn, I have to take into account the impact of traveling through time. I live on the west coast, so there is a 3 hour “time difference” to be taken into account when traveling to New York. The plan is to fly out on Thursday, arrive Friday morning, duck the restraining order, hang out at the Botcave for the day, go to Botacon the next day, and fly out on Sunday morning.

Given the

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Printing with PLA again! [10/18/2010]

[I’ve been printing in PLA pretty much exclusively for several years now since it’s got way less particulates and VOC’s compared to ABS. However, back in the early days of MakerBot, printing with PLA was fraught with problems. It printed inconsistently, it was hard to dial in temperature and speed settings, and it caused constant extruder clogs. I think a large part of this was probably due to the design of early extruder nozzles. You had to very carefully build and wrap your own extruders back then and if heat creeped up the nozzle into the filament, it was easy to create a blockage. Modern nozzles have huge heat sinks which help prevent these issues.]

Yesterday I printed with PLA until my MK5 Plastruder jammed. I could print off a single pawn piece from Cliff Biffle’s brilliant chess set, but when I tried 9 at a time it stopped extruding. ¹

I had the Skeinforge settings all fouled up. I thought I was testing print quality starting at 200 degrees Celsius and decreasing at 5 degree increments. Instead, when I stopped

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When using Skeinforge’s multiple feature, it’s easier to create an array of 3×3 pawns to fit on the platform than it is to create an array of 2×4 to get exactly 8 pieces [↩]

Getting my Plastruder MK5 running [09/06/2010]

[Only 300 draft posts remaining unpublished! What’s a little sad about these posts is that the things they used to refer to, no longer point to valid websites. The MakerBot store and all associated documentation links probably haven’t worked for more than a decade. But, I guess it’s just as well. I haven’t used my Cupcake CNC in a very, very long time and there’s not likely anyone building or upgrading a Cupcake CNC that could find the below of any use. That said… and when stupid legislatures decide to regulate 3D printers into oblivions, the only 3D printers people will have are those that they make themselves…]

When the Plastruder MK5 I ordered hadn’t arrived on Friday I was a little disappointed because I was hoping to build it over the long weekend. Luckily it arrived late Saturday! Huzzah! My weekend was saved! I had put off soldering the Relay Board I got with my heated build platform since I haven’t gotten around to picking up a hotplate yet. However, since the Relay Board was needed to run the Plastruder MK5, I busted out my soldering kit and got to work putting together the Relay Board, LED strip, and Plastruder.

Assembling the Relay Board v1.0 was pretty straightforward. I didn’t have a problem following the assembly instructions on the wiki. Follow the directions and you’ll be fine.
Unfortunately, the assembly pictures for the LED Strip v1.1 were… non-existent. (Do not be alarmed – this story has a happy ending.) For those first-time readers – I’m a complete soldering/electronics newbie. If I don’t have detailed pictures and directions, I’m completely lost. The good news for you is – if I can assemble a MakerBot and get it working, you definitely can. ¹ In any case, with the kind help from JohnA and Theron Trowbridge I discovered the secret to soldering this kit up. I haven’t tested it out yet, so I’ll hold off on posting the pictures. Once I’ve confirmed that I didn’t totally roast this kit, I’ll put up the pictures and some directions on the wiki.
The Plastruder MK5 assembly instructions and usage/troubleshooting guide were great as well. Once I get my plastruder online, I’ll add some notes.
- When attaching the thumb wheels to the bolts, definitely use a vise. I tapped the bolts into the thumb wheels – and smashed the threads just enough to make the bolts useless. :/ If I did this again, I would definitely put the nut partway onto the bolt and tap the NUT rather than the bolt itself. This would keep the force away from the threads and probably keep them from being damaged.
- When threading the nuts onto the retainer mounting plate, I found it easier to put the nuts about halfway onto the bolts – rather than almost all the way to the plate. If you put them halfway on, it’s easier to tighten each bolt individually.
- The MK5 thermistor preparation instructions direct you to the MK4 directions for wrapping the thermistor. The MK4 directions suggest you essentially sandwich the thermistor leads in between two long pieces of Kapton tape. This is exactly how I built my MK4 plastruder – and it’s not exactly easy to trap these two thin leads in between pieces of thin sticky tape. An easier way, and what appears to have been done in the MK5 pictures, is to separate the thermistor leads and wrap the Kapton around the leads – making sure they never touch.
- I would test the thermistor’s resistance and temperature measurement before attaching it to the plastruder. If there’s something wrong with the thermistor, I would want to know long before I taped it to the plastruder, insulated it, and mounted everything inside the ‘bot. Both tests are quick and easy to do before you assemble everything – just check the resistance with your multimeter then plug the unattached thermistor leads into the extruder board. This quick sanity check could save you a lot of time and supplies by not having to undo a lot of work. This would be a good time to test resistance on the power resistors too.
- With all the wires running from the plastruder and relay board, it can get confusing. I picked up some heat shrink tubing the last time I was at an electronics store and am using them to color code each of the sets of wires – one small band at each end. This helps me keep everything straight. By just looking at the end of the wires and doing a sanity check against the bands on the motor, thermistor, or heating element I can quickly verify I’m wiring everything up correctly.
- After adding a colored band of heat shrink to each end of the sets of wires, I braid the wires together to keep them all in check.
- Stupid mistakes I made that you probably won’t make:
  - I can’t believe this – but I actually mounted the drive gear upside down. The result was I couldn’t hand feed the ABS filament – since the base of the gear was blocking the filament’s path. Another symptom was that no matter how much I crunched down on the filament with the thumbscrew,² the filament would extrude about 1cm or so, then nothing for 30 seconds, and this cycle would repeat. The last symptom was that when I pulled the filament out it had some nasty chew marks in it. These are not the sort of marks I would expect to see from this drive gear with its super small teeth. Flip the extruder motor and the problem magically went away.
  - I replaced one of my threaded rods – the one that was the most severely bent. However, after installing a new threaded rod and

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And probably do a better job of it too! [↩]
The only thumbscrew to survive my testosterone driven smashing. [↩]

Design choices in RepRap, Goals of RepRap [08/14/2010]

[The early 2010’s were a wild time for 3D printing. It felt like there were two separate tracks of printers. There were the RepRap enthusiasts, the true innovators, building and inventing things to push hobbyist 3D printing to new heights. Then there were the companies making 3D printer kits and robots like MakerBot and Ultimaker (and a few others). At this time I was basically wondering… what will future RepRaps look like? Will they look more like a pile of aluminum extrusion and 3D printed parts? Lasercut panels? In the 16 years since this post, the answer is… there doesn’t seem to be one single RepRap that’s leading the field and there are a pile of different RepRaps that have all kinds of different shapes. Perhaps this is for the best. There are so many functional 3D printers available that range from very DIY to point and click that there isn’t nearly as much innovation in the open source RepRap movement. I suppose, this is a kind of success for the RepRap dream. Some excellent fully featured printers are available today for as less than $500 that would have left crowds stunned in 2010. And all of these machines can easily produce the parts necessary to build the various RepRap models out there. Gone are the days of resin cast copies of 3D printed parts. If companies stopped producing 3D printers (perhaps because of some new bullshit misguided legislation…), people could turn to building RepRaps again.]

After looking at the Ultimaker, I have to wonder if the ideal of RepRap for a purely printed machine is non-optimal.

Actually, come to think of it – I wonder if it might not start to push RepRap in a slightly new direction.

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MakerBot + Junk = Stuff! [08/06/2010]

[In my earliest days of working with my MakerBot, I used it interchangeably with the term “3D printer”. I think the point I was going to make here was that you could take some everyday stuff, perhaps even waste products, and with a few 3D printed parts turn them into something new or useful. Unfortunately, whatever thing that did this is now lost to time. I suppose by scrolling through this blog, looking at the last Thingiverse item number I referenced and the next one I reference, it might be possible to narrow down the universe of things I could have been inspired by. This is assuming whatever thing is still in the Thingiverse system and wasn’t wiped out by the Thingageddons¹ or some of the mass boycotts / exoduses that have happened over time. Anyhow, all this seems like a lot of work to get into my headspace from 16 years ago. If I don’t think it’s a worthwhile endeavor, I can’t imagine anyone else would either.]

Yay! Math! +=

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More than once something happened to the MakerBot / Thingiverse website / server and a lot of things and/or stats were lost. [↩]

Digital assistant? [08/05/2010]

[I remember this time in my life. My eldest was only about 3 years old. I was still getting established in my field as a [professional man of mystery]. However, I don’t think there’s any way I actually needed a digital assistant. I think what I may have been starting to write was something about how a 3D printer could be a “digital assistant” in that it could make things for you while you were off doing other things. But, I never did anything with this beyond just… this one single line.]

I think I may need a digital assistant.

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House calls [07/11/2010]

[I’ve been a fan of Doctor Who ever since I was a kid. In the 80’s it just hit that sweet spot for humor and sci fi, more interesting than Star Trek, only slightly less funny then Douglas Adams. But, I have no earthly idea what I was thinking when I started this post.]

Do you make house calls?

This country has been sick, this country needs healing, this country needs medicine – in fact I’d go so far as to say that, what this country really needs, right now, is a Doctor. – The Master (The Sound of Drums)¹

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Screen cap courtesy of Themindrobber.co.uk – a super awesome Doctor Who web site. And, you know, the BBC. [↩]

New Print: Soft-Pawed Albino Stoat of South Wales Cookie Cutter [07/07/2010]

[It’s been a fun ride going through my backlog of drafts. I’ve published several and have literally hundreds more to go! Early 2010’s was a wild time for MakerBot, 3D printing, and the associated communities. There were several people who were regulars on the MakerBot forums as well as in the comments section of this blog. Before I was using OpenSCAD, I was making use of Sketchup which was an incredibly user friendly interface, was great as a “surface” modeling program, but kinda meh at making watertight solids. Back in these days you could literally read every single 3D printing related blog post, article, and watch every news piece in just a few minutes per day and even go a few days between any kind of major updates. Someone coming up with a new printer, completing their build, or just developing something new was big news. And, if you published some kind of nonsense blog such as my own, the comments and models that spin out of them would be a bit of fun for a few days. Essentially published as-is, with the exception of one grammatical correction.]

Designed in California, printed in New England a few hours later.

I actually learned a fair bit from my llama cookie cutter. This time I designed in Sketchup, ran through a polygon reduction plugin, exported through a Sketchup STL exporting plugin, and fixed the STL in NetFabb before uploading to Thingiverse.

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