[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
[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.]
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.
[This was an entire blog. I changed one grammatical fix, but it’s otherwise the same exact post I wrote 16 years ago and abandoned. While I’m still very nostalgic for the days of the MakerBot-that-was, I’m probably even more glad that 3D printing went so mainstream that every farmer’s market across America has multiple stalls selling 3D printed flexi-dragons and keychains. We’re well past the days of 3D printing operators creating makeshift nozzles from drilling out nuts and wrapping nichrome wire by hand and more into being able to pick up a roll of filament somewhere in your neighborhood. Yes, it means more 3D printed garbage sitting on shelves, but it also means regular people have a chance to actually innovate and iterate things without significant tooling and manufacturing barriers.]
I didn’t realize this, but apparently all the press from MakerBot hitting CBS evening news was enough to crush their website. As best as I can tell at least some portions of their website are hosted on the Amazon cloud. That’s a LOT of traffic. As they say, success is a good problem to have.
As a purely self-interested person I really like the idea of more and more people having access to a MakerBot or RepRap. The more these technologies are available, the easier it will be to get replacement parts and extra plastic. Perhaps more importantly, the more people using personal fabrication technology the more designs and upgrades and developments we’ll see.
Just imagine – someone who watched that CBS episode or those video clips has an amazing idea right now and the only thing holding them back is getting their paws on a MakerBot. Did you notice the little poll box on one of those CBS pages? When asked, “Do you plan to buy a 3-D printer within the next year?” 82% of respondents “Yes”, 12% were undecided.
Did you also notice NO ONE voted for “Screw this, I don’t want to live in the future!”
[This post had no content – except a link to a Google Groups post under the MakerBot Operators group. Since I use this website as a lab notebook, this would have been a good place to preserve this kind of basic “start up guide” information for a MakerBot.]
[This draft post is over 16 years old. Back in 2010 RepRap was exploding. People were cranking out 3D printed RepRap Mendel parts, then people started selling parts cast from 3D printed parts, then selling the actual molds?! I think I was going to discuss the quality of 3D printed parts, their molded counterparts, and other options. Back in mid-2009 the MakerBot was launched with zero 3D printed parts, everything made from lasercut pieces of thin plywood.]
[Yep. This was the whole blog post. I don’t know what happened to that set of parts, if I sold them, gave them away, or what. I hope I gave them away.]
[Holy cow. Can you imagine a time when a person could singlehandedly have made a comprehensive list of all open source 3D printers in an afternoon?]
Here’s a list of all of the RepRap, RepStrap, and MakerBot open source 3d plastic FDM 3d printers I can find. When possible I’ve tried to link to the official site, helpful derivative sites, instructions, and parts. I’ve also included some notes.
RepRap – The ultimate in DIY personal fabrication technology. Source everything yourself and put it together!
Dialing in Skeinforge settings and calibrating a MakerBot can be a frustrating and time consuming process. I’m always tempted to just start tweaking settings and start printing. Part of the reason I’m impatient is that making a change to Skeinforge, printing a test, noting observations, and LRR1 is SOOOOoooo incredibly boring next to the magic of watching things materialize inside a MakerBot.
Now, I don’t want to it sound like I’m down on Skeinforge. It’s an incredible piece of software that does some amazing things. However, the dozens of identically sounding settings put me in the mind set of deer and headlights.
or this post could be titled … “Open source intern tells all!”1
A review of the MakerBot Industries Cupcake CNC today from a former MakerBot intern discusses the MakerBot’s use as a tool. Some of the comments bring to suggest its usage as an expensive toy. I’ve used my MakerBot as a tool to print tools and as a tool to print toys. I suppose at the point I’m using it to print up toys I’m really using as a toy.
I’m fairly confident my MakerBot will pay for itself. That’s not a claim most people can make about their toys. I have printed replacement parts for toys, broken parts around the house, and broken tools – thereby saving me those replacement costs. This probably doesn’t amount to more than $20 or so. That’s not a great return on an investment, but it is returning
