A few weeks ago I was contacted by Les H. about helping his company prototype a design.
Jay is very knowledgeable about his machine’s capabilities and any pitfalls. His advice enabled us to get a pretty good first prototype out quickly, which showed some deficiencies in our design, and recommended changes to make the design more robust and enable his machine to print it easily. We are about to make the second run. Jay’s suggestions about wall thickness, design elements and dimensional requirements have made us pretty sure that this will be the one we use (unless I make a mistake on layout or measurements). What he printed for us was exactly what we specified, and he worked with us to accomplish a moderately difficult design shape. I am not a mechanical designer, so his assistance filled many gaps in my knowledge. Check out the photos. It all fit together right the very first time.
My advice, go with Makerblock for your prototyping needs.
Regards,
Les H
Prototype enclosure
They had originally expected to go through several design iterations before getting a usable prototype. By exchanging a few e-mails and discussing their designs we were able to eliminate those intermediate print jobs.
As someone with a modicum of javascript, URL hacking, and a passing familiarity with Firebug I sneer at websites that use javascript to disable right clicks. Frankly, I’m amazing anyone would bother doing it. There are just too many ways around these “protections” to make them worthwhile.
I recently was reading a website and started to select some text… to discover that they had included some javascript which blanked the content if you tried to select anything. And, of course, they disabled right click as well. There are hardly impediments to anyone who’s been using a web browser for more than a few years – but I found the experience amusing nonetheless.
If your content is important, why not do something to actually protect it rather than just annoy legitimate users?
If your content isn’t important enough to try some kind of actual protection schema, why are you bothering at all?
I had kept a few choice episodes of Doctor Who on my DVR, including several from this most recent season. When working late, I like to have something playing in the background. Unfortunately, my wife deleted the second1 half of the Season 5 finale. Shortly after our DVR started to go and the whole thing had to be replaced. We got the new one, but they don’t offer a “comes with all the episodes of Doctor Who you were saving” option. 2
Well, it took a while but BBC America re-ran all of Season 5, which I’ve been recording.
The one episode that just gets me every time is “Vincent and the Doctor.” The guy who played Vincent was pretty damn good. If nothing else, that episode also included some of my favorite pieces of art of all time, including the one above.
Humans are always asking us if we ever get tired of doing “Penny Arcade,” which is a reasonable question, but from here inside the mechanism it doesn’t all hook up conceptually. It would be like asking if we get tired of eating “food.” The one thing you may rely upon when it comes to our work is that it will be
1. self-indulgent,
though it may also be gruesome or oblivious, or gruesome and oblivious, depending on the day. “Penny Arcade” doesn’t have a firm definition, it’s a container object that represents our generalized creative output. We make whatever we want to make, which (luckily for us) generally means .jpegs about videogames, but it can also be morality plays about imps and businesscats, samurai with paper tubes, technoir, or any other Goddamned thing. I don’t entirely know how it works, and I don’t entirely know why you stay, but this arrangement appears to work for both of us. And, as I have suggested on many other occasions, you can’t beat the price.
You have to love that. Every day these guys get up at the crack of noon (or whatever time they’ve chosen to brave the new day), do what they love all day long, and then begin anew. I mean, can you imagine? They do what they want, what they would do anyhow, and people love it!1
Now, I consider myself a lucky guy, don’t get me wrong. I have a great family, good friends, everyone is healthy, good job working with people I like, I can pay my bills, and I have some free time to devote to doing whatever random things occur to me. I’m probably the happiest and luckiest guy you’ve ever met.2 :)
However, I think my existence is more like Cicero from Gladiator than like Tycho and Gave from Penny Arcade.3
Sorry for the wistful/melancholy post.
Long day (and going to be a lOnNnNnNg night) at work. :)
My WordPress/gravatar avatar is basically a small picture of David Tennant as Doctor Who. I started using that picture because I’m a big fan of Doctor Who and have been for a long time. 1 In actually, no one with any visual degree of acuity would ever confuse me with David Tennant. 2 That’s why I thought Bre’s drawing of MakerBlock as a posterized black-and-red rendering of David Tennant was particularly hilarious. When my wife saw that she couldn’t stop laughing – that picture is just so much cooler than I really am.
That said, I think it would be really cool to dress up as MakerBlock for Halloween. The idea really only occurred to me today, otherwise I would give it an actual shot. I don’t think I have time between now and Sunday to source a red and black suit with matching black and red shirt and tie.
Our only similarity is that he wears glasses sometimes and neither one of us can properly coordinate shoes with suits. I’m sure his manner of dress is more of a fashion statement. My inability is better described as a crippling form of fashion Tourette’s syndrome. [↩]
I have this pile of printed PLA pawns I’m not going to be using any time soon. They’re of varying quality and interesting-ness. If you’ve always wanted a MakerBot printed part but thought they were just too unattainable, now’s your chance!
I’m going to be at the East Bay Mini-MakerFaire this Sunday just walking around with my family. If you’re going to be there too, drop me a line or leave a comment and I’ll bring a spare piece for you. I’ll have at least nine pieces to give away. (More if I try a few new settings.) If you’re the only one to respond, you get all nine. :)
So, I am just a guy. Prior to assembling my Cupcake 3D printer I had never fiddled much with electronics, let alone attempted something as audacious as building a robot. I don’t have a tech degree, I don’t work in a tech field, basically I’m a glorified cubicle plant. With what little spare time I get, I spend it fiddling with my robot making awesome things and writing about the awesome things people do with their robots.
But, it occurred to me today… By virtue of building one robot from a kit and writing about robots… and given my total and complete lack of knowledge and training1 is it fair to call myself a roboticist?
As well as my ample surplus of ignorance and chutzpah [↩]
