Tips learned from experience building a MakerBot
I update an earlier post with the best, coolest, and most awesome Sketchup plugins I can find.
The latest entry is one that will convert a Sketchup file into a 2D G-code cutting pattern. It’s not useful (yet) for printing 3D images, but I hope one day it will be!
I’ve mentioned wanting to print a Voltron several times before. It was Tony Buser who mentioned modifying the Leonardo Robot by jrombousky.
Well, I finally got around to designing it! All you have to do is print up the parts from Jrombousky’s Leonardo Robot and then this single plate of parts. Swap out the bits, paint to suit (or print in the color of your choice).
Yay!
I’ve got my Thing-O-Matic operational. There were some initial hiccups, but it seems to be working. However, I definitely need to calibrate Skeinforge and the “end.txt” cool down settings for this machine. More on those details over at the MakerBot blog. My initial print, a mini mug1 , turned out reasonably well – but is a little too sparse for actual toasting.
Just a little. I completed the body assembly of my Thing-O-Matic, but not the MK5 Plastruder.
I just finished up the plastruder, so I’m going to bolt that in and move on to flashing the firmware.
Here are some of the ideas I’ve been kicking around:
I’m sure other ideas will come to me. I just wanted to jot them all down before I forget them.
Now that I have my chess set complete, it would be pretty cool to have a working OSDS prototype before Botacon.
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Despite my best efforts I could not locate an image on the interwebs for the kind of disc shooter I remember playing with as a kid. Finally after much googling, I found a picture and the actual name of the type of toy. Apparently they were known as “Tracer Guns” and were produced circa the 1960’s through 1990’s. (Image of a Tracer Gun at right from collect-antiques.net). Whenever I searched for these online I only found references to larger disc guns that shot larger foam discs from cylinder mounted on top.
A variation I had not seen as a kid, but desperately wanted, was disc shooter that had a removable and re-loadable clip. In the pictures to the right you’ll see a grove about halfway down the barrel, just above a protuberance. That protuberance would house about 20-25 discs depending upon the gun you had. In order to load/reload the gun you would have to slip each disc under the firing pin one at a time.
Once I discovered the name of this type of toy, Wikipedia filled in the rest. They had some pictures of a tracer gun which had been taken apart to expose the insides. The best part is the gun depicted has a clip loading mechanism!
Having taken apart the non-clip version as a kid, I recall it having a similar metal spring as a source of power. 1 I believe the rubber band on the trigger is merely to keep it in place. The protuberance on the non-clip version and the clip on the clip version of the toys both contain springs for advancing the next disc into place.
To be clear, I am not looking to duplicate, copy, or replicate this toy. I don’t want that toy. Rather, I would love to print a toy of my own, or a collaborative, design that will shoot harmless plastic discs.
I’ve updated my prior post about cool Sketchup plugins with some interesting new plugins. 1 These should be very useful to anyone looking to develop printable models in Sketchup. Some allow for smoothing, fixing solids, adding curves, and other cool stuff.
I spent WAY too long this morning working on a post here… got ready to hit print… and was told by WordPress the post no longer existed. Even better? Every post and page on the entire site was gone. Even better? MySQL said the posts table had crashed.
I use a plugin that backs up this website regularly, so it wouldn’t have been tragic – just painful. However the post I spent the morning working on was totally gone. I was able to repair the posts table using the MySQL repair function, but that post was GONE.
That sucks.
I like the idea of making a crayon mold with my MakerBot. I even have a draft design sitting on my hard drive. However, what’s a good shape for a crayon mold? Triangular crayons, square crayons, fat crayons, thin crayons, flat crayons, smiley face crayons, Christmas crayons, Halloween crayons, Valentine’s Day crayons, Easter egg crayons…
If you could have any1 shape crayon, what shape would you choose?
I’m working on designs for MakerBot printable bearings. The proof of concept tests so far have been very promising. I’ve printed one that’s a little larger than a 608 bearing and turns quite well.
The secret is that I’m not using printed ball bearings, just the printed casing. :)
My final proof of this part will be to install it in place of one of the bearings holding the Z axis in place.
