Cyrozap – ARE YOU HAPPY NOW???

Cryozap Cyrozap, I mean, is there anything else I can get you?  A moist towelette?  A cotton shammy?  Perhaps you would like a bloom from the titan arum?1  Shall I bottle the nuance of the Mona Lisa’s smile for you?  Please just tell me what the heck you want and I will just do it!!!

What will it take to make you happy???

Kidding aside –  thank you.  Apparently the mobile version of MakerBlock went quite mad when viewed on a mobile device.  I’ve yanked out the mobile version – so hopefully it will look a lot better now.

If you see a problem with the site, please let me know. 2

Update:  Cyrozap – sory fore mispellnig yoru mane.

  1. By some reports, it blooms about once every three years in the wild. [↩]
  2. I may make fun of you a little bit, but I will absolutely thank you as well. [↩]

MakerBot Cart

3 Shelf Cart

I had a dream last night which featured my MakerBot. 1 2 3  I had a dream I was working on my MakerBot in some fashion, I don’t remember how.  Then some neighbor I don’t really have in real life came over.  We talked for a while about something I don’t remember.  A little later we went over to his house and saw his work cart.  It looked like a pretty standard large heavy duty plastic cart.

As I’m looking at the cart I somehow don’t really notice anything that’s on it or how it has been altered.  Then my non-existent neighbor presses down on a large square section of the top shelf of the cart.  It presses in slightly and then I hear a hydraulic hiss as two square shelf sections, about the size of a MakerBot footprint, raise upwards.  He presses down on it again and it lowers.  Think of the pressure applied when using an entertainment center door – you press in, click, it pops out.  Press in, click, it stays closed.

I immediately think, “Wow!  It would be really neat if you could bolt a MakerBot to this hydraulic raising panel, include a power strip, a laptop/netbook and/or a USB cable, spool(s) of plastic, tools, supplies, replacement parts, and little drawers for keeping things in.”  At this point, still before 5am PST, I still think this would be neat.  When not in use, just lower the ‘bot into the cart and roll away. 4

Of course, looking back on this dream through the eyes of mild sleep deprivation5 other ideas come to mind.  Put solar panels on top and roll it outside for greener MakerBot printing.  Power it with a large6 battery.  Attach a motor for mobile MakerBotting and drive the entire MakerBot Cart to 7665 Commerce Way
Eden Prairie, MN and make heckle the guys at Dimension. 78

And, my all time favorite idea:  Attach larger wheels and some kind of suspension to the MakerBot Cart, or at least some kind of suspension to the platform that suspends the MakerBot itself, install solar panels and/or a battery, attach to a bike hitch and a bike, and bike around a MakerFaire printing and giving away stuff.

I think that would be pretty cool.

  1. This post was brought to you by insomnia and the Butthole Surfers. [↩]
  2. Maybe it was this morning – in which case it was just a few hours ago. [↩]
  3. I really shouldn’t be awake right now.  Anyhow. [↩]
  4. Not… in… use?  Does not compute. [↩]
  5. It’s been a long week.  Six full days so far at least! [↩]
  6. Car? [↩]
  7. Hey!  Why would I ever want a plastic cartridge when I can have this spooly snaggly mess trailing behind me?  Hey, can you drive and print at the same time?  Hey, I’m having some difficulty with these Skeinforge settings – a little help? [↩]
  8. I wouldn’t really do that. [↩]

Christmas in July!!!

A little while ago I posted my plastic wishlist.  Glow in the dark plastic was the only thing on that list.

Well, Vik Oliver managed to score some glow in the dark PLA.  Apparently it’s pretty expensive – but I don’t know how to convert 100m of 3mm plastic at NZ$60 to something I would understand. 1

  1. I’m guessing it would probably take a slide rule, a Commodore 64, and a very patient person speaking very loudly and slowly to put this all into terms I would understand. [↩]

Closed!

Thanks to MakerBot for retweeting my MakerBot poll.  The number of responses basically doubled in a single day.  It’s been a busy day so I’ll go into more detail this upcoming weekend.  For now, I’m going to close the poll and show the questions:

  1. Why are you interested in MakerBot
  2. Have you heard or read about RepRap or RepRap.org?
  3. Have you tried to design anything in 3D?
  4. Have you tried to upload anything to Thingiverse?
  5. If you had a MakerBot, what would you want to download from Thingiverse and print?
  6. If you had a MakerBot, what would you want to design and print?
  7. If you had a MakerBot, what would you use it for? (Help starving children, make toys, make tools, etc)
  8. Why haven’t you purchased a MakerBot yet?
    • It’s not worth $1,000.00 to own an awesome robot.
    • It’s not worth $1,000.00 to make my own stuff with an awesome robot.
    • I don’t have $1,000.00 to spend on awesome robots.
    • I’m interested in MakerBots, but not interested enough to buy an awesome robot.
    • I don’t think I have what it takes to build awesome robots.
    • I fear awesome robots.
    • My parents were killed by awesome robots.
    • My friend has an awesome robot, so I just use theirs.
    • I don’t think awesome robots are that awesome.
    • Other (please specify)

Spacexula to the rescue!

This poor guy gal known as “noobcake” had gotten so frustrated with his her MakerBot CupCake CNC that he she was getting ready to either strip it for parts to start work on a RepRap or just sell the entire thing on eBay at a loss.  It read like most of his her problems were coming from improper Skeinforge calibration.  Anyhow, that made me very sad.

And then I scrolled down.  Spacexula helped noobcake get his her Skeinforge calibrated and MakerBot printing reliably.  That’s really really fantastic, man.  Kudos.

Edit:  Apparently I have as much difficulty telling girls from guys online as in real life.  Sorry noobcake.  My bad.

Long winded ramblings and the iPhone

I don’t own an iPhone but I have coveted them for years. 1  I got a new phone back in March and I’m very happy with it.  However, I had kept my old flip phone for about five years.  That’s long enough that old people were holding up their touch screen phones, sneering at me, and spitting on my shoes. 2 3 4

It was a great phone and I had a lot of fun with it.  If you wanted a ring tone you had to go through Verizon’s5 store and purchase a watered down MIDI of a song.  However, I noticed that I could do two important things (1) I could send e-mails to my phone and they were interpreted by the phone as text or media messages and (2) I could save sounds attached to media messages as ring tones.  So, I would convert MP3’s to WAV files, downtranscode them to be about 500K and only span about 30 seconds, and e-mail them to my phone. 6

My new phone is the Motorola Droid.  Unfortunately, Verizon won’t let you purchase the ‘Droid without a data plan7 and Google won’t let you enable it without a Google account8 , but neither of these is really that bothersome. 9101112  I would point out that the phone wouldn’t be terribly useful without either a data plan – but it could probably get along just fine without an associated Google account.  The data plan is $30 a month on top of my voice plan.  These issues aside, there are a number of perks.  Tons of apps, lots of them free, rich development platform, an attempt to make app programming accessible to everyone, and I can tether my phone to my laptop for free and unlimited broadband.  Not even Verizon’s broadband cards have unlimited data. 13

Which brings me full circle to the iPhone.  This clever kid designed yet another flashlight app for $0.99.  Apple approved it, no problem.  Well, it turns out the app allowed for free tethering of a computer to the iPhone to use the iPhone’s internet connection.  Yeah, that got yanked from the app store pretty quickly.

Let’s look at this from a cost benefit analysis standpoint.  How many people own iPhones and want to tether their phones?  I’m guessing not a large percentage.  I think 5% would be pretty high.  Yes, yes, you read this blog, wear glasses, and are a self professed nerd.  You’d be included in that small group – but really most iPhone users use their phones for (1) phone calls (2) e-mail/web surfing (3) music and (4) fart apps.  Overall, the number of people who are to get free tethering for their iPhones is probably pretty small.

If we can run with that assumption – does the following not sound like a reasonable idea:

  1. Kids publishes Flashlight App with secret tether capabilities.
  2. Apple gets wind of this and publishes an announcement that no one is allowed to build tethering apps and that they will delete from the marketplace any such app.
  3. The FlashTether app remains a relative secret and Apple doesn’t do anything more.

If Apple shuts down this FlashTether App, they’re just going to have to run through this all over again the next time some 15 year old kid uploads a fart app.  If instead they force it to be a secret, only those people who are (1) interested in free tethering and (2) are probably capable of either Jailbreaking or building their own app are going to know about this app and try to install it.

I don’t know, it just seems like a lot of work for no real benefit to Apple.  Then again, I don’t own any Apple products and they don’t give a damn what I think.

</endramble>

  1. That’s right covet.  Gettin’ biblical, baby. [↩]
  2. Or, that’s what it felt like.  People are strange when you’re a stranger.  Faces look ugly when you’re alone.  When you’re strange. [↩]
  3. Then again, I was walking across their yard… [↩]
  4. ANYhow… [↩]
  5. You’re big boys.  You don’t need a link from little ole me. [↩]
  6. Who’s got two thumbs and has a phone that plays Darth Vader’s Imperial March when his mama calls?  This guy. [↩]
  7. Boo! [↩]
  8. Boo! [↩]
  9. Then again, I’m not crazy about Google essentially knowing exactly where I am at every moment of every day.  Obviously, I don’t know for a fact they do this…  but it wouldn’t exactly seem out of character given their recent StreetView/WarDriving routine. [↩]
  10. Belch.  That makes me sick. [↩]
  11. Does anyone ever read these parentheticals? [↩]
  12. Where was I? [↩]
  13. Mu-ha-haha!  FIRE THE DROID!  And now Mr. Bond, I shall DOWNLOAD… the INTERNET!  <clap of thunder> [↩]

Hi Rez Printing Problems

The stuff nightmares are made of: 1/4 of Disney's head
The stuff nightmares are made of: 1/4 of Disney's head

Earlier I had wondered about some of the challenges facing high resolution printing.  Specifically, I had suggested that a lower resolution would be better for overhangs, speed, and (after the suggestion of Erik) interlayer adhesion.

It looks like Dave Durant has a proof of concept with 1/4 of Disney’s head. 1  The layer height is unbelievably small – but as he points out:

Even smallish overhangs seem to be far harder to print at this layer height. I tried to print this one several times and it always went pear shaped as it got close to his chin, which is a pretty agressive overhang. Serious blobbage. :(

This certainly seems to demonstrate the flip side of my hypothesis – that thin layers are not good for printing overhangs.  I’ve been printing with a layer height of about 0.33mm.  This seems to give me enough resolution and overhang printability to make whatever I’ve needed so far.  However, I think it also gives us a reason to have several different configurations for a MakerBot for each kind of plastic:

  1. Thin layer printing
  2. Good overhang printing
  3. High speed/thick layer printing
  4. Printing small holes?

What other kinds of profiles would you suggest?

  1. Dave – your Flickr account says all rights reserved.  Obviously, I’m attributing this to you.  If you would like me to remove the picture, I will do so. [↩]

Clothbot’s distillation of OSHW

I really like Andrew Plumb‘s distillation of the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Draft Definition version 0.3.  I’d hate to see it get lost in Twitter history, so here it is:

  1. Documentation: Establish & facilitate the right to repair.
  2. Necessary Software: Operates using Free Open Source Software.
  3. Derived Works: The right to fork the project.
  4. Free Redistribution: Pay for parts, not permissions. No restrictions on the sale of parts.
  5. Attribution: Give credit where it’s due.
  6. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups: Respect is earned.
  7. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor: Make recommendations, not restrictions.
  8. Distribution of License: Share Alike.
  9. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product: The right to re-use.
  10. License Must Not Restrict Other Hardware Or Software: Play well with others.
  11. License Must Be Technology Neutral: The right to modify.

Edit:  See more amazing distillations, machinations, imaginations, and mastications at the Clothbot wiki!

I <3 UV LED

Making a sonic screwdriver is all well and good.  I own a commercially produced version of the 10th Doctor’s blue LED screwdriver.  But, as a screwdriver it’s just crap.  As a flashlight, it is underwhelming.  Also, it’s not red, so it will kill your night vision.  There’s just no really good use or call for it.  That said…  I think it is fantastic.  I just am realistic that while I enjoy this thing, it serves no particular purpose.

But, what if I could have a small sonic screwdriver like device that had a purpose?  Well, then I suppose I would end up using it.  Thus, I came to think about how to make a potentially useless prop/replica useful.  I could add a screwdriver attachment to it – which would be damn hilarious.  I could make the light red instead of blue – so it could be used at night and not affect night vision.  I could make it super bright – so that it IS good as a flashlight.  I could make it so that it has a Tic-Tac-shakey rechargeable flashlight.  If it were a shakey rechargeable flashlight, it would be very useful in emergencies – since it would never be without power.

After consideration, I think the best use of a sonic screwdriver shaped device would be a flashlight that incorporated a shake recharger and some combination of a UV LED and either a a red (for night vision) or white LED (for a bright light).  And, space allowing, maybe even a hex screwdriver bit.  I could see how such a device, which would never need new batteries, could come in useful in a lot of situations.  It could be both frivolous and functional!  My favorite combination!

I don’t really know how to read circuit diagrams, but I think I could assemble the simple circuit from that instructible.  It shouldn’t be too much harder to add a three-position switch for the second LED.  Although, if I had to choose just one LED it would definitely be the UV kind.