DaveD for his copy of my llama cookie cutter! Hooray!
Two days ago the universe was llama cookie cutter-less.
Today there are two in existence! (Well, three if you count my sub-par first attempt. It’s okay, but the walls are too thin and the cookie cutter is twice as tall).
The last week has been a fruitful one for me, at least as far as printing things on my MakerBot is concerned. I’ve designed, created derivatives, printed upgrades, updated the firmware, installed the latest (super sweet!) RepG, and even performed some maintenance.
One amusing and useful experiment was the serial production of the Z Axis Wobble Reducers by MakiYoshida. Using my current settings I printed one. Then I installed it and printed a second. The second was a visibly better product. I installed the second and printed a third. The third was no better than the second. I installed the third and printed a fourth. I then installed the fourth… and didn’t bother to print with it.
Right now I have two of these wobble reducers installed on the front right and back left Z axes. Installing one on the most warped rod (front right, for those of you playing at home) helped significantly. Installing the second on the back left helped a little more. Installing the third on the back right didn’t seem to make much of a difference, and may have been worse than the second print. I didn’t realize why until I tried to install the fourth Z axis wobble reducer.
Once all of the wobble reducers were in place I found that the entire Z stage was too mobile – and would easily shift from left to right and back and forth. When you have no wobble reducers one or more warped Z axis rods will force the entire stage out of whack. When you have four wobble reducers, there is nothing keeping the Z stage steady. Thus, the optimum number is between one and three. However, I noticed that having two diagonally across from one another gave me enough wobble reduction to improve the print, but not so much flexibility that it could get pushed around in the middle of a print.
Part of the problem is that this particular wobble reducer will allow nearly unimpeded side-to-side motion. However, these wobble reducers are also fantastic at compensating for a badly warped rod. I suspect that mixing different kinds of wobble reducers might be my best bet. I’m not really that interested in installing one of versions that requires precision rods, since it’s just one more thing I have to source for my MakerBot. Ideally I can mix and match these two types of wobble reducers to improve the overall print. The Z-axis floating arrester appears to keep the captive nut more … captive than the Z axis wobble reducers I have installed. This may provide the exact combination of rigidity and flexibility I need to optimize my print quality and minimize layer shift as I print.
The upshot of all of this, and the reason for the post title, is that I now have two Z Axis Wobble Reducers by MakiYoshida that I’m not using. Do you need one or two of these and feel like saving yourself the print time? If so, drop me a line.
Adam, if you read this – the latest RepG is AMAZING. Getting to preview an STL, convert to GCode, and then to an S3G file all from the comfort of the friendly RepG UI is fantastic!
It’s not that I’m scared of the Skeinforge UI or anything.
It’s just that it stalks me while I sleep, steals my happy innocent dreams, and replaces them with a theater of shadow puppet parade of horrors.
This llama cookie cutter doesn’t take much plastic to print, especially if you’ve got a heated build platform or are printing in PLA. The surface area of the part that touches the build platform is so small you might be able to get away with no raft at all.
A few days ago I was explaining to a friend of mine that you can print anything with a MakerBot. All you need is sufficient time, determination, and plastic. 1 What I would really like to show my friend is how the llama cookie cutter we designed has made it around the world in just a few days.
How about printing a llama cookie cutter and posting a picture?
I’ve already posted about how much I like TomZ’s simplified version of a Rubik’s cube. Only problem is that I wasn’t able to encourage my MakerBot to print it. Taking into account some of my ideas, I’ve designed a derivative. It’s 4:45am at the moment – not a good time to have my MakerBot tooting and beeping. ;)
Here’s what I’ve done with this version:
In a future iteration, I hope to change the middle pieces so that all you need to do is snap the two middle pieces together. Also, I’d like to incorporate any design suggestions from people who have tested this version.
Ever notice how delicious llamas look? Yeah, me too.
Given the current scarcity of llama meat, I have to make do with llama in cookie form.
I just tried to print up the 1x2x3 Rubik’s cube puzzle from TomZ. I really like the idea of it.
Unfortunately, it’s just not working for me. I had to rotate all of the STL’s 90 degrees to make them printable. Once most of the parts were printed I discovered it’s not going to fit together. The swivelly bits on “Part 1” are too large to rotate freely inside the center cubes. If the grooves in “Part 2” were much larger it wouldn’t fit inside the part.
At this point, it’s probably easier to start building the entire puzzle from scratch. Here’s what I’m thinking:
Okay, you had a robo-blog. That’s fine. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I’m appreciative for some of those posts and blogs you pointed out to me. You apologized profusely, though I don’t there’s a need to apologize for a robo-blog per se.
However, since then your robo-blogs have gotten worse. The one associated with 3D-Printer-Parts.com, which links back to your site, is collecting anything and everything with the words “made, make, printer, 3d, 3-d” et cetera. Oh, but that’s not the worst part.
Botmill is stealing the entire content of other people’s works and not providing any attribution. That link is to one of my own posts (and not a particularly interesting one) copied whole cloth and posted in your own blog.
Make up your mind – do you want to be a blog aggregator or sell robot parts? There are tons of aggregators out there. Not many are very good. The ones that are have a real person picking and choosing. The robo-blogs are basically packed with irrelevant or useless content. Turn off the robo-blog and drop the fake secondary sites. Rather than stealing the content of potential customers, why not write some of your own content. How about posting some information about your own products? Or some innovations of your own? Stolen content doesn’t help you with customers, hurts your Google PageRank, and actually causes ill will.
Why not take a page from MakerBot and MakerGear? Have a contest, give some stuff away, write some interesting things, ask them for help, show them you care, involve your customers, and form a community.
Glow in the dark plastic.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of fluorescing red ABS.1 But, how sweet would glow in the dark plastic be?
It’s like making all of your printed plastic objects twice as useful, since they can be seen at night as well as day.
There must be something wrong with me. The idea of a “unibody” Mendel cast as several large chunks of polyurethane with nylon fasteners, is a pretty cool concept.
Then I thought of a Mendel wearing a unitard – which is just weird.
