Have you ever browsed a dollar store, store going out of business, or garage sale? The senses are overwhelmed with the sheer number and variety of things you’d never ever want to take home with you. It boggles the mind to even conceive of how or why such things were created in the first place. The frustrating part of it is – there’s probably a really good deal on something very useful somewhere inside that place.
Unfortunately, this is kind of how I’m beginning to feel about Thingiverse. I love the idea of a place for sharing digital designs. Over the last month it has gotten flooded with “things.” People just uploading Sketchup, SolidWorks, or other 3d modeling files directly to Thingiverse, outright plagiarism, and stuff that could never be printable/cuttable/makeable (such as several objects with zero thickness).
I’m totally good with uploading an unfinished design, partial designs, or the outline of an idea. But, for heaven’s sake, please include a title, description, and a copy of your file for sharing. And, by sharing I mean an STL or DXF file – not a proprietary format. By all means, include your source Sketchup or SolidWorks file, but please also include a file type that’s actually meant for assisting in the production of the thing.
Next in the cranky-pants series: Hey you kids! Get off my damn lawn!
Problem: Broken crayons, useless crayon bits, or crayon shavings. Crayola has their own crayon making system – a cross between an easy-bake-oven and little molds. However, I don’t think it is quite versatile enough. Plus, why pay $20 for what could be accomplished easily for $0.20 worth of plastic parts?
I would want at least three different molds – the normal crayon size, the fat crayon size, and then a triangular non-rolling crayon size. I’m picturing a two part mold for each, with the seam of the two parts running along the crayon lengthwise and a half funnel for pouring.
In addition to the half-mold, I’d also design a snug fitting square block for fitting the assembled mold into. That way you could stand it up and pour crayon wax into it.
Another potential use for this would be to place the pieces of crayon inside the mold, close it up, then heat. This would allow you to mend a broken crayon.
Usage: I can think of several different ways to use this mold. Frankly, I’m not sure which is easiest/most advisable/least advisable. There are easily several considerations:
Assembly:
The mold could be assembled with crayon inside to be melted and repaired.
Crayon pieces could be melted and then poured into the assembled mold.
Crayon pieces could be placed in the funnel at the top of the mold, the entire system heated and crayon allowed to melt down into the mold.
Melting:
Crayon could be melted in a test tube or similar container in the oven, microwave, hot water bath (such as on the stove) or perhaps even open flame and poured into the mold.
Crayon could be melted while inside the mold by placing the mold in a heat source (oven, microwave, hot water bath).
Crayon could be placed in the funnel and allowed to melt down into the mold with the application of a heat source (oven, microwave, hot water bath, open flame?, or sunlight plus magnifying lens!)
Cooling:
Allowing to naturally cool to ambient room temperature.
Placing in fridge.
Placing in freezer.
Placing in cold water bath.
I’m not sure which method of heating and cooling are optimal. Though I’d suspect it is preferable to apply the least amount of heat over the shortest period possible.
Variations: It would be interesting to create these molds in different shapes besides cylinders. You could top each one with a geometric shape, the head (or tail!) of some kind of animal or character, or something else entirely. You could mold crayons into spheres, blocks, chips, or little figurines. While not particularly sturdy, you could even mold them into building blocks or components of some larger device. A clever person could use some left over nichrome wire to build a heated metallic funnel.
That said, my extruder isn’t pumping out plastic until it hits 200 degrees Celsius at least. [↩]
I really like WordPress and was kinda hoping I’d make it to SF WordCamp this year. Unfortunately, it is not to be. If you’re going, I’ve got a silly frivolous request –
If you spot one of those WordPress “W” stickers, would you snag one for me?
I’m getting a new laptop (actually, I’m getting an old relatively unused laptop from someone else) and I’d like to slap an official WordPress, MakerBot, PHP, and MySQL sticker on it.
I can’t help liking the NBC show Chuck. A show about a nerd getting the girl? Sign me up.
After the last episode NBC put up a “playlist” from the show. The music from the show has been really good and I rather like several of the songs from the playlist. In any case, here it is (mostly for my own future reference):
“Heart Skipped a Beat” The XX
“Swim” Surfer Blood
“Rhinestone Eyes” The Gorillaz
“Polyesterday” Gus Gus
“Step It Up” Stereo MC’s
“Tape Song” The Kills
“Light & Day / Reach for the Sun” The Polyphonic Spree
“California Desert Party” Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers
“Feeling Good” Nina Simone
“Friday On My Mind” The Easybeats
“Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” Bill Withers
“Lump” The Presidents of the United States of America
Moving the print platform to the front/back/side of the MakerBot for ejecting the finished print
Ejecting the printed part
Returning the platform to 0,0,0 / center
From the video posted on Charles’ site, it looks like he’s managed #3 and #4 already. The extrusion path around the print that we see in Nophead’s prints probably would work at #2. I also seem to recall some (such as Zaggo?) have mounted a toothbrush head on the build platform for auto-wiping of the extruder head.
Returning the platform to 0,0,0 is an interesting proposition. This would seem to work best once the opto-endstops are installed. I’ve got my set of six fully assembled opto-endstops sitting in a box next to my MakerBot because I haven’t really needed them and they tend to get in the way of printing. Although the opto-endstops have been removed from the standard MakerBot kits, I think we may now start to see them returning.
This is the fourth MakerBot “milestone.” We’ve reached milestone #1. Milestone #2 (different threaded rods and internal electronics) and #3 (Gen 4 electronics) are noble, but not really transformative goals.
Continuously cranking out parts is a way to turn a simple MakerBot into a portable factory – rather than a modest means of prototyping.
I just started reading Makers by Cory Doctorow and I’m really impressed. He’s managed to capture the giddiness of the dot-com era in a very plausible-near-future sort of way. I’m reading the HTML version on my ‘Droid right now, but reading the first few chapters has convinced me to go old skool and pick up a meatspace copy.
As a sidenote, by making his work open source there’s all sorts of amazing things sprouting out of it – the entire novel printed on a cash register roll? And other wild stuff you and I never thought of…
I like the mini-Mendel, don’t get me wrong, but there isn’t nearly the kind of documentation for it as you would find for the full fledged Mendel. Sure, it’s a little cheaper, but a Mendel gives you nearly four times the build area. Since the price barrier to entry into the RepRap project just isn’t that high, the bigger issues are probably going to be quality of documentation, support, skill level required, and interest. Is there a detailed mini-Mendel construction guide somewhere?
Just as an FYI for anyone who’s having trouble upgrading your MakerBot Cupcake CNC plastruder firmware, the instructions built into ReplicatorG don’t tell you to unplug the TTL cable from the motherboard and plug it into the extruder board.
So, save yourself 5 minutes of frustration and googling for the answer… and just plug the TTL cable into the extruder board. :)
