Tag Archives: bot

Botmill.com – NOT COOL

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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.

Differences between MakerBot Batch 9 and 10

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Someone recently posted on the MakerBot operators group that there were some minor steps missing on the MakerBot Batch 10 instructions.  Just so you know the three things that person pointed out were fixed almost immediately.  You’re NEVER going to get that kind of service from IKEA.

In any case, this gave me the idea of perusing the Batch 10 instructions to see how they differ from my Batch 9 ‘bot.  Here’s what I’ve noticed:

  1. Different build order.  The Batch 9 ‘bot instructions show the body being built first, then the XY stage, then the plastruder.  Batch 10 shows the XY stage, then body, then plastruder.  I think you could probably build the Batch 9 ‘bot in the Batch 10 order without a problem.
  2. Different Y stage caps.  Batch 10 ‘bots appear to be using an Y stage cap that has more room for the pulley that rides on the Y stage.  My guess is that this will probably buy you a few precious millimeters of print space.  (The pictures say X stage end caps…  but it looks like the Y stage to me.)
  3. Different Y stage pulley.  Unlike my batch 9 bot, these instructions show assembly with a manufactured toothed idler pulley.  I have no idea what benefit is conferred by having teeth on that pulley.  Perhaps it is less prone to slipping on the belt?  Perhaps it makes it easier to tension the Y pulley without disassembling the Y stage?
  4. Different X axis pulley.  This manufactured toothed idler pulley looks similar to the one on the Y stage.

Why the toothed idler pulleys?

I failed in convincing someone to buy a MakerBot

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It was going pretty well, actually.

  • MakerBlock: “Yeah, listen, I’ve got no technical skills – it was basically a bolt together system.”
  • Dude: “Seriously?!  So, what, when you’re ready to print you just send it an STL file?”
  • MB: “Um, well, not quite.  I have to take the STL, make sure it’s printable, convert it to GCode, and then convert it into an S3G file, and for maximum resolution/quality save it to an SD chip which I then put in the ‘bot and then…  Hey, where’d you go?”

The fact that it’s not yet a USB plug-n-play system kinda scared him off. 1  I’m confident we’ll get there some day.  And, even if we don’t, I’m still having a hell of a time.

  1. Well, that and I heavily suggested my ‘bot could violate any of the three laws at any moment… [↩]

Pulley troubles

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My MakerBot (Batch 9) uses printed pulleys.  I had attached them to my MakerBot with the bolt going down into the body with a nut underneath.  As far as I can tell, there’s only two ways to attach the printed pulleys to a ‘bot:

  1. Bolt going down into the ‘bot, nut underneath and inside, pulley with the tapered edge on the top.
  2. Bolt going up from underneath and inside the ‘bot, nut on top, pulley with the tapered edge on the bottom.
Printed pulleys, tapered end down

Printed pulleys, tapered end down

The problem with this orientation is that the pulley can slip down on the bolt.  When this happens it’s very easy for the belt to gradually ride up the tapered edge and then right off the pulley.  This ended up killing one of my test prints as the Z-stage started to descend to start the print.  Because of the way the “tapered end up” orientation of the pulley rides on the belt, I don’t think sanding away the taper would totally remove the problem.