MakerBot – MakerBlock

The ultimate in customer service [08/26/2010]

[How wild was it that I could write a blog post namechecking pretty much all the people in and around an open source project in a short blog post? All of the people mentioned below were super happy to help troubleshoot and get printers working. Gotta love open source – and the people committed to keeping these projects going. Plus, this was still the “wild west” of 3D printers. People were building printers, innovating, shipping, fixing, and trying new things constantly.]

There’s been some interesting discussion following We Alone On Earth’s post (Plus the updates)) in the comments. I think WAOE and the various commentors would probably agree that although anyone could build a working MakerBot Cupcake CNC from a kit with enough persistence and help, DIY kits¹ just aren’t for everyone.

It’s the “help” part that is the most amazing and enabling aspect. There are not a lot of products out there where the best customer service actually comes from the customers themselves. We’ve collectively built up wiki, posted problems and solutions, taken pictures and videos. It probably took me about three months before I progressed from total newbie posting basic annoying questions to being able to help others with their problems. ² With each shipment of MakerBots, the product gets better with customer innovations and input, customers improve the instructions and wiki, and there are even more people out there to help you.

Bre, Zach, Adam, and Marisol
Andrew Plumb aka Clothbot
Rick Pollack aka MakerGear for holding my hand in diagnosing a blown thermistor
Rick Pollack aka MakerGear and Neil Underwood aka Spacexula for talking me down from the ledge when I clogged my extruder
Scott Small aka Tox for PLA printing advice
Eberhard Rensch aka Zaggo and J. E. ‘jet’ Townsend for helping me create a mini-mug
Conrad Farnsworth for helping me figure out how to install my XY opto-endstops

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And all that they entail [↩]
It only took me about another month or so before I started posting regularly here. I find it’s a wider platform for annoying more people than just those that read the MakerBot Operators‘ group. [↩]

Dear Anonymous [08/25/2010]

[A blog post about trouble shooting in the early days of MakerBot printers. It was entirely possible for a regular person to build and operate a MakerBot 3D printer – but if they weren’t already technically inclined, they’d have to really want it. I really really wanted to have a 3D printer, and with the help of kind souls and absolutely stubborn pig-headedness, I was able to get mine working reasonably well. Sure, I had to rebuild the extruder every now and then – but that was just part of the maintenance cycle back then.]

You have nothing to feel guilty about for your WAOE post. You were frustrated with the time you were spending on a DIY kit and some of the limitations. I really liked two of the points you made in reply to my post on your MakerBot woes. First was that it may just be a matter of time before getting good Skeinforge settings isn’t as challenging. ¹ Second was an analogy:

I’ve been thinking of MakerBot as ‘using linux before Ubuntu’. At first you had to build the kernel yourself and compile and manage your own packages, but eventually it got to the point where Grandma can use it.

As you note, this is an open source project. If there’s something you don’t like, dive in and fix it! I had a lot of trouble getting my X and Y axes tight, so I designed X and Y axes tensioners.

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I’m sure others would say difficult. :) [↩]

MakerBot Operator’s Manual [06/04/20210]

[This post had no content – except a link to a Google Groups post under the MakerBot Operators group. Since I use this website as a lab notebook, this would have been a good place to preserve this kind of basic “start up guide” information for a MakerBot.]

operators guide ?

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts

QR Codes and Avatars

I’m not really big on social media, especially Facebook. While I used Twitter for a long time, I pretty much abandoned it after their re-brand. For a variety of reasons, mostly privacy related, I actively avoid associating my online moniker with my real name or photographs of myself. Plus, I can be a lot more candid here where a comment won’t have to be associated with my work persona. ¹ Anyhow, instead of using my real name and birthday, I fed Facebook the above photograph and use a totally different birthday and other information. Later on, I used a very small version of this photograph as my “avatar,” but that changed when Bre drew a super cool secret agent looking version of my avatar for use on the MakerBot blog.

Anyhow, I was thinking about the “evolution” of my online avatar recently and some other projects when I remembered I’d seen some cool instances of people distorting a QR code in such a way that it appeared to be an image of something – but the contrasting light and dark patterns would be interpreted as a QR code. I found a website (QRBTF) that will automate most of the process for you.

This isn’t the first time I’ve played with QR codes. One of the first was waaaay back in the day. Thingiverse has over 7 million “things” uploaded to the site as of right now. But, Thing #5000 was this gem by yours truly.

Where was I?

MakerBlock’s Avatar QR Code of MakerBlock’s Blog

The process is … fiddly, even with lots of nice dials and buttons to adjust the image. I don’t think I’ll keep this as the last version of this QR / avatar. There needs to be either way higher error correction, larger QR code, or lower resolution, or higher contrast or… something to make scanning the image more reliable.

Anyhow, the reason why I’m even messing with this at all is so that when our projects are (hopefully!!!) accepted to Maker Faire, I can put this on my “maker badge” as a way for people who know me by my pseudonym / avatar to recognize me and for everyone else to be able to scan it and check out my website with more information about our projects.

Here’s another variation with some modifications:

This latest version required some post-processing:

Trial and error to position the original image and then see how it looked when turned into a QR code. Obviously, this also involved tinkering with the brightness and contrast settings. I kept the error correction at maximum throughout.
I downloaded the image in SVG format which was kinda messy. Every black or white pixel was a separate element. I laid a rounded corner set of squares over the four alignment blocks, obscuring the sharp corners usually associated with QR codes. Then, I duplicated the central figure, and in the copy above I deleted the four alignment blocks and the figured, then made all the black speckled pixels slightly larger – to make it easier to read at small sizes.
Centered the QR code on the white background, then rotated it 45 degrees for a diamond shape.

This version scans much more reliably and faster than any prior version. I’m fairly happy with this result and will allow myself to fall down the rabbit hole of my next project… Or prior project. Projects.0

Thermal Sticker Printer

While my work-name and work-face are the same as my real name and real face, that’s just the professional responsible adult I pretend to be in order to pay the bills. [↩]

RepRap and MakerBot alternatives [Draft 04/05/2010]

[Holy cow. Can you imagine a time when a person could singlehandedly have made a comprehensive list of all open source 3D printers in an afternoon?]

Here’s a list of all of the RepRap, RepStrap, and MakerBot open source 3d plastic FDM 3d printers I can find. When possible I’ve tried to link to the official site, helpful derivative sites, instructions, and parts. I’ve also included some notes.

RepRap – The ultimate in DIY personal fabrication technology. Source everything yourself and put it together!
1. Mendel –
  1. parts on ebay
  2. bearings – http://www.vxb.com/page/bearings/PROD/kit9060
Darwin –
1. Ponoko Darwin Acrylic lasercut parts – http://www.ponoko.com/showroom/reprap/free-acrylic-reprap-v1-1–2083
Mini-Mendel
Isaac Mendel http://isaac-mendel.blogspot.com/
Fab@Home
MakerBot –
McWire – http://reprap.org/wiki/McWire_Cartesian_Bot_1_2#This_project_is_no_longer_actively_developed.___For_newer_mcwire_info.2C_please_see_http:.2F.2Fobjects.reprap.org.2Fwiki.2FDevelopment:McWire
ShaperCube –
1. http://wiki.shapercube.com/wagn/Shapercube_Assembly
Profound Devices –
1. http://www.profounddevices.com/
RepMan –
1. http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&product_id=168&category_id=5&flypage=flypage-ask.tpl&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=100005
Tommilese –

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Idea for Skeinforge settings… [Draft 03/27/2010]

Dialing in Skeinforge settings and calibrating a MakerBot can be a frustrating and time consuming process. I’m always tempted to just start tweaking settings and start printing. Part of the reason I’m impatient is that making a change to Skeinforge, printing a test, noting observations, and LRR¹ is SOOOOoooo incredibly boring next to the magic of watching things materialize inside a MakerBot.

Now, I don’t want to it sound like I’m down on Skeinforge. It’s an incredible piece of software that does some amazing things. However, the dozens of identically sounding settings put me in the mind set of deer and headlights.

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Lather, rinse, repeat [↩]

MakerBot: Toy or Tool? [02/25/2010]

or this post could be titled … “Open source intern tells all!”¹

A review of the MakerBot Industries Cupcake CNC today from a former MakerBot intern discusses the MakerBot’s use as a tool. Some of the comments bring to suggest its usage as an expensive toy. I’ve used my MakerBot as a tool to print tools and as a tool to print toys. I suppose at the point I’m using it to print up toys I’m really using as a toy.

I’m fairly confident my MakerBot will pay for itself. That’s not a claim most people can make about their toys. I have printed replacement parts for toys, broken parts around the house, and broken tools – thereby saving me those replacement costs. This probably doesn’t amount to more than $20 or so. That’s not a great return on an investment, but it is returning

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… ’cause, you know, it was all… open source. [↩]

Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]

[Reflecting back on this post is a little bittersweet. 2010 was an incredible time to be someone with a 3D printer at home. I remember Forrest Higgs’ detailed website about how he built his mostly wooden 3D printer. By my recollection, it was slow but accurate enough to make useable parts. Back then it was possible to read literally every single word published on the topic of 3D printers in about 30 minutes once a week – and I did. I read, and re-read, so many of Forrest’s posts leading up to and well after the purchase of my Cupcake. While Forrest’s site is no more, it lives on at Archive.org.]

Since I know basically nothing about how the actual electrical components of my MakerBot work, the entire thing is essentially magic to me. (OOooooh! Shiny lights!)

One of the things that kept me from buying a MakerBot in the beginning was the thought of trying to solder surface mount components. Admittedly, I wasn’t exactly a pro at soldering through hole components either, but the idea of soldering super tiny parts using a hot plate was certainly off-putting. I know the MakerBot guys said it is pretty easy, but I certainly had my doubts.

One of my favorite projects to monitor is Forrest Higgs progress on his Tommelise. His goal, as I understand from his blog, is to design/build a machine that could be built cheaply by a reasonably clever and motivated 12 year old. While the suggested cost of building a RepRap Darwin/Mendel is somewhere in the $500-$750 range, Forrest suggests a Tommelise could be built for as little as $150.

The trade off is that the Tommelise uses a lot of wood in its construction (cheap, but not RepRappable “vitamin” part), uses linear stepper motors, uses through-hole components so it doesn’t benefit from the nifty wizbang bits you can get in surface mount components, and prints slower than a RepRap. But, I keep thinking back to the breadboard prototypes Forrest puts up on site.

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MOAR WHISTLES

The other day I was trolling Thingiverse¹ looking for the best quick-printing model to show off DIY 3D printing to 3rd graders.

After a bit of searching, I found it: the simple whistle.

There are whistles a-plenty on Thingiverse, but the DarkAlchemist remix of the muddtt Emergency Whistle is easily the smallest by far. I compared these two against several other options, tossing all of them into my slicing program and doing a visual double-check for good measure.

Emergency whistle, clear PLA as designed by DarkAlchemist — Emergency whistle in clear PLA as designed by DarkAlchemist

There’s no doubt about it – these are SMALL. They are less than 2.7cc² and weigh about 1.2 grams a piece. Best of all, they print very quickly. Printing just one whistle with 0.2mm thick layers, including printer warm up time, took 7 minutes. 10 whistles at once? Only 47 minutes.

Naturally, I took the opportunity to print up 20 more whistles. This is what 30 whistles looks like:

THIRTY emergency whistles, clear PLA as designed by DarkAlchemist — THIRTY emergency whistles in clear PLA

That got me thinking – could they be even smaller?!

Turns out they can. I redesigned the whistle in OpenSCAD with a hacky thickness adjustment. In doing so I discovered that the existing designs on Thingiverse used 1mm thick walls. A one-millimeter wall thickness is pretty good if you have a small part that needs to be sturdy – but a bit of an overkill if you just need a small functional quick-printing thing. By removing the little loop at the end of the whistle and creating a wide hole in the top of the whistle, I reduced a fair bit of plastic while keeping the ability to be connected to a cord.

I exported a version with 0.5mm thick walls and a copy with 0.4mm thick walls. Printed at 0.2mm layers the 0.5mm thick walled version was functional – but the 0.4mm thick walled version was not. The layers didn’t fully overlap, causing small gaps which prevented the whistle from making any noise. Printing the 0.4mm thick walled version at 0.1mm layers³ turned out both beautiful and functional. Best of all, they’re 1/3 the weight of the 1mm version!⁴

Three emergency whistle in black ABS as remixed by MakerBlock

A friend recently suggested that his plastic filament supplier of choice ships via Amazon Prime for a ridiculously low $22-23 per kilogram. Ignoring the amortized cost of the robot and electricity, I could make about 2,500 whistles for about 0.88 cents a piece!

Now, just imagine the following scene. I take my HedonismBot ((As my MakerBot Replicator 1 Dual Extruder is named)) to my daughter’s third grade class. I show off the robot printing a single whistle and call a random student up to test it. Thank you, a pat on the head, and the whistle is yours! Golly, I guess that’s the whole show everyone. Oh, you want a whistle too? Check under your desk. You get a whistle! You get a whistle! You get a whistle! You ALL GET WHISTLES! What’s that? Your sister is in second grade? It just so happens it only took 80 hours of printing to make enough whistles for every damn student, teacher, and student teacher in the school.

MOAR WHISTLES.

Loudest 3D Printed Whistle

and Youmagine! I can’t forget you Erik and Team Ultimaker! [↩]
Close approximate dimensions: 8mm x 8mm x 42mm [↩]
Basically, twice the vertical “resolution” [↩]
Just 0.4g each?! [↩]

Was This Made on a MakerBot?!

Doctor Who Christmas Special 2010: A Christmas Carol

Netflix has nearly all of the “new series” Doctor Who episodes available for online streaming. As a guy who grew up watching the show, having it on tap is just plain awesome. Unfortunately, Netflix does not carry one my favorite episodes ever – the Doctor Who Christmas Special from 2010 entitled, “A Christmas Carol.” You can’t get the DVD from Netflix and you can’t watch it online.

Thankfully, Empire State Building. The screenshot appears above.

So, what do you think? Does that Empires State Building look as if it was printed on a 3D printer?