Thingiverse user Webca has uploaded a printable MakerBot.
Back in February I thought it was audacious to hope someone would design a printable Y stage. Later that day I realized that if you had a MakerBot Cupcake Deluxe kit, you’d have all the tools plus much of the materials to build another MakerBot – suggesting the second MakerBot would only be about $500.00 or so of extra components. More the fool was I when I thought I had published a comprehensive list of the MakerBot printable components of a MakerBot.
Webca clearly dreams (and designs) so so so much bigger than I. I am in awe of the awesomeness of that MakerBot made MakerBot.
150 plus printed parts, a month of solid printing, and more than 5 pounds of plastic. So, what’s the final cost of a second MakerBot made MakerBot? Setting aside issues of shipping and tax, it sounds like it would be about $50.00 worth of plastic plus all the bits from the $575.00 laserless MakerBot kit, plus some cables, cords, and power supply.
It’s a testament to MakerBot’s rock bottom pricing that a mostly-printed $625.00 MakerBot is not a tremendous discount off the $750.00 basic MakerBot Cupcake kit. But, cost-savings is almost certainly not why he designed and printed this. A month of printing and $50.00 of plastic is far more than it should take to print all the parts for a Mendel.
Yes, an unbelieveable amount of work, but now I want a PLA MakerBot…