MakerBotNumberNine

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MakerBot Number Nine - WORK IN PROGRESS

Technically it's a MakerBot Cupcake CNC but, since it's from the first batch (Serial Number 09) of the first product released by MakerBot Industries, I call it MakerBot Number Nine because it defines what MakerBot is all about.

What Was I Thinking?

I'd considered a ShopBot but even the small model would have taken up sizable space in the garage. With small children in the house, noise was a significant factor; subtractive CNC is rarely quiet. A laser cutter would have been cool, but I couldn't justify the cash with a service like Ponoko at hand with a broader range of materials and community experience to pull on. They do steel too!

I'd been watching Desktop Factory development but couldn't bring myself to pull that trigger. There were too many unknowns for me around input material. It felt too much like the printer ink/toner game; we'll sell you the printer cheap and make money on the proprietary ink/toner cartridges. With an opaque development process it's hard to grow a community beyond the hard-core, existing (ab)users of the tech.

I'm a closet Industrial Design (ID) enthusiast. The local ID school (http://id.carleton.ca/) recently started a Masters program, but what with parental obligations and startup-style work schedules there's little time left to entertain that sort of additional commitment. My Makerbot provides me with an outlet to explore the whole design process at my own pace. Perhaps one day I'll enroll... At least by then I'll have something in the way of a portfolio!

I was fortunate to be going through university in the early '90s right when Linux was making the rounds - Math and Engineering, Control and Communications Systems program at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. (Cool! There wasn't a Control and Robotics option back then.) That box of a hundred-odd 3.5" floppies landed on my desk and I was plunged into the second emerging wave of Open Source software - the first being the BSD origins of UNIX.

No matter what happens in the future, since all aspects of the hardware and software are open sourced, my MakerBot will always have a repair and upgrade path. It's very much about reconnecting with the materials around me. My tools are extensions of me, the cyborg me if you will.

What Have I Made?

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  • Bathroom counter fix
    • Still working on this.
    • Repeat after me: MakerBot output is not the same as injection-molded output. Modify your designs accordingly or they will crumble.
    • Poorly manufactured designs tend to shear - Time to floss the extruder's teeth!

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MakerBot Upgrades!

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My Process

Make Mistakes

I love making mistakes! I learn so much more from a single mistake than a multitude of successes.

  • Early mistakes are better than those late in the game.
  • I try to be prepared for my mistakes; know the possible failure modes. e.g. I assembled the extruder myself; it gets very hot; there is a nice big fire extinguisher within reach at all times.

Calipers Are My New Best Friend

I find the easiest place to start capturing my own ideas around the house.

  • Lego was a natural target - it's made of ABS too - but smaller dimensions and tolerances do make it tricky to fab just right.
  • Broken stuff that I never got that replacement A Round Toit necessary to fix.
  • My kids' toys are entering the fabject stream too: Source and Printed Toy Train Track

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Be Free Little Tool

There's a lot in the way of free software out there. Half the battle is finding the right tool for the job and understanding its limitations.

  • Coming from an IC design background I probably have an edge on most folks visualizing layered fabrication processes. Even so, I take advantage of the visualization capabilities of skeinforge to slice and re-slice my models to understand how my MakerBot is going to build a given fabject.
  • Coming from an Electronic Design Automation (EDA) background, there's opportunity to borrow long-since-expired-patent tricks for simple pre-processing of design data for better quality prints.
  • SketchUp is a useful tool.
    • I capture my designs in CAD
    • Where it makes sense (e.g. Lego Compatible Disc Buttons), I break up my design into a sequence of macro-slices. I can then virtually stack them, see what works, and edit only the bits that need to change.
    • For those designs that don't slice easily, I still try to break it up into a set of sub-components. I'm able to tweak parts of the design without affecting the whole and avoid some of the more dramatic side-effects of semi-automated tool features like vertex snapping.
    • I draw rulers. Lots of rulers. Rulers are the anchors that keep everything snap-positioned and sized properly.
  • The Collada (DAE) format Sketchup uses happens to be XML. XML is easy to parse in nearly any scripting language, and XSL Transforms make for some pretty powerful ways to manipulate XML source in something as simple as a web browser, Java, and/or command-line xlstproc.

To Do List

All That Is Old Is New Again

  • Review my notebooks of ideas captured over the years and see what I can MakerBot sooner.

Make it Better, Faster, Stronger

  • More upgrades for my MakerBot along the same lines as my Locking Bearing Bracket.
  • Printable circuit boards, not necessarily square or even planar.
  • It's a bootstrap process. Once you have a starter MakerBot, it's relatively easy to come up with improvements along the way with the ultimate goal being a fully-printable future generation MakerBot.

Around The House

  • Light switch face-plates cringe in terror as I approach.
  • Electric socket faceplate, thy name is integrated child-proofing.

For Every Board A Custom Case

  • Case designs for my Gumstix computers.
  • Case designs for my Sparkfun breakout boards.
  • Case designs for some little micro-LCD units I have.

Into the Future

  • I'm watching RepRap Mendel intently, particularly the bit about it making its own electronics.
  • Ever-smaller makerbots using the previous generation; aiming for atom-pusher.
  • Closed-cycle fabrication. All that is old shall be remade anew. I'm saving up all my spent rafts and trimmings for this part.

Category:MakerBot

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