That's F for Flower. A PVA water soluble weapon of mass foliation. Otherwise known as a Seed Bomb deployed by ninja gardeners to sew seeds in hard to reach places. See Also: guerrillagardening.org/ggseedbombs.html

Sure, there are cheaper and more efficient ways to do this... but... pfft... The idea is to stuff it with some compost and seeds and then throw it somewhere that you think could use some color, but you either can't get to it or it's where people wouldn't appreciate seeing you digging around. Then wait for mother nature to dissolve the shell and make some magic.

This of course requires water soluble PVA makerbot.com/blog/2011/02/21/makerbot-introduces-water-soluble-3d-printer-filament/ since you don't want to wait a thousand years for ABS to go away. I'm not even sure this will work, however PVA is supposedly bio-degradable eliteanglingproducts.com/PVAEnvironment.asp and is used as a seed coating celvol.com/sekisui/sek_seed-coating.htm so hopefully it's safe. However, I will assume it's not safe, I'm stupid, and advise you not to do this. Also, I am not responsible if you get arrested for defacing someone's private property with beautiful flowers. :)

However, I'm going to test it anyway (did I mention I'm an idiot and you shouldn't do this?). Unfortunately it's not the best time of the year to try it, but I loaded one and sat it in a pot outside. I also sat one in a pot indoors that I'll run some water over whenever I water my other plants to see how it dissolves naturally over time and if anything grows out of it. I also threw some of the seeds into another pot just in case these old seeds are no good and to compare the growth. SCIENCE!

Alternatively, you could print this in something other than PVA and just use it like a little box to store things in...

Functional Pin Tumbler Padlock Model. User Print-To-3D: thingiverse.com/printto3d shared a very cool sectioned Paddle-Lock: js-kit.com/blob/sk9sIwQKzOFH1K4lciYmmQ.jpg that got me interested in making something that actually locks.

Again, all items are printable except for the springs which I removed from ball-point click pens (thankfully my wife is still putting up with disassembled pens around the house). This one is a little more complicated but it still works and makes a good desk oddity. If you were to glue the "Top", "Retainer", and "Lid" in place, the only way to get this lock open without the key would be to break it. But, what is the fun if you can't take it apart?

Note 1: I did do a bit of finish sanding on the components to make everything fit together and slide/twist well. I would suggest a "dry-fit" of the components with their mates before attempting assembly.
Note 2: The "Lock" component is a difficult print. I was able to get good results by adding two supporting features over the length and then carving/sanding it back to a circular form. If anyone has suggestions on how to print circular objects on their side, I'm all ears.

This is a 20mm modification of a Enclosed Cable Carrier by Landru. I added two end parts and opened up the links to be able to get the cable in when the chain is in place. Put the links every other left and every other right. :)

Update: Replaced the skp file with a new one also containing smaller version of the closed link and end parts.

This project now has a home: code.google.com/p/smt-pick-n-place-system/

This is part of my efforts to automate assembly of PCBs, using an existing 3D printer with a pick-and-place toolhead instead of acquiring a 40K euro machine. This is a parametric design that can be easily adjusted for various sizes of SMD tape. The gear will also be adjusted depending on the pitch of the tape and components.

A tape feeder like this can cost about 1 euro instead of 200 euro's.

Like most of my design, it was designed in OpenSCAD, openSCAD.org a wonderful tool, especially if you're more of a TUI person than a GUI person.

Personally, I really like the recursion that you can print and cut these parts on open source machines and that they will allow you to automatically assemble the PCBs for 3D printers and laser cutters. Also, the laser cutter can be open source, which is what our friends in Utrecht are working on: see laoslaser.org/

Video: youtube.com/watch?v=fsWpC6L91qo

Derivatives, additions, improvements and suggestions may also be prized as part of the Ultimaker challenge:
Ultimaker.com/Challenge !

After many little pieces, I am finally able to construct a delta robot that is mostly made of printed parts.

This thing is a delta robot frame. There is the basic frame, mounted motors, arms, tool holder, and the like. The arms closest to the motors are printed plastic notched spans. The longer arms are wood dowels, with tape on their ends to enhance the friction fit into their fittings.

Steel rods in this case are 5/16". The size doesn't really matter, you can select any size as long as the vertices match.

the size is 2' on edge. that's a pretty huge build area if you decided to use this robot as a 3D printer.

It's a good platform for experimenting with various delta robot ideas. The arms will be replaced with carbon fiber. The 'bearings' will be replaced with brash, with 1/4" axles, the motors will be replaced with servos, etc.

At any rate, at least a model can be built, with not too many different types of materials. There isn't a fastener on the whole thing. Of course if it were actually moving, you'd probably find places where you'd want some fasteners, but that's the whole point of the experiment anyway.

Some interesting aspects of the design:
This is an endoskeleton. It can take a 'skin', but it's not required for structural support.
The tetrahedron is a fairly stable self supporting structure.
No threaded fasteners, other than the threaded rods themselves
Use zip ties to hold the little motor board in place. That board could be gotten rid of entirely if the motors mounted to the rod instead

UPDATE: 05022011
Changed male and female clevis part counts. They were 24 ea, and they should have been 12.

UPDATE: 06022011
Created a page on RepRap as this is more of a development project than I think is appropriate for Thingiverse
reprap.org/wiki/PolyBot

UPDATE: 27022011
There have been many parts updates. I've included a new picture with the servos and new arms, as well as the base plate in place. I've added a video on YouTube of the thing in action: youtube.com/watch?v=VzWJDWvJvqo

This is a derivative of Jaylan's C&LFS, in that I looked at it long and hard before designing my own from scratch. ;-) It's cheaper because it requires no nuts, bolts or other non-printable parts other than marbles. It's lazier because only the two files with the word "spindle" in the name were actually designed for this thing. The other parts came from other designs I'm working on and they fit a little loose because I was too lazy to adjust them for this design. I substituted a little krazy glue for the missing elbow grease and it seems to work fine.

Here is my entry to the Open Call for Open Science Equipment Contest, detailed here:
thecitizensciencequarterly.com/2010/11/25/open-call-for-open-science-equipment/

Start with the video to see what this is all about:
youtube.com/watch?v=1d4_SQBTFjg
vimeo.com/17497511

Download the .zip file to get everything, or get the individual pieces you want.

This is an open-source orbital shaker for mammalian cell and tissue culture and for bench-top science. The orbital shaker fits inside a standard 37 ºC/5% CO2 cell incubator and puts out no heat so you can load up the incubator full of these things. We have used them for 2 weeks now and the design is very simple, inexpensive, and scaleable. Our cells are growing happily in these shakers.

Orbital shakers are typically ~$1,500 and even more expensive if you need one that is designed for a cell incubator so that it will not put out any heat (incubators only have heating and not cooling functions, so if equipment puts out too much heat it will kill all the cells in the incubator).

To accomplish this goal I used an arduino microcontroller, Pololu stepper motor controller, and an inexpensive stepper motor. A DC motor could have been used but it is very difficult to control the rotational speed with high accuracy since the DC motor rotation speed varies based on load. Instead I used a $10 stepper motor and a pololu stepper motor controller at 1/16th stepping.

I used a NEMA 17 motor. Lin Engineering 4218L-01-11 works very well. It can do 75 oz-in and has lots of torque so it can be run at 1/16th stepping and at low current without generating any heat.

I used 3D printed parts I designed and printed with a MakerBot to make the off-axis motor connector and bearing plate holder.

Nuts and bolts are used to finish the design.

Stepper motors are known to put out enormous vibrations, so part of the design also required rubber tubing stand-offs which smooth out the motion of the orbital shaker and also dampen all of the motor vibration.

Coding the stepper motor rotational speed was straightforward once we calibrated the correct delay time between motor steps. We typically run the shakers at 2 Hz (2 revolutions per second) but can easily get anywhere from 0.2-5 Hz with the current setup.

Full sources are available on Thingiverse, posted today.

If you want to buy a commercially available orbital shaker you're going to spend ~$1500.00 USD.

Cost Breakdown for Open Source Orbital Shaker:
First shaker minimum requirements to get started:
ATX Power Supply $30
Arduino $30
USB plug and long cable $20
Motor $10
Bearing $1
Tubing $1
Motor controller $40
Wire $4
Nuts and Bolts $5
3D printed parts $0.50
Total: $141.50

Additional shakers, incremental requirements:
Motor $10
Bearing $1
Tubing $1
Motor controller $40
Wire $4
Nuts and Bolts $5
3D printed parts $0.50
Total Incremental cost for each additional shaker: $61.50

Currently we have 4 shakers being driven concurrently with this setup (one set of electronics).

And here (attached) is a video of them working in our incubator!

My design would benefit from winning this contest by being able to design a lasercut case for the electronics and make a kit that could be purchased directly by customers. I would make the 3D printed parts lasercut instead to make production easier.

All of these parts are sourceable from SparkFun and Ponoko. The motor controller I used is not from SparkFun but SparkFun has many that would work for this application, or they may be willing to sell the controller that I am using (from JohnYang.com). John Yang's controller is available from MakerGear.com.

This orbital shaker is likely to have numerous applications in bench-top science in addition to in vitro cell culture.

update : a revised script and set which includes 4,5 and 6-fold vertices ( slash facets, not sure which to call these ) can be found at thingiverse.com/thing:4934 and thingiverse.com/thing:5028.

These two triangular pieces can be assembled into any polyhedron based on equilateral triangles. This includes tetrahedra, octahedra, icosahedra, and many others.

The structure of the pieces is such that they resemble both faces and vertices, so the octahedron is also cube-like, and the icosahedron also looks like a dodecahedron. ( a tetrahedron is self-dual, so that doesn't count ).

This is a gear I designed to go with my plans for a Buld Your Own CNC inspired mill. It has a 3/16 hole to be able to use on nema 17 motors, but it was designed to be an idler pulley since we make them in plastic. It is usable with the chain that he has on that site (40-1)

A small printable Van de Graaff generator.

Designed to use common household parts, once you have the printed parts...

The MakerBot is currently not cooperating so I haven't tested this yet. The prototype it's based on was made of pvc pipe and was about twice as tall. It generated around 6kV (old possibly uncalibrated electrostatic voltmeter) and visible 2" sparks.

This is a wing nut or knob for a 1/4" threaded rod designed to comfortably fit fingers.

Since the model is fully parametric, the hole size can be adjusted to match your rod, or the number of finger holes can be adjusted, etc...

The model works well with 3, 4, and 5 wings. More wings would fit if the radius was increased or the finger hole decreased, etc.

Note that the hole is conical, a bit larger on the bottom to make threading it easy. The knob should self thread onto the rod.

This is the pfiercest printable pfrostruder around!

I wanted to expand my printing capabilities and instead of actually buying a Frostruder, I came to the conclusion I have an awesome 3d printing powerhouse...Why not just print one?!

This is still in the beta test stage, i'm waiting for my solenoids to arrive, but thought I should release this and see what people think and or can come up with to improve the design.

Update 11/29/10: Now with smaller file sizes

Pull those space invaders straight out of 1978 and print your own.

This kit is hard to make! It's SMD soldering and it's freaking hardcore. We're selling them at just a little bit more than cost because this is for alpha users!

We're going to go into production on these and they will come mostly assembled. We are just selling these as alpha kits.

There is no guarantee or warranty at all. Bre has made four of them and three of them required a lot of fussing with the soldering until he got rid of all the solder bridges.

Specs:

* Atmega328 chip with Arduino bootloader on it.
* 6 pin header for bootloading. Also includes access to 4 I/O pins and power and ground
* 6 pin header for programming.
* 4 pin extension header for plugging in other things like sensors or shields that extend the watch.
* 16mhz crystal.
* Piezo buzzer
* 3 pushbutton switches

It has 12 LEDs to mark the hour and 12 LEDs to mark the 5 minute marks plus an extra 4 LEDs to mark the 4 extra minutes that aren't shown. So if it was 12:04 the hour LED in the 12 position would be lit up and the Minute LED in the 12 position would be lit up and the 4 extra minutes would be lit up to show that it's 12:04.

Besides having it work on a watch, there are a number of other possibilities because it's an arduino environment on your wrist!

You will need a TTL Cable and USBTiny programmer to program this kit. (Available here in the MakerBot store.

Documentation is available in the wiki at wiki.makerbot.com/makerbot-watch

We ordered a bunch of prototype boards and I've made them into 18 kits and put made them really cheap to just get them out there in the world and get friends playing with them. This is for alpha users because it is realllllly hard! I have soldered up 4 of them and 3 of them had major solder bridges that made me swear a lot. Be prepared for a serious smd challenge!

Here's the google group for it: groups.google.com/group/makerbotwatch If you get one, you really really really need to join!
Here's the wiki documentation: wiki.makerbot.com/makerbot-watch
Here's the link to the store where you can get it: store.makerbot.com/electronics/electronics-kits/makerbot-watch-kit.html

Acrylic boxes in the shape of Legos for holding Legos. Insanity! They stack quite well, though for the next version I'm going to make the "nubs" a smidge smaller, they're a bit finicky as it is.

Each box holds at least 64 of that sized Lego, and the larger ones hold a few more. The 1x1 box is 40mm per side.

The boxes were generated with OpenSCAD, the code for which is available on my blog if you want to make other sizes.

This is a vinegar and bicarb-powered rocket that will blast into space! Well a few inches or feet!

UPDATE: We had lift off today (6/13/2010)!

In order to make it blow, you need to make the rocket and base airtight. I've uploaded Rocket Base 2, which has a larger diameter than Base 1, which is too small. Once you've printed #2 out, use sandpaper to make it smooth and exactly the same size as your rocket "engine". In the end, I found that the rocket itself was airtight enough. Also, I think that using modeling clay to fill the holes works too.

After my initial not so successful attempts to create a snapping sphere I had a chance discovery when I tried to put a ball inside the two sphere halves and noticed that although the two parts of the sphere don't hold onto each other they both snap to the slightly smaller ball in the middle...So I went back to the original symmetric Demi-Sphere thingiverse.com/thing:3068 for the shell but added an inner sphere (without the hard to print top and bottom tips) to hold the two demi-sphere parts together. Snaps like a charm.

The reprap is not the only 3d printer that can replicate itself, now the Makerbot can to.

This Makerbot is made out of aproximatly 150 individual pieces that is printed on , "yes you guessed it) a Makerbot.

My Makerbot worked hard everyday for about a month straight to finish this project, and i am immensly happy about the end resoult.
There are more pictures on the bottom of this page;)

(The pictures doesnt do it justice one bit, but it really is a thing of beauty)

Now i have added a zip file that includes all stl- and max-files.

How do you make a great idea like Makerbot-printable (clothing) buttons better?

Why, make them Lego Compatible! Naturally.

Update 2009/10/04: In the design files, the knobs are 5mm in diameter. I remeasured my source Lego disc after getting back some Shapeways test prints and the Lego knobs are actually closer to 4.8mm in diameter. I lucked out with my MakerBot-printed buttons; shrinkage brought them down to about 4.9mm in diameter. The Shapeways printed versions are more accurate, 5.00mm diameter, +/- 0.05mm. There's enough give in the plastic materials for them to still fit 'regulation size' lego blocks, but the metal one was simply too wide a diameter.

Update 2009/11/07: I've been playing around with OpenSCAD (http://www.openscad.org/) and came up with the attached DiscButton_20091107 variation. I even added bottom "sockets" to this variation. It's almost too easy when it's all code!

Disclaimer: LEGO is a trademark of the LEGO Group and these explorations are in no way associated with LEGO Group. Heck! The files are CC-licensed; nothing to stop them embracing and extending it themselves if they so chose! ;-)

A simple flashlight using a 20mm coin cell and jumbo LED. Can be used as a stand-alone object or built into a larger design (e.g. keychain).

What's cooler than transformers? A Cupcake CNC transformer with a Bre head? This is a fully articulated assembly that transforms from a Cupcake CNC to a Bre-bot.
I started with a snap-together design (see the attached concept sketches) but migrated to a bolt-together kit for various reasons. The final design allows for fine adjustment of the joint tension so the transformer can stand in any position but still be movable, positionable, transformable!

See the animated transformation here: jmillerid.com/wordpress/2010/05/cupcake-cnc-transformer/

Modeled in NX6, rendered and animated in Modo, .stl files cleaned up in Blender, exploded view created with Rhino and Illustrator, sketches with Sharpie.

My first 3D drawing. I needed a case to mount my arduino to various projects. I found a model of the board in the 3D warehouse on Sketchup. Future mods will be extension housings for add on shields and screw terminals. Now i gotta figure out a way to print it.Added images with improvements. thicker sides, pegs that use the holes in the board, and hold down tabs.

I would like to create this using a 3d printer. Dental rubber bands for braces act as tendons and hold the hand in a rigid state. When strings are pulled corresponding joints will fold, making the fingers open and close. I plan to have servo motors pull and release the strings.

Here is a video of an earlier revision:
youtube.com/watch?v=fKrzORMTyOE

A crude prototype of the concept made from tubing, rubberbands, and zip ties:
youtube.com/watch?v=_mID_RQ7qIs

Testing of the "controller" glove. Only a single flex sensor installed:
youtube.com/watch?v=OmnV2m10Eyk

Original inspiration for this project is from:
sciencetoymaker.org/robothand/assembl.html

Video of the Printed Robot Hand in action:
youtube.com/watch?v=WPuke73UgL4

Flickr Set:
flic.kr/s/aHsjvC1JYr

A Magic Puzzle Cube.

The cube in the thumbnail is printed by Robo thingiverse.com/Robo . Thank you very much Robo! See comments for details.

I don't have my own printer, yet, so I'm not able to test this model myself. Feel free to modify anything so we can have a printable, working cube.

When the cube is functioning mechanically, perhaps we can distinguish between the sides without colors? See corner_color for an example.

My 3D background is from image and animation rendering, where it's important to maintain quads and avoid many edges meeting in a vertex. I don't know if it matters much in 3D printing? The flat sides on the pieces are 20 Wings unit wide/high/deep, which should equal to 20mm.

EDIT: I split the side and the corner (diagonally) in two parts to make it printable, but it needs to be glued together afterwards. Files updated.

EDIT2: "v2" New side and corners, resting on side. Scaled 10x from before.

EDIT3: "v3" Side piece turned the right way this time. Raft and flat bottom version of axis. All new objects combined in one Wings3D file for less clutter.

EDIT4: April 17. 2010 - Robo printed the first working cube!

EDIT5: "v4" Updated the corner piece with smaller connection part and beveled edges/smoothing (polygons went from 67 to 3432). Would love feedback and thoughts on this.

makezine.com/go/makerbot

These are drop in replacement tiles for the famous scrabble game by Parker Brothers. What these tiles provide is a hexadecimal set of characters, with point values corresponding to their numeric values. This should provide for truly universal language support in scrabble. Any player can feel free to deploy their words now as they would in any other version of scrabble, only now they have their choice of encoding types. Including full unicode support!

This is a makerbottable altoid tin-like enclosure for MintyBoost XL found at thingiverse.com/thing:2144 Will presumably also work for other similar devices.

It's not necessary in the strict sense, but if you can't find an altoid tin you have a ready replacement. Additionally, you can alter the files to print a design or logo on the lid (in relief and thin lines only, since the top of the lid is on the bottom of the print), and you won't have to worry about insulating the board from the metal case.

Strømg Lump Leaks is a ceiling lamp designed by Lamp Lumps (LL).

The used technique is self supporting interlocking of pieces (without gluing, screwing or nailing) of 547 different pieces of polypropylene routed with a three-axis CNC.

The conception and materialization is mixed by using digital and analogue means.

The first name Strømg is the junction of the English term strong with the Danish surname Strøm. Strong, because it is a robust three-dimensional puzzle witch form is the result of small variations in each of the pieces. Strøm, because this work is an homage to Holger Strøm and his IQ Lamp.

The Lump Leaks surnames suggest, for instance, the leaking drops of water or the leaking of information. The abstraction of the concept results, morphologically, in a piece that is the materialisation of the metaball modeling technique that was widely used by pioneers of digital media in architecture in the 90’s.

blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/05/3d-printed_combination_lock.html

instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Combination-Lock/

This was for a final project for my 3D modeling class. I went with a Combo lock. It was done to show how a basic combo lock works. Total size is 4 inches wide. 3.5 front to back and 2.5 tall and is made of 10 parts.

I was going to do a Anniversary release of the files, but I am releasing it sooner because I get asked every once in a while about the .STL files or the Inventor.IPT files so here you go. Enjoy.

Inventor IPT files are for Inventor 2009