This is a quick and dirty strain relief bracket for all the wires coming off your extruder to prevent them from getting bent and jostled as much when the carriage moves around. Tested with a Greg's Hinged Accessible Extruder, but it'll probably fit any extruder design with an exposed motor.

I created this so I could mill it on my CNC machine using Birch ply. You should use material that is 4.65mm thick (the thickness of the groove on the groovemount V3 hotend insulator).

Using the projection function in OpenSCAD I created the DXF. I use Cut2D for the toolpaths.

This is an adapter plate based on my MakerGear adapter plate to hold a dial indicator. One would use this to level their bed.

Ok, this is a tough one.

This treasure chest is printed in one piece!
You definitely should be good friends with your MakerBot when printing this. ABS warping is a big problem. The few lucky ones with PLA on their desk definitely have the advantage here...

Anyway, you might give it a shot.

As usual with my quirky objects, Skeinforge is moaning and groaning when processing it. But if you configure "Carve" to use "unproven meshes" and ignore all warnings, you should get a printable gcode file :)

The attached gcode is the one I used for printing the treasure chest on the photo. It's suitable for MakerBots with a .5mm nozzle.

There's also a short video on this on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=wtoLPj_YOkA

I was inspired by zignig's Printable Desk Clamp thingiverse.com/thing:683 . I used hex nuts instead of square nuts because hex nuts are more common. All the parts are easily available at hardware stores and hobby shops. The total cost is about $4.50 for this clamp compared to $50 ones. It is used for holding circuit boards at comfortable angles, hobby modeling, and holding stuff. Enjoy.


The picture of all parts does not show two nuts that I had already hammered in but I did not want to take them out. Also it does not show 20mm brass tubing as I already hammered some of them in.

All of the idler and timing pulleys seen here were MakerBot printed. And, as soon as the motor pulley can be pried off it will also be replaced.

The flanges are currently being printed separately but will be combined once any kinks have been worked out.

MakerBot Made (using 0.4mm nozzle).

I designed this a couple of weeks ago. The pulleys look good when printed, but at least when using a standard .5mm nozzle, the teeth are not "sharp" enough and the timer belt slips too easy.

When MakerGear published their z pulleys ( thingiverse.com/thing:1081 ) I asked how they managed to avoid the slipping. Well, they use a .4mm nozzle...

Since MakerGear asked for my design: Here it is.

Again: These pulleys print nicely and also kind of work. The only thing is, that the timer belt doesn't get enough grip on its teeth at .5mm printing.

The gcode file contains the object, processed for .5mm nozzles!

This is part 3 of "Pimp my MakerBot" (see thingiverse.com/thing:973 and thingiverse.com/thing:958 for part 1 & 2 :)

I was tired of dragging on the Z belt multiple times to upper or lower the z stage of my MakerBot.

With this crank mounted on one of the 4 M6 threaded rods, I can now easily adjust the height of my MakerBot.

Better Living with MakerBot, Episode 2
You probably all know this situation:
You're supposed to ref a soccer game in less than 1/2 an hour and you cannot find your whistle. You're screwed!

But from now on you're out of trouble: Fire up your trusty MakerBot and print a new whistle in 26 minutes!

This object prints the pea right inside the whistle. Since the pea is connected to the rest of the object only at one tiny point, it's quite easy to break it loose after printing with a small screw driver or tweezers.

I probably pushing luck a little bit with bridging the top layer. So far I printed the whistle twice without problems.

As always, I added the object as .obj file (wavefront), which can be imported into AOI and Blender.

The gcode file is the one I used to print the whistle on the image. The gcode file contains an experimental raft with additional "blobs" on the second (interface) layer.
You might want to generate your own gcode file with skeinforge settings, tested with your MakerBot. Be sure to setup Skeinforge to create an (almost) watertight object, since the whistle won't whistle if it's full of holes...

[Update]
I added a second version of the whistle. "Whistle_v2" is an attempt to fine tune the object a little bit. My brother (he's a pipe organ builder) gave me some tips how to optimize the whistles mouth. Whistle v2 should start whistle with less airflow than v1 and thus be (somewhat) less loud. I also downsized the pea a little bit and changed the shape of the lanyard loop.

Whistle v1 is still available for reference and also since it's more "tested"...

Since you blow the whistle with your mouth, be aware of possible problems concerning "food safety" of printed plastic. See the blog post "For foodies out there" ( blog.thingiverse.com/2009/09/13/for-foodies-out-there/ ) for more information.