This is a replacement prosthetic leg for the Walker ( store.makerbot.com/windup-walkers.html ). I started working on this as a replacement for the walker's leg, but have yet to actually print it. If you do print it, please let me know how it fits!

These are a tight fit for the glowsticks we have, so I shoved my needle nosed pliers in each aperture, rotated, and scraped the holes until the glowsticks fit.

Story to be continued on the blog...

If there were a setting to declare this a failure in progress, I would so designate this contribution to Thingiverse. I tried this gondola of my own design ( makerblock.com/2012/02/drawbot-the-assembly-part-viii/ ) but it just wasn't working. I've been using John Abella's design. :)

For the latest on my Drawing Robot Adventures: makerblock.com/2012/02/drawbot-printing/

I tried designing a motor mount - which turned out very cool - but ultimately didn't work for my DrawBot. ( thingiverse.co/thing:16725 ) I started this version from scratch and is dead simple and it just works.

A simplified bottle opener, inspired by Br3ttb's Pocket Coin-Op Bottle Opener. This is a partial step towards a secret project. It's only partially parametric, so watch out. :)

As the day was winding down I realized that I hadn't created a Thing today yet! Trying to figure out what I could quickly design that wouldn't be complete junk, I came up with this - a simple bookmark.

After explaining Thing-A-Day to my daughter, I asked her what she would like me to design for her for day 2. Answer: A sailboat for the bathtub.

Designed in OpenSCAD, but not very parametric.

Just a simple case for holding an Arduino plus a shield. I am using this to mount the electronics for my DrawBot-to-be.

Latest on my DrawBot adventures: makerblock.com/2012/01/drawbot-printed-parts/

These are the motor mounts I'm using in my DrawBot based mostly on Sandy Noble's polargraph. Since I'm mounting these motors inside a box, the mounts are designed to go into the corners of the box.

These mounts are also designed so that the motor shaft is pointed towards the wall. This allows me to get the filament to spool and unspool as close to the wall as possible - hopefully keeping the pen up against the wall as much as possible.

The mount features a hole directly under the motor shaft for the monofilament line to go through.

Finally, the mounts are designed to be reverseable.

The designs are mostly parametric.

I'm working on building a DrawBot similar to Sandy Noble's awesome Polargraph. vimeo.com/24647023

My goal is to use a spool for monofilament line, rather than a beaded cord. This spool is designed to press-fit together on a piece of monofilament line and then press-fit the spool onto the stepper motor shaft.

A toothbrush holder, designed to spec for my daughter

My wife has a thin flexible tape measure she keeps with her knitting stuff. After watching her winding it up to put with her things, I suggested a small winder for it. A few minutes with OpenSCAD and I had a design. Luckily, the first print worked out great!

The parts don't snap together, which would be a nice touch. Also, for extra awesome points, it should really have some planetary gears so that a single rotation of the winder would be like 27 rotations of the inside core.

It is not uncommon that I have to schlep around a banker box of paper for my job. The combination of thin cardboard, heavy boxes, and two flights of stairs to my workplace mean that sometimes it can actually hurt to carry such a box.

Reminded of langfordw's ergonomic plastic bag handle ( thingiverse.com/thing:3230 ) I quickly sketched this up in OpenSCAD and cranked out an STL. This is clearly less sophisticated and less ergonomic langfordw's, but I think it will do the job nicely.

Right now you'd probably have to print this with support settings. I'd like to design one that can be printed in pieces and just snapped together.

I went to Maker Faire Bay Area 2009 and saw these cool little robots that held pens and drew lots of spirograph style drawings as it spun around. Unfortunately, I got distracted by something and forgot to go back to it.

I didn't get to go back to Maker Faire until just this last weekend. Fortunately, my daughter immediately caught sight of these robots and we built one together. It was a lot of fun to build with her and a lot of fun to watch in action.

A Spinbot is basically a tripod that has pens in place of two legs and a little motor with a rubber nub as the third leg. Start up the motor and set it spinning and drawing. It's a simple device, but a lot of fun to watch.

Here is Chris Myers' page on the Maker Faire website: makerfaire.com/pub/e/5241
And, here's Chris Myers' website with a few other pictures: isopoddesign.com/6.html

Chris' design uses lasercut acrylic pieces (some of which have been heated and bent), zip ties, double sided tape, and rubber bands to hold the pieces together. The heat-bending of the acrylic is necessary to give the flat pieces acrylic the ability to form a tripod.

After looking it over, I decided it could probably be made into a very printable form. This is my shot at it. Rather than creating a strict copy of Chris' work, I wanted to make a variation that would (a) be smaller (b) be printable in one piece and (c) enable to user to use fewer additional parts. One of the trade-offs is that I had to angle each of the legs at 45 degrees so I could avoid the use of support structures. The legs in Chris' designs appear to be at about a 30 degree angle.

A printable OpenSCAD pirate ship. While it will definitely require support for the bow, the rest of the model should not. The OpenSCAD code isn't commented at all, so it may be difficult to follow.

There are two main parameters - "shipscale" and "th." The first parameter "shipscale" is the size the entire ship is based on. It roughly corresponds to the overall height of the model. The second parameter "th" refers to the thickness of many of the features. The STL below has the thickness set to 0.6mm. It should probably be about 1mm or so for optimal printability.

This ship features three masts with three sails each, a rudder, deck, captain's quarters, bow, and crow's nest.

As an FYI, this pirate ship was made with just "cubes" and "cylinders."

Yes, I realize I declared this challenge and am entering it myself. ( makerbot.com/blog/2011/10/11/openscad-challenge-klein-bottle/ ) I didn't start designing this until well after I had already posted it. Since there are no real prizes, I figure you'll forgive me claiming the "first to upload", "fewest number of facets" and "most resembles either Kelsorj’s Klein Bottle ( thingiverse.com/thing:5217 ) or RotoScan’s Klein Bottle ( thingiverse.com/thing:11976 )"

The bottle could be rendered with even fewer facets by just reducing the number of faces on the cylinders in the OpenSCAD file.

Also, I hereby claim 9000 internet points! Mu-ah-ha-ha!

Also, a shout-out to CloudSCAD is in order for letting me draft this up from my browser.

As you may already know, I wanted a D20 that had "20" on each side. Shamelessly abusing my power as a blogger for MakerBot, I asked the citizens of Thingiverse to create one for me. ( makerbot.com/blog/2011/09/29/openscad-challenge-regular-icosahedron/ ) Polymaker was the first to post a solution and win the prize. ( makerbot.com/blog/2011/09/30/polymaker-dont-mess-with-him-that-dude-rolls-20s/ ) (Though, really prize might be overstating the value...)

I tried printing several icosahedrons at different sizes and resolutions, but none of them seemed to come out very well. Most of the time the extruder would snag the die and pull it off the build platform. Finally I adjusted the design a little in OpenSCAD and printed the D20.

Here's what I did:
1. I used OpenSCAD to scale the D20 down to about 30mm in diameter.
2. I added a thin, 1mm circular disc, 30mm in diameter, underneath the D20.
3. I positioned the die so that it was hovering 0.25mm above the surface of the disc.
4. I printed with support structures on. (But this may not have been necessary)

The big flat disc allowed the die to maintain contact with the build surface and it never came off. And, being placed 0.25mm above the disc allowed the die to pop right off very easily without any sanding or stray threads.

A screw came loose on the metal baseplate of our dishwasher and I couldn't manage to get the screw to line up with where it seemed like it went. So, I whipped up this little doohickey to hold the baseplate in place.

It's a quick OpenSCAD hack. Not sexy, but it works.

From the time I fired up OpenSCAD to printing was probably about 10 minutes total. I printed slow and steady. OpenSCAD firing up to fix was about 30 minutes total.

I like ErikJDurwoodII's Mr. Maker, but I hate printing parts one-by-one.

Yay printing plates!

Also, I had trouble getting OpenSCAD to render "Bot_Spool1.stl" so I fixed it up a bit and re-saved it.

A simple pencil case for exactly 10-pencils.

***

Here's my set up:
* Thing-O-Matic ( store.makerbot.com/makerbot-thing-o-matic.html )
* Stock Teflon coated 0.5mm nozzle ( store.makerbot.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=nozzle+teflon )
* MakerBot PLA, 3mm ( store.makerbot.com/pla-4043d-1kg-spool-3mm.html )
* Automated Build Platform ( store.makerbot.com/automated-build-platform.html )
* Settings from my ProfileMaker ( makerblock.com/profilemaker/ )

Extruder at 188C, ABP heated to 80C, a 40mm ducted extruder fan ( thingiverse.com/thing:8955 ), 0.36mm layer height, and the sides of my 'bot enclosed with white paper to reduce drafts

Inspired by a Tweet ( twitter.com/#%21/mostley/status/103775960905691136 ) and a few images of a maple seed ( fieldlines.com/board/index.php?action=printpage;topic=137623.0 ) I have tried to design a printable version. I've tried to make one that is somewhat organic while the other is more refined.

I haven't printed this yet, but I will soon. If you get the chance to crank these out, let me know how they fared.

This is yet another iteration of my designs on an Open Source Disc Shooter. A Pez dispenser spring and smooth white plastic slide are perfect for this design. Once you remove the head and colored plastic outer casing, you can just snap the white plastic slide into the magazine.

My wife planted a small garden in pots in our backyard. This is a replacement plastic clip for the wire frames.

This is a redesign of my prior attempt at building an open source disc shooter.

I'm not sure which kind of disc would be best. So, I've designed 9 different kinds. There are three with 2 holes, three with 3 holes, and three with 4 holes (plus a center hole for each). There are three with those holes beveled up to the right, three not beveled at all, and three beveled up to the left.

The barrel is in two halves, which should hopefully fit together. There's a firing pin as well, with notches for a rubber band. The cap is designed to be used with either one long rubber band or two smaller ones.

I've included a sketch with some basic design elements.

Eventually, I'd like to add a way to pop in a set of discs.

Having printed and assembled, I offer the following notes:
1. Despite the version number, this is the first draft I've printed. It does shoot. When you do you want to cover the circular hole or the next disc in line will pop out.
2. The firing pin sometimes snaps to one side, jamming. This might be solved by putting a guide into the top of the barrel. Needs more thought.
3. It seems like just pulling the firing pin back far enough to clear the disc gives it a pretty good amount of energy.
4. I'm using some small rubber bands. I'll try with larger ones later.
5. I've only tried the discs with the two small notches in them. The ones with bevels appear to fly better - but I've only shot a few times.
6. In case you're curious, I included my hasty sketch of this part of the mechanism.

If you're interested in helping, I've uploaded the OpenSCAD file. I could use some ideas on attaching a handle, getting the firing pin to slide straighter and jam less, magazine for additional discs, how the trigger should work, etc. :)

Or, better yet, why not make a derivative?! I think a very similar mechanism could be used to shoot darts like Vik's thingiverse.com/thing:7512

The 27 Spidersaur STL parts organized into just 5 printing plates. You'll need to print plates 2 and 3 twice each, all other plates once. The plates are all sized for printing within a 90x90 build area. The parts are totally centered, so you can feel free to scale it up or down as big or little as you need.

Since a lot of people were saying their copies were very loose and needed glue, I've made the STL plates 18% thicker than the originals. (You can see this in the SCAD file.) My parts slide/snap together VERY well and tightly, with no wiggle. Some of the parts are pretty close to one another, a MK6 stepper extruder or similar is probably necessary.

Thanks to Renosis and Syvwlch for their help organizing plate 5!

You can download all of the STL's or the ZIP of the printing plates. Have fun!

I've updated Tony's OpenSCAD file to include code for the brace, used MeshLab/NetFabb Cloud to clean up the two gears, and created a module for organizing the non-gear parts into plates for easy printing. Enjoy!

Update: I had actually used MeshLab, then NetFabb Cloud to fix the winding order issues on the gears.

I have a new project I'm working on, but I needed to have an idea of the angles involved. I couldn't find a protractor, so I made one. :)

The protractor has two sets of angle-finders, an inner and an outer ring. The marks on each ring are 10 degrees apart. The two rings are set 5 degrees from one another.

If you require a greater degree of measurement, you could always edit the OpenSCAD file to include finer gradations. For my purposes, this worked really well.

Ever wanted to eat candy directly from Stephen Colbert's face? Me too!

Want to do shots with Stephen Colbert? Now you can!