I like the living hinge idea very much, but think it's just as useful in a static context where the wood stays in one place. I like the idea of being able to make curved wooden objects by pinning the hinge in a particular position.

files for the toadinator

developed at educationhackday.org in baltimore

toadinator.schmarty.net

Thanks to Marty McGuire, Any Hurst, and John Cutonilli for working on the project, and thanks to Mike Brenner for organizing the event.

Alligator clip

Updated Design
Change Log - 12-04-2011
-Updated Spindle Base Design to Make Pockets Faceted for Easier Printing
-Updated Masters to Include New Spindle Base
-Added Counterbalance Hardware
-Removed WIP, Design Complete!

Change Log - 11-25-2011
-Yarn Guide Added
-Ball Winder Base Drawing Added
-Spindle Updated to Remove Mtl
-Spindle Base Updated to Remove Rounds & Add Support
-Carriage Updated to Remove Mtl & Add Spacer
-Spindle Updated to Add Support
-Updated all STL Files
-Added Creo (Pro/E) Native CAD Files
-Added Exploded Assembly Views
-Updated Parts/Fastener List

This printable wool winder creates center-pull balls from raw hanks of yarn, it must be used in combination with a yarn swift, I will work on a printable swift in the future.

I designed this winder for my mother who was having troubles with her current ball winder, a new equivalent winder was priced around $50. I felt like I could design and make a better winder for only a few $ in purchased parts (most I had around) and plastic. Plus I know how it works so if it breaks I can fix it.

The winders function is pretty simple but really fun to watch. The motion of the winder can be explained as such. The hand crank, when turned causes the center carriage mechanism to rotate around a stationary cone. The motion of the carriage in combination with the stationary cone causes the winding spindle to rotate about its axis. The winding spindle completes one rotation for every nine rotations of the hand crank. The dual spinning motion of the carriage and the spindle is what causes the yarn to take the form of a cylinder.

Video of the winder in action. youtu.be/iS2732Mlz7k

To build the winder you will need a few non-printable parts.

Qty 4 - 624ZZ Ball Bearings
Qty 2 - 606ZZ Ball Bearings
Qty 2 - 608ZZ Ball Bearings
Qty 1 - Compression Spring, McMaster-Carr P/N 9435K93
Qty 1 - O-Ring Size -237, McMaster-Carr P/N: 9396K226
Qty 1 - O-Ring Size -254, McMaster-Carr P/N: 9396K245
Qty 1 - 1/4" PTFE Tubing, McMaster-Carr P/N: 5239K12
Qty 3 - M3 x 30mm SHCS
Qty 3 - M3 Hex Nut
Qty 1 - M4 x 40mm SHCS
Qty 1 - M4 x 30mm BHCS
Qty 2 - M4 x 16mm SHCS
Qty 3 - M4 Flat Washer
Qty 2 - M4 NyLoc Hex Nut
Qty 2 - M5 x 25mm SHCS
Qty 2 - M5 Hex Nut
Qty 1 - M6 x 40mm SHCS
Qty 1 - M6 Flat Washer
Qty 2 - M6 Hex Nut
Qty 1 - M8 Hex Nut
Qty 1 - M8 Threaded Rod (65mm Long)
Qty 2 - M10 Hex Nut
Qty 2 - M5 Acorn Nut
Qty 2 - M5 x 35mm FHCS
Qty 4 - 1/2" Tall Rubber Bumpers

A swift holds a skein of yarn while it is being wound into a ball, so you don't have to fight it all the way.

If you're a hardcore knitter, you buy your yarn from hippy communes in faraway places, or you spin it yourself[1]. This gives you yarn in skeins - long loops that are good for dyeing, but non-trivial to knit with. To get it into a ball, you need someone or something to hold it and prevent tangles, while you do the winding by hand or with a ball winder. That's where the swift comes in: it holds a skein of yarn, and rotates gently on demand, allowing to you to unwind/rewind yarn as needed without requiring a large family to assist you.

The canonical example of a swift is the umbrella swift. Wikipedia has a picture: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_%28textiles%29 . We[2] wanted something similarly light, yet sturdy enough for the wildest of knitting parties.

The arms of the swift expand to the diameter required for the skein when you press the top disk downwards, at least 1.8m for the parts given here. It is mounted on a rod around which it can rotate freely, but with enough dampening to not over-wind. It just feeds you yarn on demand.

A video of the assembled swift: youtu.be/Rj0PEjT_9D4


[1] Disclaimer: we are not knitters, this is merely an observation.
[2] I'm not the only one, rspanton was also involved in this project thingiverse.com/user:902

I made this by accident while printing the attached STL!

To those who have emailed me about the lack of files.. I'm updating the files please be patient no one is paying me to do this so progress is slow. My printer is also under repair and it will take some time to test my mods. The reason for the mods are to corrects some problems and to back out changes made for the museum challenge as the entry was unsuccessful.

My redesign (derivative) upgrade of a classic toy from my childhood, the original one still can be purchased in shops but they do NOT fly horizontally. This one does, in fact it can even fly over houses and get lost! Lucky we can print another! It improves our world because when you pull the cord and it flies off horizontally the gyroscopic effect tracks it straight and level and gives you a big grin. Smiling people are happy and happy people make the world a better place. It takes advantage of the accuracy with which a 3D printer creates parts to produce a very precise aerodynamic and balanced flying toy that only works well due to the precision of a 3D printer. I'm designing different Prop Rockets for it say tuned :-) bigger faster further!

Updated to identify the aspects for the new museum challenge

Single walled low res hi quality cup, printed is 17min 12 sec...!

see also facebook.com/europerminutedesign

I started working on this before arkatipe uploaded his spike with threads. This is the difference(); of his spike and my 2L bottle threads: thingiverse.com/thing:10489

This is my version of the 8 bit violin. A lot of things have changed since I stubbornly wanted to do it my way.
One of those things is that I wanted those nice chequered press-fit sides. This adds a nice purfing-like trim (struggled to make it really press-fit actually). The top has a slight curve in it, to give it a little more volume and to move away slightly from the blocked look. All part are designed for 3mm (ply) wood. That makes for ~40 minutes cutting time on our Epilog mini 35 lasercutter. This edition is cut from a local light plywood, most likely made of poplar, but any 3mm ply would probably do. Light weight is a plus if you want more volume from your instrument. To make sure the bridge does no come through the top deck, I designed a bass bar too, to go under the G (lowest) foot of the bridge. A sound post is left as exercise for the maker.

This is a Makerbot printable Dan Moi*, which is similar to a Jew's Harp**.

I modeled it off of a brass bass Dan Moi, but the sound is much closer to a bamboo one. While this will not replace a nice brass Dan Moi, you can print this on a well-tuned Makerbot!

Here is a YouTube video of the Dan Moi in action: youtube.com/watch?v=enHMpn5SC5w

Since I can't seem to do links properly:
* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%C3%A0n_m%C3%B4i
** en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_harp

A basic, but sturdy and practical, egg cup for your boiled eggs. It was modeled in SketchUp (model attached) and has quite a pleasing faceted/polygon finish.

Partially hollow to try to cut down on the amount of plastic it uses for printing, but it's still fairly plastic-intensive. It's 28g/1oz of ABS at the current scale.

My print took approx 1hr 20mins to print on a newly assembled Thing-O-Matic.

A chick inspired by the famous Easter marshmallow candy.

(Alternate name: Articulated Python)

When I was little, I had a wooden snake just like this (but better). The cutouts allow it to bend. So I thought I'd print out something similar to see if it would work.

In PLA it is kinda stiff. A more flexible material would probably be better.

I made the snake short so that it would fit on a Makerbot, so it came out kinda chubby. It could actually be a little bit longer and still fit. At some point I will design and post a longer version for RapMan/Mendel sized beds. Or maybe a modular snake!

Oh and the STL has some weird stuff on the edges of the nose, but it doesn't seem to hurt anything when printing.

Dimensions: 80.2mm x 80.2mm x 11.3mm tall
(It is printed diagonally, the snake itself is around 110mm long)

EDIT (Feb 11, 2011)

I've included an alternate file, SnakeThin.STL. This version has a thinner core that should be only a single layer thick. It ends up being much more flexible. Skeinforge kept giving me trouble with the core so I scaled up the model slightly.

SnakeThin dimensions: 84mm x 84mm x 11.7mm tall

Have you ever wanted a Gothic Cathedral of your very own?

Are you intimidated by the centuries long construction schedule, and the punishing job requirements of being a European Bishop during the Dark Ages?

Then We Have a Thing For YOU!

The Gothic Cathedral Play Set!

Turn your pencils into a couple of stacked cooling towers, very cool(ing)
I got the idea from a suggestion by relet thingiverse.com/relet

CodeThread is libary for processing that lets you create g-code as you calculate coordinates for a toolpath.

One of the things we love about makerbot in contrast to commercial printers is that you have complete control over every aspect of the print technique. We think there is a lot of opportunity to develop new printing styles with makerbots, beyond traditional solid prints.

We wanted to experiment with the materiality of makerbot prints by working directly in gcode with processing, so we made this small library that provides some simple functions for generating gcode commands, and prints a gcode file.

Library (v1.1.2):
diatom.cc/code/processing/libraries/codethread/codethread_1.1.2.zip

Documentation:
diatom.cc/code/processing/libraries/codethread/reference/

Our experiments (including some description of the images attached here):
blog.diatom.cc/codethread

It's still pretty fresh, hope to have some more updates and examples soon!

A Moineau pump is a type of positive displacement pump with steady flow (no pulsing). This type of pump is common in the food processing industry because it can efficiently pump slurries (like soup) without crushing the contents. This one pumps 32 cc/revolution (neglecting whatever leaks back through the seals) and is capable of pumping water (milk is shown for contrast).

I thought this might be useful as a paste extruder or something of that nature. It's better than a peristaltic pump because no flexible hose is needed (which tend to reduce efficiency and wear out), plus it doesn't pulse.

In the tradition of barrel of monkey's these guys are meant to link together en masse. They can form chains or even checkered sheets by connecting on all four corners.

This thing was originally conceived and designed by MakerBot's own Matthew Griffin (http://thingiverse.com/mifga). Enjoy and please send comments, we're still working on it!

Check out v16 for our latest and greatest version! the sc55 version is the version that they are printing at MakerBot lately....

A laser cuttable ocarina.
I took ranjit's great design and added tiny bridges which hold the small mouth piece part in place while gluing it. The bridges then can be cut away with a sharp knife afterwards

This item fits on a potentiometer to be used as a chicken head knob

A gripper compatible with a mini servo I used the Topline ES-05 JR, I milled it with a 3-axis cnc machine but its also printable. Made of 4mm hardboard.

A little video:
youtube.com/watch?v=7CUNx4kPw6w

For more pictures and info:
jjshortcut.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/my-mini-servo-grippers-and-completed-robotic-arm/

I loved making this violin. It was a lot of fun to make. I sometimes wish I had four hands so I made a few changes to help in the assembly process. I added cut outs to the top and bottom and tabs to the sides. It gave me freedom to glue the sides to the bottom and leave the top unglued until I have everything just where I wanted it.

Need some holders for some CR2025 batteries, so I made them myself. This should work with all button batteries with similar shapes.

I designed this a few months ago, but my machine couldn't print it until now. Sort of inspired by basalt column rock formations. Might look nice printed in Pencil Yellow

This is a complete two-leg walking mechanism of Theo Jansen.

To build a complete walking Robot, you'll need this Thing 4 Times and some Construction for the two Motors and Control of them.

Making text for Unicorn or EggBot plots isn't always a fun process. Most tools require you to convert text into paths, and even then you get the outlines of shapes, which can often turn messy at small sizes.

mifga pointed me towards the Hershey fonts[1]. They're a set of fonts for vector plotters named after creator Dr. A. V. Hershey who made them for the National Bureau of Standards.

These files are in a weird, weird, format. But after some normalizing, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, I was able to write some code to parse them and spit them back out as SVG! Now you can use these fonts in your Unicorn drawings.

Each SVG contains a layout of one of the Hershey fonts. The hershey_svg.zip file below contains all of the SVG files. The hershey.zip file contains the (cleaned up) original .jhf files. math-drawing.svg is just an example of using these glyphs, including scaling and stretching. I think the result is nice!

To use these in Unicorn plots, you'll want to grab my Unicorn G-Code extension for Inkscape[2].

[1] Hershey fonts - emergent.unpythonic.net/software/hershey
[2] Unicorn output for Inkscape - thingiverse.com/thing:5986