I made these for fathers day a while back (printed out my dad's name) but they actually came out really well. They have a nice sound and feel to them. Since then I've just been printing out random letters and rediscovering the joy of playing with blocks.

**Just uploaded the whole alphabet. Enjoy :)
I've just been designing the letters as I need them but if you have a specific request just let me know. (I haven't quite worked out how to make parametric models easy to share)

I know people have already experimented with this a bit but I thought it would be nice to have a slightly more elegant solution to the problem of mounting a pen or pencil or brush or whatever to the Makerbot (before I had just hot-glued a marker to my extruder).

*Just updated it with an extra piece that you can print and strap on with rubber bands that allows the pen/tool to travel slightly, allowing better contact with the surface. It does this while still allowing the pen to be picked up off of the surface when you need to start a new line.

Sarrus linkage linear bearing

This is an implementation of the Sarrus linkage that may be useful for reprap type machines. It is made from ABS printed on my repstrap, with 1/16" (1.6 mm) brass rods for the hinge pins and 4-40 screws to hold the spine sections together. The hinge pin holes were chased with a 1/16 drill bit, and the screw holes with a 1/8" bit. The two ends are made of one center block cut in half with a saw, and there are some other holes that were drilled rather than printed.

It has a total swing of 100 mm. This is set by the length of the spine, and could easily be 110 mm. It moves very smoothly, and was stiffer than I thought it would be. The center block only moves down about 0.2mm with a 460 gram payload. Interestingly the droop is about the same over the whole range of motion. It stays well within 0.2mm of a straight line as it moves.

A payload (extruder?) could mount on the central block, which could be widened.

Here is a box that I made with my reprstrap. It has an inside size of 50 mm by 50 mm by 25 mm (approx).

Got an Empire State Building model off Google 3D warehouse and hacked the crap out of it to make it printable. Then I scaled it up to 120mm tall and printed it out. Can you say "New Record Height"?

:)

wiki.makerbot.com/hall-of-fame-tallest-print

While talking to Zach I got inspired to model lego bricks in order to create custom bricks - the ones you always wanted but thought you never could get. Well now you can!

Of course it does not snap in place as nicely as original lego bricks but it should be good enough to create the custom lego piece you always wanted.

All the randomness of a Russian Roulette game, without the drama.

I was thinking that putting numbers on dice when we can put pretty much anything we want was... a little square. Since a cube is simple to design, I figure I'd start with a d6 die. Die... hey, Russian Roulette!

Tasteless, and easy to express with simple emoticons, so no need to draw or anything.

The idea here is that you could print out N chain links, and then snap them together to form a chain. If they can work as printed with minimal post-processing (like, maybe you pick at them a little) then it shouldn't be *too* hard to make big long chains for things like mechanical linkages or clock chains. (We'll probably need to change the inside edges a bit.)

Extruded Ellipse (curves_extruded.stl)
height: 70mm
wall thickness: 0.8mm
rotation: 8°/mm


I also included another file (curves_extruded_screw.stl) that is half the height and has a 1.2mm bigger radius. The two parts can be screwed together :)

A neat 3D printable model designed to show off the capabilities of 3D printers. Not sure if we can print these *just* yet with a MakerBot, but its a good thing to aim for.

Watch the video to see it in action: youtube.com/watch?v=h6ozSqo3lfw&feature=related

This is a stylus that I made for a friend of mine who had lost the one in his NDS lite. This one fits rather nicely into the DS lite's dedicated stylus slot, and works very well on its touch screen. I'm sure you can use it on other screens, as well.

Its a warmholding plate that you can lasercut yourself. Its for holding things warm. (sorry but I dont know the correct english words). Its just a test, so if things dont match, please tell me asap. The jpg file containing the cut-out will be online soon.

This is my first cut of a 3D turntable scanner that can be printed on a cupcake/reprap. It is by no means finished but it is a start.

It has a turntable driven by a motor ( a size I had in my 'bits' box ) and mounts for a camera and the laser line drawer.

It needs heaps more work but I thought I'd put the first cut into the thingiverse and see what people came up with

The blender file of the complete device is included in the tar gzip file. I have not uploaded all the stl files individually , grab the zip if you want them all.

To build it you will need a 608 bearing , 5mm (or 3/8 ) rod , some M4-20 bolts , a motor , webcam , laser pointer and possibly a PHD in quantum physics :P

There is no software yet but this

sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=A_Simple_3D_Scanner

looks like a good start; combined with an arduino to index the wheel and some scripting this could be a automatic scanner.

A quick spin off from TMR's Clip Test clip fastener... a fixed-length plastic tie, or bracelet.

TMR's original Thing is here:

thingiverse.com/thing:484

This is a simple cube that tests the settings of your 3D printer. I tested it on my MakerBot and it came out within .5mm of 40mm on each side.

The two of the corners came up a bit. I'm going to make a bigger raft later and see if I can correct that.

Had an idea for a way to print something flat, but then fold it up into the intended 3D shape. Should work well with anything conical/column-like, including, say, wings!

EDIT: I made a wing using this technique, which I've take to calling Flat-Roll... Here it is: thingiverse.com/thing:483 (I kinda forgot to make it a derivative of this one, not used to that feature working again)

This rests on the notion (or hope?) that if you print something sufficiently thin, it will bend without snapping. (Might need to heat the piece?) If this is true, you can split your 3D shape into flat sections and unroll it, print it, and then roll it back up.

This may not be the best way to do this, but I connected each section in this first experiment with just a face, no thickness... I'm hoping Skeinforge will automatically print that with the thinnest layer it can, but I don't really know.

EDIT2: Nophead returned some experience and pointed out that zero-thickness faces won't print at all. Luckily, this is easily fixable since that big, flat underside is easily adjustable with a push-pull or extrude command in most CAD programs. Here's a variation that shows this: thingiverse.com/thing:485

EDIT3: Jay Swift pointed out that you could print this out onto a sheet of flexible plastic without adjusting the thickness at all. You would then trim the sheet prior to rolling the whole thing up.

If this is workable, future improvements would include centering pins on the contact faces between each section... perhaps even some kind of latching mechanism.

An openly designed Creative Commons Licensed robot.

Note: New Version (Beta 2.1) posted 06/05/2009

New features: 12 legs instead of 8, "drop-in" center platform, 1:1.8 ratio gears, many small changes.

I only update this listing for major revisions of the walker, it's possible there's a minor revision posted at my site that is not here: 4volt.com/projects/jansen/

What you see here is the Jansen walker, a laser-cut robot, based on the Jansen Mechanism. It has 12 legs and scuttles similar to a crab walking sideways. The brain is a Arduino, and the legs are powered by 2 micro-servos modified for continuous rotation.

This project is heavily influenced by Theo Jansen's natural gearing mechanism, it’s a very efficient mechanical leg design for converting rotary motion into leg movements, and is very elegant in my opinion. The basis is the relative distance of the 12 joins, Jansen calls them "The 12 Holy Numbers". The numbers were developed with a genetic algorithm. In a couple of interviews that he wrote the evolver on a Atari STe computer and it took literally months of 1990’s processing power to find the solution.

For more info on Theo Jansen as well as some video and pictures see strandbeest.com.

I've marked this as non-commercial creative commons licensed, but it would be very easy for anyone get me to license a commercial version to almost anyone. For the most part I would just like to make sure I agree with the usage, and make sure I am aware of it.

See vimeo.com/4221721 for a video of the motion.
The home for this project is 4volt.com/Projects/Jansen/

Also, if you don't have a laser cutter, but would like a set of laser cut parts for this project see: 4volt.com/donate.aspx#jansen

If I'm measuring things right, this gear box should print at this size AND the gears should mesh.

The motor is the same motor from the old shape library:
allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/DCM-296/SMALL-DC-MOTOR-MABUCHI/1.html

Here's my take on a wing. I modified the previous wing design to be a solid model of the wing. My theory was that skeinforge handles generating both the outline and the 'struts' (infill) very well. I printed a few wings off, and they look really good. Not sure if they will work or not though.

This is the plastic extruder that we have developed over at MakerBot Industries. It is a primarily lasercut design which uses a pinch-wheel filament drive system and a nichrome heating element. It is heavily based on work we've done with the RepRap project and is compatible with the RepRap mounting system.

You can buy kits for this at the MakerBot Store: store.makerbot.com/featured-products/plastruder-kit-presale.html

Various towers leaning at angles from 5 to 60 degrees with base for testing overhangs on your MakerBot or RepRap machine.

A very primitive 2.5" chess rook, the first in a series of fabricatable chess pieces.

The .skp file is the original design, made in SketchUp.
The .stl file was generated directly from SketchUp using the DXF/STL Export plugin.
The .gcode file was generated from the .stl file using Skeinforge.

This is my very first 3D model. You can probably do better. ;-)

This is the design we used for the first batch of MakerBots. These are the lasercut design files you will need to make your own if you have access to a laser cutter.