This is an apparatus designed to allow three people to conveniently type out a specific phrase: it is as it is

Each person must time their actions specifically, and operate their portion of the device with care.

This device was made to be a performance at a local art-event. Its operation is (of course) far from convenient, but it does type out the most true thing I have ever known.

This is the working version of the thingiverse.com/thing:3093 lagescale cartesian bot concept.

This version is actually working and tested by myself (to make this clear its far from perfect but it works ;).

I designed it with ease of construction and sourcing of the parts in mind, almost everything can be obtained in the hardwarestore, except the pulleys which are attached directly to the steppermotors, the timing belts, and some flangebearings (ordered them from maedler.de).

All parts are cut out of 10mm mdf, even the other pulleys, so there is only one kind of sheet material you have to buy.

The Z-axis is driven by 4x 180Ncm Nema23 stepper motors. 4 Pololu A4983 drivers plugged into this thing thingiverse.com/thing:8622 will drive them synchronously. A long timing belt assures synchron movement of the stepper motors mechanically (No encoders needed).
X and Y axis are driven by one 180Ncm stepper each as normal.

Cross spanned steelwires provide stiffness to the outer frame (the big cube thing).

For a more sophisticated build you could easily swap the outer aluminumbeam frame with a welded steel frame. The hardwarestore threaded rods i used for the z-drivetrain can be substituted with acme threaded rods and nuts, which would also provide faster z-travel speeds. Same thing for the wooden pulleys i use (which look kind of charming by the way), you could use the expensive ones from the factory.

All in all i assume i spend about +/-3000€ for materials, you could do it cheaper as i remade lots of parts and the development process sucks up quite a bit of money.

I made all the parts with a small 3axis CNC, but i think a skilled back alley maker could actually make the parts manually with a saw, a drill press, some glue and lots of recycled parts. I would love to see that happen!

blog is lebigrep.org

by the way, the build envelope is almost 1000x1000x1700mm

This is a Collaboration between MakerBlock and I for the MakerBot United Competition. And we now have a new collaborator syvwlch! If you like it, please click the 'like' button!

These are a set of Windup ChatterBox Teeth, like the kind you get in gag stores or the kind "The Joker" always seems to have in "Batman". The two toned teeth are of course achieved by changing the filament at the proper time during the print. The wind-up portion is driven by a clock spring, which you can get from any old wind-up toy (or a wind-up clock, but why would you want to destroy a clock?). I got this particular clock spring from a Dollar Store Easter Toy, you can see the pictures of the Harley Riding Easter Bunny I sacrificed in the instructions.

The Drive Mechanism is a Geneva Drive, which is pretty common for a wind-up toy. You wind up the spring and it rotates a cam shaft, opening and closing the teeth. Unfortunately, we could never get the mechanism to work properly. The teeth chatter of course, but the problem here is they chatter too fast and the clock spring expends its energy WAY too fast. We still have a few days left in the competition, so if anyone thinks they have a solution for this and would like to collaborate, speak up now!

We have tried every thing we can think of and are at our wits end. We thought gears would produce enough friction to slow the clock spring down, but they don't!

Here are some miscellaneous toolholders that can be scaled to fit practically any tool.

I was in the market for something like this myself, and was looking around searching for toolholders. The problem however is that there ar alot more different sized tools than there are toolholders that match, so then you end up with something that just looks awful and doesnt fit 100% to anything.

So regarding this project the goal was to make many different shaped toolholders that could easily be customized to fit any tool.

And again a big thanks to the makerbot crew for the plastic that made this:)


(Just an FYI - Everyone of my toolholders are printed on my full size makerbottable makerbot thingiverse.com/thing:3285)

This is a business card that shoots US pennies. It has a little magazine that pops up and allows you to load up to 10 pennies. Then you can just pull back the slide and release to shoot a penny, and repeat until all the pennies are gone.

A video of the card in action - youtube.com/watch?v=5KNZZ9qDJtQ

They're height adjustable to make it easy to level your bot and has a slot on the bottom to add a rubber band or washer of some sort to help cushion it and reduce vibrations and noise.

I'm not sure how much quieter it is, so might need thicker O-Rings on the bottoms.

The holes are tricky to get right so that the nuts and bolts fit snuggly, might need editing for your makerbot skeinforge settings.

They attach to the MakerBot by tightly squeezing and pinching onto the side panel so they're pretty easy to take on and off.

Could also design different bottoms to screw into them. I might try making something like the RepRap Anti-Vibration Feet: thingiverse.com/thing:808

Notice: This is a project in development, and I intend to improve it over time. This draft will work, but it's hardly ideal. Caveat Emptor!

Update Jan 31st: I've uploaded Version 2, which is pretty much the same as 1.5 (which I've removed as a result) but comes with the "Hex Key Holder", which can be fitted with a standard screwdriver bit from a powertool to act as a crude "center". My experiments with using two such centers to drive the lathe weren't great, as one invariably ends up spinning and the piece stops. So it looks like the required parts at present are: Two Bearing-End-Body Sections, two Bearing-And-Tool-Fittings, A Boltplate and a Hex tool holder. You'll also want a Dremel Rest and a length of MDF/wood to bolt it all down to. And you'll need googles, and perhaps gloves, and a lot of sense.
For now, it is left to the user to figure out spacing of the body sections and how to align them. I'm working on improving that. :)

More Update: Really bad video of me demoing Microlathe: youtube.com/watch?v=6XXN6UkrnIw and a shot of the finished piece of dowel on my Twitpic: twitpic.com/y8jnl
Also, Microlathe was featured on Makezine! blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01/tiny_printable_dremel-powered_lathe.html

Microlathe is a little dremel-powered woodturning/watchmaker's lathe that can be printed and bolted together with all those leftover M3 nuts and bolts that came with your Makerbot. In addition to the M3 nuts/bolts, you only require a 608 bearing (I got an extra one with my Makerbot) and an 8mm diameter spring to fit the bearing-end. You probably don't even need that spring.

So, if you have a Dremel handy, you can consider this "The Lathe That Came Free With The Makerbot"!

Microlathe is Parametric, and makes use of a "Global Parameters" script from which the others derive shared traits such as the radius of the bolt plates, etc.. you could try printing a larger one, but bear in mind the limited space you have to print the body portions, which are already quite large for a Makerbot.

MicroLathe makes use of shapes.scad, which was kindly released to the community under the GNU General Public License by Catarina Mota. Permission was explicitly granted for shapes.scad to be considered released under an Attribution, Sharealike license additionally in this case, to facilitate licensing crossover. Thanks a million Catarina!
Microlathe also makes use of teardrop.scad, which was provided kindly by Erik De Bruijn. Teardrop.scad is released under the GPL2 license, with the inheritance clause generously waivered in this case to permit release under a non-GNU license. I'm very grateful Erik, thanks!

I'd appreciate a small donation via Paypal if you find yourself using this to generate a profit (selling turned items, etc.), or if you just love it and want to show your appreciation. Otherwise, it's all yours to print for yourself or others! Just don't charge for it without asking me and informing the buyer that it's available freely here.

This crate is designed by Joris van Tubergen in the ProtoSpace FabLab, Utrecht (Netherlands). We use this crate for storage of a lot of stuff.
The design is made for 4mm plywood, and just fits in the Epilog mini helix 12x24 inch laser.

This is a fork from thingiverse.com/thing:964 lasered on 3mm AlMg3.

It uses a 606ZZ bearing to use a 5mm bolt shaft for the idler wheel and has custom mounting holes.

Needs a Kysan 1156006 Gearmotor and a fitting pulley.

License: GPL V2

Yes, this is a 3D printed one of a kind phone holder. What can be more awesome than that?

This is the second half of my openscad.org gear sets.

I couldn't get the top and bottom parts of the double helical to union properly, so I ended up offsetting the bottom piece by 0.1mm :( It skeins and prints fine though.

This thing is part of a set:
- spur gears: thingiverse.com/thing:1336

UPDATE: I'm printing some gears and noticed a couple mistakes on the openSCAD script: the variable 'orientation' wasn't doing anything and the value 'extrudeInDiam' was in fact being used as radius. They're both fixed now and I uploaded a new version of the script.

This is my attempt to create a 608 bearing wrapper that has gear teeth on the inside. Without a belt currently this is not very useful however once I get a few belts I ordered in I will make matching inside gears. I got this idea from makerbot's older method of 1/8 plywood for their 608 bearings.

Flickr Page: flickr.com/photos/31697990@N00/sets/72157622572234151/
Blog Page: blog.synthetos.com/608-bearing-wrapper-and-gear/

This is a box I made for exposing photoresist-coated PCBs to ultraviolet light. It's what Kelly used to make the PCB connector for the thermal printer [1]. I used scavenged parts, so I can't give a list of everything I used in making it. You can find more information for this box and photo etching on our wiki [2].

[1] nycresistor.com/2009/10/13/thermal-printer-success/
[2] wiki.nycresistor.com/wiki/Photoresist_PCB_Etching

Our foosball table came with the creepiest dead-eyed foosmen possible. Here's a printable modernist alternative!

Here is a simple 3D puzzle. My grandpa made me one out of wood a while back, now I cnc'ed one out of plastic. You don't really need a CNC machine to do this; you can use a bandsaw, scroll saw, small coping saw, drill etc. The design of the pieces are simple.

Back in July Switched.com challenged us to design and make a set of salt and pepper shakers, all in one day! We took care of the design end, and the shakers were made by awesome 3-D printing technology from MakerBot.

We've always wanted to design a set of salt and pepper shakers to match Egg Pants, one of our most successful products. This finally gave us the chance to do it. We bring you Salt and Pepper Hats! We're so happy with how they turned out that we will be taking them one step further and turning them into a product for our line, which should be available by winter 2009.

In the meantime, we're offering up the files for our prototypes - download away and make your very own! Want Egg Pants to go with them? Get a pair here: designglut.bigcartel.com/product/egg-pants

A small python script for generating DXF designs of involute gears.

Without an output file the generated gear is displayed in a (tkinter) window instead of generating a DXF file.

The script is licensed under the terms of GNU GPL. This however does not have any influence on the DXF files you generate with it..

Created during Hackathon 2.0 at Metalab, Vienna:
metalab.at/wiki/Hackathon

Link to subversion (check for latest version):
svn.clifford.at/handicraft/2009/gearsgen/

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.

These parts are a pan tilt mount for two 'mini' servos

flickr.com/photos/zignig/3681821576/in/pool-makerbot/

It printed first time and the servo's were a tight fit.


I used the 20 mm circular horn and made the screw holes with a hot pin. Then mounted with superglue

I will be making a webcam , torch , laser and blank mount so you can mount your widget on a turret.

I am currently redesigning it with a normal size servo on the pan , enjoy

:)

Some geometric trickery is used here to make this a gear that will print well even on machines that, like mine, have poor or no buffering of GCodes and stop momentarily at the end of line segments.

Skeinforge will only record four line segments for the inner hole of the gear, and won't have stops midway up the gears, features not found in the Blender Gear script.

The hole is small enough (and on my machine got represented faithfully!) to thread with a 2mm post, making it a good candidate for building gearboxes.

EDIT: Uploaded a "test clip" file which can be used in conjunction with a couple of posts cut from a wire coat hanger to build arbitrary-length gear trains for test purposes. I found that a few washers in the right places can really smooth out the train.

So.. i made all these gears (see other u/l) and when I made the dioramas, there was no way to turn the gears from the outside. I consulted my favorite guru for ideas (that didnt involve me using a lathe to carve a worm gear) and we came up with this. So I designed it to match the tiny gears in my gear sheet (two at top) and the long ones are for 6 inch boxes, the small ones for 4 inch frames..
i'm going to go print it on the lazor. hopefully it'll work. fingers crossed.

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

This 43" tall, 46" square dining table assembles with no hardware or glue. It is incredibly sturdy.

The table is square because it promotes better community with no one placed at the head of the table and everyone equidistant, allowing for better conversation.

The table takes 2 4"X8" sheets of 18mm plywood. Most cabinet grade plywood from Home Depot is 18mm and inexpensive. The one in my home is made from high grade birch ply.

Please check out jeffreymatthias.com to see some of my other work.

Someday, I will alter the design to allow for an expanding top to accommodate 8 people.

I've added a photo of it in our home for an idea of how big it is.

A neat little gears in a gear design for a necklace

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

An eight-legged big spider robot.

The design goal was to create a legged robot that is large enough to walk regular stairs and strong enough to lift simple loads. It also had to be simple enough to use regular RC-srevos and could be cut with my minimal CNC machine.

youtube.com/watch?v=gNXuzhop-u8

youtube.com/watch?v=mSzAuPa47WA

The build process is documented here:

roboternetz.de/phpBB2/zeigebeitrag.php?t=39810&highlight=