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.

For those of us with a Princess in our lives, and the need to be forgiven for the state of the living-room-slash-mad-scientist-laboratory and the ABS fumes... the ability to print a crown made of hearts can go a long way to securing continued forbearance. ;-)

Thank you MakeALot for the original of which this is just a quick hack.

Here's what I meant by a cuff, a much wider bracelet so the text can be supersized.

I also ran the mesh thru Meshlab, this time, and used the 'close holes' command, which fixed all the little issues with this object in one click. Very handy!

Judging from the gcode Skeinforge put out, the resolution is more than enough for letters that big.

Heart Bracelet

This item uses the Bezier Heart by WilliamAAdams thingiverse.com/thing:8483

I made this in three parts so the overhangs would print. The top and bottom are stepped rather than curved so that I could better control how it printed on my printer.

Have added a middle with a hole in to use less plastic.

Heart Bracelet

This item uses the Bezier Heart by WilliamAAdams thingiverse.com/thing:8483

This accomplishes a number of things...

Pulls the filament off of the spools at a constant, low resistance around a gentle arc at a fixed position and angle. Without it, filament pulls off the side of the spool at an extreme tight angle causing the spool to bounce around during reversal and Z movement.

You don't need spool housings around the spool to keep the filament in place. Since it's being pulled off at a fixed angle, the filament no longer has a tendency to fall off the side and get tangled. It also doesn't unwrap when Z homes, the tube rises instead and the spool remains wrapped nicely tight. (which gets really bad when you stack a second spool on top)

Makes switching between the 2 spools really easy since when you pull one out of the extruder, the tube holds the filament in place instead of spinning out of the spool and making a mess.

Provides another place to stash your tools!

Heart Bracelet

This item uses the Bezier Heart by WilliamAAdams thingiverse.com/thing:8483

A tiny toy dump truck, no assembly required.

Captive wheels and dump box.

Inspired by toy tanker truck by jag thingiverse.com/thing:5273

The picture shows the series of intermediate designs.

This is parametrized Box model. It can be adaped to your wishes by changing the parameters like height, diameter, screwing angle, grip height, and curve parameters. In case you just want a screwable jewellery box I included 3 versions of the box as stl files.

I've been starting to print raftless, but I was having a terrible time adjusting the M3 nuts on my HBP to get it level and flat. My needle nose pliers don't fit in my ToM well and I didn't want to keep taking the X platform off just to make small adjustments. I was about to search Amazon to find a small wrench when I realized I could make my own!

The file is parametric. Fill in the width of your nut (the STL file is set for an M3), the thickness (the wrench will be 20% thicker) and you'll get a nice wrench.

For bonus fun, you can set the size smaller and the wrench comes out pretty cute. If you set the nut diameter to something like 4.2 (which I did by accident) it looks great but is still pretty tiny.

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!

UPDATE: Version 0v1 is a bit taller and I worked on the symmetry and cleaned up the base. Enjoy!

I wanted to put a base on "George Hart's 3D Sculptures" hyperboloid ( thingiverse.com/image:40818 ), but I could not get it to render in OpenSCAD.

So I cooked up this one.

It looks a little like this one from MakeALot:

thingiverse.com/thing:6917

5-16-2011 I have updated the files so that the parts are 3mm thick. This makes a more stable Dino. Please Enjoy.


Well I've been hopeing that someone would make one of these. Seeing that no one did, I decided to get off my butt and make one myself. I hope others will have some fun with it as well.

I used this dino as my insperation, and then traced the plans in Sketchup. epiloglaser.com/sc_dino.htm I don't Know who the creater is, but I would like to say thanks for the plans.

The Trammel of Archimedes is a device used to trace an elliptical path. It is sometimes made as a novelty and called a "do-nothing machine" or a "smoke grinder." It is extremely easy to print and assemble but hard to put down.

Wikipedia has an awesome .gif of it in action
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Trammel_of_Archimedes_Large.gif

The arm could be made more complex, to add a handle or pen holder, but my aim was simplicity. I didn't want to distract from the motion of the device.

Edit: Base-V2. Made some slight changes to the base. Fillets on some of the external faces to get rid of the sharp edges and smoothed out the internal sharp edge the slider would occasionally hit. This should give a smoother motion.

A bolt shaped pencil case

After spending the weekend building and testing my new MK6 extruder, I had seen quite a few of these and needed to exorcize thoughts of them rolling across the floor.

If you don't have an MK6, save up for one - they're fantastic!

This is a quick release lever that I designed for my filament drive ( thingiverse.com/thing:7113 ). It may also be useful elsewhere.

The delrin plunger, while an elegantly simple idea, bothers me a little because of the added drag on the filament. Even more so with the stepper driven mk6 extruder since for me at least there seems to be a pretty fine line between having it tight enough and too tight such that you are losing steps.
Like jstkatz and his thingiverse.com/thing:7037 I didn't like having the 4 screws and springs. I wanted something a little little simpler and could more easily pivot out of the way.
jstkatz's design definitely came out a little more elegant but functionally I think they are pretty similar (except mine uses the mk6 nema 17 motor).

This is my version of a Mini Fig. I measured, modeled, and scaled a mini fig x2. I made minor modifications to make it printable and articulating.

This is chunky version of the saw ring. This would be handy if someone tied you up and put you in a trunk and you needed to ring-saw your way out and then hit them in the face when they let you out of the trunk...

Here's what I meant by a cuff, a much wider bracelet so the text can be supersized.

I also ran the mesh thru Meshlab, this time, and used the 'close holes' command, which fixed all the little issues with this object in one click. Very handy!

Judging from the gcode Skeinforge put out, the resolution is more than enough for letters that big.

(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

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.

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.

Added 30 degree chamfers and small fillets to hoeken's design

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

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....

Something a bit more practical made with TopMod, and with a direct reference to RepRap myth and lore: an organic, topologically generated shotglass which should print just fine in a RepRap or MakerBot but be a bit more interesting than the usual spent-ammo-casing tubes...

Afterall, who wants to toast a new 3D printer with something you could make in a lathe or in a mold?

EDIT: Added a variant with a twist. Same licence, download, modify, print... or do what TMR did and make your own from scratch after you see the tutorial video!

EDIT: Added a variant with a flat base and a diamond pattern in the filigree, as per Zach's suggestions. It should print more cleanly.

EDIT: It slices in Skeinforge, and it prints on a MakerBot. Screenshot added.

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.

It's a mashup of LOLcats and derivative Things, see?

Ahem... Yes, humor runs to the bizarre in my family, sorry. :-)