I chopped @jspiro's design into two parts in FlashPrint.

This allowed the print to fit on the bed of my Flashforge Finder.

I've got an old white macbook and a newish retina macbook pro. Typically these live on my desk stacked on top of each other, with keyboard/monitor/mouse plugged in.

My cat likes to sit on top of them because they are warm. She also likes to chew on nearby cables. This is a problem.

So, here's this Thing to stand them vertically!

Kitty came by looking for her warm spot, but didn't stay long. My desk is now clearer, but also more lonely.

... success?

Get out your best green filament and get festive!

These 8-bit glasses print all in one piece - arms and all! The corners of the frames are tacked down with "mouse ears" in the shape of shamrocks, so you're all set for your St. Patrick's Day celebrations!

The default size should fit most people, but feel free to scale the design, or play with it in OpenSCAD and make your own stylish variation!

These glasses are inspired by the "5DPI" glasses design by Dzmitry Samal: http://www.dzmitrysamal.com/5dpi.html

The Baltimore Node is pleased to have taken part in the creation of the cover for Urbanite Magazine's March 2012 "Change Makers" issue.

The file was designed in Inkscape and OpenSCAD and printed on MakerBot Thing-O-Matic #5564. Dozens of photos were taken during the build and then combined into the final cover image by the excellent people at Urbanite.

You can find the online archive for the issue here: http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/baltimore/IssueArchives?issue=1469643

Other issues of the Urbanite are here: http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/

If you're in the Baltimore/DC area, check out the Baltimore Node Hackerspace! http://baltimorenode.org/

Teennntacllles... coming out of the waaaaallll.

amyhurst was asking for a key hook by our front door and decided upon a tentacled theme.

guru's awesome volumetric tentacle seemed like a great choice, so I pulled it into OpenSCAD and made space for a 1" roofing nail to slide-and-lock into the back of the tentacle.

(thanks to cibomahto for the tagline up top).

Experimenting with laying out tweets on a sticky note. Thinking about some fun automated Unicorn plots.

Unfortunately, once again, I am not home to plot this. I will try to put up pictures later, but feel free to give this a shot in the meantime.

Feedback welcome!

Just in time for Valentine's Day, it's an 8-bit heart from my favorite video game series.

From Nintendo to me to 3DTin to you!

After seeing Allan's "*sta" post on the Thingiverse blog[1], I couldn't help but actually make the "star-sta" a reality.

This is technically a derivative of yzorg's Gangsta[2], but since I haven't actually printed it, I don't feel right clicking "I Made One".

Thanks to tbuser for his 2D to 3D tutorial[3] which has the right pstoedit voodoo required to export things sanely from Inkscape to OpenSCAD.

Thanks to Inkscape for having a Star tool.

Thanks to MCAD for the oval generation code.[4]

Thanks to OpenSCAD for making ridiculous things like this possible.

Thanks to cibomahto for creating this mash-up madness.

[1] *sta - http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/02/10/sta/
[2] Gangsta by yzorg - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5367
[3] 2D to 3D - http://tonybuser.com/2d-to-3d
[4] MCAD - https://github.com/elmom/MCAD

To go with the new multiple-color plotting functionality of my Unicorn G-Code Output extension for Inkscape, here's a new version of the Baltimore Node logo.

This one is ready to plot in 2 layers - all of the black parts at once, followed by all of the blue ones, with a pause at the beginning of each layer to allow a pen change.

I also made use of my Hershey Fonts in SVG to make the word "baltimore" more readable after plotting. This should make it look nice, for example, on an EggBot.

UPDATE!

I forgot to resize the original for a sticky note pad (whoops!) and I was right that the EggBot version needed layers beginning with a number.

Updated files attached and pictures added!

Links

• Unicorn Inkscape extension: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5986
• Hershey Fonts in SVG: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6168

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

When I first heard of Graffiti Markup Language (GML)[1] I was like "An XML format for graffiti? Pfft!" Then yesterday I was like "Wait, I have a pen plotter."

There are a ton of tags for you to play with at 000000book[2], so go get some files and start tagging ... with post-it notes!

Updates

Watch for updates on GitHub:

https://github.com/martymcguire/gml2unicorn

[1] http://graffitimarkuplanguage.com/
[2] http://000000book.com/

One problem that has often plagued users of the MakerBot Unicorn[1] is the long and confusing chain of tools required to go from a nice vector drawing to a G-Code file that can be plotted from ReplicatorG.

mifga did an awesome tutorial[2] that made it possible to understand the steps needed to work all of these tools, but it was obvious that something better was needed.

So, I made a mashup of scribbles.py[3] and the Egg-Bot Driver for Inkscape[4] to bring you the inkscape-unicorn extension for Inkscape!

Once installed, this extension allows you to save files in "MakerBot Unicorn G-Code (*.gcode)" format!

Learn more, download, and contribute at the GitHub page for this project:

https://github.com/martymcguire/inkscape-unicorn

If you're desperate, you can also download the zip file attached to this thing, but it is guaranteed to be out of date. Please get the latest version from GitHub. :)

Thanks to langfordw for the original Unicorn Logo[5] used as an example on this Thing.

UPDATES!

I'm updating and adding features to this script as my first days for the February Thing-A-Day. Updates below:

• Day 1, Release: http://thing-a-day.com/thing-a-day-2011-1-unicorn-pen-plotter-extens
• Day 2, Registration and Homing: http://thing-a-day.com/new-features-for-inkscape-unicorn-pen-registr
• Day 3, Copies and Continuous Plotting: http://thing-a-day.com/thing-a-day-2011-3-copies-and-continuous-plot

[1] Unicorn - http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-unicorn-pen-plotter-kit.html
[2] mifga's Unicorn Tutorial - http://wiki.makerbot.com/unicorn-tutorial-01
[3] scribbles.py - https://github.com/makerbot/Makerbot/tree/master/Unicorn/Scribbles%20Scripts
[4] Egg-Bot Driver for Inkscape - http://code.google.com/p/eggbotcode/
[5] Unicorn Logo by langfordw http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4197

I felt that it was about time Baltimore Node had a Unicorn-plottable logo! You can learn more about this awesome hackerspace at baltimorenode.org.

I've attached all the files I used to create the G-Code for this thing, which tells the story of how you can make your own:

• node_logo.svg - Start with the SVG logo available from the Node wiki.
• node_logo.eps - Use Inkscape to export an EPS file, making sure to convert text to paths.

• node_logo.dxf - Use pstoedit as described on Tony's 2D-to-3D post - tonybuser.com/2d-to-3d - to create a DXF, with simple line approximations of curves. I also ended up using some scaling:

  pstoedit -xscale 18 -yscale 18 -dt -f dxf:-polyaslines node_logo.eps node_logo.dxf

• node_logo.gcode - Use scribbles.py from GitHub to convert the DXF into Unicorn G-Code. github.com/makerbot/Makerbot

I used Pleasant3D for its excellent G-Code preview capabilities to check that everything looked reasonable, find a good scaling, etc.

Decorations in a pinch!

Note: This script is designed to work with the MakerBot Unicorn Pen Plotter: http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-unicorn-pen-plotter-kit.html

This Python script takes your message and turns it into G-Code which prints one character on each page of a pad of sticky notes. It makes use of mifga's tricks for pen registration and page-changing.

There are configuration options at the top of the file, so tweak them to make things work best for your bot and your needs.

This is a work in progress. Fork it and make improvements on GitHub! https://gist.github.com/771967

Ideas for improvements:

• Fills and/or cross-hatching
• Deploy this as a web service
• Clean up the code :)

This is a parameterizable ring made in OpenSCAD with a "BHat" logo for the Baltimore Hack-A-Thon.

It was created as part of the Nickel for Scale project, which you can learn more about at http://nickelforscale.com/

Time to get organized!

For years I've had a pair of metal interlocking file stands in a set of wood drawers for holding files. For almost as many years, the plastic brackets that secure them in place have been broken and useless, letting files flop around at will.

Today, my girlfriend offered a trade: if I fixed the file cabinet, she would do all of the house cleaning. Needless to say: OFFER ACCEPTED. :)

You can tell from the pictures that I've got a long way to go as far as quality settings with the PLA 4043D and MK5. The MK5 puts out plastic FAST and the PLA stays hot for quite a while, allowing it to sag. I'm sure I could improve this with some cool settings, a faster feedrate, lower temp, maybe a fan blowing on the work piece, etc. Instead, I padded out the values for the holes and hollow areas with some multipliers in the .scad file and everything works great!

Put your PS3 Eye on a tripod! Why not?

Starting with the CameraHolder.stl from abarry's MakerScanner 0.3 (thing:3946), I wrote a goofy little OpenSCAD script to chop off some of the scanner-specific parts, thicken the base, and cut out space for a standard tripod 1/4"-20 hex nut and bolt.

License is GPL based on abarry's MakerScanner license and use of Catarina Mota's shapes.scad (http://www.thingiverse.com/download:11183).

It's a story that can happen to anyone. You move to a new town and leave your shower curtain behind. "No problem," you think, "I'll just pick up a new liner at the pharmacy down the street."

So, you trek to the local pharmacy and find the shower curtain liner you were looking for, only to discover that they are out of shower curtain rings, hooks, anything made for holding up a shower curtain!

Facing down defeat and the very real possibility that you will have to take a dirty, inefficient bath, you come to a stunning realization:

You're a MakerBot owner. You live for these moments.

A little bow to string your dental floss across. Requires less floss than using your fingers, and only slightly harder to use!

Standard warnings apply:

• Don't accidentally swallow this thing.
• Don't use this if you're uncomfortable having plastic in your mouth.

And problems with this design:

• The bow is not quite thick enough to prevent it from bending inward.
• The straight-line handle makes it hard to reach back teeth.

Clips for a refrigerator shelf restraint.

I recently moved into a new apartment with a missing bottom shelf restraint. Thanks to MakerBot and OpenSCAD, I can finally replace it!

The hole on the left side is a bit more damaged than the right, so I created 2 different clips.

One fun exercise when creating this thing was modeling an M5 nut in order to remove it from the model later. I recommend everyone try it. :)