Charles Edward Pax

Today I’m very proud to announce the MakerBot Replicator is launched. We started development this summer with two full time employees, a college intern and a hand full of high school students. Developing a new product from idea to launch was a huge undertaking, but we knew we could do anything. Over the past months the team grew, but the goal remained the same: create the ultimate dual material 3D printer for your desktop.

Tomorrow (7 May 2011) NYC Resistor is hosting another Interactive Art Show. Come interact with beautiful and interesting works that will buzz, blink, and blow your mind. For a better idea of what to expect view the Interactive Art Show round up from 2009.

Paul Strohmeier’s interactive paper cranes will be shown along with other amazing works.

Wow! Thingiverse citizen Mike Sheldrake has posted a totally awesome cardboard surfboard.

I’ve been making and riding cardboard-core surfboards for about three years now. They work. Leaks are not the huge problem you would expect. And they happen to look – what’s that old term the surfers used to use – awesome!

The design files come lain out in 12×24 inch sheets meaning it can be cut on the NYC Resistor laser cutter.

UPDATE: The surfboard was covered by Becky Stern back in June of 2009.

Every product you see was designed. Most of these were designed using three-dimensional CAD tools. This means that most of the things we use already have 3D models somewhere out there. Thingiverse is a great place to share the objects you have created and download the objects shared by others. But what about all the things not on Thingiverse? McMaster-Carr is full of 3D models for various parts. Do you know of any others?

Colorbroken used a a neat Skeinforge trick to get a concentric patter on the bottom of this 120 Film Advance Crank. All he had to do was increase the “Extra Shells on Base Layer” in the Fill pane. Can you can count the rings to calculate how old it is?

The Skeinforge path

Colorbroken's result

World Maker Faire is coming to the New York Hall of Science this weekend. Come visit MakerBot Industries in Zone D near the 3D printing village. We’ll have the botfarm running. This is an event not to be missed.

Tickets may be purchased at the event for $25 or less depending on the discount for which you are eligible. Parking is $10.

(via Make)

On Friday I was scanned using the newly released Makerbot Cyclops 3D Scanner. Feel free to download my face from Thingiverse. For less than $200 you can start experimenting with 3D scanning. I’m pretty excited to see what people do with this new tool.

We’ve launched the MakerBot Automated Build Platform! I’m endlessly happy about this. I’ve hacked on this for the past year. I began full time work about two months ago when I started working at MakerBot Industries.

The Automated Build Platform is a totally new way of printing your 3D objects. For the first time ever multiple objects can be printed in succession without the need for human intervention. Up until now, the 3D printing industry has been focused on making one part at a time. You had to manually remove your object from the build surface and prepare your machine for the next build. This is true for all other 3D printers on the planet. MakerBot is the first to bring to you a truly automated 3D printing experience. That era is over and the new dawn of personal manufacturing has truly begun.

Read my previous posts to see how the project developed into its current incarnation:

It’s an awesome addition to the CupCake, and it has all the printing advantages of the MakerBot Heated Build Platform built in. Optimized to work with the beautiful and reliable MK5 MakerBot Extruder, you can look forward to watching your desktop factory auto-eject your dreams into a parts bucket of unending awesomeness!

You can listen to a discussion of the ABP in an interview with Liz Blessing .

Later today, from 6 to 10 pm I’ll be running a MakerBot build party at NYC Resistor. I would really appreciate anyone coming in and lending a hand to get a few bots up and running. I’m trying to build a bot farm at MakerBot. It’s like a computer graphics render farm, but for real objects.

Calling all NYC MakerBot operators! We’re building a bot farm and we need your help! Today (Thursday, September 2nd) at NYC Resistor (map) we are throwing a build party. The goal: assemble three MakerBots in four hours. Drinks and snacks will be provided.

A bot farm is a group of MakerBots available to a group of people ready to print whatever is wished. We would love to print more of the great things popping up on Thingiverse, but here at the bot cave our machines are mostly used for developing future hardware and software. To increase the awesome we need to increase the number of bot hours available for printing. We need more bots and we need your help building them.

Everyone is encouraged to attend. There will be three or more kits for assembly. Just let us know you came for the build party and we’ll get you started on a task. If you’re thinking about buying a Cupcake CNC, this is a great opportunity to experience the build process. Feel free to bring your own MakerBot and work along with us. Several MakerBot employees will be in attendance, building bots and ready to help. We’re looking  forward to seeing you there.

It was brought to my attention today that Wolfram Alpha widgets can be embedded in web pages, a useful tool for anyone hacking on their MakerBot. Andrew Plumb and Tony Buser have embedded a few widgets in the PID Controller Tuning and Adjusting the Thermistor Settings pages on the MakerBot wiki.