In case you missed my announcement, I have moved my 3D Printing commentary to Andrew Mazzotta’s 3DHacker site. In case you haven’t been following it here’s what you’ve missed: 3D Printing is more than a Gimmick or I don’t think so Mr UogHow much is a design for 3D printers worth?First step to 3D printed eletronics, or the birth of …
Book Update – Makerbot Project Blueprints needs YOU
Makerbot Project Blueprints is close to finishing but is in dire need of a technical reviewer or two to help review the last few chapters for technical accuracy, meaning you will actually do the activities and report if anything is missing. Since you’re coming in at the end the ideal candidate will know the basics of Blender at least a …
3D Printing Tidbit – Don’t tightly spool PLA
Got some clear PLA a little while back. Spooled it in my usual way around a spool from Makerbot. Turns out the spool I used was too tight, or maybe I spooled it too tight, and it resulted in the spool cracking into smaller and smaller segments near the end. Lots of air prints resulting from this. In the future …
A second shot at a Modibot
After my last go Wayne Loosey actually contacted me and asked if I’d like to test a few accessories for modibots on my next go. Well that motivated me to give this another shot. Did a couple of things different this time: Scaled everything to 130%. This was to hopefully increase wall thickness and fudge the tolerances. Mostly successful, except …
Soap Stamp in Etsy Store
My sister makes her own soap. When I mentioned the properties of ABS and PLA, that PLA will disolve in a lye solution but ABS won’t her eyes got big. She asked if ABS could be used to make a stamp for soap, since soap has lye in it until it hardens. I told her it should work. So I …
Makeware makes a superior Pick of Destiny
Both prints were made with the same model. The one of the left was made with RepG and the one on the right with MakerWare. For some reason RepG got all the details backwards. It raised the recessed portions, the recessed the raised portions, I don’t know what is going on. To be sure the original model is far from …
PLA can’t finish a print
Having some trouble with PLA this week. Almost caused me to give up on the nice things I’ve said about it. So far it’s worked fine for the Modibot experiments, but when I tried making something taller like the Angular Dice Tower it would get to about 60-80% and start air printing. As I went on it got worse. Then …
Home printing a Modibot
I’ve mentioned Wayne Losey’s Modibot before (and subsequent rantings about using 3D printing for manufacture). The basic “Mo” Modibot is available for download on 3DBurrito. So how well does a model created for SLS printers to use as little material hold up when printing on a home 3D printer? The final verdict is this is as challenging a print as …
Fixing the Ceramic Tape again
This is by far the most annoying bit of maintenance that the Makerbot needs. The ceramic tape is held on only by Kapton and frequently exposed to plastic from failed prints, which is what broke the right extruder’s insulation this time. The left one also has problems in that the ceramic tape has broken down, turned brittle, and is flaking …
3D Printing Commentary will now be on 3DHacker
I’ve been thinking lately that there’s too much of my commentary on the constantly changing face of 3D printing in general on this blog an not enough of “Joe’s Makerbot” and what it’s making here. Fortunately there is a solution. Andrew Mazotta has graciously given my ramblings a new home on his site 3DHacker.com. From now on anything that would …