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 …
Windows 8.1 will have 3D printing support
Alright, fine, I’ll comment on Windows 8.1 having 3D printing support since it seems every news outlet and blog in the world is talking about this. Seriously, I have more links than words. Thing is my recent opinion changing experience with MakerWare has taught me 2 things: With a good slicer it is possible to get great prints without exposing a lot of …
Reevaluating MakerWare
After giving Makerware a public lashing I found myself in contact with Joe Sadusk who is a developer for MakerWare at Makerbot (this blog attracts the Joes doesn’t it?) We spent the weekend talking about MakerWare, the shortcomings it had and Sadusk defended MakerWare extremely well. So I decided to give MakerWare another shot and since I needed to test …
If you want me to believe you, don’t let marketers handle your ad
Can you spot the mistakes? 0:25 This would give depth information for making a 3D scan, but no human being holds still enough for a high-resolution 3D scan with a hand-held camera. At best the scan would be muddy and require some significant cleanup of background elements…which is also never shown. And there is not enough room in that space …
Useless junk? What do you expect?
“All anyone ever makes with 3D printers is toys.” “Why is every tutorial for something useless?” “Shapeways, is wasting amazing technology making inconsequential garbage.” “All that stuff is just designed to do is collect dust on a shelf.” ” I just don’t get this obsession with printing little trinkets.” 3D printing is perhaps the single most useful new technology in …