3D Print What Now!?

3D Lids

Have we mentioned that living in the future is awesome?

You may have seen MattN’s post about printing art object on our MakerBot Replicator, and hey, a lot of our members love art, and art enriches our lives, but we don’t want you to think that 3D printing is just limited to making pretty objects.

Let’s say you need a lid for your jar… perhaps some special purpose lid, to turn your jar into a bank, or a strainer, or a shaker, or a fruit fly trap… Well, you can do all those things. Here’s a great post about jar lids. I know, you’re thinking that jar lids aren’t very exciting… but that’s because you probably haven’t downloaded and printed a jar lid. It’s the future, and it’s here today!

But seriously, sometimes I think we get so caught up in our tools, that we forget that we can do amazing and everyday things with them. Like make crazy lids for jars.

And the best part is, you’re not limited to what others have done… With a little bit of work, you can be designing your own jar lids that will make you the envy of your next canning party.

MegaMax Lives!

The video shows the last few layers of the calibration cube “printing” at 414% speed (according to my LCD display).

The Bucketworks 3D printing meet-up on 8/12 paid off big-time!  Gary Kramlich helped me debug a problem that was preventing me from flashing the firmware on the controller board for the MegaMax 3D printer.  After a few tweaks I was able to get it moving.

I’m such a “blockhead”

I love architecture, and I also love blocks!  Several years ago I started designing my own “building blocks” in Solidworks, with the hope of eventually machining them out of wood.  That will probably not happen soon…about a year ago I tried using the Makerbot “Cupcake” model 3D printer at the Milwaukee Makerspace; the results were ok, but i found it to be an unreliable device.  Now we have a Makerbot Replicator, THE newest thing…I didn’t like it at first; turns out I had a few minor settings wrong, and now the results are fantastic!!

I have hundreds of designs for these little cubes, now the next step is to start printing them in “batches”, ie, start at midnight and come back at 8 am to hopefully collect 8 of ’em.

I hereby renounce work, sleep, food, etc… :)

-MattN

MakerBot Visit [Video]

My motto isn’t “better late than never” but let’s pretend it is for now… Remember when the MakerBot guys stopped by the space in June? Well, at least one member said he would be out of town, and hoped there would be video… So here, my friends, is some video. Sorry it took so long…

Also worth noting, Milwaukee Makerspace now has its own MakerBot Replicator, and we may just bring it to the next 3D Printing Meetup.

MKE 3D Printing Meetup – August 2012

MKE3DP

Remember that 3D Printing Meetup we had? You probably read all about it. Well, people liked it, so we’re doing it again.

If you’ve got a MakerBot, RepRap, Mendel90, Solidoodle, Bukobot, Quantum ORD Bot, or some other oddly named CNC machine that spits out melted plastic, pack it up and join us… if you don’t know what the heck those names mean, but you’ve heard the phrase “3D printing” you can join us too, and we’ll answer all your questions.

We’ll be meeting on Sunday, August 12th, 2012 at 1:00pm. We won’t be at our space because we’ve partnered with our friends at Bucketworks for this one! Details are below.

Bucketworks
706 South 5th Street
Milwaukee WI

Note: This event is FREE and open to the public! Everyone is invited.