As it turns out, there really is a great future in plastics.
Marius Watz announced to an appreciative crowd at the start of a talk in Brooklyn recently.
“There’s nothing like working with plastic!”
Mr. Watz, a Norwegian-born artist, was describing his work with MakerBot, a new consumer-grade, desktop-size 3-D printer. With some assembly and do-it-yourself tinkering, the MakerBot makes, or “prints,” three-dimensional objects from molten plastic, creating a piggy bank, say, or a Darth Vader head from a computer design at the touch of a button.
Mr. Watz said.
“I’d heard about 3-D printing in the ’90s, but at that time it sounded like some sci-fi technology, like laser guns. Basically, it sounded totally awesome.”
“Awesome” was sort of the buzzword at MakerBot’s inaugural open house, held at its warehouselike offices in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where Mr. Watz, its first artist in residence, showed off his sculptural forms (“We just started doing some blobby objects — vaguely disturbing but also awesome”) to a few dozen admirers and MakerBot owners, mostly guys in various stages of nerdy bliss. (“Aaawwwe-some.”)
After a burst of invention by three friends, the company was formed two years ago — “built on caffeine,” said a founder, Bre Pettis — and has since expanded to 32 employees and thousands of MakerBot kits sold. Three-D printing has existed for years, but the machines were cumbersome and expensive, relegated to art and engineering schools, often monopolized by specialists. The MakerBot, which tops out at about $1,300, gives anybody with a computer and an idea the same creative horsepower, and artists are beginning to take notice.
On Saturday 3rd Ward, the Brooklyn arts and design collective, will host a Make-a-Thon, where those interested can play with the Bots and receive miniature 3-D busts of themselves printed by Kyle McDonald, MakerBot’s current artist in residence and an expert in digital scanning.
Click Image To Enlarge
Mr. Pettis, 38, who worked as a middle school art teacher in Seattle before starting the company with Zach Hoeken Smith, 28, and Adam Mayer, 35, hardware and Web developers.
“It’s definitely baked into the DNA of MakerBot that this is a tool for creative people.”
They met at a Brooklyn hacker space.) As part of their mission, MakerBot’s founders also embrace sharing: users are encouraged to post their designs for the machine on a company blog, Thingiverse, where anyone can have access to them, to print or modify.
Mr. Pettis said.
“We’re obsessively open-source.”
Pettis, like many people in the MakerBot universe, speaks with the zeal of the technologically converted.
“In this age of the Internet, the sharers are the people who will come out ahead — the people who make progress and then share it so that other people can stand on their shoulders.”
He knows his audience. John Abella, a MakerBot hobbyist from Huntington, N.Y., came to the open house with a bin full of objects for the show-and-tell.
He said, clutching a brightly colored plastic doodad.
“Almost all these things are things we got off Thingiverse. We have a rabbit that someone put a dragon head on.”
Mr. Abella, 35, who works in network security, said the appeal of MakerBot was that “everybody sees it with their own slant.”
He continued.
“My wife’s friends look at it, and they ask me for cookie cutters in shapes that don’t exist. At work people see it and say, ‘Can that replace the missing part in the company Ping-Pong table?’ ”
Probably, though the MakerBot has its limits — it can print objects that are at most five inches on a side, at relatively low resolution.
Another hobbyist, Ed Hebel, made a carrying case for a single cigarette.
Mr. Hebel, an engineer from upstate New York, demonstrating his little holder, which he invented for the show-and-tell said.
“I go out and I don’t want to take a whole pack of cigarettes. This is called a Lucy. I thought of this like two days ago. I thought for like 20 minutes, and I thought of this. And an hour later, I printed it.”
And shortly after that, it went up on Thingiverse, where, despite Mr. Hebel’s disclaimer that smoking is bad, another user quickly suggested a modification.
As part of its open-source ethos, in its offices MakerBot has a “botfarm” — 18 machines capable of operating almost continuously — that it will give over to worthwhile projects. Michael Felix, a Brooklyn designer, used it to make the hinges for a giant geodesic dome he built for a music video shoot. Noting that nearly 4,500 MakerBots have been sold so far, Mr. Pettis said,
“For artists, it’s kind of like, imagine, you create something that’s a 3-D model, there’s 4,500 different locations in the world where it can seep out of the Internet into the real world and blow people’s minds.”
But the ease of replication does present some questions for art professionals.
Mr. Watz, who is represented by the DAM gallery in Berlin, noted dryly at the open house.
“Art is not traditionally an open-source practice.”
Nonetheless, he posted some of his technical specs on Thingiverse, explaining that he didn’t want to take advantage of the generous community spirit there without giving back.
And as a digitally oriented artist, Mr. Watz said, he had long questioned the art market’s economy of scarcity, even if he participated in it with limited-edition designs. For prospective buyers, he does offer to sign his MakerBot work, which brings up another question. He mused,
“What is the real value of my signature on the object? When I’m trying to model with the MakerBot, I don’t consider that printed model the final product. It’s the process that is the significant part.”
Some Bot artists are just excited about the machine’s practical applications. David Bell and Joe Scarpulla have been laboring for years on a stop-motion animated film and photo series with an elaborate, labor-intensive miniature set. On a whim, Mr. Bell and Mr. Scarpulla bought a MakerBot — a “CupCake” model, which costs about $700 — and found it to be a good fit as a custom manufacturer.
Mr. Bell said.
“Our first successful prop was a miniature toilet bowl. We’re outfitting an entire apartment in 1/8 scale. So far we’ve done sinks and light sockets, a bathtub and pots and pans.”
Including the painstaking design process and troubleshooting, using the Bot takes the same amount of time as hand carving, Mr. Scarpulla added, “but the results are definitely better.”
Now they are imagining other things they can use their machine for, on a much bigger scale. Mr. Bell said.
“It opens up a lot of opportunities.”
That sentiment was echoed by Mr. Watz and Mr. McDonald and visible on a tour of MakerBot headquarters, known as the Botcave. In the front, by the whirring Botfarm, is a vending machine of Bot-extruded plastic bangles. Employees sit behind stacks of products with high-tech Seussian names, like Thingomatic Gen. 4 Subkit for Stepper Drivers V 3.3.
Little plastic doohickeys and thingamabobs cover many surfaces. (A new employee recalled being told to print out his own coat hook.) Mr. McDonald, 25, comes nearly every day to work on his MakerBot project, which turns the Kinect, an inexpensive 3-D scanner and Xbox accessory, into a miniature replicator. Though his previous work was theoretical — his background is in computer science and philosophy, which translated to an interest in “democratizing technology,” he said — playing with plastics and engaging with other Bot fiends has changed his focus.
He said.
“Now I think about physical things. I spend a lot of time thinking, how can these systems be used in an interactive way? It’s basically my full-time job to inspire myself and others. It doesn’t pay very well, but I’m happy.”
COMMENTARY: MakerBot Industries makes 3D printers for creating finished products and prototypes. The company makes the following products:
MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D Printer - A kit you can assemble to create the latest in cutting edge personal manufacturing technology. Includes the new StepStruder® MK7 Complete Upgrade! PRICE: $1.099.00. Allow 3 weeks for delivery.
Click Image To Enlarge
Click Image To Enlarge
Here's a time lapse video that shows how to assemble the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D Printer kit.
Here's the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic in action printing a Buddha head. It took 1 hour and 13 minutes to print the Buddha, but the video speeded it up considerably. That's so cool.
MakerBot Replicator™ - The ultimate personal 3D printer, with single or dual extrusion (2-color printing)--and a bigger printing footprint, giving you the superpower to print things BIG! Comes pre-assembled. PRICE: $1,749.00 (single extruder) and $1,999.00 (dual-extruder) Pre-Orders Only - Allow 6 weeks.
Click Image To Enlarge
In this video Bre Pettis, CEO and Co-founder of Makerbot Industries, reveals the newest generation of MakerBots - The Replicator! This is the first footage of The Replicator ever to made visible to the public! Find out what makes The Replicator awesome and why you are going to want one!
January 9, 2012 was a big day for the newly launched MakerBot Replicator™ when it was unveiled at the world famous Computer & Electronics Show (CES) 2012 in Las Vegas. The latest in open source 3D printing features the ability to use two print heads for two-clor printing or printing with dissolving support material. Not only does this printer feature the largest build area ever for a MakerBot, but best of all it ships to you fully assembledand ready for printing! For more info check out these great posts!
Here's MakerBot Industries' press release for CES 2012:
MakerBot Industries
MakerBot Industries is excited to announce the launch of its latest product, The MakerBot Replicator™, which will debut at CES in Las Vegas, NV on Tuesday, January 10th.
The MakerBot Replicator™ is the ultimate personal 3D printer, with MakerBot Dualstrusion™ (2-color printing) and a bigger printing footprint, giving you the superpower to print things BIG! Assembled in Brooklyn by skilled technicians, the MakerBot Replicator™ is ready within minutes to start printing right out of the box. At $1749 for a single extruder and $1999 for a dual extruder, The MakerBot Replicator™ is an affordable, open source 3D printer that is compact enough to sit on your desktop.
With a build envelope that's roughly the size of a loaf of bread, The MakerBot Replicator™ gives you the power to go big. Make an entire chess set with the press of a button. Friends, classmates, co-workers, and family will see the things you make and say "Wow!"
The MakerBot Replicator™ creates anything you can imagine with the new MakerBot Stepstruder™ MK8, the extruder is the part of the machine that turns raw feedstock, like ABS (what Lego® is made of) or PLA (a biodegradable material made from corn), into the objects you desire. You can order your MakerBot Replicator™ with single or dual MakerBot Stepstruders on it. By choosing the dual extrusion option, you'll print with two different colors at the same time. MakerBot Dualstrusion™ unlocks the ability to make beautiful combinations of colors and opens the door to experimenting with multi-material objects.
Today, MakerBot Industries re-launches Thingiverse.com, the website that allows you to share your designs and download files for thousands of models turning your ideas into real, physical objects. It's now easier than ever to share your digital designs! Thingiverse users will notice a new look and better organization for Thing pages and User profiles, as well as improved search and navigation making it easier to find what you're looking for. The updated Thing sharing process allows you to share designs faster with the "I Made One" button and use the new "I Made a Derivative" button to show off your mashups!
The MakerBot Replicator™ is ideal for personalized manufacturing, providing a new way to make the things you want and need. It is also an essential tool for children and students; parents and educators with a MakerBot Replicator™ offer the next generation an opportunity to learn the digital designing skills required to solve the problems of the future. Students with access to a MakerBot have an edge in the future job market. Just like the youth of the 1980's, who had access to computers, children with access to a MakerBot Replicator™ will become the leaders who make a better tomorrow.
The MakerBot Replicator™ is the tool from tomorrow, today. In the two years since the company was founded, the capabilities of a MakerBot have grown from printing cupcake-sized objects in 2009 to printing things as large as an entire loaf of bread today on on the MakerBot Replicator™. MakerBot Industries continues to demonstrate its dedication to putting the tools of creativity into the hands of the those brilliant and bold enough to bring their imagination into the physical world.
The 2012 International CES in Las Vegas runs from January 10-13 and the CES convention and exhibit takes place at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Tickets at the gate are $200.00 for individuals who did not pre-register. MakerBot's booth is located in section South 4, Booth 36839. To locate MakerBot's booth or the booth of other exhibitor's an interactive floor plan can be found HERE. To enhance your experience you can download the official CES app for your iPhone or iPod Touch HERE.
If you own a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic or have seen the new MakerBot Replicator™ in action, we welcome your feedback.
Courtesy of an article dated May 14, 2011 appearing in the New York Times and an article dated January 9, 2012 appearing in Engadget
Comments