Photos from Maker Faire NYC - 3D Printer Village

We had a great turnout, including MakerBots, Mendels, an Isaac with HBP, a Huxley, a laser-cut Mendel, a Drill-Press-Only Mendel, a MakerBot with single-board electronics, and MakerGear's new prototype test unit.

Lots of pics here: [www.flickr.com]

Three of us won Editor's Choice awards, and we were interviewed by a number of media outlets.

I got a blue ribbon!

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Tony Buser http://tonybuser.com * http://reprap.org/wiki/User:Tbuser#Projects

tony, I like the bottom design.. can you tell me more about it? is it loaded on thingverse?

It is, it's also almost fully documented on the RepRap wiki here: [reprap.org] There's a few changes I want to make to it, but it's working quite well. Right now it just sits on top, but I need to design a better way to attach it to the bar. My only other real issue is that you need a spool of filament that is tightly wound for it to sit on the spool correctly.

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Tony Buser http://tonybuser.com * http://reprap.org/wiki/User:Tbuser#Projects

It looks like the machines were printing in tents that were pretty much open to the air. Did anybody have problems with drafts affecting their machines? If I as much as open a window it affects mine. Also when I once tried using a soldering iron outside in a slight breeze it failed to get hot enough to melt solder, so I would expect the extruder to struggle outside unless well insulated.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Surprisingly I was able to print pretty well outside despite the wind on saturday, probably because it was so hot out (about 90 F). Sunday it was cooler but less windy. The real problem was all the dirt. Thousands of people walking around and kicking up dust clouds, everything was coated in a layer of dirt. Kind of hard to keep the platform clean. My belts/bearings started to make some odd sounds. Going to be fun cleaning it out now.

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Tony Buser http://tonybuser.com * http://reprap.org/wiki/User:Tbuser#Projects

15 mph winds on both days -- 90° F on sat, 69°F on Sunday. Dusty and dirty, printed for 22 hours straight with a single failed build the whole day. The problem?

The dust clogged up the vents on my mac, it overheated, and crashed. Swapped in my netbook and kept on chugging.

The only thing I had to change on the machine was to wipe down the build platform between prints (just water and a paper towel)

The photos of a makerbot kit being opened and assembled on site made me think they had starter packs for the audience to build themselves. Then I decided that they were only building the one and doing it themselves as a demo, which makes more sense considering the costs of parts. Then I saw the PVC make something on the spot and that got me to thinking. You can make almost anything out of PVC tubing, what about a cheap, low precision starterbot? What is the cheapest, quickest to build 3D printer possible? Something highly interested attendees (with some cash) could sit down and make right there during the Faire?

With 1" pieces sliding over 3/4" tubes for simple linear bearings, heavy twine and pulleys to move each axis, single board controller, cheap motors with encoders or steppers, and possibly even a modified hot glue gun for an extruder. It would make very crude objects, but at the same time they would build quickly. Using this approach, I think a sub $100, under 6 hour build (pre-built electronics) might be possible, and catch the imagination of a few who thought it was to tough and technical to do themselves. And despite the very crude nature of the builds, it could still build some useful objects. Admittedly, it would never even be a boot strap, and not much of the hardware would scale up to a repstrap let alone Mendel, but I think the excitement of making your own from the ground up would generate a lot of interest in following up with something better (and harder, and more expensive).

Mike

Yeah, that was myself and Catarina doing the live kit build in the 3D Printer Village. Neither of us relished the thought of crossing international borders with our own 'bots so we asked the MakerBot folks to donate a kit with a Frostruder. We got it built and extruding Nutella and Strawberry frosting on pieces of bread by lunchtime on Sunday (that landed up being my lunch).

We free-raffled off the built 'bot (including an unassembled Plastruder Mk5 and an Automated Build Platform) at the end. A fellow with a columbia.edu e-mail address won it.

Andrew.

Lucky fellow! Still, it must have been popular to see one being built. Or was it more popular putting frosting on bread?

nophead Wrote:
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> It looks like the machines were printing in tents
> that were pretty much open to the air. Did anybody
> have problems with drafts affecting their
> machines? If I as much as open a window it affects
> mine. Also when I once tried using a soldering
> iron outside in a slight breeze it failed to get
> hot enough to melt solder, so I would expect the
> extruder to struggle outside unless well
> insulated.

I had serious warping issues. Once I borrowed a relay from Andy I got my heated build platform working, and I had no issues besides the PLA being dirty.

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-Steve

Much more popular once it was up and printing. :-)

A lot more photos here now: [www.flickr.com]

Press that talks about or has photos of the 3D Printer Village:

• NY Times
• PBS
• SmartPlanet
• InfoTech Spotlight
• cnet TV