Assembly begins

Today we got started on building the Makerbot. H came over at 8am and we worked until 11:30.

We worked on the Y-stage assembly and the automated build platform.

Click here for a link to the instructions

The Maker bot Kit.
August 28th 2011
Happy birthday Jim!
Happy birthday Makerbot!

Get'n organized

Makerbot motherboard

H at work

At the end of the work session 3 hours later.

Jim has his first MakerBot design ready for printing

In Mathematica

In DraftSight (an awesome free AutoCAD clone)

"I made a STL file of a geodesic dome, specifically a stellated, frequency 3 icosahedron.
I made it with Mathematica (version 7) by one simple command:

Export["icos_f3_stel.stl",
Stellate[Geodesate[PolyhedronData["Icosahedron"], 3], 1.1]]

I loaded it into ReplicatorG, and scaled it up.

Cheers,

       IncrediJim

 In Replicator G - ready for the MakerBot

The MakerBot kit has been delevered

Here is the official update:
Today (Friday August 8th) the kit was delivered to H's house at last. But due to everyone's travel plans the first good time to get together to work on it will be August 27/28. That gives us lots of time to prepare Sketchup files and AutoCAD STL files. (total nerd speak).

On a related topic - There is a dutch version of the Makerbot called the UltiMaker. Same basic principal. The main difference is that the extruder travels in the X & Y axis and the build platform travels in the Z direction - which is the exact opposite of the MakerBot. The web site says that they've only sold 150 kits (versus 5000 MakerBots sold so far).