3D Andy’s starter kit 3D printer, CNC and plotter

Andy from Austria made a 3D printer framework based on the items in a MakerBeam Regular Starter Kit (art. no. 100012/100034). You can find some pictures here. Videos of the 3D printing, plotting and milling will be published later. He is also working on a building instruction and a Bill of Materials. Stay tuned for more and enjoy the first pictures!

/100034). You can find some pictures here. Videos of the 3D printing, plotting and milling will be published later. He is also working on a building instruction and a Bill of Materials. Stay tuned for more and enjoy the first pictures!

Andy built a complete 3D-printer-frame out of one “MakerBeam Regular Starter Kit” with just a few additional screws and parts. The main target of his project is to construct a low cost 3D-printer/cnc-mill/plotter with easy available parts. See pictures below.

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Rotating cube

Stefan Gschroefl from ConstrAct sent us a few pictures from his rotating MakerBeam cube. It looks great.

The cube is made using MakerBeam. It now holds pictures of MakerBeam items and projects. Stefan is planning to attend the MakerFaire in Vienna in early May.

The rotation platform is custom 3D printed and runs slow. The rotation platform is powered by battery or external power source. It can be used for other things since the cubeholder itself is magnetic mounted.

 

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3D printing and MakerBeam

In the previous post the Light Box was shown. The feet on the light box were different from the feet we sell. It turns out that Stefan made the feet himself.

Light Box

Stefan sent us the pictures of his Light Box (link to post webshop blog). The feet on the light box were different from the feet we sell. Stefan had actually designed and 3D printed new feet himself. The feet are a bit wider and higher. He needed more space from the bottom to fit the planned additional lighting. The extra is light is set to be mounted outside the box to shine into the cube from the bottom upward. See pictures of the special designed feet below.

Feet of Light Box in detail

He also made a photo cube which should rotate (driven by a small motor). Therefore he also created a special holder. See the first picture of the prototype below as well.

Cube holder

Stefan is planning to be present at the Maker Faire in Vienna. He wants to show all his work and all MakerBeam parts at this faire. The Maker Faire in Vienna (Austria) is scheduld for May 5 and 6. Here is a link to the Maker Faire Vienna website.

Brackets for servo motors and micro stepper motors

It is a fact the NEMA 17 brackets are in demand. What about servo motor brackets and brackets for micro stepper motors? We wanted to give it a try. Pieter Bos (@pieterbos) gave us a way out. He is the guy that makes our 3D printed end caps. 3D printing is a fun and easy way to try new ideas and 3D printers are very popular with makers. Why not have more 3D printed parts for sale in our shop? We asked Pieter and he started prototyping. You can see the steps he made in the picture below.

The first idea was to completely encapsulate the micro stepper motor. From there it went to the lean figure on the right. This design, printed in black,  will go on sale soon. They are printed in PLA – polylactic acid.

With the servo brackets we dismissed 3d printing but thought of laser cutting. This posed no problem for Pieter. He made some brackets and tried different materials.  From left to right: MDF, transparant perspex and finally opaque perspex (or polymethylmetacrylaat). We liked the last one the best. This one will go on sale soon.

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3D printer nearly finished

From Bodenmann Electronics we received the good news that the 3D printer Joel is been working on is nearly finished. Pictures of this were already available on our site under News&Projects. Video footage of some test runs are available online.  Here is the video from test #1. In the video the Y-axis is tested.

httpv://youtu.be/k7T9jM97geY

Bodenmann Electronics by the way is a distributor of MakerBeam.

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X-Y carriage

James Hardiman made a x-y carriage using MakerBeam and the bearings we sell through our webshop. It is the world’s first MakerBeam x-y carriage. Or so we think. Let us know if we are wrong.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asl5LT2QF_U

The design looks good. We do have some comments though.  Here the bearings are on the inside of the frame. If you put them on the outside there is more space for the frame to move. Also if you use three bearings in one dimension it is stable. Then a single beam would be stable  and you do not need a frame to realise stability.

James Hardiman is working on a book about 3d printers. He is also looking into the power of making. What is happening with 3d printing, homemade cnc machines, sites like etsy.com and makerfaires in various places is sometimes referred to as the industrial revolution 2.0 or micromanufacturing.

Johan and James met each other in the Netherland at ProtoSpace, the fablab in Utrecht. There Johan handed James a MakerBeam starter kit. The x-y carriage is James his first serious MakerBeam project in connection with his book on 3d printers. We love the initiative. Thank you James!!

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Beams, bearings, bolts and more

MakerBeam is wonderful construction material and accessories will only expand the possibilities. Movement suddenly becomes an option when you add bearings and that is why we were looking for ones to fit MakerBeam.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSdKXuFbD1s

The search for the right size bearings moved up a bit on our list of priorities after meeting the guys behind Ultimaker. Building a 3d printer with Mini T-profiles now is feasible. Or maybe someone wants to build their own CNC-machine, just to name another popular possibility.  There must be all sorts of projects that can benefit from these little wheels.

When you use bearings you will need longer bolts. Also we think self locking bolts will make your construction more rigid. Ideal for the machine of your choice in working mode. We made a small pack with 10 bearings, 15 M3 12mm bolts 15 M3 nuts and 15 M3 self locking nuts for €15,-.  We hope you will have fun with our latest addition to our webshop!

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Makerbeam meets Ultimaker

We are proud to tell you that one of our starter kits found its way to the guys behind Ultimaker, Martijn and Erik. It was a nice surprise discovering Erik had ordered a kit. Ultimaker works together with Protospace FabLab Utrecht. When they learned we would give a lunch lecture there it was real easy for them to attend. It gave us the opportunity to personally hand them a starter kit and to shake hands.

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The relationship Ultimaker has with MakerBeam goes back a few years. A 3d print of a makerbeam was made some years ago. Back then it was just an open source hardware project paying the other budding open source hardware project a compliment. Today it was time for a more serious introduction.

20110901Ultimaker MakerBeam 120110901Ultimaker MakerBeam 320110901Ultimaker MakerBeam 420110901Ultimaker MakerBeam 7

The Ultimaker of course is in full production. The process of improving the production process is ongoing as well. Especially the production of the wooden framework takes up a lot of time. There is definitely room for improvement there. Could the aluminum Mini-T profiles of Makerbeam fit in? We talked about it and the guys of Ultimaker took their starter kit home. So who knows what beautiful combination the future will bring!

20110901Ultimaker MakerBeam 520110901Ultimaker MakerBeam 10

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