Thing of the Week: The MakerBeam
The MakerBeam isn’t the first building toy to show up on Thingiverse, but it is the first one to come with its own attached business plan! 3D printed entrepeneurship is a great thing to see, and I hope we see lots more where this came from!
The MakerBeam team is looking to manufacture these the old fashioned way, with capital investment in tooling and extrusion, presumably for reasons of cost and surface finish. But by uploading designs to thingiverse, and by actively engaging the MakerBot community, they just may create a user base dedicated to making better designs, more connectors, and smarter ideas the norm.
In the years between completely democritized manufacture and the old days of brick and mortar factories, I think we’re going to see a lot of hybrid approaches, some of which will be really successful! Best of luck to the MakerBeam Team!
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Sam Putman Said,
October 9, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
Thanks for the mention! I’ve been blown away watching people print off and modify the profile. Seriously fun!
One note: We’re extruding MakerBeam out of aluminum, not plastic. So reasons are precision and rigidity, rather than cost and surface finish. There’s just no good way to fab MakerBeam at present, even subtractive milling from aluminum billet would take a pretty specialized toolhead.
With MakerBeam you can make large(r) structures by printing off connectors that link the beams together. It’s a hybrid, just like you say, and a lot like the RepRap that way actually. I’m hoping to be able to build at least a Mendel frame modified to use MakerBeam, if not an entire MendelBot.
Everything that can be made using fab technology, we will make the files available for. So if we do sell extruded plastic tie-ribbon, which we’re considering, the models will be there for anyone who has a printer to make their own. Our current plan for the brackets is to cut them from aluminum sheet on a ShopBot, so that too anyone with access to the tool will be able to do for themselves.
We’re also going to make the tooling profile available if anyone is in the mood to fire up their aluminum extruder…
Andres Said,
October 9, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
so this is basically just a shrunken version of 80/20 (www.8020.net)? i don’t understand why this is considered democratized manufacture.
Wouldn’t this just be another vendor like any other, just with a marketing/business plan that is aimed straight at hobbyists?