MakerBot 3D-PO

Our MakerBot is named 3D-PO and is a bog standard MakerBot 'Batch 5' Model. We print things.

Printing with 3D-PO

Each MakerBot is a bit diffent, since they are hand assembled. This is a how to for our specific MakerBot

First time printers

Take the class, or have someone at the space teach you 1) Download 007 version of ReplicatorG from : http://code.google.com/p/replicatorg/downloads/list 2) Unzip or unpack the package 3) If you have not used a USB FTDI cable before (or don't know what one is) you need to install drivers for them. Go into the ReplicatorG/Drivers folder, and install the right driver (Intel or PPC, be careful) for an FTDI cable (a USB cable that connects to embeded devices, like MakerBot).

Software

MakerBot specific:

ReplicatorG - The MakerBot's IDE Skeinforge - Converts STL to ReplicatorG sketch (I think).

3D

Any 3D Rendering software that can export to .stl will work Blender is a good Open Source/Cross Platform 3d app.

Setting up Your Environment

Linux

(Dependencies are beyond the scope of this doc - If you can run the Arduino IDE, and have python installed, you should be set) This is what works at the moment. We'll probably put all of this into git or something pretty soon Download MakerBot.tar.gz

• This is ReplicatorG, Skeinforge and JMil's files, known to work as of 09/08/2009

cd ~/
wget http://www.hive76.org/MakerBot.tar.gz

Untar it:

tar -xzvf MakerBot.tar.gz

Assuming your deps are up to snuff, you're all set.

How to test that it's all Working

First and foremost, you should be able to run ReplicatorG, Skeinforge and Blender without errors (ReplicatorG will throw some errors if not connected to the bot)