3D printing in bulk with the Makerbot Automated Build Platform

Eagleapex sez, "Makerbot [ed: an awesome, DIY 3D printer project] made an upgrade for their open source 3D printer, an automated conveyor-belt to print on. Now instead of carefully minding your 3D printer, you can hit go on 100 widgets, go to sleep, and wake up with 100 fresh widgets in the morning. The home factory is go! This is truly 'owning the means of production.'"

So consider the possibilities. Say you need 10 of that printable tool handle, or 40 of those cable clips. Or you want to build a foosball table, and print out all the plastic men. Or print your own chess set? How about printing out the plastic components of another machine all in a single batch print?
With this latest addition to the MakerBot family. Your machine will not be just a "prototyper" anymore. With the MakerBot Automated Build Platform, your MakerBot becomes a desktop personal manufacturing system making useful object after useful object.
The Automated Build Platform is available now. Get it and turn your MakerBot into your own factory! The MakerBot Automated Build Platform is a perfect match with the MakerBot MK5 Plastruder and MakerBot Filament Spindle.

MakerBot Automated Build Platform (Thanks, Eagleapex, via Submitterator!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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ytrewq

I read the book Makers by a dude called Cory Doctorow about 2 months(good read)ago and though it was a pretty dam accutate stab at the not to distant future, if only those 3D printers were avalible to the public at a realistic price. Then saw one of these printers on tech site, then got passed a link about another topic on this site. Now they seem to be popping up more and more, and what the global crunch an’ all, the book seems more and more on the money. Have just seen author of book is poster.. of… this…
mkultra

This is quite interesting. I imagine when the resolution and tolerances get significantly better I’ll look into something along these lines.
Anonymous

It is different but amazing.The Automated Build Platform is available and we need to purchase.Now we can open a small business to purchase it at home in morning and our home factory is now open.
This is awesome gadget.

Thanks….!!!!
semiotix

This is truly ‘owning the means of production.’”

Maybe Marx was right, but in that case the human capitalist making his self-replicating robot slaves work 100x longer hours is not going to come out on the right side of the inevitable revolution. :)
coverandwait

But who makes the Makerbot?
- relawson
  
  well, makerbot industries makes makerbot! :)
  
  http://store.makerbot.com
  - Pantograph
    
    Or you can stick it to the Man and make your own Makerbot. Of course, much like humans, to make a new one you’d need one of those infernal machines in the first place.
FreeRadicalX

“…you can hit go on 100 widgets, go to sleep, and wake up with 100 fresh widgets in the morning.”

Have you ever used a Makerbot? If so, you’ll understand that “go to sleep” never follows “hit go” with those things. They are LOUD. If anything, after you hit go you’ll hit play on some Daft Punk and crank it up in the hopes of diluting the sounds of mechanical madness you’ve just initiated.
- turn_self_off
  
  different room perhaps?
Anonymous

“instead of making one whistle for one friend, u can now make 10 whistles for 10 friends”..

people in the future are going to laugh their heads off…. :D
jabo27

i thought we were trying NOT to fill the world/ocean with more plastic crap.
- turn_self_off
  
  How about switching to byproducts from the paper industry, lignin?
  
  Iirc, there is a german company that turns lignin into a substance that can be used just like pastic in injection molding. But when the product is worn out or broken, it can burn just like wood.
  - Pantograph
    
    Polylactic acid is a promising plant based material for future prints, but at the moment it’s twice as expensive as ABS (the stuff Lego bricks are made of) and until recently it was difficult to get.
    
    The support infrastructure for DIY 3D printing has mushroomed this year. Parts and consumables that you needed to hunt for or could only buy bulk six months ago, can now be ordered conveniently from several specialised suppliers around the world.
    
    In reply to anon #5, these parts can be solid plastic. You can for instance make gears out of ABS that are just as strong as molded ABS gears bought from a factory. (perhaps not as smooth, but good enough for most mechanical purposes)
Anonymous

Out of curiosity, can anyone explain the durability or type of plastic in these products? I know it can’t compete with the best of modern plastics, but is it mold-o-rama brittle or 70s-baby-toy soft or what?
apoxia

My immediate thoughts on reading this article and watching the video were somewhat facetious. The idea of “making useful object after useful object” and watching the speaker talk about bottle openers and whistles and making “thing after thing” was somewhat humorous.

Of course some people will have useful objects to make, and certainly bottle openers and whistles are useful to some, and I know technology progresses generally in small steps, but I agree with Anon poster 4, “people in the future are going to laugh their heads off…. :D”
- turn_self_off
  
  As was with the computer (remember the IBM CEO quote about there being a market for maybe 3 computers on the whole world), i suspect we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg with regard to these machines.
  
  What is needed is for more people to get hold of them, play with them, find uses for them and then tell the rest of the world about such uses.
  
  Consider something like gumstix or beagleboard. From what i can tell the limitation there is in the availability of case production. If one can take something like the gumstix, spit out cases or case parts (or maybe variant parts to something like the openmoko phone to fit new sensors and such) in small batches to try out various designs, things may get interesting.
- eagleapex
  
  There’s possibly more _useful_ things on the site http://www.thingiverse.com/ to print.