I'm not an operator, but more of a customer. I have objects I would
like to have made, but don't really want to pay print service prices,
and don't have the time to devote to building and tweaking my own bot
(though I would love to eventually). I am happy there are people like
Will who is willing to take orders through his Etsy store. Printing
with a Makerbot is much cheaper than the commercial systems, but the
big drawback is the low print resolution and rough surface. I am
happy to take on the extra effort of finishing pieces, in exchange for
the low price.
I've completed a project that fits in with the vision of "make it
instead of buy it". I have a Pottery Barn soap dish that is part of a
bath fixture set. It rests in a ring mounted to the wall, making up
for the lack of space on the edge of my pedestal sink. If the soap
sticks to the dish for a moment as you pick it up, the dish is prone
to tipping and falling through the ring, shattering against the
tiolet. This has happened so many times, continued repair is
pointless. Buying a new one is impossible, because the line is
discontinued, merely because I bought it (this is true of all the
dishes, drapes, silverware, etc in the house).
I decided that I would get a new one printed. I modeled half of the
dish, since it is too big for the Makerbot build area and sent the STL
to Will. He sent back the two halves, which I glued together with ABS
cement (found in the plumbing aisle of any hardware store). ABS
cement is ABS plastic melted in acetone and is fairly thick. I
thinned it out with some more acetone and dipped the dish in it. If
you need a color other than black, you can make your own by grinding
your filament and mixing the shavings with acetone until you have a
plastic sludge.
The surface came out smooth and glossy, but a bit uneven because the
solution was still too thick. I sanded it down to level out some
drips and finish hiding the seam between the two halves. Painting the
dip on with a foam brush restored the glossy smooth finish.
Rather than painting the dish white, I covered it with sprayed on
PlastiDip. This gave the dish a matte, slightly rubbery finish that
is more forgiving of imperfections than paint, and keep it from
sliding around on the ring. I've made a Flickr set of the various
steps, which you can find here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34519968@N03/sets/72157622911002038/detail/
The Makerbot is fine for creating parts where appearance is
unimportant, but it doesn't really make finished objects . Instead I
see it as a great tool for creating a base to build on. I could have
sculpted the dish in clay, made a mold and cast it in plastic.
However I don't have any skills in sculpting, but I can design an
object in 3D so I printed it instead and went from there.
By the way I found that the forum at
mp3car.com is a good resource for
working with ABS. The people there are cutting up their dashboards
and fabbing custom bezels for their carputer screens