Hey guys I thought I'd do a uh unboxing of the MakerBot I got and uh I'm doing a live show at the same time there's everyone on the live show and uh thought we'd uh uh crack this thing open and see what's inside. There it is. make a bot inside like Intel inside but cooler so let's check it out. So uh, thanks to Charles at Make a Bot for sending this, let's crack it open see what's in there Swiss Army Knife got to have one.

It's a Swiss Army knife mini champ for those who want to know. mini champ Awesome! It's got little pen in it. Beautiful. Cut my finger open with a spoon last night if you watch my tweets I have no idea how I cut my finger open with a spoon but I did it Unbelievable.

Anyway, let's go. whole bunch of uh paper on top top of it I hope that's recycled. Looks recycled. can sort of tell? yeah I think it's recycled Beauty All right, Do you like this? How do you like the digi key? um stuff.

This is what Digi key pack and ship stuff in. Now it's like a recycled, um content and it's got like this, uh, you know it's this, uh, corrugated, sort of, um, you know, cut out. uh I don't know. What do you call that.

a sort of a mesh like, um, a meshlike material with some paper in it. and that's what they WRA all their components in. Now they've gone sort of eco-friendly and uh, apparently it takes up a lot less. uh, weight, volume and all that, um, sort of stuff for a given density.

Anyway, sure they've done their research on that. Beauty look at this. look at this: I Have a makeer bot Awesome award! Thank you very much. There you go Dave Thanks for being awesome Charles Thanks Charles Beautiful! Make Aot Awesome award.

There we go. I'll show my live audience there you go. Make Aot Awesome! So apparently make Aot think I'm awesome. that's why they sent me this.

so thank you very much. All right. What do we got? Uh, we have whole bunch of of filament stuff. so oh, it's even got my name on it.

Look at that! Beautiful! So uh, looks like I got a whole bunch of green and uh, different colored uh filaments with different uh thicknesses as well. You I don't think you don't quote me I don't think you get that with a standard makeer B kit I think they've uh, thrown that in um, as additional uh stuff. so it's 1.5 mm ABS light green. There you go Go! So H let's a look at what's this stickers is that I don't know a makot robot or something? No idea, anyone haven't seen that before.

but I got a whole bunch of make Aot robot I Guess stickers? Cool all right. Got to do something with my resistor network. Still got the resistor Network I wanted to frame that but yeah, never got around to it. Still here, it's going to end up getting crushed one day.

So beautiful, All right. And we've got uh clear ABS 1.75 mm natural, 1 kilo of uh, uh, 1.75 mm stuff. Awesome. More, uh, natural.

X What's the difference between natural plain? natural and natural? X Oh yeah, they're actually different. They seem to be a different type of, uh, different type of color. So yeah, this is more clear. The plain natural looks clear and this looks like a more, you know, milky sort of, uh, color.

So cool. Jeez. Thank you very much. No shortage of uh, stuff there.

and what is that is that? copper shielding tape. Looks like some sort of tape. Not sure what that is. Any guesses anyone? No idea? Is it? Uh, no, yeah, it's just.

uh. cellophane tape. There you go I don't know what's that? what's that used for? I've never I've haven't looked in the in-depth details of the makeer bot before. but uh, there you go.

some cellophane tape. I'm sure I'll figure that out. Anyone in the chat window know can we do this in real time? Oh I Put it down on the bed to keep things sticking to the platform. Thank you.

Where is? where's my socks? Beautiful! There you go. Real time feedback from the chat room. That's um. you put that down and it doesn't stick.

Of course, it's obvious, so the stuff doesn't stick to your platform when you actually manufacture the stuff. So there you go. Awesome! I Assume that uh, the width of the platform is that width or less? That's its maximum make Aot capability I'd be guessing. So what else do we have here? It's awesome.

We've got a metal plate, aluminium heat spreader kit counters Al aluminium build surface for Tom Who's Tom got no idea Struder Head also has a few wrappings of Capon too. Oh, it's capton Okay, it's actually cap on material right? Got it? Thank you very much. Uh, who said that? Z Nerd Well done. Z Nerd Looks like I've got another extruder head nozzle I'm guessing that's one of the extruder nozzles in there.

So there you go. Awesome bubble wrapped that looks like a power supply. Let's open that up. Looks like a regular ATX computer power supply and it's got a noise killer with noise killer.

Absolutely got to have a noise killer. There you go and uh yeah, that looks like a regular ATX uh power supply with all the uh paraphernalia. So that's how they power it. Obviously because you know you can't beat these.

You can't build your own and compete. You know it's best to just use an off the-shelf power solution like a uh, you know, a PC power supply cuz uh, you know they make these by the tens of hundreds of millions and can't beat it. So it makes sense to reutilize the consumer Market stuff if you can now make Aot Industries step Struder Somebody asked on the uh chat room which one did I get I got the Mark 7 step Struder seems uh, pretty darn new. So Mark 7.

It's gone through a lot of revisions so there you go. That's the step. Let's take a look at that. Oh there's lots of uh, cables, heat shrink, more Capton tape, some very thin Capon tape, and a whole bunch of other paraphernalia.

Jeez, this is going to take me ages to assemble. Oh look at that. I got sold on my own board. There you go I Thought the boards came pre-assembled maybe not I might have to, uh, do some soldering.

There you go. bag of kits. that's the uh safety cut off Revd kit safety cut off rev D I've got I'm assuming that this is all the whizbang latest. so got the heat sink.

uh Mark 7 mounting sub kit. There you go. It's got a heat sink and uh C couple of other mechanical and plastic bits. There you go and bingo we're going to steep a motor.

by the looks of it, let's take a look at that. There you go and nice shiny steeper motor. It's a Moon's brand steeper motor. There you go, pretty good and a little fan.

so there you go I better put all that back. Otherwise I'm going to be screwed and it's going to be all over the place and I won't have a clue cuz I'm most likely going to follow the instructions. Probably a darn good idea. All right.

Gen 4 Interface Kit Beautiful. once again, they've gone through a few generations of that. Yep, there's an LCD and once again, a board is PCB so it looks like you do have to assemble that and there's a multi. Looks like a four line.

LCD I think there's a four line LCD uh Display: probably 16 or 20 characters by four lines. Most likely 16. That's the most common. And yep, you've got to build your own.

uh, build your own board up. There's all the parts for the board. Beautiful. It there some soldering.

Awesome. There you go. Ah, can't see in there, but uh, there's lots of electronically electronic goodness in there. Yeah Beautiful.

a Some nice wood bits. There you go. Lots of wood bits to uh create some sort of uh mounting thing or front panel. looks like the LCD Ah right.

yeah. LCD goes in there board with the buttons, various buttons and things go in there. Nice custom uh designed wood and you can see that's been laser cut cuz you can see the burn burn marks all the way on there along the edge. It's all black so uh, didn't smell this.

Oh yeah, good stuff. Yep there we go. You can see that they've uh, laser cut those and uh, beautiful and that. Jeez that it's plywood.

I Think it's very light. feels like Bolser wood. So that is the Gen 4 interface kit. So that's just the interface.

Electronics I Didn't see any Power Electronics on there. so the step Struder probably has the electronics. Let's have a look a thingo. Matic ABP Version 2 Kit Tada Automated Build Platform Version 2.0 Some plastic, some aluminium backed sheating or something.

my sheeting or something like that. All right cable Tires Auto Ated Build Platform version: two custom bits kit. They're the custom bits, more tape but looks of it, some metal rods, uh, couple of little gears, widgets and things like that. Another PCB This is unusual.

Automated Build Platform: Once again, it's part of the automated Build platform. But let's have a look at this board. Looks rather unusual. Oh, it's a heat spreader.

Aha, there you go. Jordan Miller Designed by original design by Jordan Miller Modified by Zack Hoken at Makot, There you go. It's a heat spreader if you can see the individual traces on there. It's like what you have on the rear window of your uh car.

If you've seen the you know, the rear window. um t- Mis uh thing. they have the track on there and you pass enough current through and they're actually going to heat up and that use and that's um, used as a heat spreader to evenly heat the surface of the board. and they've got couple little components on the back and you just plug it in there and bingo Not sure what uh current they're going to pass through that to uh to get here we go.

It' be nice to see that inaction. That would be neat. So there you go. It's just one continuous uh Trace which then snakes its way all the way along the board.

Boop Bo Boop Bo Boop And in and out, that's it. It's one one track and it heats up so that's rather interesting. Probably pumping. you know, 5 amps through that or something.

so it' be something serious. Kaon Electronics some sort of little steeper motor or some such. There you go. All right getting it.

Oh, it's a 3D Make Aot Printer patch. If you're into patches, you know if you're Boy Scout or something, you get the patches and you can sew them on. There you go. 3D Printing Awesome.

Some people sell them on of their hats or their backpacks or whatever like that. make Aot sticker. Join the make Aot Revolution I Am Thank you and uh, but you've just bought the Makot. Why do you need to know about joining the Makot revolution? You just bought one because you want to join the revolution.

You know all about it. Hm. Okay, cool. Dear Make Aot owner in Cloes you will find your Make Aot thinga kit by putting together this kit and learning how to print digital objects.

You are joining group of pioneering roboticist blazing a trail to the future of 3D printing and Open Source robotics. Awesome! This is an advanced kit. There are lots of Parts organized in kits which you'll then make into components and finally into your make Aot thing aaic. All the instructions are at blah blah blah.

Would be honored if you took a picture of yourself with your make Aot and upload it to Flicker Group and uh I would do that. We're on this adventure together and as a community of pioneering roboticists, I'm now a roboticist. Awesome! You're invited to join conversation on the make Aot operator group. Cool.

They've got a uh, it's it's a Google group and there's a Blog and blah blah blah blah blah. You're you're going to want to start printing things out Ferse? Yes, we'll definitely have to get something on Ferse. Thank you Brie Pettis Adan Adam Maya and Zack Hokan Smith from MakerBot Industries How nice. And we have a uh bill of materials.

There you go, but we got two more boxes. Hang on. Oh jeez, that weighs a bit. What Fail! What's wrong with this picture if you didn't notice the accent? I'm from Australia anyway H USB Cable There you go those playing along at the live show.

It's a one of those weird Us cables doesn't work here at all. Well, actually it does. If you um to convert one of these to an Australian one, What you do is you chop off the uh Earth pin. Just uh, chop it off.

If you don't care about having Earth on your product, you chop off the Earth pin. or highly recommend doing it with ones without Earth and then you just bend these pins at 45 like that and it actually fits in an Australian socket. So go figure. but don't do it.

One, we there designed to be an earth only do it for the two pin ones but you can actually modify it. Um jeez, that weighs a bit. Ah Band-Aid came off damn it and I shouldn't uh speak? Harley of the US I got a US t-shirt on Death Valley Been there, got the shirt awesome. Woo! More stepper Motors Excellent and steeper motor with a nice Worm Drive on it.

oh it's just pornographic really is I Love the step motors with worm drives like that. It's just brilliant I could play with that all day long. Oh yeah, exciting stuff I Love it. sorry didn't show the folks on the live show.

There we go Tada Very nice, very nice. Wonder what sort of resolution you can get out of that I'm actually one turn I can probably get my uh calipers out and measure and I'm thinking ah, just by eye you know, tongue at the right angle. Close one eye and I'm thinking that's moving by .1 mm maybe per step of the motor. like .1 mm vertical per step.

I'd be get no, it's probably more than that between 005 and .1 mm. that would be my guess. um would be the resolution on that. ballpack.

You know Ru of thumb, order magnitude stuff. it's not going to be 1 mm. It's not going to be. you know, 0.01 probably? um but it could be all right.

No, haven't finished. Okay, it looks like we have all the metal I won't bother opening that, all the metal. just the metal rods and bars and stuff which hold the whole thing together. And we have the Uh belts, belt and pulley kit version two.

So it's got all the belts and pulley and uh, all sorts of other paraphernalia in there that you need to connect up to the steer. Motors Beautiful! Hardware Burrito There you go. Hardware burrito and uh, thematic tools kit and M4 Hardware um thematic M4 Hardware kit M3 Hardware kit. So I guess they've separated everything into M3 and M4 they've just given you like a 100 man.

that's got to be. That's got to be a bag of like 100 m3x 16 um uh. cap head, uh, socket screws? Un unbelievable. Wow.

do you really need that money? Or they've just bought in a pack of 100 and they couldn't be bothered sorting them out. They cost them more time than uh, money. so they just throw in a bag of 100. Maybe I don't know.

Maybe I have some leftover socket head cap screws that would be nice steeper motor driver. There you go. We got our steeper motor driver. It's been, uh, individually tested so that's an assembled board.

probably? uh, surface mount. Which should be my guess why it's uh, let's avoid the warranty and uh, why it's assembled. Yeah, there's a reason that's assembled. There you go.

a Uh Plcc package in there surface mount Plcc. So that's why. uh, they haven't left it up to the individual to actually, uh, solder that together cuz it's not through hole enough. If they chose, that's a Um I Have no idea what that device is, but it's a steeper motor driver obviously.

Um, there you go. Stepper Motor Driver Driver Version 3.3 and there's four trim pots in there. single turn, a couple of uh, uh, dip switches, and instructions designed by MakerBot Well, who would make Aot? Why did you just put MakerBot on there? Be a bit more personal, put your own name on there. come on, you know, show a bit of Pride Okay, cuz I'm sure everyone at Make Aot didn't Design This Somebody at Make Aot laid out their board.

You know they're probably proud of it. Probably works quite well. Put your name on it and looks like we have three of those. So we've got three step motor drivers and a whole bag of goodness.

Generation 4 electronics and that's got a Um 80 Mega uh 20 and it's 2560 uh. mechanical end stops? uh more Mega boards. Shall we take those out and have a look? Ethernet table? y all right? Ando There a a lot of stuff which goes into making MakerBot Let me tell you, mechanical end stops. It looks like they've got a uh, probably for a mechanical end stop.

My guess would that be use a micro switch. So I'm guessing this looks like a little board. I'm guessing that'll have a micro switch on it, Will it? Yeah, Yep. Little micro switch there with the amateure little amateure.

So that's a mechanical end stop and um, that's the traditional way to you know a roll like you know a thing comes along and it it hits the micro switch and it stops the thing so it doesn't go past the Um switch. and that sort of stuff is um, standard standard practice in all sorts of these. um, you know test Jigs and um. automated Production test Jigs and uh, things like that.

So connecting cables, all the harness assemblies. Wow. There a lot of stuff that goes into this. It's um, it's it's.

really. it' be quite interesting to know the Uh price difference between kiding up all this stuff and just selling. You know, just getting someone to mass manufacture the MakerBot and I You know in the video um, quite a few months ago when uh, 6 months ago or something when makot, Um got that Venture $10 million in Venture Capital funding. My guess would be would be that the kits would actually disappear.

That would be my guess. Um, just because they'll get to such a complexity and they'll eventually get to a volume where they'll find that it's just more economical to um, uh, just get somewhere most likely in China. Unfortunately to uh, although you could do it in America I'm sure you could. Um, you just got to make a stand.

You know, you got to make a statement that yeah, we're going to make this in America and we're going to be proud. You know, instead of not have made in China and have made in America, go for it. It's a differentiator because if uh makot I'm starting on my rants here. if MakerBot um, well no, sorry.

if one of the Chinese makers comes out with one that's you know, just as good for half the price or a quarter of the price which they probably can than the eventually than the MakerBot then MakerBot are going to be in deep trouble overnight. So really, you got to have a differentiator and uh, be open source and maybe being made in the US would be a good thing. So um, uh, let's have a look at this board. Here we go.

This is the uh extruder controlling at Mega 2560. Looks like there's there's a few boards in here. Woohoo there we go. Let's take a look at that.

It's got Ethernet and a whole bunch of uh Ftdi chip and a whole bunch of other stuff on there and that actually looks quite good. rather like that. What I don't like is the bodge wire on the back, but at least it's black matches the solder mask. Beauty Someone was thinking there's the custom MakerBot board.

It's got a big SD card over here. nice to see lots of um standard uh um .1 in uh headers along there. It's got the power um input from the ATX uh power supply and that's quite nice. And there's the and it is the Arduino Mega 2560 There you go a doino' Mega 2560 controller board.

Neat and that actually all looks quite nicely designed I Like it Beauty Beautiful! That was the most exciting Box by far and it's a thing. Matic Automated Build Platform Laser Cut Parts kit. There you go. Tada Oh, serial.

It's got a serial number 6,887 There you go. They've made 600 6,887 of these suckers. Uh, whether or not that's just I Assume that's just the thing of Mtic and not all makeer. Bots Um, cuz there's been a couple of revisions, hasn't there? 20 cents an hour? Zeder says 20 cents an hour pay and low taxes make some take some beating.

Unfortunately, China's not that cheap anymore. Um, in fact, there are quite a few companies who are moving back out of China and back to the US Because By the time you're factoring everything, not just the labor cost, labor cost is still cheaper. although it's starting to creep up cuz they want the same lifestyle as um as uh oh oh. this is cool.

Anyway, the um I smell it too. Oh more laser cut goodness. Oh and uh so the Chinese are um, you know, demanding their better Lifestyles and uh uh which is great which they should be doing, don't get uh, shafted anymore and uh, so those companies moving back to the Um Us so which is really good. So when you're factoring everything, not just the labor cost, but the fact of um, you know, getting uh, you know, cheap uh, component which ruin your runs and all sorts of back and forth, um, uh, issues flowing there and back and doing all sorts and just generally dealing with somebody in another country.

It can actually be cheaper to uh, manufacture your stuff in your own country but the Us or even here in Australia and um, some people are still doing that and I think um, the tide will turn even further. um in the future. So here we go. We got some laser cut plexiglass.

Beautiful. It's all laser cut out I Love this and they you know once it's all set up you can just churn out these I'm not sure what wattage laser you know, 50 or 100 watt laser or something. It just boom blasts all the way through. Um, you know that's like 5 mm plexiglass.

It's not transparent aluminum. you know, like a star trep. That'd be cool. all right.

And this is really neat. Taada. There it is a thing of mic. Oh this is great.

I Love it. There you go: a Oh I Can smell it. Oh, it's beautiful. It's probably carcinogenic.

You know? it's probably not good to actually smell this stuff I'm sure. but um, there you go. It's a make Aot thinger. Matic And it's It's beautiful.

It's all laser cut out. Oh, it's just fantastic. And you can actually see. There's like a couple of fibers left in in there and it just hangs on.

It's just enough to keep these things and you don't have to put much force at all. Oh, you can actually see. You can actually see that little point there, which is actually a little couple of fibers left just they they. They don't go all the way, otherwise it would actually fall out so they've left just a little bit in.

It's like penalizing a circuit board. Exactly the same thing. Um, you just leaving a little, uh, a little. uh, you know, a little Slither of circuit board material there or in this case wood there and it sort of stays in the panel.

Although, because you don't have to load components on here like you do with a picking Place machine on a circuit board, you you only need like one or two just to hold it in place just so that you can handle them and put them nicely in a kit like this. and they don't fall all fall all over the place. So that's really good. I Love it.

That's beautiful. It's l nice touch to put the red. you know the red on there. it's just ah, looks beautiful I Love it.

Well Done Hats off to uh, the makeer bot team. It's brilliant. Burn hazard? Yeah. caution Warning Warning: Will Robinson Yeah right.

just want to print stuff. Um, so that is very cool and you get all the panels the top bottom IG je probably shouldn't even go through them. Well, these going to fall to pieces and uh, but that is just. ah.

actually this is Worth showing. Look at that. It's beautiful and there's you know, there's very little cost in actually doing that just a bit more. Uh, you know, time to actually burn that in there at a low lower laser power so it doesn't cut all the way through it.

just uh, it just scores out. Um, and it. it just marks it on there. So it's a way to label everything and it's quite fine.

It it really is quite well done. There's a lot lot of resolution in that. I'm surprised at the at the resolution that's actually. uh, well.

I'm not not terribly surprised I guess. but it's just nice. The resolution. You know that's 2 mm resolution or something like that.

So um, it's rather quite neat. I like it. It's a good way to add uh labeling to your product cuz you're already paying you pay that oneoff setup fee to actually know, set up the machine to laser cut material and handleing and all that sort of stuff. Once you've paid that, getting stuff and uh, that labeling and stuff is done for free.

It's like when you, uh, do a circuit board with your front uh panel. Like if I've got my little microcurrent like that, it's free to do a front panel cuz you're getting the silk screen anyway, so you may as well. you're getting silk screen on the other side. You put it on this side, you pay a couple of cents extra for the silk screen on the other side, but you get the free front panel labeling and that just works.

uh Works A treat. So this is. ah, it's beautiful and it's all going to fall look apart. They've got some more.

uh, nice redness in there. I'm not sure how they do the red. the scan lines I'm not sure if the macro the macro on this camera is not that great, but you can actually see the scan lines in that logo. There you go.

not sure if you can actually see that, but but quite neat. I Like it. and there's tons. There's literally literally tons of these.

Oh, there's so many sheets to 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20. You know there's like 15 or 20 individually cut sheets. Imagine trying to assemble this without the instructions. They don't actually give you the printed instructions, which I'm a big fan of.

Save the paper, why not? Um, just uh, do it online. I Assume they've got really good online instructions, so that's uh, that's really is quite neat. And there you go. That's a good example of having just the one cutout on there for assembling.

uh, the one um Branch off the one little uh tab there that joins that board. so the board is only hinged down at that one point there and that wouldn't be good enough for a circuit board if you were populating Parts on there. When your um, when your machine comes along, a places your component there, it puts force on it and bang it. Snap out your board so you'd put one up the top and you put another one over here and you'd put another one over there or in the four corners.

Um, like that and that would hold your board in place and then you can snap it out. Uh, afterwards. or uh, get some side Cutters in there and cut them out. Need to get a little bit of electronics talk on this rather than 3D printing torque.

But there you go. I'm very impressed I Haven't um, actually seen one of these before and uh I think it is just awesome. like my makeer book. Awesome award.

So there you go. That's an unboxing of a um Mark 7. Is it a Mark 7? Whoops. Let's have a look hey make aot thing aaic catch you next time.