Back in 2013 Dan Spangler and Jason Babler dreamed up a fun idea of doing a stop-motion animation skit involving a giant re-designed “Makey” robot. Dan set to work designing and building the bot, which lived in our lab for years. Sadly, it never made it into that fantasy video. Dan published a blog and released the files back then, but only on our site. Today, we’re uploading these files to thingiverse for you to download and enjoy.
Before you get started though, you should be forewarned. Dan Spangler was a fantastic maker of things, but when it came to design for 3D printing, he was still a beginner. Many of these files simply aren’t built in the ways that we’ve learned work well with typical filament based printers, so it will probably be a bit of headache. That being said, you can see that it was successfully printed and painted at one point, so it is possible.
When I realized that this file wasn’t anywhere to be found on thingiverse, I talked with Matt Stultz, our digital fabrication editor. He opened up the files hoping to quickly print up the bot for it’s triumphant return to the spotlight. What he found was nearly every part he tackled took longer and needed more fiddling than he had time for – he has to plan our annual shoot out!. He’s mentioned taking on the task of “fixing” all the files to be an easier project, but that is time consuming and will have to wait. I pressured him to release the files as they are, and now they’re out there for you to play with.
So, consider this a challenge, can you print the MEGA MAKEY? Can you beat Matt to the punch on making a derivative that isn’t such a pain to print?
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