MakeMe

A pipeline for getting things 3D printed.

Support

At the moment, this only works on OS X 10.8+ and ships with some binaries compiled for this platform. This is not ideal.

Homebrew is required for the bootstrap to run.

Setup

$ git clone https://github.com/make-me/make-me.git
$ cd make-me
$ script/bootstrap

CLI Interface

The printer can be operated using command line tools within this repository. The project comes with some STL files to use to test the basic operations of the toolchain

$ ls ./data
Mr_Jaws.stl

You can also use external models from places like Thingiverse

# Download Mr.Jaws from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:14702
$ curl -F http://www.thingiverse.com/download:48479 > data/jaws.stl

Plug the makerbot printer into the computer with the USB cable.

To print a model, invoke make with the path to the model, leaving off the extension

$ make data/jaws

This is enough to get most things printed without much further tweaking, but several print parameters can be adjusted from the environment

Slicer config

$ make GRUE_CONFIG=default path/to/model

GRUE_CONFIG=name controls the slicer config to use. These are stored in ./config/ in the project root and two configs are included.

• default - The default configuration, it's used if no config is specified
• support - A slicer configuration that genrates support structures for the model.

Print quality

$ make QUALITY=low path/to/model

QUALITY=(low|medium|high) controls the quality of the print by altering the line height of object layers.

• high -- 0.1mm
• medium -- 0.27mm
• low -- 0.34mm

Print density

$ make DENSITY=0.1 path/to/model

DENSITY=<percentage> controls the infil percentage of the print. The default setting is 0.05

Normalization and packing

The make-me distribution ships with a version of the stltwalker tool which is used by the web service described below to offer advanced functionality and to normalize input models but can also be used standalone as part of a manual print.

Help for the version of stltwalker bundled with make-me can be obtained with

$ vendor/stltwalker/stltwalker -h

The tool can be used to composite multiple objects or multiple copies of a single object into a single print, as is allowed by the HTTP API

$ vendor/stltwalker/stltwalker -p data/object_a.stl data/object_b.stl data/object_b.stl -o data/out.stl
# [.. stltwalker output ..]
$ make QUALITY=low data/out

HTTP API

The service can also be controlled through an HTTP API. You can launch the web app by simply running

script/server

Then you can POST a URL to the server and it'll start printing. The default HTTP auth credentials are hubot : isalive. They can be controlled with the MAKE_ME_USERNAME and MAKE_ME_PASSWORD environment variables.

The maximum dimensions of the print can be specified with the $MAKE_ME_MAX_X, $MAKE_ME_MAX_Y and $MAKE_ME_MAX_Z enviornment variables. The defaults are configured for the MakerBot Replicator 2.

$ curl -i http://hubot:isalive@localhost:9393/print               \
       -d '{"url": "http://www.thingiverse.com/download:108313"}'

To manually unlock the printer with curl you can either issue a DELETE request or a POST request with _method=DELETE as a parameter

# These are equivalent
$ curl -i -X DELETE http://hubot:isalive@localhost:9393/lock
$ curl -i -d '_method=DELETE' http://hubot:isalive@localhost:9393/lock

GET / -- HTML "Front page"

$ open http://localhost:9393/

The front page is a human-friendly view of the current print, the state of the lock, the progress and the complete log of the print.

POST /print -- Print an object

$ curl -i -d '{"url": ["http://www.thingiverse.com/download:108313"], \
               "count": 1,                                            \
               "scale": 1.0,                                          \
               "quality": "low",                                      \
               "density": 0.05,                                       \
               "config": "default"}'                                  \
       http://hubot:isalive@localhost:9393/print

The parameters in the JSON object are

• url - Either a String or an Array of Strings that are URLs of .stl objects. Required
• quality - The quality of the print, defined by line height. Can be "high", "medium" or "low". Default: "medium" Optional
• count - The number of times to print all the given objects. Default: 1, Optional
• scale - The scaling factor of the print. Default 1.0, Optional
• density - The infill densitity of the object. From 0.0 to 1.0. Default: 0.05. Optional
• config - The Miracle-Grue config to use during slicing Default: "default", Optional

Returns HTTP 200 OK when the print appears to have begun successfully

Returns HTTP 409 CONFLICT when the given STL models cannot be normalized or transformed

Returns HTTP 423 LOCKED when the print cannot be started because the printer is locked.

GET /lock -- Lock status

$ curl -i http://hubot:isalive@localhost:9393/lock

Returns HTTP 200 OK when there lock is clear.

Returns HTTP 423 LOCKED when the printer is locked, returns the lock contents as JSON.

GET /photo -- Take a snapshot of the printer

$ open http://localhost:9393/photo

When successful will return HTTP 302 FOUND with a permanent location of a picture from the camera.

DELETE /lock -- Unlock the printer

# These are equivalent
$ curl -i -X DELETE http://hubot:isalive@localhost:9393/lock
$ curl -i -d '_method=DELETE' http://hubot:isalive@localhost:9393/lock

Unlocks the printer. A printer can only be unlocked when no job is active.

Returns HTTP 200 OK if the lock was successfully cleared.

Returns HTTP 404 NOT FOUND if the lock is free