Thingiverse

Last updated
Thingiverse
Thingiverse Logo 192x192.png
Type of site
Database
Available inEnglish
Owner Ultimaker
Created byZach "Hoeken" Smith, Bre Pettis
Revenue Advertisement
URL www.thingiverse.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedOctober 18, 2008;15 years ago (2008-10-18)
Current statusActive

Thingiverse is a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design files. Providing primarily free, open-source hardware designs licensed under the GNU General Public License or Creative Commons licenses, the site allows contributors to select a user license type for the designs that they share. 3D printers, laser cutters, milling machines and many other technologies can be used to physically create the files shared by the users on Thingiverse.

Contents

Thingiverse is widely used in the DIY technology and Maker communities, by the RepRap Project and by 3D printer and MakerBot operators. Numerous technical projects use Thingiverse as a repository for shared innovation and dissemination of source materials to the public. Many of the object files are intended for the purposes of repair, decoration or organization. [1] Thingiverse houses more than a million open source hardware designs, that allow prosumers to save money by manufacturing their own products rather than purchase them commercially. [2]

History

Thingiverse was started in November 2008 [3] by Zach Smith as a companion site to MakerBot Industries, a DIY 3D printer kit making company. In 2013, Makerbot and Thingiverse were acquired by Stratasys. The open source value creation of Thingiverse was a major component in the value of Makerbot. [4]

Thingiverse received an Honorable Mention in the Digital Communities category of the 2010 ARS Electronica, Prix Ars Electronica international competition for cyber-arts. [5]

As of November 2012, 25,000 designs had been uploaded to Thingiverse; [6] by June 2013, the total exceeded 100,000. [7] The 400,000th Thing was published on July 19, 2014. [8] Many of the designs on Thingiverse are meant for the greater good - e.g. assistive technologies. [9] [10]

Administration

The site is owned by Ultimaker and was originally owned by MakerBot Industries and run by one of its founders, Bre Pettis, in Brooklyn, New York. [11]

In its terms of use, Thingiverse stipulates that users must not include content that "contributes to the creation of weapons, illegal materials, or is otherwise objectionable." In 2012, Thingiverse removed an uploaded design for an entirely 3D-printed gun. In response, the gun's designers launched the site DEFCAD, designed to host Thingiverse's "censored" files. [12]

Open-source hardware

Whereas many open-source hardware projects focus on project-specific materials, Thingiverse provides a common ground from which derivatives [13] and mashups [14] can form. These derivatives typically involve users modifying or improving existing designs and uploading them back to the site. Because all models on the site are open source, this behavior is actively encouraged by the site and community. Thingiverse is one of the first websites [15] to allow customization of parametric designs made with OpenSCAD. OpenSCAD is a free and open source software that uses scripting to design 3D objects. [16]

Many 3D printers can be upgraded with 3D-printed parts. Thingiverse users produce many improvements and modifications for a variety of platforms. Popular examples of community-based 3D printer projects include the RepRap project and the Contraptor project. Some 3D printers can be almost entirely 3D-printed themselves. [17] [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-design movement</span> Movement for product development with publicly shared designs

The open-design movement involves the development of physical products, machines and systems through use of publicly shared design information. This includes the making of both free and open-source software (FOSS) as well as open-source hardware. The process is generally facilitated by the Internet and often performed without monetary compensation. The goals and philosophy of the movement are identical to that of the open-source movement, but are implemented for the development of physical products rather than software. Open design is a form of co-creation, where the final product is designed by the users, rather than an external stakeholder such as a private company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RepRap</span> Self-replicating 3D printer initiative

RepRap is a project to develop low-cost 3D printers that can print most of their own components. As open designs, all of the designs produced by the project are released under a free software license, the GNU General Public License.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MakerBot</span> American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company

MakerBot Industries, LLC was an American desktop 3D printer manufacturer company headquartered in New York City. It was founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach "Hoeken" Smith to build on the early progress of the RepRap Project. It was acquired by Stratasys in June 2013. As of April 2016, MakerBot had sold over 100,000 desktop 3D printers worldwide. Between 2009 and 2019, the company released 7 generations of 3D printers, ending with the METHOD and METHOD X. It was at one point the leader of the desktop market with an important presence in the media, but its market share declined over the late 2010s. MakerBot also founded and operated Thingiverse, the largest online 3D printing community and file repository. In August 2022, the company completed a merger with its long-time competitor Ultimaker. The combined company is known as UltiMaker, but retains the MakerBot name for its Sketch line of education-focused 3D printers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenSCAD</span> Free software for creating 3D objects

OpenSCAD is a free software application for creating solid 3D computer-aided design (CAD) objects. It is a script-only based modeller that uses its own description language; the 3D preview can be manipulated interactively, but cannot be interactively modified in 3D. Instead, an OpenSCAD script specifies geometric primitives and defines how they are modified and combined to render a 3D model. As such, the program performs constructive solid geometry (CSG). OpenSCAD is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maker culture</span> Community interested in do-it-yourself technical pursuits

The maker culture is a contemporary subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture that intersects with hardware-oriented parts of hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. The maker culture in general supports open-source hardware. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Defense Distributed</span> American non-profit developing digital firearm schematics

Defense Distributed is an online, open-source hardware and software organization that develops digital schematics of firearms in CAD files, or "wiki weapons", that may be downloaded from the Internet and used in 3D printing or CNC milling applications. Among the organization's goals is to develop and freely publish firearms-related design schematics that can be downloaded and reproduced by anyone with a 3D printer or milling machine, facilitating the popular production of homemade firearms.

Printrbot is a 3D printer company created by Brook Drumm in 2011 and originally funded through Kickstarter. Printrbot printers use fused deposition modelling to manufacture 3-dimensional artifacts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DEFCAD</span> American technology company

DEFCAD, Inc. is an American startup that has created a search engine and web portal for designers and hobbyists to find and develop 3D printable and other CAD models online.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ultimaker</span> Dutch 3D printer manufacturer

Ultimaker is a 3D printer-manufacturing company based in the Netherlands, with offices and assembly lines in the US. They make fused filament fabrication 3D printers, develop 3D printing software, and sell branded 3D printing materials. Their product line includes the Ultimaker S5 and S3, Ultimaker 3 series, Ultimaker 2+ series and Ultimaker Original+. These products are used by industries such as automotive, architecture, healthcare, education, and small scale manufacturing.

A 3D printing marketplace is a website where users buy, sell and freely share digital 3D printable files for use on 3D printers. They sometimes also offer the ability to print the models and ship them to customers.

A recyclebot is an open-source hardware device for converting waste plastic into filament for open-source 3D printers like the RepRap. Making DIY 3D printer filament at home is both less costly and better for the environment than purchasing conventional 3D printer filament. In following the RepRap tradition there are recyclebot designs that use mostly 3-D printable parts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fused filament fabrication</span> 3D printing process

Fused filament fabrication (FFF), also known as fused deposition modeling, or filament freeform fabrication, is a 3D printing process that uses a continuous filament of a thermoplastic material. Filament is fed from a large spool through a moving, heated printer extruder head, and is deposited on the growing work. The print head is moved under computer control to define the printed shape. Usually the head moves in two dimensions to deposit one horizontal plane, or layer, at a time; the work or the print head is then moved vertically by a small amount to begin a new layer. The speed of the extruder head may also be controlled to stop and start deposition and form an interrupted plane without stringing or dribbling between sections. "Fused filament fabrication" was coined by the members of the RepRap project to give an acronym (FFF) that would be legally unconstrained in its use.

MyMiniFactory is a file 3D printable object-sharing platform where 3D printers can share their design and ideas. It was founded in 2013 and headquartered in London, United Kingdom. The online platform hosts digital creators with a primary focus on hobbyist with an interest in 3D printing.

3D Slash is a 3D modeling software application produced by Sylvain Huet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aleph Objects</span>

Aleph Objects, Inc. was a small manufacturing company based in Loveland, Colorado. Their business model focused around the development of Open-source hardware for 3D printing with full support for Free and open-source software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slic3r</span>

Slic3r is free software 3D slicing engine for 3D printers. It generates G-code from 3D CAD files. Once finished, an appropriate G-code file for the production of the 3D modeled part or object is sent to the 3D printer for the manufacturing of a physical object. As of 2013, about half of the 3D printers tested by Make Magazine supported Slic3r.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinshape</span>

Pinshape Inc. is an online 3D printing community and marketplace with headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It allows designers to share and sell their 3D printable designs. People with 3D printers can print those designs on their own printers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">InMoov</span> 3D-printed humanoid robot

InMoov is a humanoid robot, constructed out of 3D printable plastic body components, and controlled by Arduino microcontrollers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cura (software)</span> 3D printer software

Cura is an open source slicing application for 3D printers. It was created by David Braam who was later employed by Ultimaker, a 3D printer manufacturing company, to maintain the software. Cura is available under LGPLv3 license. Cura was initially released under the open source Affero General Public License version 3, but on 28 September 2017 the license was changed to LGPLv3. This change allowed for more integration with third-party CAD applications. Development is hosted on GitHub. Ultimaker Cura is used by over one million users worldwide and handles 1.4 million print jobs per week. It is the preferred 3D printing software for Ultimaker 3D printers, but it can be used with other printers as well.

Marlin is open source firmware originally designed for RepRap project FDM 3D printers using the Arduino platform.

References

  1. ↑ "Make and Mend: Thingiverse fixit roundup, Makezine.com by John Baichtal, 16 August 2010". Blog.makezine.com. 2010-08-16. Archived from the original on 20 August 2010. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
  2. ↑ Wittbrodt, B. T.; Glover, A. G.; Laureto, J.; Anzalone, G. C.; Oppliger, D.; Irwin, J. L.; Pearce, J. M. (2013-09-01). "Life-cycle economic analysis of distributed manufacturing with open-source 3-D printers". Mechatronics. 23 (6): 713–726. doi:10.1016/j.mechatronics.2013.06.002. ISSN   0957-4158. S2CID   1766321.
  3. ↑ Previous post Next post (2008-11-20). "Thingiverse.com Launches A Library of Printable Objects, Wired; GeekDad by John Baichtal, November 20, 2008". Wired.com. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
  4. ↑ West, Joel; Kuk, George (2016-01-01). "The complementarity of openness: How MakerBot leveraged Thingiverse in 3D printing". Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 102: 169–181. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2015.07.025. ISSN   0040-1625.
  5. ↑ Austria. "2010 ARS Electronica | Prix Ars Electronica | Digital Communities | ANERKENNUNGEN". New.aec.at. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
  6. ↑ Andrew. "Introducing MakerBot Thingiverse Dashboard And Follow Features". Makerbot blog.
  7. ↑ JHoward (23 May 2013). "The 100,000th Thing on Thingiverse!". Makerbot blog.
  8. ↑ 400 000th thing on Thingiverse
  9. ↑ Simpson, A. Chloe; Taliaferro, Andrea Ruth (September 2021). "Designing Inclusion: Using 3D Printing to Maximize Adapted Physical Education Participation". TEACHING Exceptional Children. 54 (1): 26–35. doi:10.1177/00400599211010191. ISSN   0040-0599. S2CID   236219739.
  10. ↑ Buehler, Erin; Branham, Stacy; Ali, Abdullah; Chang, Jeremy J.; Hofmann, Megan Kelly; Hurst, Amy; Kane, Shaun K. (2015-04-18). "Sharing is Caring: Assistive Technology Designs on Thingiverse". Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI '15. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 525–534. doi:10.1145/2702123.2702525. ISBN   978-1-4503-3145-6. S2CID   17273816.
  11. ↑ "Dutch-based Ultimaker and US-based MakerBot complete merger; aims to accelerate 3D printing innovation | Silicon Canals". 2022-09-16. Retrieved 2024-02-01.
  12. ↑ "Daily Dot". The Daily Dot . 24 December 2012.
  13. ↑ "Prusa simplified mendel by prusajr". Thingiverse.com. 2010-09-18. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
  14. ↑ "Duplo Brick to Brio Track adapter with snap-lock by Zydac". Thingiverse.com. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
  15. ↑ Nilsiam, Yuenyong; Pearce, Joshua M. (2017). "Free and Open Source 3-D Model Customizer for Websites to Democratize Design with OpenSCAD". Designs. 1 (1): 5. doi: 10.3390/designs1010005 . ISSN   2411-9660.
  16. ↑ "OpenSCAD". openscad.org. Retrieved 2023-03-02.
  17. ↑ "Snappy: Most 3D Printable 3D printer yet". 3dprintingindustry.com. 21 September 2015. Retrieved 2018-02-28.
  18. ↑ "3D printing businesses". pick3dprinter.com. 24 July 2019. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
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