This afternoon I had the pleasure of being a guest on NPR's Science Friday with Ira Flatow, live in the NYC studio. Even cooler, the other guest was Bre Pettis, CEO of MakerBot!
For the show, the Science Friday group made a SCiFRI logo with MakerBot's new Printshop Typemaker app, and Bre printed in the studio during the segment. One of the things the Printshop app does is let you type anything you want, stylize its dimensions and look, and then export to a 3D-printable file. The app does a particularly good job of solving the problem that words have spaces between their letters, as well as the problem that letters have holes, by making the letters flare out from a hidden base platform. We needed a nameplate sign for our apartment so we used Printshop Typemaker to make one:
Thingiverse link: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:416344
Settings: MakerBot Mini on standard settings with layer height increased to .3mm.
Here are some of the models live in the studio, with Ira looking up to see how much time is left in the segment:
And here's me and Bre outside the studio on the way out (had to get the "On-Air" sign in there!):