MakerBot’s Turtle Shell Racers cruise around our offices (video)

Sep 20th 2011
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MakerBots Turtle Shell Racers cruise around our offices (video)

This weekend’s Maker Faire in Ny city was lousy with 3D printers . Every tent within the outdoor area was packed to capacity with the things, their owners standing beside them, showing off the small trinkets they’d created with the devices. Judging from their presence, there seems little doubt that the technology has proven a hit with the maker community. Amongst most people, however, they have been a miles harder sell. Perhaps it is the price, or even it is the generally dull connotations of the word “printer,” or it might probably just be the truth that there hasn’t been the correct iconic image to assist sell the goods to the general public at large.

MakerBot’s Turtle Shell Racers could be just the ambassador that the arena of 3D printing needs. The toy football-sized RC cars are proof positive that the devices can turn absolutely anything which you can imagine into reality. There are specific limitations, obviously, just like the undeniable fact that the objects printed cannot be larger than five inches in diameter. The Shells’ creator circumvented that admitted shortcoming by assembling the goods out of small pieces that snap together. Inspect more hands-on impressions and a video with the racers after the jump.

Turtle Shell Racer hands-on

MakerBots Turtle Shell Racers cruise around our offices (video)

The Shells are constructed out of ABS — a similar plastic used to create Lego — that is fed into the printer from a spool. A couple of pound of ABS goes into the shell, gear shaft and other printed components — which, at MakerBot’s going rate for raw material, would run you around $22 or so. The corporate recommends a particular brand of RC car on the market from Target for around $15, putting the entire cost of components at under $40. MakerBot isn’t actually selling the Turtle Shell Racers, much because the components here. It is easy to download the plans for everything from the company’s Thingiverse site.

Once printed, the racers are pretty solid. They stood as much as quite a few abuse this weekend at Maker Faire, being driven across the track by scores of kids with a penchant for crashing things into one another. They don’t seem to be quick, in anyway — consider, that this can be a pound of plastic on top of a low-end car. We also had just a little trouble turning the things, but again, a number of this may likely be chalked as much as abuse suffered over the weekend.

All in all, the Turtle Shell Racers are a beautiful great experience — one certainly recommended for anyone with a 3D printer lying around. If you haven’t gotten around to choosing one up, however, the entry price of this kind of device is probably going a deterrent. Still, watching a product like this make the transformation from idea to real world object is set nearly as good a selling point for the technology as we have seen.

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