The lack of information on Maker Supply parts

MakerWorld Maker's Supply
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Hello my fellow designers. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but at times it feels there’s a critical lack of information on the Makersupply, or sometimes information isn’t consistently displayed, so it’s difficult to compare things. Or, I’m just a noob and don’t always understand what the numbers even mean?!

I wanted to ping @MakerWorld, and and air these thoughts, but I thought maybe it’s a community thing too. We have the wiki; maybe we need a dedicated Makersupply section that goes into better details on certain things. Who of us even has time to go and write those articles though?! Maybe we could collectively work out a few of the articles, to help others.

I wish there was a comparison of the motors they provide along with thoughts on applications. I’m new to that side of things, so choosing the right motor isn’t my strong suit.

They provide reduction gears, and there’s just no information on that at all, from what I’ve seen.

They don’t provide any documentation on the reachable power kit, the bubble maker kit. On the reachable kit, is it meant to only work with that one motor? Can I use a light instead of the motor?

Can the electric push rod even be used with the current selection of electronic components ?

There’s so many cool things in the MakerSupply, but I also constantly have questions about this stuff too. I often wonder how they choose things, or what the thought process behind it all is. Sometimes I think it’s just a lack of understanding of how certain components could be used.

It’d be cool too. If on some of the product pages there could be shown examples of some of the hardware in use. The product pages should be littered with inspirational examples. At the end though, past the data and spec sheets; the most important stuff.

I could probably google and dig up all the information I need for all the questions I have. Surely. It would be nice to have that information collated somewhere here though so as folks like myself start to push into hardware use, especially the hardware provided on the Makersupply, that there’s the information handy there alongside it. I mean, a little more than just spec sheets. For me, I’m exploring a lot of this hardware for the first time, and I imagine others are as well.

I want to be sold on it. When the Water Bladder was added, they didn’t have any examples to show with it. I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and thought, what could I really use that for? Well, then there was that mushroom model, and now it’s like oh. Okay, yeah. I get that it’s a simple application, but sometimes that’s what’s needed to make things click.

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i subscribe to that, i’ve stared at those parts myself for quite some time, thinking what i could achieve and what group of parts i’d need to get it done, and it’s not very clear cut, would definitely be cool to learn from people that have experience in creating cool models with moving parts and which parts and even thought process one needs to take to accomplish those kinds of projects, I’d love to learn more about it for sure :slight_smile:

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YES. Imo they should get someone from the community who is fluent in the tech and in English to document it all for them (perhaps in exchange for some components. (And no, I’m not suggesting I do it, I am not fluent in the tech.) It’s hard to tell what everything is and what it does.

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Right now, the only available use for the rechargeable kit is the included motor as the connections are ZH1.5. They have confirmed that they will be releasing a ZH1.5 to SH1.0 wire soon which will allow for using any of their N20 motors and some of the LEDs.

I was really hoping for a ZH1.5 to PH2.0 wire so I could use the kit with the power distribution board. A ZH1.5 to SH1.0 wire is a step in the right direction, but still very limiting as you’ll only be able to use one motor/LED with it while you could power multiple things if the kit was PDB compatible.

I haven’t bought a push rod yet, but I’m 99.9% sure that I’m looking at an SH1.0 connection on that wire even though there is nothing in the description about what connection that is.

One of the coolest Maker’s Supply toys hasn’t actually been released yet. If you take a look at the official Makerworld account, you’ll see that they recently released a new design. A Maglev base. I fully expect to see the Maglev components in the store in the near future.

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There are example prints , which include parts sold by makers supply

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i have 3/4 of these pprint

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Running dinosaur
Running Dinosaur Automaton by Amao Chan - MakerWorld
build instructions

I consider these models as free practical lessons and the best way to learn apparently

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Ooh, can’t wait for that!

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It’s more so stuff like this. They have all these gear reduction sets, but no information on how to use them or configure them. Are they swappable or would each gear set need different spacing? Among other questions rolling around in my head. How would these relate to the geared N20 motors? How would I choose between something like this and a N20 motor?

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I’m sure there’s people out there that have answers to these questions, and will chime in and tell me right now, but I think what we need is for this information to be collected where it’s accessible. That’s why I was thinking the wiki might be good. The product pages could link to the wiki, and the wiki could be updated with new information as it comes along.

Not everything has been made into a kit or used in a kit to the extent to show off it’s functionality or application. It’s not that things are tricky or mysterious too; it’s just there’s basic questions we could answer right on the product pages, or within a wiki.

Even with being used within a kit, that doesn’t always help. These thoughts really started to bubble up because I was asking myself a lot of questions about the motors they supply. I don’t have the real world hands on experience yet to know these things, and the provided information doesn’t really help make it clear.

This could be cool. Talk about features, uses, things to consider, possible limitations.

Question is, can I make this with that?! :smiley:

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You are Josh3D. Yes, you can. And I fully expect you to. If not I might want to try to :joy:

Very much. I was considering getting one, but saw nothing documenting it. Not worth my giftcards if I don’t know what it is :person_shrugging:

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I bought one of each ratio. I’m going to find out.

I even thought a little bit about if I could put a rig together to do some sort of meaningful comparison between the motors they offer, and how different voltages might affect things.

The curiosity has gotten to me too much.

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And I thought it was just ME… I placed my first big Maker Supply order last week and I was haivng to google several of the parts I saw to figure out what they were for. I agree with this post 100%.

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Let me know how they work and what they do :grin:

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Yes, more info on the details please!
Even such simple things as tolerances (for the acrylic tubes for example) are missing.
With my Hibernation Pod for DUMMY 13 the outer and inner diameter need to fit. → I simply went with what I measured off of my specimens and what I could find at other acrylic tube suppliers listings.
So far no one who downloaded it complained - but having a lot of people download, print and waiting for the tubes to arrive … it would be no fun when 1/3 of the people face difficulties due to tolerances :-/

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Oh, and on the electrical specifications:
The Ring LED Magnetic Control Switch Lights (KC002) I bought simply turn off after a couple of cycles! - Since the working time depends on the light cycles it seems like an overrun shut off to me.
I am not happy with a light that only makes the cool cycling stuff for only 10 to 15 minutes, I am the only one who wants to have it working till the batteries die?

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Another one: this LED strip light has almost zero info on how to power it (voltage only, no amp rating minimum listed, nor how to find out) and they do not sell any power supply compatible:

This is spiritually one of the first “creator program” items but lacks a link to the Jorge Rui model in the thumbnail photo: Light flood for closed Bambu lab printers by Jorge Rui - MakerWorld

Interestingly, because this pre-dates the creator program, Rui did not work with MW as they do currently to ensure compatibility- so they never consulted him and he links to a different led strip that is more of a turnkey solution.

So from top to bottom, this product is sold without a means for any novice to use it. I bought one, and after googling for hours to ascertain which led power calculator to use, I’m honestly too scared to use it in a print out of fear of melting or fire - what’s worse is some will correlate 24V with the printer’s power, possibly trying to tap into the printer’s power supply and cause a short. The actual power supplies for these are massive btw.

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I used the power supply from my old Sidewinder X1 that I tore apart a while back. Works great, and I printed a box for it and the switch. I agree that they should sell one and be more descriptive though.

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I think I might make a little gear box for these. I’m not sure if there’s even one out there. The spacing is the same on all of them though, so you can drop in whatever gear ratio you need. Nice!

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I bought several of the gear reduction kits and have several of the N20 motor kits, etc. and cannot figure out the best way to mount these. I haven’t looked at it in a few days, but the rods don’t necessarily seem to be the correct size for the plastic gears. I was about to post something similar the other day but haven’t had a chance.

With several inquiries around Maker’s Supply parts, perhaps it might be helpful for the admin to make a new category in the forum.

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How did I miss this post?

I agree, MakerSupply appears to be purposely withholding information that would enable people to use the parts it sells.

Sometimes there is very little or no information of what it is or what it could be used for.

Lots of tech info missing as well.

The dimension drawing are great, the occasional STEP files are useful p, but, some of us require an STL.

These look useful, but, they lack example uses. I can guess, but, only because I have some experience.

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As far as I know, it’s not documented anywhere, frustratingly.

They are suppose to be used with the 030 motors, and are organized on two spindles (the two rods). The gears should be loose on the rods, so they can spin freely.

I’ll try and put a sample model together today. My current usage I can’t yet show.

I got a set of these and was surprised. I didn’t fully realize what it actually was. Haha. I thought it was an electrically controlled magnetic latch. No. it’s a magnetic connector, the poor man’s mag safe. Actually, really cool. I’m not sure what I can use it for, but I want to.

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Exactly why I order a set.

Right there with you.

I’ve used magnets in the past to enable things, like direction connection of a circuit (which is what this is) but, I didn’t have a bracket.

I’ve used Hall effect sensors in the past as well. They can give you different values depending on the strength of the magnetic field.