Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
No, Really, Make a Better Mousetrap
Building a better mousetrap is a classic story of innovation. Cathal Garvey
had a problem: he had a mouse living with him in his home in Ireland. He'd
just gotten 5 fresh pounds of ABS plastic for his MakerBot and he wanted to
find a way to catch the mouse without killing it. He made a blog post (
http://
challenge/
)
that quickly made its way around the Internet with a request to
follow the age old tradition of building a better mousetrap. His criteria was
that the mousetrap had to be a “live” trap so that the mouse wouldn't be
killed.
Within a day, there were 9 designs on Thingiverse tagged “mousetrap” and
within a few weeks, more were added. Whose freshly invented mousetrap
would meet the challenge?
Thingiverse user 2RobotGuy came up with a solution that used the power of
gravity to spring the trap and keep the mouse in a bent tube that looked like
a bent toilet paper tube with caps on the ends (see
http://blog.maker
mousetrap/2/
), shown in
Figure 2-1
. In captivity, he shows undeniable video
footage of catching a mouse in his trap:
http://youtu.be/7E8CZd66lLI
.
Figure 2-1.
Mouse vs. MakerBot
