July 6, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team
The ecommerce store and website for Brooklyn based MakerBot went down last night after a brief appearance on CBS news that featured their 3D printer rapid prototyping machine called the Cupcake CNC. MakerBot reported on their Twitter account that “Traffic from CBS News brought our server down. We’re on it!.” 
Luckily they were able to get the entire site back up online very quickly after experiencing the outage. There are have been a number 3D printing machines developed over the past few years as the technology advances, but none have been as affordable as the Cupcake CNC from MakerBot. Customers can purchase the CupCake CNC Deluxe Kit for $950, or the CupCake CNC Basic Kit for $750. These 3D printing machines are not functional when received, instead they come in kits that allow you put together on your own. Once the Cupcake CNC is assembled, you can go online and download a digital 3D object which can then be uploaded into the 3D printer. 
Then the Cupcake CNC takes a thin line of heated plastic and shapes it as it is forced through a tube, and layers on more plastic as needed to get the desired shape.
There are a wide array of digital 3D items which you can download at Thingiverse.com and have them printed out with your Cupcake CNC machine. Some of the cool items were cookie cutters, yo yo’s, and an iPhone 4 bumper. On CBS they featured how the printer works by showing you how you could make a usable bottle opener. They also mentioned other items that it could create like a whistle or a Foosball player. CBS reported that they have only sold 1400 Cupcake CNC 3D printers in just over a year, but it is likely that sales are going to increase dramatically as people continue to flock to the ecommerce site to find out what all the buzz is about.
Amy is the co-founder of ZippyCart. She went to school for film in Cleveland, Ohio and ended up working in the field of viral video marketing, which eventually led her to her real profession: SEO. When she's not writing for ZippyCart, she can be found out and about Seattle, WA.
