Makerbot Operators Log

Dec 3, 2010. (Elliot.) Printed out a bottle opener and it worked just perfectly. Noticed that the feed had a kink in it, and clipped and re-fed it. It didn't print sucessfully since. There's something to do with a twist in the feed? Or it the feed slightly oval-shaped and slipping? Fed the makerbot the white ABS feed, which is slightly thicker, and it printed flawlessly. Hmmm...

Nov 29, 2010. (Elliot and Xaq.) While Xaq was in the space, we both spent about 2 hours of frustratingly abortive 2-minute prints, attempts at raftlessly printing a coathook. Shortly after Xaq left, Elliot printed a coathook with a raft and it worked well enough (with babying on the feed at points). Elliot then printed dino-2s for the brutstruder without rafts with only one flaw in the first of five prints. I'm at a loss for what changed: it got later at night, and the machine had been in continuous use for longer. I wonder if the bot needs much longer to warm up than we thought? Anyway, before printing something raftless, I would try printing a rafted small object first as a sacrifice to the makerbot gods (or at least to verify that the machine is working) because that seems to be a lot less tweaky.

Nov 27, 2010. (Elliot.) Printed small odds and ends, just to watch it go. Looks great. The new spool which Dan B and I built seems to work fine, and certainly won't tangle. Moved it to its own (partly mobile) table. I've been working on raftless settings, and it's looking great. Printed a few of the heater-retainer collars for later in case we need them, and tossed them in the reprap box. It's about 5 hours of printing time since the rebuild and it's behaving flawlessly. Will this continue? Knock on wood.

Nov 26, 2010. (Elliot.) Having broken the hot end of the extruder, I needed to fix it. Took it completely apart and soaked all the parts in acetone, getting all the melted plastic off. I reinstalled things as per the makerbot instructions, with the exception of using teflon tape to (electrically) insulate the barrel from the nichrome wire, because its original sheathing had come off during removal. Noticed that the brass barrel was installed upside-down, so I fixed that. The nozzle seems to be flowing a lot now -- so much that I had to reconfigure skeinforge to deal with the extra plastic. We'll see if it holds up. Printed out a brutstruder and the plastic axles for the new feed spool.

Nov 24, 2010. (Elliot and Will G.) Still having problems with intermittent extruder stoppage. Will and Elliot removed the hot end and cleaned it out. That wasn't the problem. Elliot noticed that the idler wheel was binding, fixed that. Still not the problem, though it has sufficient strength to push through whatever is giving the high back-pressure. Elliot started to re-do the hot end again, and probably messed up the heater in the process. Hopefully it's just a loose wire, but the insulation and heating element may need to be re-worked. Sucks....

Nov 20, 2010. (Elliot and Tommy) Noticed that gear motor was out of line. Tommy and I added a bearing to it. Extruder still just randomly stops extruding after 15 minutes or so.

Nov 18, 2010. (Elliot) Printed out some widgets. Extruder head stopped extruding halfway through a print, turned out to be due to ABS bits fouling up the pushing-gear teeth. Also had some troubles with adhesion of the raft to platform.