Quote:
September 9, 2014
Ref: case #00222903
Dear Makerbot Service,
This 5th Gen has a couple of issues. The main and most obvious one is that the build plate does not have sufficient mechanical adjustment to level the Y axis. The front is too low and the back is too high. You can cheat and get it to the second step by pressing upward on the front of the build plate until the light comes on. Then it has an odd issue with the X axis leveling. It wants it to be crooked – with the right side too low and the left side too high. At first I thought that the X axis gantry might also be crooked and it might be compensating for that, but this isn’t the case. There is only one sweet spot you can build on, in the center of the X axis and a little toward the rear on the Y axis. To make anything bigger than 4x4 cm or so footprint and you have to use a raft.
A second issue that has become increasingly frequent occurs intermittently. At the beginning of each build when it tries to find Z home, sometimes it gets it right, and other times Z is too great and it will end up half or even a mm or so above the bed. Obviously there’s no way those builds stick. Alternatively it will be too close, and smash the nozzle down onto the build surface preventing any extrusion. This is characterized by the familiar clicking sound of a filament jam or tangled spool.
It is puzzling why the designers chose to recalibrate Z home each and every build, and also puzzling why it takes so long. All our other machines, including our Rep 2s, Z-Morphs, Type A Machines and Lulzbots only have to be set once unless you fiddle with the plate or change extruders. It is also puzzling why bed leveling requires the filament to be removed, yet it can somehow sense Z home with filament loaded, at the beginning of each build.
Note that this machine has a new extruder. When I first called on case #00215194, I explained the bed leveling problem and it was somehow diagnosed as a faulty extruder. This extruder functions identically to the original one.
Please call at the number below if you have any further questions.
Sincerely,
Jeff Zepp
I will certainly share whatever we learn. In the mean time, I still have a huge backlog of posts and images to add to this thread. The scanned customer above was actually done on 8/18, so we've got several more weeks of builds and data to share.