extruder head hits build plate despite leveling

[82cabby]

hi gang-

I am hoping someone here can help. I have a MakerBot 5th gen. It goes through the leveling procedure just fine, it loads filament fine, all seems good. Then when I start to print it immediately presses the nose of the extruder into the build plate and tries to print. It immediately jams. I re-level the plate (easy, requires almost no change), reload the filament (no problem, filament comes out of the end of the extruder) and try again. Same thing. When the printer tries to make that initial right to left pass, the nozzle is pressed down hard enough to make a groove in the tape and it jams. Sometimes it makes it to the first inch of the raft, not usually.

Any advice would be tremendously appreciated,

Dave

[richardphat]

I'll be honest with you, but the makerbot 5th gen is notorious for failing. The series itself is a total failure, I'd suggest you to get a refund and actually get a printer that work. It's a piece of garbage.

Because if you keep sticking with the makerbot 5th gen, you'll just end up losing time, money and become frustrated.

Get your money back while you can, and I think everyone that truely wants to help you will agree with what I have written.

Instead, I'd reccomend some notorious sucessfull printers, such as the Ultimaker 2, Affinia printers, Ditto Pro, of course there are tons of honorable mention I haven't added yet.

[sinful]

I'll be honest with you, but the makerbot 5th gen is notorious for failing. The series itself is a total failure, I'd suggest you to get a refund and actually get a printer that work. It's a piece of garbage.

Because if you keep sticking with the makerbot 5th gen, you'll just end up losing time, money and become frustrated.

Get your money back while you can, and I think everyone that truely wants to help you will agree with what I have written.

Instead, I'd reccomend some notorious sucessfull printers, such as the Ultimaker 2, Affinia printers, Ditto Pro, of course there are tons of honorable mention I haven't added yet.

Well I wouldn't quite agree on that. I personally own one and could agree, that over the last year there was ups and downs for makerbot 5th Gen. ( more downs than ups maybe ) , but after the latest firmware/desktop release and the new revision smart extruder which I have got replaced free of charge I have almost no trouble with it and the quality is really nice!

For the problem, have you already printed before or is it the first run you try to do? Have you followed all the steps of the leveling build plate and turn the knobs tight before readjusting it?

[Roberto]

Hi there
Look like your extruder is not working as it should - From what you said.
But, before you make any further moves, please upgrade your Firmware together with your desktop into latest version FW 1.7 DT 3.6)
Then unload filament completely and make sure your nozzlehead is moving freely up&down. Don't press directly into nozzle tip!!!
Then only make your Level build plate again.
Should be OK now.

But if it is not OK again - then your extruder is not reporting correctly while Level build plate procedure is done.
In this case, You can stil make it work of course with a little trick - get yourself buisness card, wait for print procedure to start and put that business card under nozzle just before it get into center point of build plate.
This way you will arteficialy make your build plate a bit higher and nozzle won't punch into build plate at start of printing.
It might print too high ...

[richardphat]

Well I wouldn't quite agree on that. I personally own one and could agree, that over the last year there was ups and downs for makerbot 5th Gen. ( more downs than ups maybe ) , but after the latest firmware/desktop release and the new revision smart extruder which I have got replaced free of charge I have almost no trouble with it and the quality is really nice!

For the problem, have you already printed before or is it the first run you try to do? Have you followed all the steps of the leveling build plate and turn the knobs tight before readjusting it?

It's a fact that the new firmware/ and variant of extruder make the print now possible, but then I just hate myself for destroying that garbage when I could.

It's a product that was meant for simplicity, the old smart extruder was a disaster and uselessly over engineered. The one that is in our library had its extruder swapped 7 times and at some point when our school was looking to get more smart extruder, they were out of stock. I even took the time to disassemble one that is no longer under warranty, and to realize the extruder was pissed poor in the aluminium fin.

The lastest extruder did the job for printing but a new issue occur with the tube. Yet it is the makerbot customer service that advise the horse crap setup. Even the ultimaker, rostock max can be repaired without hassle and I don't have to wait for replacement.

That is what we get for having a proprietary printer

[Roberto]

Hi
I tought this form is meant to be for to help guys with problems - like 82 cabby

But it look lmore ike gathering place for #weeping grandmothers" - after reading few post above.

[pa9k]

Hi 82cabby!
We had this issue with our z18 at first. No matter how many times we leveled the plate or reset it it would always hit the build plate. I ended up manually adjusting the z axis offset. Raise it all the way up and stop your print after the first raft layer. It will probably look very bubbly. Lower the offset one step at a time until the raft layer is smooth.An offset of .6 works best for us. Hope this helps. fyi I complained to support about this and they sent me a new plate and tape.