MakerBot 5th gen printing issues

[bmazzarese]

I am having an issue with my prints where as I print, the nozzle of the printer will run through previously printed material and destroy the entire print. My model is fairly small, a cylinder of about a half inch thickness with a honeycomb inner structure surrounded by an outer solid shell. I created the file in SolidWorks and imported it in as a .STL file into the MakerBot software. Anyone else have similar issues or have any idea where the error is occurring? Thanks in advance

[richardphat]

Greetings bma,

while to be honest, and frank. The markerbot 5th gen has been plagued. One of our tech in our universities has to change 4 smart extruder head for under 50 hours of print. There are people here in this forum that do have the same issue as yours, and in fact, so does one of my guy.

Can you see if you can get a refund of your printers? You are going to waste your precious time trying to debug this thing working, and I believe you can spend that time doing other project that bring income.

So basically yes, I am avoiding to answer your question because I believe it will be better for you at the end of the day.

[bmazzarese]

That is interesting, is it a hardware issue? Any chance that running an older version of software might solve the issue? Ill get in contact with their customer support and talk to them, thanks for the honesty.

[wpilgrim]

That is interesting, is it a hardware issue? Any chance that running an older version of software might solve the issue? Ill get in contact with their customer support and talk to them, thanks for the honesty.

It is both hardware and software issues. Software can and probably will over the long haul be improved, you can’t revert back to anything prior to gen 5’s as it is incompatible the only hope is future revs improve its usability as much as software can with the hardware it has to work with.

On the hardware side, however, the “smart” extruder was WAY over complicated. They attempted to make a nice packaged extruder which would make some of the tedious tasks easier or pain free. In the process the new design was over thought over designed and multiple issues were created. The extruder on a printer is the most critical and finicky portion. Their previous gens were great (after they adopted some fixes from the community at large (and attempted to patented those fixes..)) and they should never have moved SOOOO far away from where they were. One other thing that you lose in the new generation that was available to the older generation, was the ability to easily tear down and fix the extruder when problems occur (problems will always occur). The new gen is sealed up and you will void your warranty if you attempt to take it apart to perform small and simple fixes, thereby requiring you to continue to shell out money and time for waiting on replacements.

Attempt to contact support by all means, but that has its own issues as well. People have complained about waiting for support to get back to them for days at a time up to a week or more all to have to wait to ship smart extruders back and forth, in the meantime your 3k to 6k machine is sitting unused week after week eating up your 90 day grace period and still not printing. Note the guy above said he has used 4 smart extruders… 4 and he is far from alone. A little research will point out that problems with these machines are rampant. Look at this thread on the MB site particularly the hoards of users asking for help on the blog, due to unresponsive support agents. http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2014/09...d-future-mind/. Note a most recent users comment "...Even with the expensive Makercare extended warranty my support replies seem to be completely ignored until the 10 day limit and then they are just dropped. If I could still send this dud back I would."

I would backup what the above user said and attempt to get your money back ASAP and dump it to a company that will 1. provide a finished product to you, and 2. will support you in your efforts to get printing.

(full disclosure, I am a Mechanical Engineer and I personally own a replicator 2 (4^th gen) and am incredibly happy with it, but am very disappointed in the direction this company has taken)

[wpilgrim]

I am having an issue with my prints where as I print, the nozzle of the printer will run through previously printed material and destroy the entire print. My model is fairly small, a cylinder of about a half inch thickness with a honeycomb inner structure surrounded by an outer solid shell. I created the file in SolidWorks and imported it in as a .STL file into the MakerBot software. Anyone else have similar issues or have any idea where the error is occurring? Thanks in advance

To answer this issue however, it sounds like more of a software issue though than anything, but I believe you will shortly start to see some of the other issues many other users are experiencing with their gen 5 machines.