We recently purchased a MakerBot 5th Gen printer for use in one of our lab assignments. The students have drawn up some small windmill or turbine blades which I am going to be printing. I have made about 6 attempts to print the 3 blades which are approximately 1 1/4" h x 7" long and about 1/8" thick from the spool of white PLA which came with the printer. I have ran several profiles including some custom settings without any luck. I switched filament over to a spool of green we also purchased with the printer and the parts have successfully printed. I am assuming that the different colors based on the pigment used to produce them may require different settings to be able to successfully print the parts.
At this point in time, I am fine with printing the blades in green.
A problem which has puzzled me from my initial printing of the 3 blades is that one blade regardless of the amount of infill I select or the number of shells, always prints one of the 3 blades hollow or without any inside support.
A single blade was drawn up in Siemens NX and arrayed with a 1 inch space between each of the 3 blades which was then opened in MakerBot's software and the printed file generated. The 3 blades in the print file are all identical although one blade continually is printed completely hollow.
The MakerBot 5th gen is running the latest firmware and I am using the latest software. I have also printed the 3 blades rotated at 0 and at 90 deg to rule out a misalignment of the printer or print platform which I have levelled several times.
Too rule out the extruder, I purchased 3 spare extruders as well with the printer and have tried 3 different extruders with the same results.
Would anyone have any insight or suggestions to try as too why the printer continually prints one blade hollow and the other 2 with internal support?