# Specific 3D Printers, Scanners, & Hardware > MakerBot Forum >  5th Gen - Review and Head to Head with Rep 2

## American 3D Printing

We are a retail 3D printing store (meaning you can just walk in and have us build stuff), and have a number of different 3D printers, and a LOT of experience with them. We also sell what we use - we have the machines and filament in stock. As such, we are careful of what machines we use and sell. We don't want our customers to have bad experiences because of poor choices we've made. As such, we haven't brought in any 5th gen machines because of all the horror stories we've heard -- not just on the web, but face to face with other walk-in customers who've bought them direct from Makerbot.

So yesterday I had a customer come in who's had his 5th Gen Replicator for about a month. He's a 3D n00b -- this is his first experience with 3D printers. He's had limited success, and is frustrated. He's got a specific project in mind and is beginning to wonder if the machine will do what he needs it to do (probably not, it looks like his project is best suited to Ninjaflex, and that's a job for our Lulzbot TAZs). But he asked me if he could bring me his 5th Gen and let me play around with it and see if I can get it working better for him.

Since we're Makerbot resellers, we get inside info direct from Brooklyn, as well as through our distributor, Ingram Micro. So I kind of already have a feel for what these machines are about, but there's nothing like playing with one with your own hands and seeing it with your own eyes to get a true sense of what they're like. And we have a relatively unique perspective with so much experience with our Rep 2s and our other printers.

This is going to be long and detailed, so I am going to split this up into multiple posts. Pictures will be included. And since we have a business to run, I'll post up when I get the time.

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## American 3D Printing

The first thing I noticed is that this machine is significantly larger than the Rep 2, and a bit heavier.



The next thing I noticed is the bed appears crooked - as in really non-level along the X axis, the right side is way lower than the left. Okay, lets see how this "auto-leveling" business works.

The first thing I did was load some Makerbot filament. Since we haven't opened any of our new "2 pound" spools of filament I grabbed a 1kg roll, which of course doesn't fit into the cartridge compartment in the rear, so I used one of the A3DP spoolholders we made for our Z-Morphs.

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## American 3D Printing

I should note that I took the extruder off to get a close look at it and take a few pictures, and then had a dickens of a time getting it back on. There's a trick and THEY DON'T TELL YOU (this is even after spending over a half hour on the phone with tech support, but I'm getting ahead of myself).

Here are some close-ups of the smart extruder:



The dual row of connectors are pogo-pins. Those of you who have worked with test fixtures in electronics manufacturing will be familiar with those. The four protrusions around the periphery contain powerful permanent magnets.



Those of you with a Rep 2 will notice the familiar lever to release the spring loaded pressure between the idler and the hobbed wheel.



Other side. Instead of screw type fasteners, the enclosure snaps together with 6 latches.

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## American 3D Printing

Okay, so here's the thing that took me a while to figure out and THEY DON'T TELL YOU. See that round doo-dad I have circled in the picture? It rotates! It has to be lined up JUST RIGHT when you snap the extruder back onto the X carriage or else it won't attach or make a connection or work. It was SUPER-FRUSTRATING trying to get that sucker back on there. Talk about some poor engineering.

But...we're only getting started  :Frown: 



One major change from the Rep 2 is the fan arrangement. There is only one fan, it appears to be the same squirrel cage fan that's used for the Rep 2. On the Rep 2 that's the one that blows into the duct which blows onto the build around the hot end. On the 5th Gen, they split the air flow so that some of it blows onto the build from either side of the hot end, and some of it goes to the area just above the hot end that's supposed to stay cool enough that filament can be pushed.

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## Geoff

Awesome! thanks for this, been looking for an honest review on it, keep it coming!

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## papabur

A printer is only as capable as the person using it...

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## Geoff

> A printer is only as capable as the person using it...


A saying I can't really see being applied here.

So far, he has reviewed the hardware, not actually using the machine, so I don't think that's fair to say until he gets to that point. So far, it's been good and already I don't like the machine. I *want* him to show me they are worth the money.. there has to be a reason for it other than brand name. I have not seen a makerbot print any better than any other clone of it on the market.

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## American 3D Printing

Below is an image of the front of the X carriage. You can see the squirrel cage fan, and you can also see that all connections are now using an actual flex cable rather than the traditional wire bundle that all the manufacturers seem to use, including Makerbot on their previous machines. I have had to replace wires in all but one of our printers (including Rep 2) from the constant flexing, and have wondered why these guys didn't have a clue. When I was designing high speed pen plotters back in the 1980s (almost identical robotic motions as printers except much faster), we used flex circuits rather than wires. It's good for a couple orders of magnitude more flex cycles than stranded wire is.

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## American 3D Printing

This is the back of the X carriage, and shows a several things. You can see that round metal locating pin I referred to when I discussed how difficult it is to attach the extruder. You can see the mating pads for the pogo pins. And you can see how the fan's output is split between the cool part of the extruder above the hot end, and the ducting on the extruder that blows onto the build. You can also see where those 4 permanent magnets connect to.

If you are REALLY familiar with the Rep 2, you will notice that the X axis belt is about twice as wide as the Rep 2's belt. We haven't had any issues with our belt wearing out, but maybe somebody has? Another difference is that the pulleys at each end are about twice the diameter, which will result in a less sharp radius for the belt to flex. It is hard to see because it's painted black, but instead of the two rods for the carriage to ride back and forth on like you see in most printers, including the Rep 2, the gantry is made of a piece of sheet metal bent into an inverted U shape. Attached to that are some glide rails that the carriage rides on. These type of rails are also used for the Y axis for the bed of the Z-Morph.

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## American 3D Printing

The famous camera. Chatting in the store after the 5th Gens were introduced at CES last February, some 3D buddies and I were wondering if the addition of the camera was what made the 5th gen "worth" so much more money, since the specs didn't seem to make any appreciable improvement. In fact, there some items we can't build on the new one that we can on the old one due to the change in shape of the bed. And we still keep bumping into that darn 150mm Z height limit!

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## American 3D Printing

As I mentioned above, the bed looked crooked, so I figured I should check on that first. But before that I decided to load some filament into the extruder. It took a good 10-15 minutes of fiddling to get the extruder connected to the X carriage. From the front panel, I selected Load Filament and waited for it to heat. It takes about twice as long to heat the filament as the Rep 2. Loading it is essentially the same procedure as the Rep 2. The front panel user interface takes some getting used to, as there are two buttons on each right corner of the display, in addition to the scrollwheel, and the scrollwheel button. At first it is not intuitive that the scrollwheel even has a button, but some of the commands are invoked by pressing the scrollwheel button, and others with the buttons on the right corners of the display. The Rep 2 has far more intuitive UI.

My normal procedure for leveling the bed on the Rep 2 (and all the rest of our different printers) is to make sure the extruder is hot so any ooze is soft and doesn't affect the slide-the-paper-under-the-extruder friction. But the 5th gen wanted me to unload the filament (!?!) before leveling the bed. So I had to unload the filament. When it finished that, it cooled the extruder and allowed me to proceed with the leveling procedure.

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## American 3D Printing

There are two wheels to turn to level the bed, unlike the 3 on the Rep 2. One is in the front, and the other is on the side. I should also mention here that the bed is glass. We've purchased aftermarket glass for our Rep 2s that we use for PLA, and we use the original acrylic bed covered in PVA glue for our nylon and PET builds.

When you invoke the bed leveling procedure, it raises the bed with the extruder in the middle until the extruder just touches, then it goes down a couple mm and then just sits there. At first I thought it was hung or something, but every few seconds you could hear that familiar "thunk" that the Rep 2 does when it's lowering to the next layer, in this case it's raising the bed.

Ever.


So.


Slowly.


Go get a cup of coffee, because it really takes a long time to finally decide that it's happy. I think it's like 10 minutes or so. Then the extruder comes to the front of the bed and an animated graphic on the display tells you to turn the front knob in the direction shown until the LED on the extruder illuminates. It was telling me to turn the knob CCW, so I did.

Until the knob fell off.

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## American 3D Printing

Huh? I looked underneath and saw that there is a threaded stud sticking down, and the knob has threaded female threads. Okay, so I put the knob back on and turn it CW, until it is completely finger tight. The last couple of turns. I could observe the front of the bed lowering, opposite from what the firmware is telling me it wants (and it's also visible that it is the wrong way, but hey, I got the knob back on!).

So I started turning the knob CCW like the firmware wanted and I could see the front of the bed raising up as we wished it would, but then you could feel the resistance of turning the knob go to nothing, the bed stops raising and the light never came on. I kept going until the knob fell off again.

I repeated the procedure above AGAIN, but this time, just before the knob got all loose again, I pressed upward on the bed with my fingers and got the LED to come on. The display said it was "calibrating", then it moved the extruder over to the right side of the bed, middle of the Y axis, and again wanted me to turn the knob, but I aborted, because I knew that I had cheated to get it past that checkpoint in the procedure and it just wasn't right.

I figured I was just not doing something right so I call Makerbot tech support.

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## American 3D Printing

Hold time was only about 15 minutes before I got a tech. I explained the situation, he asked me some questions and I performed a few diagnostics and things for him. He somehow concluded that the smart extruder was faulty and got my shipping info for a new extruder (I have one customer who's on his 3rd extruder on his 5th gen, and I have another 3D buddy who returned his entire machine after the 2nd extruder quit working). I figure that the drones in tech support are just programmed to send out a new extruder instead of using real logic to troubleshoot stuff, but that's probably what they're taught. I know the company has been growing like crazy and they're probably having trouble finding good help. I get that. But i don't see how a new extruder is going to fix a bed that won't mechanically level. Who knows, maybe it will?

But, while on the phone I did learn a few useful tidbits.

The business part of the extruder moves up and down on the Z axis, about a mm or so. It can sense when it touches the bed, and it can also go up and down. That's pretty cool. Teaser - when you build, when most printers raise the extruder or lower the bed to do a Z-lift, the 5th gen raises the extruder - it's cool to watch.

I asked him how the machine senses Z limit, as I didn't see any limit switches like all our other printer, including the Rep 2. He said that it was a laser. Later in the conversation he said it was a hall effect sensor. I don't know exactly what it is, but there certainly aren't any mechanical switches visible anywhere on the machine, not just for the Z axis, but for the X and the Y as well.

As for how it is actuated to move up and down, I'm not sure. I know that on the high speed pens plotters I used to design, we used a voice coil driven by a linear amplifier to moved the pen up and down.

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## American 3D Printing

Being somewhat impatient and curious as well, I went ahead and went through the whole bed leveling exercise using the cheat of holding the front of the bed up manually. I looked at the left and right levels and it still looked really crooked. So I adjusted the right knob until it was visually level, then went through the procedure again, and by the time it was done, it was crooked again. It occurred to me that the gantry itself might be cockeyed and it was compensating for that?

Bear in mind, that each of these bed leveling sessions take a good 15 minutes or so. Also bear in mind that there is a piece of solid PLA sticking out of the end of the extruder because it doesn't want to level the bed with a hot extruder like i am used to. Turns out it doesn't matter. It turns out that before EACH AND EVERY BUILD it "calibrates" Z-height. And this takes about 10 minutes or so with this incredibly S L O W business where it gradually eases its way to what on most printers is the "bounce" part of finding Z home. Add the 5 minutes or so to heat and you've got an automatic 15 minutes before EACH AND EVERY BUILD before it starts building. Let's just say we are not impressed and do not consider this an improvement over the Rep 2 (and all our other various printers).

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## American 3D Printing

I shrugged my shoulders and decided to make something, the ubiquitous stretchlet that comes with all Rep 2s and 5th Gens. Turns out the one inside the 5th Gen's memory is on a raft.

How nice.

The raft itself is an identical slice to the one that good old Makerware 2.2 and 2.4 make:

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## American 3D Printing

Drum roll:

It took ONE HOUR AND 8 MINUTES!!!! To make what the Rep 2 does in 16 minutes! WTF??

Bear in mind this is on top of that darn Z-height calibration and heating which total around 15 minutes per build.

Okay, calm down, maybe it's making .05mm layers at 15mm/sec or something? I can't see the slice because it is inside the machine. Maybe it is something in the firmware? The support tech wanted to know what version firmware I was on, and I have read that there have been a LOT of firmware updates on these things.

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## American 3D Printing

Sorry, been busy in the store. Still putting the 5th Gen through its paces and taking lots of pictures, just haven't squeezed the time in to post here. I see 250 views - feel free to comment or ask questions, we've had the thing for most of a week and are starting to get a better feel for it.

Picking up where I left off - I thought maybe the slow build was something to do with the slice settings - really high resolution, slow print speed, something like that. So we need to do it straight from makerware.

Turns out Makerware 2.2 and 2.4 (our in-house staples) aren't compatible with the 5th Gen, so we downloaded and installed the latest "Makerbot for Desktop" 3 point something. I think I remember this from previous versions, the drivers aren't properly signed or something and Windows keeps asking if I really want to continue installing at several points. It took a fairly long time to install and required babysitting to get past the prompts, but it worked just fine out of the gate, which is not something I can say about the Sunbeam Smoothieware drivers that make the Z-Morphs go.

So we load the stretchlet into the software and set it for 10% infill, 0.2mm layers, 90mm/s print speed, no raft and and slice it up. A new twist with this software is that it splits slicing and printing, unlike older versions which are a 0ne button affair. In addition, when you go to print, you don't see all the settings like in the older versions, there's a separate Settings screen that you have to save. Not too inconvenient or unintuitive, but more clicks nontheless.

Drum roll.....



One hour, no minutes and 33 seconds. Ahem. Okay, let's try some of our other standard objects...

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## American 3D Printing

Oh and for the benefit of the doubt, maybe the build quality is better?



Please forgive the point and shoot image quality, the good Nikon's at home, but trust me, it is absolutely impossible to distinguish which one was made on the Rep 2 and which one was made on the 5th Gen. Remember, not only does the actual build take 4 times longer, but you have that 15 minute Z-height and warmup procedure before the timer starts ticking.

A couple other random observations that i hadn't mentioned before...

The 5th Gen is noticeably louder than the Rep 2. In fact it is now our 2nd loudest machine after the Z-Morph, which is in a class by itself. But then, the Z-Morph is about 5 times faster and every bit as good. The stepper motors are really musical though, second only to our plywood Type A machines Series 1.

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## American 3D Printing

This rook from Thingiverse takes about 56 minutes to build on the Rep 2. One hour 44 minutes on the 5th Gen, not including that 15 minute pre-print overhead.



As with the stretchlet, the one from the Rep 2 is indistinguishable from the one from the 5th Gen that took twice as long to build.



Right around now the guy that owns the 5th Gen saunters into the store and I explain what I've found so far. He almost started crying. I showed him the stretchlets and the rooks and asked if he could tell them apart. The closest thing he could find was the arch over the door of the rook that the Rep 2 built had a little dangly artifact, which was quickly scraped off with an Xacto knife.

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## American 3D Printing

Another random observation - we can't figure out how to see what the camera sees. The printer's owner told me he stumbled on it once but can't remember what to click to make it visible on the host's screen. I'll have to do a little research on that, unless someone reading this can post up with the answer?

Anyway, here's another standard object we make. This is just a test object I designed that we use to help dial in the slice and temperature settings for new materials on various printers. It normally takes about 36 minutes on the Rep 2. As you can see, it took 58 minutes on the 5th Gen.



As before, you can not tell any difference from the Rep 2 version.

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## American 3D Printing

Next up is another standard test object we make, a dodecahedron from Thingiverse.

As you can see below, it is big enough that the non-level build plate is causing issues. The back stuck and the front didn't, of course the front of the build plate is too low. We aborted the build after snapping this picture.

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## American 3D Printing

So we resliced it with a raft, which worked successfully. This object takes 2 hours and 40 minutes (with raft) on the Rep 2. On the 5th Gen it took 4 hours 37 minutes, plus the 15 minutes start-up overhead.



BTW, in each of these side by side pictures, the 5th Gen build is on the left and the Rep 2 build is on the right. The only way I could keep them straight, as that is the way the machines are sitting on the fixture as seen at the beginning of this thread.

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## American 3D Printing

We have a pile of objects we give out as free samples, and the barbie-pink stretchlets are always popular with little girls, so I put on a batch of 5 to run overnight. It was also a test to see if building multiple objects went any faster than the sum of individual objects, other than only having to go through the 15 minute prep cycle at the beginning of the build. Below, you can see how the non-level bed is affecting the first layer. One nice thing is that we didn't get a filament jam from having the extruder tip shoved so hard onto the tape that nothing could come out.



You can see what happened to this one where it had the opposite problem, too much Z-height zero. I expect this will be fixed once we get the bed leveling issue squared away. I'm giving Makerbot the benefit of the doubt that the new extruder may have some kind of chance of affecting the bed leveling. No who am I kidding. I just need to go through the exercise so when I call them back they can get a clue that not every 5th Gen issue is either a bad extruder or old firmware. Oh and I did check the firmware, it is indeed the latest, 1.2.112. That's done through the host software, Makerbot for Desktop. I had really been holding out hope that one of these magic firmware updates would somehow speed up these build times.



Unfortunately, building multiple objects does NOT speed up the build time any, it is simply the sum of the build times individually.

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## American 3D Printing

I'm out of time for today, but next up will be a really cool design approach I discovered, and then some more A-B head to head builds with the 5th Gen and the Rep 2. Again, please feel free to post up any comments or questions. I don't know how long I get to borrow this machine but I know I'll have it until at least some time next week.

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## JohnA136

Jeff, I think if you go to the Makerbot Google Group you will see a plethora of posts on the 5th Gen Makerbots and how they are printing (or rather,not printing).

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## American 3D Printing

> Jeff, I think if you go to the Makerbot Google Group you will see a plethora of posts on the 5th Gen Makerbots and how they are printing (or rather,not printing).


Thanks John and indeed there are. Ironically, the owners announced today that they are shutting it down to new posts, but will keep it live for archival purposes.  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):  

Among many things I really like about this site, is that it is for all makes and models. I also prefer the vBulletin software over most other choices out there.

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## Geoff

Thanks again, this has been an interesting one to follow. 

Out of curiosity, is the only thing stopping a makerbot printing ABS the heatbed?

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## American 3D Printing

> Thanks again, this has been an interesting one to follow. 
> 
> Out of curiosity, is the only thing stopping a makerbot printing ABS the heatbed?


That is correct Geoff, to the best of my knowledge. At some point I suspect I will have this bed disassembled in some fashion or other to address the leveling issue, and at that point i can take a peek at how much clearance there might be for a hack of adding a heater. I accidently ordered in some ABS from my Ingram Micro and they make you jump through flaming hoops to return stuff, so maybe I can use it at some point?

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## Geoff

> That is correct Geoff, to the best of my knowledge. At some point I suspect I will have this bed disassembled in some fashion or other to address the leveling issue, and at that point i can take a peek at how much clearance there might be for a hack of adding a heater. I accidently ordered in some ABS from my Ingram Micro and they make you jump through flaming hoops to return stuff, so maybe I can use it at some point?


Since PLA can have a high melting point too in some instances, I just assumed the nozzle could hit 220-230c, even 220c I can get ABS to extrude at fine, so I'd give it a go!  

Since for me getting those heatbeds in that size was a pain, I ended up finding the round 170mm ones for the kossel. They are just a thin pad with 3M tape on one side and do a remarkable job, and for $20 odd bucks they are a good buy and just stick on the bottom of the aluminium.

Returning filament is just impossible full stop, here is a conversation, word for word from my last return effort...

"Once you have broken the seal we can no longer accept returns" 

"But I haven't broken the seal! it's still vacuum sealed, in the box, you sent the wrong colour!"

"Oh we are sorry, we will send you the right one"

"Do you want the old one back?"

"No"

"Really? I said I was more than happy to return it for a credit? "

"No you keep it"

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## American 3D Printing

> Since PLA can have a high melting point too in some instances, I just assumed the nozzle could hit 220-230c, even 220c I can get ABS to extrude at fine, so I'd give it a go!  
> 
> Since for me getting those heatbeds in that size was a pain, I ended up finding the round 170mm ones for the kossel. They are just a thin pad with 3M tape on one side and do a remarkable job, and for $20 odd bucks they are a good buy and just stick on the bottom of the aluminium.
> 
> Returning filament is just impossible full stop, here is a conversation, word for word from my last return effort...
> 
> "Once you have broken the seal we can no longer accept returns" 
> 
> "But I haven't broken the seal! it's still vacuum sealed, in the box, you sent the wrong colour!"
> ...


Yes, I build with Taulman Nylon at 245°C in the Rep 2 all the time, it might even go 250, haven't tried it. Haven't tried it on the 5th Gen yet, but that seems like a logical test.

Interestingly, the 5th gen has a multi-step warm up process.

(1) Bed down, send extruder to front right corner, heat to 180°C.

(2) Send extruder to center, excruciatingly slow Z home procedure.

(3) Warm up to final temp (either 215°C or 230°C).

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## American 3D Printing

I don't know how much time I can devote to adding to this thread today, but we had a complete filament jam this morning, after trying the usual things to clear it I went ahead and completely disassembled the extruder, cleared the jam, reassembled the extruder and it is now working.

I took lots of pictures, and discovered a bunch of details about what makes it tick.

Yes it is a hall-effect sensor.

The round doo-dad that you have to line up when you put it onto the Z-carriage is a driven hobbed shaft.

The Z-lifts are from reversing the filament.

More to come!

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## American 3D Printing

Back to our exploration of the 5th Gen.

Sometimes it takes a while to notice stuff. I was watching the machine build, and it suddenly occurred to me, I didn't see an X axis motor. Huh? Okay, let's look a little closer:

This is looking up and to the left. You can't see it, but there are 2 pulleys up there at the end of the gantry, and the belt splits to go front and back.



Looking up and to the right, you see the same arrangement mirrored:

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## American 3D Printing

A slightly different angle reveals the rails the the gantry slides on for the Y axis.

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## American 3D Printing

Now I see the motors. There are 2 of them, identical, one on the upper left corner and the other at the upper right corner. At first I was thinking that they were only for the Y axis. But once you see the belt arrangement, it suddenly becomes clear that what they've done is reduce the moving mass at the business end by removing the X-axis motor from the gantry. The motors make either X or Y movement of the extruder according to which direction they turn! Fiendishly clever! I love the idea.

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## American 3D Printing

Now back to the head to head with the Rep 2.

One of our favorite builds is the T-Rex skull from Thingiverse. We make 50% sized ones for our givaway table, obviously the kids love them. Let's see how long it takes to build, and what the quality is.

As you can see, the jaw takes 33 minutes on the Rep 2.



Next up is the 5th Gen at 56 minutes.

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## American 3D Printing

HOWEVER, this is the first build where there does appear to be better build quality (appearance) on the one the 5th Gen built, on the left. Note I am using aftermarket (Filament Central, Chinese made) PLA on the 5th Gen and genuine Makerbot on the Rep 2.

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## American 3D Printing

Now to build the skull. The Rep 2 took 1 hour, 13 minutes.



And the 5th Gen took just over 2 hours:

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## American 3D Printing

As before, the T-Rex skull built on the 5th Gen (left) does appear smoother than the one built on the Rep 2:

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## American 3D Printing

I'm out of time for today. The current status is, the built plate still won't level, and it has been a week and a half since Makerbot said they'd send a new extruder to fix the build plate issue (I doubt it but will give them the benefit of the doubt). They did mail me a return label to send the old extruder back, in addition to the one they had emailed me. The sent me an email today asking if my issue was resolved, and I answered no, I still hadn't gotten the new extruder. I have to give them credit (along with Lulzbot, Type A Machines and Z-Morph), all these guys do have a clue when it comes to tech support. They all seem to try pretty hard, with varying effectiveness.

When I get some more time to post up, I will guide you through the dissected and figured-out smart extruder. It's a fascinating assembly, and like the rest of the 5th Gen, it has some cool approaches and some head-scratchers.

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## tim

Jeff- fantastic review so far, I have really enjoyed reading it, and have shared with the other Makerheads at the shop here.   I think we'll stick with the Rep 2's for the time being...   :Smile:

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## American 3D Printing

Thanks Tim! How's your Form 1 doing?

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## American 3D Printing

When I next went to use the machine, I heard the familiar clicking sound of a Makerbot filament jam. Usually you can clear these out by unloading the filament, cutting a clean edge off and reloading. All of our printers have had filament jams at various points, and when the unloading, cutting and reloading routine doesn't clear the jam the extruder must be disassembled to get at the jam. That was the case this time. Even though Makerbot supposedly had a replacement smart extruder on the way, we're professionals (literally) and know what we're doing.

After removing the extruder and allowing it to cool, the bottom half of the duct that blows onto the build is unclipped from the top half of the ductwork.



Next, slide the top half of the duct off.

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## American 3D Printing

IMPORTANT and not shown here because I didn't realize it was important until I almost caused myself some grief. The next step is to remove the filament feed tube from the top of the extruder. This part goes over an angled feature at the top of the extruder and retains the two halves of the enclosure to each other. The enclosure halves cannot be separated until this part is removed!

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## American 3D Printing

Next, VERY CAREFULLY pry the 6 retaining clips from their mate and remove the cover to reveal the inside! You can see the 4 magnet on the periphery, a large plastic idler wheel, a bearing, a couple of circuit boards, the small filament idler and the plastic spring loaded lever which tensions the small idler up against the filament. On the left you can see the heat sink fins for the cool part of the extruder. Close examination of the circuit board at the lower right reveals an optocoupler to detect the presence of filament.

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## American 3D Printing

Next, removing the bearing allows the hobbed shaft to be retrieved. You can see that coupling feature I mentioned at the beginning of this thread. The 5th Gen extruder design puts the extruder motor inside the X carriage, and the hobbed shaft is passively driven.

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## American 3D Printing

The idler and lever assembly can now be lifted out, and the hot end set aside, revealing the main circuit board. Examination of the components reveals that it is not "smart" in the sense that it has a microcontroller of any kind, just some active and passive circuitry. Fairly unremarkable IMHO.

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## American 3D Printing

Examining the inlet side of the hot end reveals the blob of stuck filament. What had happened, was when I went to unload the filament, obviously this end was hot enough that it separated and left that blob in there. There was enough friction between the blob of filament and the inside walls of the hot end tube that loading filament would get stuck when it got to this obstruction. The actual offending blob turned out to be remarkably small, and a little tug with some pliers got it out.

If you look carefully, you will notice a small, shiny metal cylinder in the black plastic by my index finger. That is a magnet, used with the SOT23 hall effect sensor on the circuit board to detect the extruder's position. I forgot to mention in the post immediatly preceding this, you will see a small gauge spring near the top of the photo. This pushes the hot end downward from the rest of the extruder assembly, When bed leveling or setting Z home before each build, that hall effect sensor can tell when the tip of the nozzle just touches the bed.

Fortunately, reassembling the extruder went smoothly and it worked right off the bat after returning it to the X carriage.

----------


## 3D OZ

Jeff,
Brilliant, detailled honest review. You have done well to maintain the matter-of-fact tone of your posts as you work through the challenges of a new printer.
It seems to me however that you are experiencing many of the types of issues that those of us who bought a printer at the cheaper (much, much cheaper) end of the market have to deal with.
I seriously considered a MakerBot before ultimately buying a 3DStuffmaker and did initially think that perhaps I had made a poor choice when it turned out that you really need to dedicate some time to learning the quirks and odd behaviors of the lower end printers (what a n00b I was back then), but it turns out that the 5th Gen Ferrari is slower and just as temperamental as any other printer.

I struggle to see how MakerBot can justify classing this printer as a generational change when very little seems to have changed, certainly very little has improved.
Many aspects are different but hardly improved. Smart nozzle? That's more effort to clear a simple nozzle blockage than I have ever dealt with.
At this rate of "improvement" the Gen 6 wiii take 4 hours to prepare to print and 4 days to print a rook. :Big Grin:

----------


## Geoff

> I struggle to see how MakerBot can justify classing this printer as a generational change when very little seems to have changed, certainly very little has improved.


And also how they can justify the price tag!!! I have to say, after Jeff's tear down I am even less impressed. I already had a bit of a gripe with this machine for the fact it looked so sexy and was well out of my price range for what it offered.

Now I see the actual components they are putting in, and a hot end that while has handy features like auto sensing loss of filament etc, it looks really cheap.

----------


## LambdaFF

Thank you for all this. Very detailed and factual. The X&Y belt arrangement to remove the motors from the gantry are a nice idea but the rest kinda kills it for me.

----------


## tim

> Thanks Tim! How's your Form 1 doing?


I'm sorry to say, but our Form1 spends most of its time sitting in the corner.   We had an encoding issue with X printing twice as big as Y, and my guys kind of lost interest in diagnosing it.   The material price also has us a little guy shy about messing around too much, plus the fragile nature of SLA resin.  Don't mean to derail this Maker thread (hey you started it!  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic): ) but will end by saying we've got over 1000 hours on one of our Rep2's, another with around 700 hours... we've had each apart fairly extensively a couple of times, replaced most of the wire harnesses, repaired some of the pulley housings, but at this point have a lot more confidence in our ability to run a good part on the Makers than the Form1, so they're the first choice.  

I could see us adding a third Rep2- was considering the new Gen but after your review there's no way.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Quick update - the replacement extruder came in yesterday. The fins on the heatsink are thinner and there's more of them. The plastic idler has a rib on it, the old extruder doesn't. I took pictures but don't have time to post them up right now. Install went smooth, it didn't fix the bed leveling issue. I haven't had time to call Makerbot tech support, will get after that on Monday about the bed issue. I did do a couple of builds with the new extruder. They came out fine, no better or worse than the original extruder.

One other thing - I was looking into Makerbot for Desktop (the replacement for Makerware), and in the setting profile, they have dropdown selections for other filaments just like Makerware does, but it won't let you select anything but PLA. I had a customer in yesterday who owns a 5th Gen and was interested in buying a roll of Makerbot flexible filament. It doesn't look like you can use Makerbot flexible filament on the 5th Gen.

And get this - the tab for temperature is inactive. You CAN NOT CHANGE TEMPERATURE from Makerbot for Desktop, at least not the current revision. Maybe you can slice it offline and sideload the memory? There's no removable SD card on the 5th Gen like a Rep 2, so I will see if that is possible. But I can't see building with nylon or PET or HIPs at the default 215°C! Oh yeah, that's another difference from the Rep 2. The Rep 2 defaults to 230°C (240° for the stretchlet preloaded from the factory in the SD card), and the 5th Gen defaults to 215°C.

----------


## Geoff

> Quick update - the replacement extruder came in yesterday. The fins on the heatsink are thinner and there's more of them. The plastic idler has a rib on it, the old extruder doesn't. I took pictures but don't have time to post them up right now. Install went smooth, it didn't fix the bed leveling issue. I haven't had time to call Makerbot tech support, will get after that on Monday about the bed issue. I did do a couple of builds with the new extruder. They came out fine, no better or worse than the original extruder.
> 
> One other thing - I was looking into Makerbot for Desktop (the replacement for Makerware), and in the setting profile, they have dropdown selections for other filaments just like Makerware does, but it won't let you select anything but PLA. I had a customer in yesterday who owns a 5th Gen and was interested in buying a roll of Makerbot flexible filament. It doesn't look like you can use Makerbot flexible filament on the 5th Gen.
> 
> And get this - the tab for temperature is inactive. You CAN NOT CHANGE TEMPERATURE from Makerbot for Desktop, at least not the current revision. Maybe you can slice it offline and sideload the memory? There's no removable SD card on the 5th Gen like a Rep 2, so I will see if that is possible. But I can't see building with nylon or PET or HIPs at the default 215°C! Oh yeah, that's another difference from the Rep 2. The Rep 2 defaults to 230°C (240° for the stretchlet preloaded from the factory in the SD card), and the 5th Gen defaults to 215°C.


Oh god man, it's even worse than I thought!! I am so glad I did not break my bank to get one of these..

Do you think they did it for machine longevity or just another push to get people to buy makerbot filament?

----------


## American 3D Printing

Just got off the phone with Makerbot tech support. They want to have the machine back. I don't know whether they plan to repair it and return it, or replace it. The tech (Alex) said that when they designed the 5th Gen, they wanted to make it more of a consumer oriented machine, rather than the Rep 2 which was based on the original Replicator, aimed at hobbyists and tinkerers. As such, it isn't intended to be repaired in the field, other than replacing the extruder. So if my car breaks down I have to send it back to the factory? Bad paradigm if you ask me.

Hold time before speaking with anyone was 28 minutes, 32 seconds. I also got put on hold for around another 15 minutes after the initial explanation of symptoms and what had been done. Total call time 55:05.

I did extract some (potentially) useful information from him. I asked about the difference in default temperature, 215° for the 5th Gen and 230° for the Rep 2. He said that the Rep 2 does not necessarily "see" the nozzle temperature at the thermocouple, but that it was a little low and that was to compensate for it, and that the 5th Gen had a redesign where the thermocouple sees the actual nozzle temperature more accurately. Maybe so?

I asked about using Makerbot flexible filament, and he said that you can not use it in the 5th Gen as currently designed. Lovely.

I asked about the inoperable temperature tab in Makerbot for Desktop on the slice settings, and specifically said that we use nylon and PET in our Rep 2s and wanted to on the 5th Gen. He said that using any other filament than Makerbot brand would void the warrantee. He did mention that you can create a custome profile and save it to a *.json file and that is a way to specify a different temperature than default. I'll definitely have to try that.

I asked him how making the new machine build so much slower than the previous model was supposed to be an improvement? He said they continue to work on firmware updates. I personally speculate that there is some kind of issue with their acceleration profiles in firmware. I know for example, that building with the exact same GCode, our Z-Morphs are nearly twice as fast as our Lulzbots. But the Z-Morphs will definitely skip and slip on the X and Y when it tries to go too fast, and I have to slow things down sometimes to get a good build. The Lulzbots don't do that, and you can easily see that the acceleration is just smoother.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Here's a measurement I did this morning. I had written earlier that it takes "about" twice as long for the 5th Gen to heat up than the Rep 2, and had estimated the total heat time at around 5 minutes (preheat to 180° then final heat to 215°). I started both of them up at the same time, and watched the temperature indication. Bear in mind that the 5th Gen is only going for 180° and the Rep 2 is going for 230°, but I can still see how long it takes to get to 180.

At the 1:00 minute mark, the 5th Gen was 100° and the Rep2 was at 145°.

It took the 5th Gen 2:20 to reach 180° and the Rep 2 1:20. The Rep 2 Reached its 230° setpoint after 2:00 minutes.

----------


## American 3D Printing

I fiddled around with the *.JSON file today, it is just an ASCII text file you can edit in Notepad or equivalent.

Here is a snippet:




> {
>     "comment" : [
>      "This is a custom profile for MakerBot Slicer. Editing it will modify your",
>       "slice settings. For documentation on MakerBot Slicer parameters, see here:",
>       "http://www.makerbot.com/support/makerware/documentation/slicer"
>     ],
>     "version":"3.0.0",
> 
>     "layerHeightMinimum": 0.12,
> ...


So basically it looks like there are a lot more things you can specify outside the Makerbot for Desktop environment.

----------


## exit

i'm having multiple issues with our z-18. Support is somewhat helpful, depends on who you get. Its aggravating sitting on hold for 45min to get someone who cant help you. 

They told me to make my own custom profile to solve problem of extruder paths being to wide and not making a complete layer on 100% infill. Well now for some reason after a certain height, the extruder head is not high enough and is dragged across the previous layer. it pretty much just remelts that already deposited plastic in the direction its moving. Interior hole look like crap, now exterior surface of circles are getting worse. Support wont respond to any emails, so I cant send pictures of issues.  :Mad:

----------


## American 3D Printing

Thanks for sharing that, exit.

My customer brought the original shipping carton to me on Friday, so I am getting ready to send this 5th gen back to get the bed leveling issue resolved. In the mean time I am continuing side-by-side builds of the exact same models with the Rep 2 for speed and quality comparisons. Again, all settings exactly the same for both the 5th gen and the Rep 2. I'll try to get that stuff posted up later today or perhaps tomorrow, depending on how much time I have.

Just to be totally clear, I did not start this thread to bash Makerbot. I am trying to be completely fair and factual, with everything fully documented so that anyone can do the exact same tests and get the exact same results, just like any science. To that end, if anyone wants the STLs I'm using, I'll be happy to share them, along with any pertinent info on settings such as scale, rotation, raft, support, etc. I really wish the 5th Gen worked better. I can't get the Rep 2 any more from my distributor, just the three 5th Gen models and the Rep 2X.

I do want to try to build with some Taulman nylon and T-Glase now that I know I can bump up the temperature in the *JSON file. I had previously sold a roll of nylon to one of my customers who has a 5th gen, and it would be nice if I could help him use that material. It will be interesting to see how to get it to stick, I use PVA glue directly on the Rep 2 acrylic build plate on the Rep 2, and the same PVA glue on the PE tape on the glass bed of the Lulzbot TAZs.

----------


## exit

Capture1.jpg photo.jpg

Well, after spending at least 1 hr each day last week on the phone, I think I finally talked to someone who knew how to answer all my questions. When I called Friday, I told him he wasn't getting off the phone until he looked at the pictures I emailed and I had an answer for causes. 

1. Z-calibration  -   The new firmware 1.3 has a Z calibration problem on the Z-18's. This was messing up everything, from the raft to the printed model itself. They said new firmware should be out this week, maybe even tomorrow. Hopefully will fix this. Also should fix the circle problem. 
2. Paths not touching  -  Still not sure on this one, but I had to make a custom profile to correct for the issue. 
3. Raft problems -  Sometimes the base layer pattern of the raft was to large and would leave a corner off (see bottom left of blue picture). It is showing the second layer of the raft as overhanging, and we all know this does not work out well. An example is in the corner of raft in the printed pic. Also, that is supposed to be a circle with 3 circles inside of it. I had to decrease the "square wave" pattern size to reduce this effect, you would think makerware would do this automatically to compensate for this issue.

----------


## Assaf

Hi jeff,
Congrats for finding the *.json file, it took our experience of printing to another level, there are some unfortunate design problems in the way it is designed but it trully enable you to get much better prints.
We are using the custom profiles to print dana bloom jewelry  and as you can see her jewelry do not have the regular engineering design so are not so simple to 3D print.

The problems that I hope someone in Makerbot (hopefully this thread has drawn their attention) will fix someday and will sure make my life and anybodies else who uses Makerware are the following: 
Speed,Support,temp and raft should not be controlled in the profile or more exact: those setting in the profile should be able to be overwriten as in the standards profiles.

Regards,
Assaf
3d Printing Center Israel

----------


## curious aardvark

Um - so a near $3000 (2899) printer doesn't have a heated bed ? 

Wow. And looking at all the other stuff - I'm glad I bought a clone of makerbot replicator and not an actual makerbot. 
As far as I can see, everything on mine is better or easier to use and fix. 

Love the review - totally even handed and just goes to show that spending a lot more money doesn't necessarily get a better printer.

One thing - I've tried adjusting the json files for the default templates in makerware 2.4. I simply wanted the default print head to be lefty, not righty. 
Didn't work - I only changed a 0 to a 1. Just didn't effect the software at all. Which .json file should I be changing to make a change in the default templates ?
I think I tried every file I could find.

----------


## American 3D Printing

> Hi jeff,
> Congrats for finding the *.json file, it took our experience of printing to another level, there are some unfortunate design problems in the way it is designed but it trully enable you to get much better prints.
> We are using the custom profiles to print dana bloom jewelry  and as you can see her jewelry do not have the regular engineering design so are not so simple to 3D print.
> 
> The problems that I hope someone in Makerbot (hopefully this thread has drawn their attention) will fix someday and will sure make my life and anybodies else who uses Makerware are the following: 
> Speed,Support,temp and raft should not be controlled in the profile or more exact: those setting in the profile should be able to be overwriten as in the standards profiles.
> 
> Regards,
> Assaf
> 3d Printing Center Israel


Hey Assaf, glad it was helpful. I checked out your web site, but I can't read Hebrew  :Frown: 

I honestly don't know how much can be "fixed" with this 5th Gen design.

Certainly my bed leveling issue is likely simply a defect in this particular machine, rather than a design flaw. I do see a philosophical problem with their approach to these 5th Gen models, where the user has less and less control over the build parameters, and worse, the philosophy of "no user serviceable parts". If they are going to go that direction, they better have a nationwide network of repair centers in place, ready to turn around the machines very quickly.

Another disturbing bit of news is an email I received from my Makerbot reseller team. I don't have it in front of me for the actual verbiage, but they are REALLY pushing Makercare, which is basically like those pricey extended warranties they try to sell you whenever you buy an appliance or TV and so forth. The latest paradigm is that you HAVE to buy Makerware to get phone support, and that if you don't you can only get email support, and furthermore if you don't buy Makercare, you only get any support at all for 60 days after purchase.

With those kinds of strategic decisions, it bodes well for Makerbot's competitors.

----------


## American 3D Printing

> Um - so a near $3000 (2899) printer doesn't have a heated bed ? 
> 
> Wow. And looking at all the other stuff - I'm glad I bought a clone of makerbot replicator and not an actual makerbot. 
> As far as I can see, everything on mine is better or easier to use and fix. 
> 
> Love the review - totally even handed and just goes to show that spending a lot more money doesn't necessarily get a better printer.
> 
> One thing - I've tried adjusting the json files for the default templates in makerware 2.4. I simply wanted the default print head to be lefty, not righty. 
> Didn't work - I only changed a 0 to a 1. Just didn't effect the software at all. Which .json file should I be changing to make a change in the default templates ?
> I think I tried every file I could find.


Hi curious aardvark, I am sorry but I do not know the answer to that question. It seems possible that the only *.JSON file that you can edit might be custom ones rather than the defaults? Plus it isn't clear that the slicing engine is capable of making a mirror image, you'd probably be better off doing that in whatever software created your 3D model.

As for the price point, I have a suspicion as to why it went higher, when on the outside it looks like their gross COGS are pretty much the same as the Rep 2.

Having worked in electronics product manufacturing for many decades, the new product team would sit around in meetings and make decisions such as price points. One of the tidbits I picked up from the marketing folks is as long as your product was somehow perceived as newer, better, unique from the competition or what have you, you could introduce it at a higher price point and that would set the perceived value of the item. It was mostly psychology, and had little to do with actual costs. A practical aspect to this was setting more margin so as to allow for discounts for distribution and commissions for salespeople and manufacturer's reps.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Here are a couple pictures showing the new extruder side by side with the old one. The only outward differences are that the new one has more fins on the heatsink and they are thinner, and the plastic idler has a slightly different profile.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Next are some more side-by-side builds. Below is a scanned customer. Her mother in law was going to give that to her husband for their first wedding anniversary. When you drop the full size scan into Makerware, it is well over 1,600mm tall, so you click on "maximum size" in from the scale function and it goes to 150mm tall. You can see the build time at 1 hour 53 minutes.



Oddly, in Makerbot for Desktop, when you click "Maximum Size" for scale, it scaled it to 145mm tall, even though the published specs say Z can go to 150mm. Huh? Anyway you can see it took 2 hours and 46 minutes.



Next, side by side comparison of build quality. Note that I am now using genuine Makerbot filament on the 5th Gen, and aftermarket Filament Central Chinese filament on the Rep 2. As always, the 5th Gen is on the left and the Rep 2 is on the right.



The artifacts on the inside of her boots on the Rep 2 model seems likely caused by a lack of extruder retraction when going from one leg to the other. The 5th Gen, by virtue of the extruder design always does a Z-lift whenever it does a retraction, but can do the Z-lift much more quickly because it is using the extruder motor rather than the Z-axis motor. All our other printers have enough of the extruder and hobbed wheel (or bolt) visible enough that it is obvious when the slice has called for a retraction, however you can never see that on the Rep 2 because the hobbed wheel is hidden behind the heatsink. On the 5th Gen it's easy enough to see because of the Z-lift.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Newest problem is the auto Z-home. As previously mentioned, before each and every build it goes through this time consuming bit of finding Z-home, and now it is starting to get intermittently wrong. In other words, some builds it gets it right, other builds you get this from too much Z, and in other cases you get too little Z and the extruder can't extrude because it is pressing too hard on the build surface. You get that familiar "click click click" of not being able to pull the filament through.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Well, I packed up that 5th Gen on Tuesday Sept 9th and dropped it off for shipping yesterday the 10th. I sent along this letter:




> _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.
> ...


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.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Here are some more head to head comparisons of the exact same build. This is a 100mm bust of a scan of one of our customers. In the 5Th Gen it takes 9:06.



Same exact build, all parameters identical, it takes 5:47 in the Rep 2. BTW, if anyone's wondering why I'm building with him tilted up like that, it's so I don't have a bunch of support to have to clean up under the brim of his hat, all the support is on the back where it is less noticeable and easier to remove.



Here they are side by side. Notice the voids in the 5th Gen build on the left! And again, this is with genuine Makerbot filament and a brand new smart extruder.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Next we have a scan of a carved wooden bear, to which I added a little sign that my wife thought was funny. The builds are scaled to 60mm tall. You can see the 5th Gen took 1:13.



Same build, same parameters in the Rep 2 took 50 minutes:



Again, side by side, the 5th Gen build seems to have some voids. Also, it isn't bridging as well under the sign, although it is hard to see from this angle. Note that this particular build is NOT Makerbot filament, it is from Filament Central, however I am using the exact same spool of filament on each of these two builds.

----------


## American 3D Printing

I have lots more pictures, with build times, etc., however after a while it kind of comes from the department of redundancy department. All of them show pretty much the same thing - the 5th Gen is slower and seems to have a lower build quality than the Rep 2, all when using the exact same settings on both machines.

One other important difference is that I am using Makerware for Desktop (version 3 point something) on the 5th Gen, because that's all that will run it, and I am using Makerware 2.2 point something on the older 32 bit laptop that's running the Rep 2.

When the 5th Gen is returned, I will certain repeat a couple of these builds to see if there is any difference whatsoever with the initial results. For the record, the firmware in the 5th Gen is 1.3.1.143, and was the 3rd update we had in the month or so we had the machine.

The Makerbot web site insists that the 5th gen has wireless capability, however I never discovered how to use it. I didn't try the ethernet, the machine was located too far from my router. I never figured out how to use the camera, and never figured out how to store slices into the 5th Gen internal memory (which presumably replaces the good old SD card on the front of the Rep 2). Perhaps after the machine is returned, I'll ping tech support again and see what they can share with me.

----------


## American 3D Printing

I got the following email today:




> Hello Jeff,
> 
> The repairs to your Replicator 5th Gen. are complete,  and is currently being prepared to be shipped back to you. With your  bot, you will receive a detailed service report along with test print(s)  made on your machine. If you have any other questions or concerns feel  free, to contact us.
> 
> Best,
> MakerBot Support
> 
> 
> ref:_00D30W6XV._50013l6IFg:ref

----------


## Assaf

> Um - so a near $3000 (2899) printer doesn't have a heated bed ? 
> 
> Wow. And looking at all the other stuff - I'm glad I bought a clone of makerbot replicator and not an actual makerbot. 
> As far as I can see, everything on mine is better or easier to use and fix. 
> 
> Love the review - totally even handed and just goes to show that spending a lot more money doesn't necessarily get a better printer.
> 
> One thing - I've tried adjusting the json files for the default templates in makerware 2.4. I simply wanted the default print head to be lefty, not righty. 
> Didn't work - I only changed a 0 to a 1. Just didn't effect the software at all. Which .json file should I be changing to make a change in the default templates ?
> I think I tried every file I could find.


Hi Curious Aardvark (I am learning English all the time, thanks for this cute animal name  :Wink:  )
From our experience, you do not need to play with the default head. just set your settings for the head you want and choose using the UI of the makerware what toolhead to use to print your objects.
I think this is the right way to handle this issue and not choosing in the profile the toolhead to be used.

Assaf

----------


## Assaf

> Hey Assaf, glad it was helpful. I checked out your web site, but I can't read Hebrew 
> 
> I honestly don't know how much can be "fixed" with this 5th Gen design.
> 
> Certainly my bed leveling issue is likely simply a defect in this particular machine, rather than a design flaw. I do see a philosophical problem with their approach to these 5th Gen models, where the user has less and less control over the build parameters, and worse, the philosophy of "no user serviceable parts". If they are going to go that direction, they better have a nationwide network of repair centers in place, ready to turn around the machines very quickly.
> 
> Another disturbing bit of news is an email I received from my Makerbot reseller team. I don't have it in front of me for the actual verbiage, but they are REALLY pushing Makercare, which is basically like those pricey extended warranties they try to sell you whenever you buy an appliance or TV and so forth. The latest paradigm is that you HAVE to buy Makerware to get phone support, and that if you don't you can only get email support, and furthermore if you don't buy Makercare, you only get any support at all for 60 days after purchase.
> 
> With those kinds of strategic decisions, it bodes well for Makerbot's competitors.


Hi Jeff,
My site is in both languages: Hebrew and English, so you are welcome to visit us again  :Smile: 
I think this link will get you directly to the English version.
About Makerbot strategy, I am not sure it would be applied to all countries, I believe that at least in Israel the regulation authorities will not allow such behavior but I defiantly agree that Makerbot Gen 5 3D printers do not look as promising as at least I expected from them to be after they were bought by Stratasys.

----------


## wpilgrim

Really great thorough review.  Thank you very much!

----------


## American 3D Printing

> Really great thorough review.  Thank you very much!


You're welcome, and thank you.

BTW, we got the 5th Gen back from Makerbot, but they asked me to have the printer's owner be the one to unpack it, so I'm waiting for him.

I was down at MCAD for a 3D printing conference last week. MCAD is the Denver area authorized Stratasys reseller, they sell all the enterprise class machines like the Fortus and Objet and the low end ones like the Uprint and Mojo. I got chatting with the sales guy, and he (always trying to make a sale) mentioned that Stratasys has lowered the price of the Mojo to $6k. It used to be $10k. One of the things I have heard "on the street" is that Makerbot Rep2s were KILLING Mojo sales, so you can see where the price increase on the 5th Gen combined with the drop on the Mojo were probably tangentially related.

----------


## American 3D Printing

So the 5th Gen owner came in yesterday and I had him do the honors of unpacking it.

See the linked PDF of the service ticket, but I will also summarize:




> Reported problem: Unable to Level the Plate
> 
> Observed problem: Tape on lower left pulley
> 
> Action Taken: Replaced idler pulley, timing belt and belt clip; replaced xy gantry bracket; replaced z-stage assembly
> 
> Time to repair: 5


HUH???? First of all i KNOW for a fact that the only tape that was on that machine when I packed it up was the blue painter's tape on the build plate. What the heck is a "timing belt" and what would that have to do with leveling the build plate? What is a Z-stage assembly? Where is this lower left pulley? The only pulleys that are visible are around the TOP of the machine!

Anyhow, we set the machine up and proceeded to attempt to level the plate. The first thing the machine did was slam the extruderall the way to the left and then all the way to the back of the machine with this horrible sound of stepper motors attempting to move an immovable object. I quickly reached around the back and cut the power.

Try again, this time it did what it was supposed to do and went to the middle of the plate and found home. This time there was sufficient adjustment to get the LED to illuminate and say that the plate was level.

So to test it, I dropped a small object into Makerbot for Desktop, duplicated it 4x and place one copy on each of the four corners of the build plate. I loaded some genuine makerbot filament into the extruder and off we went (after the usual 15 minutes to heat up, find z home and then finish heating).

The plate was not even close to level, or properly homed. Two of the objects didn't come close to sticking, and the other two were jammed against the plate so no filament could come out.

So we went through the leveling process again (which takes a good 15 minutes in its own right, and of course you have to unload the filament for it, then reload when done).

Tried the 4 object build again, with the exact same result.

Next I simply observed where it was too high, too low etc. and after about 5 iterations and about an hour and a half of fiddling around, got it to where all four corners were about right. There is an additional problem though, in that whenever you go to start a build and it finds a new z home, it isn't very consistent, so sometimes the builds will stick and other times they won't, and yet other times the nozzle will be smashed up against the tape and nothing can come out and you hear that familiar clicking sound inside the extruder.

I had written about that issue (see prior post's copy of the letter I sent), but obviously either this wasn't addressed, or it is an inherent design flaw. I would speculate that this is why all the builds that come prloaded into internal memory are done on the very-forgiving Makerbot raft.

----------


## WayTooManyHobbies

Jeff,

Thanks you for the excellent review - it's been in depth, illuminating, and more than a little disturbing.  My company purchased a Replicator 2X about one year ago, but we passed on adding a Z18 because Makerbot refused to confirm (or deny) that it would run ABS.  Your review is confirming that as a good decision.

I feel like Makerbot has lost its way.  Our Replicator 2X remains a fine machine, but it certainly seems that the 5th generation machines are a step backward.  I've also been quite uncomfortable with the changes to Makerbot Desktop.  The slice function seems to be getting slower, the support for alternate materials seems worse, and the screen realestate given up to branding and on-line functions is disappointing.

Along with quite a few others who are reading this review, we look forward to any other information you care to share about the experience.  Thanks again!

----------


## Geoff

Wow, thanks again Jeff..

"Observed problem, tape on pulley" 

Wow, what a load of BS, this is becoming very reminiscent of a fancy car that has too many automated features being rushed out to market and causes customers a load of headaches. Like a car, they can cost a small fortune.

The only difference here, car manufacturers have to recall the cars mainly for safety reasons, where as Makerbot can give you the run-around, literally for as long as they like and there isn't anything anyone can really do about it.

A warranty means very little when the company both denies the problem and also doesn't even look into fixing it, which seems like what's happening here. 

With all that money, all that backing, all those people... How can they get this so wrong?

----------


## saifprints

Hello Jeff
Thank you for the excellent review.
I am a new makerbot 5th gen printer owner. We bought it just this month, so maybe the company looked at your review and others on the web and decided to do some modifications. I dont know. I do know that the replicator we bought has not given us any more trouble than anything else new would give to a newbie. Other than the completely non-existent customer support.
We unpacked the printer, and started fiddling around it. The first step was leveling of the bed. Went through without a hitch. 
Second was loading the filament. Now we got one from makerbot with the package, and it went into the attached spool holder without any difficulty. 
For different color, we went and bought us some PLA filament from amazon. We tried that, and the spool did not fit in the holder. Does that mean that makerbot absolutely will not allow to use non-makerbot accessories? Totally. This voids the warranty too. For this, I tried to get some support both from makerbot and the spool manufacturer. Zilch. No support from the manufacturer. And makerbot, you get pay per ticket support, unless you buy makercare. There was this excellent google group for makerbot, which they closed off. I did sign up for the new makerbot users group on google. This will be my support I guess.
We have been printing with this almost every day since it has come, and there have been some minor issues.
After 3 or 4 prints, the filament refuses to attach itself, and we have to change the blue tape we use on the bed.
Sometimes, changing filament, the filament refuses to load. Went back to google, found that one has to push the filament really hard, and keep pushing until it starts extruding. Not what it says on the LCD - to just push the filament until you feel the extruder pulling it in.
The spool holder does not accommodate any spools other than makerbot.

I have bought a ninjaflex filament, but havent yet figured out if the makerbot will print that without problem or not. I read that Rep2x, there is an extruder accessory which helps in printing with flexible filament. Any help or experience would be appreciated.

This has been my experience till now, since we received the machine around the 24 or 25th of september. 

thanks

----------


## American 3D Printing

I've been really busy so I haven't been back here in a week or so.

Waytoomanyhobbies, you're welcome, and I tend to agree.

Geoff, thanks for following along and commenting. I appreciate it.

Saifprints, you can download and print a tabletop spoolholder that I designed that will fit Makerbot's old 2kg spools and Lulzbot spools from our account on the thingiverse here, and you can download one that i designed for Taulman spools (and also works for Filament Central spools) here.

As I wrote above, Makerbot support has shifted to a model where they really want you to buy their Makercare. I will say that in general, they have been (tried) to be helpful to me, and on a number of occasions they have sent me free replacement parts for our Rep 2s and instructions on how to perform the repair.

I seriously doubt anyone can build with Ninjaflex on a 5th Gen. After having dissected the extruder, I just don't see how that design will accept it. The Rep 2 might be able to be modified. I saw a video somewhere about how to modify the Rep 2 nozzle to accept Filaflex, which I believe is substantially similar to Ninjaflex. I had to buy a specially designed extruder for our Lulzbots to build with Ninjaflex. The issue with it is that you can't really "push" it because it is so flexible.

----------


## saifprints

Hello Jeff

I found on this blog, that they printed with ninjaflex on 5th gen printer. Also, more on the same blog. 

thanks

----------


## Assaf

Hi,
Here are my thoughts and questions...
I saw a post of MB in Linkedin that promote Gen 5 owners to buy a spare extruder, I find it disturbing and even kind of ridiculous - they sell their printers in the high prices range (some would even say overpriced) and except their customers to buy an extra extruder??? Its like an automobile company asking you when you buy your car to buy an extra motor... 

Sailprints, the pic shown in the blog showing prints of Ninjaflex cannot be considered (too my taste) a good print but I think they do suggest that with some tweaking of the profiles some good prints are achievable. 
Jeff, do you have first hand experience with Taulman Bridge or t-glase with the 5th Gen Makerbot?

----------


## American 3D Printing

> Hello Jeff
> 
> I found on this blog, that they printed with ninjaflex on 5th gen printer. Also, more on the same blog. 
> 
> thanks


Interesting, I am surprised that the guy got it to extrude at all. Ninjaflex is so limp you really can't "push" it like you can with a more rigid material like PLA.

----------


## American 3D Printing

> Hi,
> Here are my thoughts and questions...
> I saw a post of MB in Linkedin that promote Gen 5 owners to buy a spare extruder, I find it disturbing and even kind of ridiculous - they sell their printers in the high prices range (some would even say overpriced) and except their customers to buy an extra extruder??? Its like an automobile company asking you when you buy your car to buy an extra motor... 
> 
> Sailprints, the pic shown in the blog showing prints of Ninjaflex cannot be considered (too my taste) a good print but I think they do suggest that with some tweaking of the profiles some good prints are achievable. 
> Jeff, do you have first hand experience with Taulman Bridge or t-glase with the 5th Gen Makerbot?


Hi Assaf, no. After Makerbot support told me that using ANYTHING other than genuine Makerbot PLA would void the warrantee, I have decided I don't want to do anything to my customer's machine that might void his warrantee.

----------


## American 3D Printing

I did find a crude workaround to the problem where the auto-homing at the beginning of each build doesn't work right.

Basically, you wait until the first layer is being laid down and observe it. If it looks okay, then leave it. But if it is too high and isn't sticking, you take a pair of slipjoint pliers and turn the threaded rod (from the bottom where the threads will never be used). Same thing when it is too close and jammed against the bed, not extruding, turn the rod the other way.

As viewed from above, clockwise on the rod reduces the Z gap and CCW increases it.

----------


## American 3D Printing

HOLY MOTHER OF NON-SUPPORT!!!!!!

Pardon the all-caps, but I just got this email from Makerbot:




> Thank you for working with MakerBot Support                 
>                          Case Number: 00222903                          
>                                        Hi there,   We haven't heard from you since the Technical Support Expert you were working with reached out about 10 days ago.
>   Has your issue been resolved? Let us know if there’s anything else  related to this issue which we can do to help. If you do not, this case  will automatically close in 5 days, at which point you’ll need to open a  new one in order to proceed. Please note that should you need to open a  new case due to inactivity you will need to provide us with case  #00222903 in order for us to relate that case with this one. If this is a  Single-Issue Support case, you will need to pay the $100 fee once more.
>   Best, MakerBot Support



*$100* for one support case? Who do they think they're kidding?????? How am I supposed to sell their gosh darn printers if they won't even stand behind their product when it is *DEFECTIVE*?????

----------


## wpilgrim

> HOLY MOTHER OF NON-SUPPORT!!!!!!
> 
> Pardon the all-caps, but I just got this email from Makerbot:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *$100* for one support case? Who do they think they're kidding?????? How am I supposed to sell their gosh darn printers if they won't even stand behind their product when it is *DEFECTIVE*?????


As much as this should surprise me…. It doesn’t, at least not with the type company Makerbot has morphed into.  What I find funny however is the fact that they can take days, and weeks to respond to support tickets, but if you don’t respond in two weeks then they shut it down and would ask for a repayment to reopen.

How about they refund the 100 if they don’t answer in a timely manner?  Or even a more novel idea, how about they don’t ask you to pay money to fix the broken thing you already paid money to own.  As much as I absolutely love my rep 2, I loathe what this company has turned into..

----------


## WayTooManyHobbies

I really actually feel bad when I look at our Rep2X churning out parts.  We passed on the 5th gen machines when it was time to add capability, and I don't see us going back to Makerbot.  The new software is poor, and the machines don't live up to the cost.

Incidentally, I teach evenings at a local University.  The Engineering department purchased several 5th gen machines, and for the last week one has been sitting idle with its detached extruder lying in the center of the build plate.

----------


## Geoff

> HOLY MOTHER OF NON-SUPPORT!!!!!!
> 
> Pardon the all-caps, but I just got this email from Makerbot:
> 
> *$100* for one support case? Who do they think they're kidding?????? How am I supposed to sell their gosh darn printers if they won't even stand behind their product when it is *DEFECTIVE*?????


Pure insanity...

----------


## richardphat

Wait and see chips implemented on makerbot filament spool....

----------


## LyalC52

have you experimented much with temperature?
I've been getting better results at 219C, thinking of going hotter

----------


## American 3D Printing

> have you experimented much with temperature?
> I've been getting better results at 219C, thinking of going hotter


That's interesting. No I haven't, as I had posted somewhere earlier in this thread I discovered that you can indeed call out different temperatures in the JSON file when you save a custom profile. As I had written earlier in this thread, when I asked the Makerbot tech support guy why the 5th gen defaults to 215°C instead of the 230°C that the Rep 2 defaults to, he told me that the temperature sensor (Makerbot uses thermocouples rather than the usual thermistors most other Rep Rap style printers use) was mounted in a different location and that on the 5th Gen, it is reading the actual extruder temperature, whereas on the Rep 2, it is "seeing" a cooler temperature than the nozzle itself, and thus the 230°C default was supposed to compensate for that.

Being the curious sort (you guys probably figured that out by now, didn't you?), I decided to measure the actual nozzle temperature on the Rep 2. While the Rep 2 was reporting 230°C, I placed my temperature probe up in between the nozzle and the insulating tape and measured:

230.2°C.

How about that? Goes to show ya, don't believe EVEYTHING those boys in tech support tell ya!  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

----------


## LyalC52

I'm running a print today at 220C
I think after reading your post I will jump to 225C next

This was sent via email earlier this month
http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2014/10...MaNyyrgFXhE%3D

----------


## LyalC52

ohhh and so far, I have yet to find any "stringy" issues

----------


## American 3D Printing

Thanks LyalC52, that's good info!

----------


## LyalC52

Here are my temp results:
White PLA on a 10lb spool, the best results were at 219C
Green and Cool Gray on 2lb spool, the best results were at 217C

when I ran the white at higher temps the shells started to get rough, never had any stringyness even at 225C
the green and cool gray had stringyness issues at 219C and the shells were rough.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Finally got a little time to process and upload some images. This thing is actually working worse now than when we sent it back to Brooklyn. I got one email saying they hadn't heard from me in however many days and were going to close the case, so Ipromptly replied (CCing support@makerbot.com of course) that no, the machine is NOT fixed, it still won't auto-level, and it still can't find Z-Home consistently. And now we start getting more and more error messages:

----------


## American 3D Printing

Funny thing about this one was, there was no jam or anything wrong with extrusion (at the time the message was displayed)

----------


## American 3D Printing

Maybe those pogo pins weren't the best way to connect the extruder?

----------


## DragonXtreme

1st post on this forum, been reading a lot here and I just wanted to add some of my observations and a post that is still under moderation at MB Blog. I still haven't gotten what I consider a great  3D print from the Z18 and nothing that even comes close to the 3D print objects that have at the shows and show on the website or even the large Margo print over at Bold Machines. Until 3.4 comes out to address some of the feed rates I am holding off on this venture being classified as a complete waste of money but I am hoping for some salvation that they can work it out.

This is the post I made on the Blog

_Just wanted to add this as I too have purchased a Z18 and have had issue after issue with the extruder, clicking, jamming, globing up, etc. This may help some but again it may not though I have gotten some mileage out of it on my side.

 First low and standard quality configs even with creating a custom config have a higher chance of problems through a print lasting more than 1 hour. High Res has given me the best, even though not what a call great quality and no where near the quality of parts they show on the website. 

Second, Filament thickness, using the default configs are most certainly causing issues with the extruders. I bought 16 rolls of Makerbot filament when I ordered the Z18. The filament thickness ranges from 1.62 mm to 1.91mm, this is a major difference in the default setting of 1.77 mm. I have measured the same roll and set the custom config to the size of the start and when I started noticing clicking or a jam measured the filament again and noticed that the filament diameter was larger than at the start. This has happened multiple times and from what I can deduce on my side a variation of .05-.09 mm will start a random clicking if the filament gets larger than the config setting. If the filament grows by more than .15 mm you are almost guaranteed a lot of clicking and possible jam. Since Makerbot PLA is the only thing allowed in these extruders it is hard to go to another source that may have better control on their filament tolerances. 

Third, if you have a Z18 and are using the bottom tray, there is an excessive drag to pull the filament to the top. locating the roll at the top of the unit an using a bearing carousel to feed the unit eliminates the drag click you may sometimes hear. Things get worse if your dragging and the filament thickens in regards to jamming. 

Fourth, also for the Z18, leaving the top on the bend in the tube on the top of the extruder causes a bind point and can push the extruder off its magnets for a second causing a break in connection. 

Fifth, use a custom config on everything you print, stay away from default. Some settings I use. 

FeedDiameter in the extruder profiles (measure your filament in several place, err on the mid range to minimize the starving or jamming. 

Feedrates in extrusion profiles, I have slowed all of these down, I get a better flow even if the extruder is dealing with varying filament thicknesses. 

Extruder temps, these can vary as well based on the filament but I have found 218-220 works better than the default 215. Z18 – set the build chamber temp to 35C, default configs do not even enable the build chamber heater. Even on small prints the heated chamber works better in my opinion._

----------


## American 3D Printing

So now, we get a new problem:

Underextrustion. Maddening intermittent underextrusion, with no obvious cause.

----------


## American 3D Printing

As I posted in this thread about Makerbot for Desktop 3.3 and firmware 1.4, when I tried to install firmware 1.4.0.188, this is what happened, repeatedly:





After about 4 tries an a wasted half hour, I gave up. Then, the next day I tried again, and instead of 1.4.0.188, it was simply 1.4.0, without the 188 at the end. And it worked. Nothing like deploying software without testing it.

----------


## American 3D Printing

The latest twist to the software saga happened last week. On Friday, I had a customer come in who needed an object scanned on the Makerbot Digitizer. After an embarrassing half hour or so of not being able to get Makerbot for Desktop to recognize the fact that the scanner was turned on and connected to the computer, the customer finally left.

Acting on a hunch, I uninstalled Makerbot for Desktop 3.3 and reinstalled Makerbot for Desktop 3.2, and presto bingo, all of a sudden the software now sees the scanner and I am able to do the customer's scan.

A couple days ago, I decided to fire up the printer and see what this new firmware did. I invoked Makerware for Desktop, I loaded an STL onto the print bed, and clicked Print.

Nothing happened.

Try again,

Still nothing.

Reboot computer, cycle power to the printer, try again.

No deal. Fire off angry email to Makerbot tech support, copying Bennt Mayrock, my reseller contact inside Makerbot. Within minutes the phone was ringing. Bennet thanked me for copying him. He explained that the email I was using, support@makerbot.com, was no long a valid email, as no one was monitoring it. Evidently, now you have to go through the form on their web site. Well, that's good to know. It would have been nice to have gotten some kind of automated warning email from them saying to stop using the support email. In all fairness, he was pretty apologetic, and I understand he's in sales, not in support. He also said that as a reseller, I am entitled to phone support, and all I have to do is identify myself as a reseller at the beginning of the phone chat with support. Very good to know.

But I still have a printer that won't print.

As above, acting on a hunch, I uninstalled Makerbot for Desktop 3.2, and reinstalled Makerbot for Desktop 3.3, and presto bingo, now the print button in active and I can communicate with the printer again! Glory be!

So I fired it up and after about 6-7 tries I finally got past all the homing errors and various sundry other error messages that would abort the build before it started, and got one going. Except it was about 200-300 microns too high and didn't stick. Grrrr. Okay, back to my twist the threaded bar with the pliers method of forcing a good z-home. I got the model to build, but there were tons of voids, still intermittently underextruding for no apparent reason.

To recap - Makerware for Desktop 3.2 will work with a Makerbot Digitizer, and 3.3 will not. Makerware for desktop 3.3 will work with the 5th Gen with firmware 1.4.0, but 3.2 will not.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Looks like Makerbot for Desktop 3.4 along with firmware 1.5 should fix a number of these problems. From the Makerbot web site:




> 3.4 Notes:
> 
>                                                              MakerBot  Desktop 3.4 is intended for use with Fifth Generation Firmware 1.5. For  improved experience, please update your firmware.
> 
>                                                                                  Bug Fixes and Improvements:
> 
>                                                              Improved print quality
> 
> Bug fix for Digitizer connectivity issues on Windows
> ...




I am particularly impressed that we can now (supposedly) set Z-home manually. It appears they're admitting that the automated homing using the hall effect sensor in the smart extruder doesn't work as well in real life as it was intended when it was conceived. Obvious somebody noticed that they hadn't thought to test 3.3 with their own Digitizer 3D scanner  :Stick Out Tongue:

----------


## American 3D Printing

We can't find where you can set Z-home manually. Plus we just got done clearing one extruder jam and then it jammed again. Grrrr.

----------


## Rolf

Hi,

We have been reselling Makerbot since the wooden, dual extruder, ABS "The Replicator" model, at least that's what the one in my bot-office says.  I wasn't around then.

This may go on for a while, but I plan to direct my comments mostly at our 5th gen Replicator, which is about to be RMAed back to Makerbot.

We only got it because we were heading to a show, for educators, last month (November 2014).  It had arrived a good while before, but I hadn't expected any issues from it, naively.  My sales manager brought it home to get to know, and soon brought it back in, saying that the Z-plate wouldn't get close enough to the extruder.

I gave it a cursory inspection, and the flex-cable was routed inside the rear frame of the printer, blocking the build plate.  I fixed that with a little tug on the cable, and started experimenting.

All of the things you noted in your series are identical with my printer.  I haven't printed that much with it.  I checked the logs today, and with 85 hours of printing, I've had 65 attempted prints and 18 successful.  I'm estimating, because a factory reset blanked those numbers for me.

I went from firmware 1.3x to 1.4 to 1.5.  The last update happened yesterday.

I set the Z-axis offset to the smallest gradient closer to the build plate. 80 microns, I think. I also had severe inconsistency with the extruder z-offset with each build.  Had the constant filament jam detections (every 5 minutes) with the 1.4 firmware. This hadn't happened with the 1.3 firmware.  After prints got started, they would go and go. I did some 15+ hour prints with the 1.3 firmware.  Not to say that the build quality was high, it was never very good, not as good as my our rep2.  I did experiment a bit with temperature and offset in custom slicer profiles, but never had a great result with the offset.

Interestingly, I had asked for the Z-offset to be a feature on the printer during a "conversation" I had via Makercare. I asked for it to be on the printer, though, so that you could fix things on the fly.

Since I'm dragging this out, I should sum up.

My extruder failed today.  Or so I thought.  I put my extra extruder on to verify.  Filament was no longer extruding from either extruder, unless I forced it in.  The printer had failed about halfway through a 100% "Owl" (you know the one), with a filament jam detect.

I had re-enabled the filament jam detect when I installed the 1.5 firmware.  I had it disabled with 1.4, because it prevented printing longer than 5 minutes. I had discussed this with Makercare.

This morning, I came in and discovered the problem.  Called Makercare and, while on hold, discovered that the "castle nut" on the xy-axis gantry no longer turned.  The shaft with the flat turns, but not the part that actually engages the extruder.  85 hours on the printer.

Notably, perhaps, this print was performed with a 80 micron (minimum setting) Z-offset toward the build plate.  The first layer looked outstanding.  Actually, and without hyperbole, it was the best print I have seen from the 5th gen replicator yet. It made it up about 3 inches, somewhere in the Owl's belly before complete failure.  I have that on the shelf with 3 50% size owls from another manufacturer sitting on it now.

Disjointed summary?

I am so glad this happened to me. Prior to today's failure, I already expanded our product line again.  We had been exclusive with Makerbot for a long time.  Then we opened things up just a little, but there was no real incentive for our inside sales staff to push customers in another direction with the Replicator 2 being available.

With the discontinuation of the Replicator 2 and availability of the 5th gen printers only, I have found superior alternatives and initiated the process of educating our sales staff that we need to steer our customers in different directions, immediately.

Thanks, Makerbot.

----------


## Rolf

You set the Z-axis manual offset in the makerbot desktop software.  There are a bunch of tabs, not immediately visible with cursory inspection.

----------


## wackyvorlon

I have an idea for a possible fix for the extruder. The upper extruder is almost entirely enclosed, I think that the fan which blows air on the hot end fins is only creating a recirculating air pocket. Kind of like what happens in the bed of a pickup truck with the tailgate up. Inevitably, this pocket will heat.

My idea is to add a couple vent holes in the upper extruder casing. This should make it behave like a venturi, and suck cool air in from above. Since I don't own a fifth gen Makerbot, I haven't had a chance to test the idea, though.

----------


## American 3D Printing

Sorry it has been so long since I've been able to revisit this thread. I swear, this is the ONLY vBullten forum (out of more than a dozen) that I belong to that won't shoot me an email when somebody posts in one of the threads I'm subscribed to.

Thanks for your posts, Rolf. very similar to our experiences, and almost everyone who's spent much time with a 5th Gen. We've still got ours, the customer who owns it had us put it up on Craigslist for him. We started out at $2,200 and have dropped it to $1,900. We've only had a couple of nibbles, we're about to drop it to $1,700. Since we're a reseller, Makerbot did give us another smart extruder after the 3rd one we were on started getting filament jams on every single build. I believe we had less than 20 hours on that one.

We have been using genuine Makerbot filament exclusively.

We are on the latest firmware and Makerbot for Desktop.

My 3D Systems sales guy is trying to tell us that the Cube 3 is Sooooooooo much better than the crappy 2nd gen Cube. After this experience with the 5th Gen Makerbot, we have told him that we'd be happy to bring in Cube 3s into our store, if only we can test drive one for a while and verify it REALLY is better.

----------


## Rolf

Hi Jeff.

I'm still a bit leery of 3d systems' products.  We have also had a rep soliciting us to give their products a shot.  We may do that.

Some very interesting stuff has been happening with regards to channel support at Makerbot, but I shouldn't talk about that at all.  Let's just say that I wasn't willing to sign anything.  That said, I also will not reveal any details, I think that would be somewhat unscrupulous.

On the other hand, I have fallen head over heels for Lulzbot.  Bought a Taz 4.1, have since upgraded it to Taz 5 standard with the new all metal Hexagon (fangtooth) tool head v2.  Good stuff!

Got a Taz 5 yet?  I also have my demo Mini sitting behind me in a box.  It's hard to get excited about it, since I have a taz 5 (well, I have no PEI, I like PET, so it's a Taz 5.(-1) I suppose).

I have literally zero desire to mess with Makerbot anymore.  Now the challenge seems to be reeducating customers.  Sometimes I really detest good marketing!

We should talk sometime, offline!

Rolf




> Sorry it has been so long since I've been able to revisit this thread. I swear, this is the ONLY vBullten forum (out of more than a dozen) that I belong to that won't shoot me an email when somebody posts in one of the threads I'm subscribed to.
> 
> Thanks for your posts, Rolf. very similar to our experiences, and almost everyone who's spent much time with a 5th Gen. We've still got ours, the customer who owns it had us put it up on Craigslist for him. We started out at $2,200 and have dropped it to $1,900. We've only had a couple of nibbles, we're about to drop it to $1,700. Since we're a reseller, Makerbot did give us another smart extruder after the 3rd one we were on started getting filament jams on every single build. I believe we had less than 20 hours on that one.
> 
> We have been using genuine Makerbot filament exclusively.
> 
> We are on the latest firmware and Makerbot for Desktop.
> 
> My 3D Systems sales guy is trying to tell us that the Cube 3 is Sooooooooo much better than the crappy 2nd gen Cube. After this experience with the 5th Gen Makerbot, we have told him that we'd be happy to bring in Cube 3s into our store, if only we can test drive one for a while and verify it REALLY is better.

----------


## American 3D Printing

> Hi Jeff.
> 
> I'm still a bit leery of 3d systems' products.  We have also had a rep soliciting us to give their products a shot.  We may do that.
> 
> Some very interesting stuff has been happening with regards to channel support at Makerbot, but I shouldn't talk about that at all.  Let's just say that I wasn't willing to sign anything.  That said, I also will not reveal any details, I think that would be somewhat unscrupulous.
> 
> On the other hand, I have fallen head over heels for Lulzbot.  Bought a Taz 4.1, have since upgraded it to Taz 5 standard with the new all metal Hexagon (fangtooth) tool head v2.  Good stuff!
> 
> Got a Taz 5 yet?  I also have my demo Mini sitting behind me in a box.  It's hard to get excited about it, since I have a taz 5 (well, I have no PEI, I like PET, so it's a Taz 5.(-1) I suppose).
> ...


Hi Rolf,

We were all excited to get the Hexagon toolhead for out TAZs (we have a 3 and a 4 in the store), but then we found out about having to reflash it for the hexagon thermistor values, PID values and MAXTEMP values. This would mean that we could either no longer build with our 0.5mm budaschonzzle, our Flexistruder, our Dually and our Flexy Dually. Since we need to use all these other toolheads all the time, that's kind of a non-starter for us. Yes, of course you can reflash back and forth every time you change toolheads, but that seems pretty awkward and error-prone. I spoke with my good friends up the road (Aleph Object's factory is a 2 hour drive from here, I've been there several times), and they do say they are working on hexagon-based Flexy, Dually, and Flexy Dually toolheads. But for now it seems a little hard to justify having a 3rd TAZ out on the retail floor.

Back on-topic, it seems the latest version of firmware for the 5th Gen has improved a few things as far as build quality and reliability. We are now on version 1.6.3.257. What it seems to have done is make the evaluation of what it thinks is a filament jam or a homing error extremely sensitive, so there are a ton of reported homing errors and reported filament jams, but no real filament jams, just reported ones. All you have to do is tell it to load filament and it starts extruding, then tell it to resume. If it weren't for the fact that it appears to do a retraction whenever it thinks there's a filament jam, you could skip the load filament-extrude step and go straight to resume.

My take on it is that they never should have been using a hall-effect sensor to determine hot-end position relative to the rest of the extruder housing. It just isn't precise (repeatable) enough to the resolution necessary for this particular application. I have designed proximity sensors using hall effect for many years, and they're great for applications that don't require as much precision as this application does. You can tell that this is the issue after 3 different smart extruders all act EXACTLY the same: They vary on what they decide is "touching" the bed from one measurement to the next, whether it is in the leveling process or the homing before each build.

Regarding channel support at Makerbot, we got a new "Channel Sales Account Manager" named Nicole Klein who is taking over from Bennet Mayrock (Bennett is still there, just not our main contact any more). After her initial email introducing herself on 2/25, I got another email from her saying they might remove us from their reseller program because we haven't been ordering enough stuff I guess. I wrote her back explaining that "hey, I just ordered several thousand dollars worth of Makerbot stuff and what the heck are you talking about?" We went back and forth via email a bit, then she called me (last week i think it was?) and we had a nice conversation. It was a productive call and we really appreciated it.

I think they're really trying hard there at Makerbot, but I also believe that they still have some technical/design issues with the 5th gen printers, mostly related to the smart extruder and how they're trying to make it do something that right now, is past the limit of this design approach. A hall effect sensor just isn't precise enough for this application and you just can't change the laws of physics!

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## American 3D Printing

Well, today we downloaded and installed firmware 1.7.0.274, and (while I hate to introduce more than one variable at a time) Makerbot for desktop 3.6.0.76. We are on our 4th (albeit small) build in a row with zero homing errors and zero filament jams. Knock on wood, we'll see how it goes, but this is better than we've sen since we started running this thing back in August. We've even entertained the idea of buying it off this guy, now we'll have to think about it even harder.

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## mastawee

Had numerous issues with 5th Gen for a year. Needless to say, currently with 3.6 and the latest print head (3weeks old), I am getting some excellent prints on .2mm and .1mm. If you have an older head, they have issues. Smooth extrusion and no under extrusion, brittle prints or clicking. Also, I picked up some Build Tak sheets to print on and all my non-raft prints grab like crazy to the build plate. No peeling or curling.

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## American 3D Printing

> Had numerous issues with 5th Gen for a year. Needless to say, currently with 3.6 and the latest print head (3weeks old), I am getting some excellent prints on .2mm and .1mm. If you have an older head, they have issues. Smooth extrusion and no under extrusion, brittle prints or clicking. Also, I picked up some Build Tak sheets to print on and all my non-raft prints grab like crazy to the build plate. No peeling or curling.


We're still having issues with the extruder finding proper Z home consistently (this is the 3rd smart extruder, November 2014 vintage), but yeah, firmware 1.6 has some tangible improvements, both in build quality, and in that silly homing business it does at the start of each build. Now, instead of taking about 13 minutes, it's closer to 4-5 minutes and most of that is heating it up rather than that "sneaking up" on Z home. We still get false filament jams a lot, and homing errors, but not nearly as often as before. It looks like they really are trying to fix the technical issues.

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## Roberto

Hi there,
new Firmware 1.7 is what you should install & use together with 3.6 Desktop.
Homing and others are much faster now.

It's been there for a while - I'm surprised you didn't get it by now.

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## American 3D Printing

> Hi there,
> new Firmware 1.7 is what you should install & use together with 3.6 Desktop.
> Homing and others are much faster now.
> 
> It's been there for a while - I'm surprised you didn't get it by now.


We installed 1.7.0.274 on 4/3/15. We are using Makerbot for Desktop 3.6.0.76, installed that same day. I wrote about the faster homing in post #115 above  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

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## pa9k

Hi Jeff!

Great review, I very much enjoyed reading this. We got a z18 here at work many months ago and I encountered many of the same issues you did. It felt much more like an early access, trial program than it did a released to consumer product. But I will give credit where credit is due, the performance and reliability of this machine has improved dramatically since we first fired it up. I wanted to touch on a couple of the things you had mentioned previously. 

First, you mentioned it is very hard to attach a new extruder to the carriage due to lining up the "castle nut" gear thing on the extruder itself and the carriage. If you go to utilities -> attach smart extruder on the printer control panel it will spin that gear on the carriage side until the extruder snaps into place.

Secondly you mentioned you couldn't find or figure out the wifi. It works (Im not sure how well, we have had many issues with ours and ditched it long ago) in theory at least. You must have your printer connected to your pc (which must be connected to the wifi network you wish to connect the printer to) via the usb cable. Then through Makerbot desktop its under devices -> device preferences -> and then network or wifi or something like that.

So I said we ditch the idea of connnecting via wifi, and the location our printers in ethernet or usb is not an option. So we use a USB flash drive. I know you had mentioned they removed the sd card, but I dont think I heard you mention the usb port at all. I assume all 5th gens have them, our z18 certainly does. 

This brings me to my next item. The camera. The only way to view it is to have the printer connected via wifi, ethernet, or usb (cable from printer to computer.) The camera is a cool feature I guess, it is really nice if your doing long prints and leave it unattended, you can check in on it. The camera is at a really dumb angle though and you can hardly see anything (other than the inside of the printer) until it has printer has printed a few inches in height. The resolution is really bad on the camera too, something like 300x300. 

My last point id ninja flex. Im not gonna say we used it (we definitely have never used it, after all it voids your warranty) but I did have someone who works at makerbot say theu use it all the time with good results. It seems it would like a higher temp, much slower speeds, and a little more overlap of the shells. Thats just what I read on the internet, remember we have never used it on our machine because makerbot said no.

I dont want to sound like I'm disagreeing with you at all, just wanted to provide a little insight from the experiences I've gone through.

One last thing, the false filament jams. We turned off filament jam detection, as I'm sure you've figured out to do by now. But we've also made a few filament filters. Basically a shell with some foam inside which you saturate with mineral oil to help the filament feed through the long long tube up to the top. Seems to have helped a little with print quality as I think its feeding more reliably now, but I'm still scared to turn the jam detection back on.

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## American 3D Printing

> Hi Jeff!
> 
> Great review, I very much enjoyed reading this. We got a z18 here at work many months ago and I encountered many of the same issues you did. It felt much more like an early access, trial program than it did a released to consumer product. But I will give credit where credit is due, the performance and reliability of this machine has improved dramatically since we first fired it up. I wanted to touch on a couple of the things you had mentioned previously.


Thank you for the kind words pa9k  :Smile: 




> First, you mentioned it is very hard to attach a new extruder to the carriage due to lining up the "castle nut" gear thing on the extruder itself and the carriage. If you go to utilities -> attach smart extruder on the printer control panel it will spin that gear on the carriage side until the extruder snaps into place.


True, they added that feature with one of the firmware updates.




> Secondly you mentioned you couldn't find or figure out the wifi. It works (Im not sure how well, we have had many issues with ours and ditched it long ago) in theory at least. You must have your printer connected to your pc (which must be connected to the wifi network you wish to connect the printer to) via the usb cable. Then through Makerbot desktop its under devices -> device preferences -> and then network or wifi or something like that.


Oh, we found it all right, but could never get it to work. That was a couple updates ago. Maybe they fixed it?




> So I said we ditch the idea of connnecting via wifi, and the location our printers in ethernet or usb is not an option. So we use a USB flash drive. I know you had mentioned they removed the sd card, but I dont think I heard you mention the usb port at all. I assume all 5th gens have them, our z18 certainly does.


Yes the 5th Gen has one on the front. We simply use inexpensive laptops as printservers for each of our printers.




> This brings me to my next item. The camera. The only way to view it is to have the printer connected via wifi, ethernet, or usb (cable from printer to computer.) The camera is a cool feature I guess, it is really nice if your doing long prints and leave it unattended, you can check in on it. The camera is at a really dumb angle though and you can hardly see anything (other than the inside of the printer) until it has printer has printed a few inches in height. The resolution is really bad on the camera too, something like 300x300.


Our started taking a picture of the completed build a couple of updates ago. Seems a little silly, but there you have it.




> My last point id ninja flex. Im not gonna say we used it (we definitely have never used it, after all it voids your warranty) but I did have someone who works at makerbot say theu use it all the time with good results. It seems it would like a higher temp, much slower speeds, and a little more overlap of the shells. Thats just what I read on the internet, remember we have never used it on our machine because makerbot said no.


We build with Ninjaflex every day on our Lulzbot TAZs, but they require a special extruder because you can't push it without it being completely enclosed in a tube or pathway. If you look at how the Makerbot smart extruder is designed, it would be absolutely impossible to build with ninjaflex (or filaflex) without extensive modification of the smart extruder. BTW, you build with ninjaflex at 220-230°C, and typically 30-45mm/sec. You also need extensive retraction on travel moves as it oozes like crazy.




> I dont want to sound like I'm disagreeing with you at all, just wanted to provide a little insight from the experiences I've gone through.


No, indeed the whole reason for forums like this is for everyone to share their collective experiences. I have tried to be as objective as possible in this thread and simply report what we've observed. Your input is greatly appreciated!  :Wink: 




> One last thing, the false filament jams. We turned off filament jam detection, as I'm sure you've figured out to do by now. But we've also made a few filament filters. Basically a shell with some foam inside which you saturate with mineral oil to help the filament feed through the long long tube up to the top. Seems to have helped a little with print quality as I think its feeding more reliably now, but I'm still scared to turn the jam detection back on.


I will give Makerbot credit for giving the user the ability to resume a build after the thing stops due to either a real or false filament jam. Reprap style machines just keep on going if you don't notice and intervene right away and then you have a failed build.

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## curious aardvark

So the big question pa9k
Would you buy another makerbot 5th gen - knowing what you do now and knowing how many other printers there are in the same price bracket ?

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## American 3D Printing

> So the big question pa9k
> Would you buy another makerbot 5th gen - knowing what you do now and knowing how many other printers there are in the same price bracket ?


I did not know there were many other printers in the Z18's $6,500 price bracket? I think the Stratasys Mojo is the only other one that comes to mind right off the bat at around $6k. The Fusion 3D is another (relatively) large format FDM machine that sells for around $4k, and Titan Robotics is working on a range of large format FDM machines ranging from $6-10k.

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## curious aardvark

most are probably cheaper. 
Wanhao have got some large volume machines out as have the dutch Builder firm. 
And don't forget there are some pretty big delta machines around that would give the same build volume.  

Wanhao duplicator 5=305mm L x 205mm W x 605mm H for about half the cost of the z18
Big Builder=220 x 210 x 664 mm -= a bit smaller - but it does have a clever one nozzle dual extruder going for it. 
Both the above build a good bit taller tha the z18 if not quite as wide. 

What I'm basically saying is the makerbots are massively over priced for what you get - so would you genuinely buy another one ?

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## pa9k

> So the big question pa9k
> Would you buy another makerbot 5th gen - knowing what you do now and knowing how many other printers there are in the same price bracket ?


Well it was totally out of my control. I have been tasked with making this thing work. The biggest reason we got a z18 was because of the large build volume. We are in the aftermarket performance auto parts industry and we build some pretty large things. Another reason was their customer support. They are available whenever we need them and usually offer a quick remedy to whatever issue we are having.

I think we were all taken by surprise with all the issues we were having out of the gate. But we also came from using a u-print abs printer where it was very much just press a button and let it go. Printing on the makerbot requires some thought and fine tuning.

Now, that we have learned alot about the machine and new firmwares and softwares and new extruders have found their way here, I would not be opposed to us buying another z18 at some point.

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## curious aardvark

Cool - worth knowing :-)

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## American 3D Printing

> I think we were all taken by surprise with all the issues we were having out of the gate. But we also came from using a u-print abs printer where it was very much just press a button and let it go. Printing on the makerbot requires some thought and fine tuning.


Our Stratasys reseller keeps wanting us to upgrade to a Mojo or U-Print, and I keep asking for a demo (test drive) and they just say "trust us, they're so much better". Well, in my experience every manufacturer claims they're the best, blah blah blah. Our 3D Systems guy insists that the 3rd gen cube is so wonderful. Zortrax keeps bugging us to become Zortrax resellers.

So describe the U-Print and why it is worth so much more than all these desktop machines? I've been told the material is quite expensive. How much does it actually cost?

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## pa9k

> Our Stratasys reseller keeps wanting us to upgrade to a Mojo or U-Print, and I keep asking for a demo (test drive) and they just say "trust us, they're so much better". Well, in my experience every manufacturer claims they're the best, blah blah blah. Our 3D Systems guy insists that the 3rd gen cube is so wonderful. Zortrax keeps bugging us to become Zortrax resellers.
> 
> So describe the U-Print and why it is worth so much more than all these desktop machines? I've been told the material is quite expensive. How much does it actually cost?


We have an older u-print by dimension, not sure the model. It has really good print quality, and is very consistent and reliable. Our model is also a dual extruder with dissolvable support material in the second extruder. With the u-print its basically just drop the stl into the software and press print and you can walk away knowing that you will come back to a successfully finished print. 

The material is extremely expensive (dont know the number off the top of my head but somewhere around 10x the cost of makerbot pla). That's the whole reason we started looking for a new printer. And they (idk if they still have this) have some sensors on the filament spools that prevent you from using third party filaments. We've had some errors with our spool holders saying the spool is empty and stopping the print when there's still over half a spool of filament left. That's a lot of money to throw out. 

So my thoughts are if your looking for a printer that's really easy for everyone to use and aren't exactly worried about the cost of the material, the u print is a good choice. 

As i said though our printer is many years old and maybe they have changed or improved on a lot of these things since then.

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## johnschneider89

I'm not sure if it was mentioned in here before, but Simplify3D has made all of the difference in our print quality. Don't get me wrong, MakerBot Desktop is OK, but we had some major print quality issues on large flat surfaces. And support material? Giant pain to remove. Since switching to Simplify3D we've had *much* better quality prints and support material pretty much falls off once the print it done. Our Z18 and 5th Gen have gone from our least used printers to our MOST used printers.

Here's a picture showing the difference in print quality.

2015-04-15 08.48.24.jpg

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## curious aardvark

yeah s3d really does work. 
The infill currently is crap but I tend to substitute a lot of shells if I want something really strong - or go back to makerware desktop, but that's now a last resort.

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## American 3D Printing

Quick update - we finally sold that 5th gen, it went for $1,400. Amazingly, less than 2 weeks after selling it, we get ANOTHER customer who wants us to sell his 5th Gen (and digitizer) on consignment.

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