5th Gen - Review and Head to Head with Rep 2

[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!

[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?