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.

[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.

[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.

[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



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.

[Geoff]

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

[papabur]

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

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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.