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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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...

[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).

[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.

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.

[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?

[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?

[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"