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

[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...

[American 3D Printing]

Thanks Tim! How's your Form 1 doing?

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.