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

[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.

[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

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!

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.