A couple of prototypes of a quick fix for our Makerbot Fifth Gens. The new spool holder design appears to deliver better prints and less extruder jams.
If the printers worked as they should you could have printed spool holders. #justsaying your bigger benefit is probably that you can now use generic spools.
Haha agree. I’m not a Makerbot fan, but it is good to have $8K actually printing(?) rather than sitting as paperweights. We also run 5 UP!s, 2 ZCorps, a uPrint SE and an Objet24, but the Makerbots do get used by students when we’re busy (and they are actually working).
Ahhh gen5 the windows vista of 3d printers… you should share the changes you made so others may be able to improve their situation if they have problems.
@Michael_Scholtz more like Windows me… Vista actually work, it just sucked. Windows me crashed constantly.
@Nathan_Walkner yep the “smart” extruder is definitely the real culprit, have had to completely strip and run a drill through them to fix the clogs. I run an E3D at home and the difference is remarkable.
I’m hoping the fix isn’t a red herring and I know they will jam again, but the original spool placement does cause a large amount of friction on the filament so I’m hopeful it makes some improvement. Only time will tell.
@Camerin_hahn
It’s Windows8 that works but just sucks. ME was a train wreck but at the time we had windows2000 to see us through. As for the extruder on the MB on my printers the difference between a barrel that’s solid metal and one that has a ptfe liner is day and night. The solid metal ones clog like @Nathan_Walkner said. I managed to source a meter of 2mm id 3mm od ptfe tube and put that inside my barrels now
I did drill my own ones till I found a supplier for them. Its even harder than it sounds. Used m5 threaded rod would drill it and had a 1in5 success rate also only had 4mm od ptfe so that left a 0.5mm tollerance till cutting into the thread. Dont miss having to do that.