I’m an unfortunate owner of the Makerbot Z18. I was so excited for this printer and pre-ordered it as soon as it was available. I own the Thingomatic, Replicator, and Replicator 2X I thought that this printer would be a great addition to my Makerbot collection. I immediately started having problems with the print quality. Extruder was constantly clicking, filament feed issues, inconstant leveling, surface artifacts, etc… I was not going to pay the extra $$$ for Makercare. Makerbot’s tech support is beyond horrible because they are afraid to admit that there are fundimental design issues with the printer and smart extruder. I ordered a 3 pack of extruders hoping to solve the extruder issue. After having waited for over a month for my replacement extruders to arrive the first extruder was bad right out of the box. Makerbot only warranties the extuders 2 months after ship date, so if you buy a 3 pack test them all because I doubt Makerbot does. The new extruders made no difference. I was almost ready to give up and rework the entire top end of the machine and replace the electronics because I’m not going to buy Maker Care, but before I do that I decided to do some experments printing ABS. ABS is my plastic of choice because of its strength and work-ability with acetone. I took some kapton tape and covered the build platform with it and applied some ABS acetone mixture to it with a paper towel rubbing until the acetone is evaporated. I mounted a roll of Octave ABS filament so that it feeds into the top feed. I set the extruder temp to 225C and chamber to 48C. I turned off the PLA cooling fan. There is a bug in the Makerbot firmware that causes a timeout when waiting for the chamber to get to temp. (Error 1001: Toolhead not heating), so you might have to restart a few times until the chamber gets to temp. I’ve attached some photos from my experiments. The printer took 13 hours to print the teapot (3 shell 10% fill). I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see the teapot had printed without major issues. The surface quality is better then anything else I have ever printed on this printer. I really think that Stratasys had Makerbot intentionally neuter this machine’s capability. The Kapton tape does not stick to well to the build platform tape, I’m going to try to add a sheet of aluminium or stainless to the build platform and see how well that works.
Thank you for the informative post Ryan. I did not know that the Z18 had a heated chamber, although it is obviously enclosed. I have spent some (not so) quality time with one of our customer’s 5th Gen, and wrote a detailed review and head to head with the Rep 2 on the 3D Print Board here: http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.php?5039-5th-Gen-Review-and-Head-to-Head-with-Rep-2 Feel free to add your story, it’s always good to add to the collective knowledge base from first hand experience rather than manufacturer’s propaganda.
If a printer has an enclosure for the print area and uses a heated bed, does that count as a heated build chamber? I do not know if that is the case for this one or not, but I wanted to ask.
Hi Nathaniel, I would say yes. Our Z-Morphs have a heated bed and are enclosed and it really helps with large builds. Don’t forget the heat being emitted from the extruder, that adds to the heat withing the enclosed are too. Even with the bed turned off, the extruder alone brings the bed up to about 10-15°C above ambient in the Z-Morphs.
@Marcus_Wolschon I have had no problems at all with my Thing-o-Matic, I’m sure it can still outprint the Z18 in speed and quality. I do agree that the @Ultimaker is the way to go and I can’t wait to get my hands on one.
@NathanielStenzel Yes, the patent is pretty vague but the wording makes it seem like any heat source inside an enclosed volume would count as a heated build chamber.
Technically a heated build chamber would have a separate heat source and be controlled to maintain a certain setpoint.
@Mike_Kelly_Mike_Make wtf is with the patent office??? That describes a damned oven!!! Merging an oven with a 3d printer is not something that deserves a patent.
Hey Marcus, I have a customer who got an Ultimaker and really regrets it. Evidently it has a major design flaw in that it “pushes” the filament from a great distance, instead of putting the extruder motor out on the hot end like most Rep Rap style FDM machines do.
@NathanielStenzel well the novelty is that the addition of a controlled heated enclosure would improve the performance of ABS based prints. Now that we know it it seems obvious to us, which is a bias that happens after an idea is public. Unfortunately they own the rights to a heated enclosure, at least for a little while. That said there’s little stopping the end user from doing it on their own, though telling others how is a bit of a can of worms.
@John_Davis in some ways Bowden is inferior to direct feed. It also has it’s advantages, such as significantly reducing carriage weight. I wouldn’t say a design flaw, but a design variation.
@Mike_Kelly_Mike_Make regardless of the use, the toaster and the oven already had their patents expire and I think that the patent for a heated enclosure infringes on that patent which is expired. You should not be able to patent things derived from already expired patents.
So, uh, I realize the biases of the Google+ forums, but I don’t recall hearing ANYTHING positive about Makerbot in recent history…and yet I see things like the stop-motion vimeo bear (http://vimeo.com/91711011) being made on a Makerbot and wonder if we’re just not hearing from the right people? The current generation hs received a TON of negative press, and zero response from the manufacturer…and yet, there’s still that feature film they’re promoting, with the M all over the place…
The 3d printing community is essentially inseparable from the RepRap community at this point and Open Source is somewhere between central and sacred. If Makerbot had not started out loudly vowing allegiance to Open Source and then done an about face, it’s possible folks could dispassionately consider their products, but they did and we can’t.
Makerbot doesn’t promote the use of ABS on the Z18, which is silly, but ABS wasn’t mentioned in the Z18 page when I looked. Using non-Makerbot filament voids the warranty.
I don’t think the heated build volume patent is vague. It’s a method to keep the machine mechanism outside the heated build volume, so you’re not also heating up the belts, bearings and motors too. Just take a look at the machine diagram in the patent and the text claims should be pretty easy to understand.
You also forget that MakerBot was already at the top of the price range for 1Kg (2.2Lb) spools of PLA, but then they decided to stop selling them and sell “large” spools instead… which are 10% less plastic at 2.0Lb. But they liked the price so they kept that.
