Cat Toys I made...

Here is a digital cat food dispenser I made for my cats...

rep2 - quieter heater block fan

As suggested by WingCommander, I upgraded to this quieter fan:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AMQ5M8C/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Ooze pic

I get more ooze stringers with my MatterHacker filament (orange) than with my MBI filament (green).

great chisel for releasing parts

I love this chisel.
It's very good at delicately levering parts off the blue tape.

What my kitchen looks like

Barbie Dream tool holder

Today, I finally took a few moments and created a tool holder.

In one of my new wonderful colors from MatterHackers.

Barbie would be proud.

Replicator2 - glue your fan stuff together

Here's a tip to save you time and broken fan blades as you find yourself taking apart the extruder components for the umpteenth time to clear some errant filament.
Glue the parts together.
Also, buy yourself a quieter fan while you are at it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AMQ5M8C/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Rerouted x-axis stepper motor ribbon cable

Here is my strain relief approach for my X-axis stepper motor ribbon cable fix.

It was intended to be a quick and dirty fix to get my bot running, but it turned out to be very durable.

Because of the long droop, the cable experiences very little flexing.

If I can get the connector model from MBI, I'll make a disposable section that I can easily swap out when the wires fatigue.

Replicator2 - heater bad

It looks like something is wrong with my heater after 74 hours.

Replicator2 - dead X-axis cable - again

After 74 hours the X-axis cable on my Makerbot2 is dead.

This is my second Replicator2 and both had this same issue early in their life.

MBI's solution is to mail you another of the same cable.

some good prints I made for work

I made these prints to support some camera hardware for a machine vision project.

Replicator2 finally working well - increased temp

After an exhausting first few months, I finally got things working well, due in a large part to the people on the google group who designed the Mk8 extruder upgrade.

Also, raising the extruder temp greatly helped with the glossy filaments

My new favorite filaments are the Makerbot translucent blue and green.  The green is really badass.  Too bad they cost $50.  I'll be sticking to the $38 filament from matterhackers, and may try the $35 filament from justpla.com.

Anyways, my prints are finally coming out great, after I realized that I need to find the correct melting temp for each filament.

The glossy natural, blue and green, all from Makerbot all do best at 260 C.  At 270 C the filament starts to burn.

Replicator2 Extruder upgrade

I owe a great deal of thanks to taylorstull@giis.net  and WingCommander, and everyone else who helped with the design of the Mk8 extruder upgrade.  Per my previous post on this topic, I tried to print the parts from Thingiverse, but they just didn't fit together right.
http://3dprinterstories.blogspot.com/2013/02/replicator2-implementing-wingcommanders.html


 And living in the US, it's hard to find a source for the right metric screws.
So I bought one on ebay from taylorstull@giis.net, pictured below  (Actually  2).

To anyone who is cursing their Replicator 2 for "air-printing", and for that incessant clicking sound caused by the extruder motor skipping, and often resulting in missed sections of extrusion, I highly recommend this upgrade.
I first experienced air printing soon after I bought my printer and almost nothing would print right.
When I read on the Google group that I needed to take my new printer apart and install a homebrewed upgrade, I was very resistant.
What kind of bullshit is this, I thought.  I just bought a $2200 printer and it needs an immediate upgrade?
I resisted for a long time and dicked around with everything imaginable.
This upgrade solved my air printing problems.  (Increasing my print temp helped too however.)

There are a few problems with the upgrade:
1. You have to carefully feed the filament down through the hole, making it curve right to left, (as opposed to not front to back), or the filament will miss the hole in the extruder block.
2. When there is no filament, the spring forces the rotating part up into the black plastic housing slightly.

But these issues are trivial, compared to the consistent printing this upgrade produces.

This part may solve both these issues:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:53125

Replicator2 - implementing WingCommanders Mk8 upgrade

Notes:
I'm using Makerware set to high res with the default skeinforge settings.

- Bearing was tight in part, didn't rotate.  I had to ream out the slot with a drill bit.
- Pin was too large in both diameters.  Also too tall.  I created a smaller one in Solidworks with diameters of 5.5 and 7.6.  Length 11 mm.
- Recessed circle in base was too small and needed to be trimmed
- Base curled during printing and kept the whole thing from functioning correctly.

I spent a whole day screwing around with this and with my tail between my legs I'm going to simply order one from Taylor.

taylorstull@giis.net 

R2 test box

High res
No skipping or clicking.
Odd.

Replicator2 air printing again

And costing me lots of expensive filament.
I further tightened the extruder plunger.
This didn't seem to help.

Replicator2 filament cleaner

A little piece of sponge to clean off the ubiquitous cat hair.

Intermittent strands - bad Makerbot yellow filament - correction

Correction, in retrospect, the filament wasn't bad, it was the plunger in my extruder.

A lot of my larger prints are quitting about halfway through.
On this print, you can see the intermittend strants in the lower layer.
I switched to my SainSmart white filament and the problem went away.

Conclusion: my Makerbot yellow filament, which can print fine for about an hour, is buggy, an therefore a waste of time and money.

Solidoodle2 printer for sale - $450

I'm selling my Solidoodle2 printer.
$450
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/ele/3568087565.html

Another gorgeous print.

Downloaded from thing overuse. (Thingiverse) =]

My temporary x motor wiring fix

I soldered the wires and things are back to normal. Maker it is sending me a new harness for free.

Identified issue with xy glitches

This cable fatigued and the signal would glitch in a particular spot.

Replicator2 - XY stepper glitch

Solved, with help from Jetguy.

I started jiggling some wires and it turns out that when I jiggle the stepper motor cable, I get the jogs.

I will contact Support.

Here are some pics...

The XY stepper motors have started producing random jogs that result in the layers being offset and the prints failing.  This happens on STLs that printed previously with no problem so I don't think the problem is with the STL.

This is happening with MakerWare 1.1.1.9 and firmware 6.2 and 7.0.

The glitching can be seen in the red boxes in the image below.

When I make South to North  lines there is no problem.

SE to NW lines show the problem. 

 SW to NE lines are fine.

Burned filament

Both my white and yellow filament clog and burn.

Replicator2 prints on thin air!

I woke up from a nap and checked my print.
I had set the printer to do support material beneath the overhang.
And you can see, the R2 printed the support material starting on thin air!

This is awesome!
PLA is awesome.
I had a lot of trouble with this shiny filament clogging, but it works great now.

solidoodle2 got really hot

I noticed my entire Solidoodle2 was really hot.

I discovered that when I replaced my extruder, (due to a failed heater), I plugged the extruder stepper motor fan in backwards so it didn't run.

Lucky I didn't burn down my house!

Solidoodle2 - kink in filament

A kink in my filament killed my extrusion.

Replicator2 - ABS - circles out of round

My horizontal axis through holes are way out of round.

I attribute this to the cumulative curling of the ABS as is is laid down.

However this did not happen on my Solidoodle2.

ABS is a pain in the butt.

Replicator2 - how to disable nozzle fan

I didn't want the nozzle fan blowing while I was using PLA so I detached it and used a velcro tie to secure it out of the way.

It still runs though.

Replicator2 clogged after ABS

After using ABS my Replicator2 nozzle is now clogged.
My Solidoodle2 has filament corkscrewing out of it, but it still prints fine.

Time to take apart the Replicator...

Maybe I can figure out how to disable the fan while I'm at it to help the layers bond together.  Funny how this delamination happens on the R2 but not the S2.

False alarm, on the R2 the filament ran out and so it was below the reach of the drive wheel.