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.