After seeing the dramatic difference printing from the SD card made, I think I’ll try my hand at printing the replacement insulator retainer ring again. I think I’ll end up with a much better result on the small screw holes by doing this.
Sooo… if you break your acrylic (or ABS) insulator retainer ring, drop me a line.
THIS is what I’ve been dying to print.
How did I achieve such a feat? Printing from the SD chip. For those of you who aren’t sure how to do this, it’s a lot easier than you think. I was wondering if there was some complicated kind of upload/buffering command. I just wasn’t seeing instructions or a how-to anywhere. Well, that’s because its pretty freaking easy. I printed to a file, popped an SD chip into my laptop, copied the file to the chip, popped the chip into the ‘bot, and then chose to print from SD card option in ReplicatorG.
My first attempt to upload code to the chip was through the USB cable. While this is certainly feasible, it’s painfully slow. It took about two minutes to upload 200k through the USB cable versus less than two seconds worth of writing to the chip.
Admittedly, this wasn’t what I had tried first. I discovered that by moving the extuder board to the same side as the motherboard, I had blocked the SD chip port. Bummer. To solve this problem I unbolted the motherboard, rotated it 90 degrees counter-clockwise, put two more holes into the side of my MakerBot, and bolted it back on. 1
Now that I’ve printed up my first lego, I’m going to want to print:
I just saw MakerBot’s blog post saying they finally got in a batch of MakerBot approved PLA. This is supposed to be nigh magical stuff. It prints at a cooler temperature than ABS, it has a low shrinkage factor meaning it won’t warp much if at all, it will stick to blue masking/drafter’s tape not requiring the use of an acrylic build platform, and it’s very clear.
While I was at it, I also ordered an extra brass nozzle, brass barrel, PTFE insulator, ceramic tape, nichrome wire, thermistor, and I asked for some MakerBot stickers to adorn my laptop. :)
Lots of non-robot stuff keeping me busy… but not too busy to print a replacement insulator retainer ring! I should really start a list of the first things you should print once you get a MakerBot. This should be way at the top, even above the Z-axis crank.
From what I gather from the MakerBot operators group, the 5mm acrylic insulator retainer ring that comes with the MakerBot kit will eventually fail. If this happens, the heater will basically pop off and melt into whatever you were building at the time.
Really, it’s all about choices, right? The extruder motor is super slow but super strong. Chances are it will eventually deform some part of your assembly. With this in mind, you can build your heater assembly with and without the nut. Depending upon which you do, different parts will be bearing the brunt of the force exerted by the extruder motor.
If you assemble the heater without the nut below the washer, the majority of the force will be applied by the motor to the filament and into the barrel and nozzle, eventually forcing the nozzle downwards, ruining the PTFE insulator barrier, stripping the PTFE barrier threads, pushing out the nozzle, and making a molten oozing mess of everything.
If instead you assemble the heater with the nut below the washer, the nut will hold the washer in place and the majority of the downwards force applied by the extruder motor will be placed on the insulator retainer ring. If the insulator barrier ring fails, it will crack or shatter dropping the heater into whatever you were building.
The good news about the second method is that its pretty easy to print up a replacement insulator retainer ring to keep handy!
I cannot take credit for these fantastic plugins. Since posting this originally I have heavily edited it to include all the great Google Sketchup plugins I’m using. 1 Without further ado they are:
InnovationByLayers – you rule. Thank you for modeling and posting this. I’ve really wanted to print out a TARDIS and a Dalek. I downloaded the file, ran it through Skeinforge, and started printing away.
1 hour and 8 minutes later:
I am very happy with this print. You can see some very minor vertical variation in the model, which is quite exaggerated by the photographic angle, but it’s probably about 0.33mm or so. The variation is barely noticeable. I suspect I could get better resolution if all four of my Z axis threaded rods were straighter, but I also think my time/effort is probably better spent dialing into the correct Skeinforge settings.
In all its finery.
Replacement scrabble tile FAQ:
Totally unnecessary and arguably useless! It’s an SD Card blank!
I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of these things are, but that’s not really the point. Somewhere there’s someone that does nothing but churn these out day and night. And I’ve just broken their monopoly!
I tried printing Zaggo’s whistle to no avail. I then printed this derivative without the “pea” inside. It works quite well.
