Category: How To’s

Makerbot 5th Gen Idler Pulley Repair

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My Makerbot 5th Gen started making some deeply unsettling scraping noises, and with great haste, I sprang to inspect the situation. The extruder head seemed to be clearing the build plate and the print just fine. So I began to inspect the many moving parts involved one at a time. After much leaning, squinting, suspecting, and a bit of voodoo, I discovered that the Idler Pulley was the culprit.

There is not much online unfortunately about the Makerbot 5th Gen’s Idler Pulley in particular, and had to do quite a bit of digging before I found anything about the pulley, let alone its name. The only place I found anything on it was Fargo 3D Printing supply and what was there was minimal. I got on the phone with Makerbot tech support and they were helpful, but then they said in order to fix it I would need to send in my machine. Since that was out of the question, I had to find a replacement part on my own. As I mentioned, Fargo 3D had one, but they were out of stock. I turned to Ali Express and low and behold, they had a few options for me, and inexpensive at that. I placed my order and hoped that the print jobs I had from my customers would not pose an issue.

I was super excited when it arrived. But again, there was little info on just how to replace the darn thing. So again it was up to me fiddling with things and hoping I wouldn’t break things more..

Lifting the top portion off was quite interesting.

As you can see from the photo above, there is a little clip that I had to gently/not gently pry off in order to get the top portion of the makerbot off, and again, no images or videos online on how to do this. I also made sure to unplug the camera so as not to yank the cord out… Camera module below…

As you can see from the photo below, I finally got the top of the makerbot and the idler pulley removed. The Idler pulley came off easy enough with an allen wrench. The scrapping sound was coming from the Pulley’s bearings wearing down and coming apart and you can see the bits of plastics dust that were left behind.

Below you can see the Idler Pulley’s bearings destroyed. When on the phone with Makerbot support they confided in me that this particular part tends to fail fairly often and this is a common repair for them.

It took some patients and some consistent pressure, but I got the new Idler Pulley Installed and in place. Looking pretty sweet if I do say so myself.

Once it was installed, I got the lid back on, did a quick calibration and it was running smooth once again! Although it was a bit of hassle trying to figure this out, I still say Makerbot is a great brand of 3D Printer and consistently gives me great prints.

Drop me a line or a comment if you are having trouble yourself and I am happy to help!

Illustrator into Sketchup, and the terrible pain in the butt it was….

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It seems like it would be easy, I mean after all, vectorized images seem like they would convert so easily to a .skp or .dxf even. Isn’t that cute… But it’s WRONG!
So wrong in fact that it took me some weeks, toiling late nights, trying desperately to figure out how the heck to get this artwork from a friend into sketchup so I could put it on a blasted Mario style coin… Like many freelancers and those with friends with seemingly simple requests, I took on this challenge not wanting to spend any money, especially if I’m not getting paid. So I set off trying to figure out how to put this square peg into a round hole. As it turns out, Sketchup used to be able to do this natively in their free versions, and you will find plenty of videos on how to do that, with menu buttons that are no longer there… But since Sketchup 2016 they have since nixed this in the free version. And you won’t find anything in their Extension Wearhouse that will do it for less than $50. Through mountains of research, and many hours of trial and error, I finally figured a way to do this for free.
1. Go into Illustrator and open your image as a clear background PNG
2. Object > Image Trace > Make and Expand (Expand is important)
3. Right click object and ungroup
4. Object > Path > Add more Anchor Points (Do this a few times if you have a curvy image
5. Object > Path > Simplify (This turns the boarders into simple point to point paths)
Now you can export a DXF that CAD programs will be able to decipher correctly
6. Hit Ctrl-A to select all, or Select the parts of your object that you want to export
7. File > Export and choose DXF as the file type
8. Select Millimeters as the scale, Select Preserve Appearance option, and Export Selected Art Only
I used Free CAD, But it won’t let you export just the outlines you imported as a .dxf,
9. In Free CAD, select File > Import and select your .dxf file
10. Clean up any extra lines you might see
In my case similar copies of my outlines seemed to overlap, so I deleted the extras
11. Extrude your shape a tiny bit, just to give it volume
12. Now you can export as an .stl, File > Export Choose .stl as the format
13. No Into Sketchup we go to import our new .stl (Which is a free extension you all should have)
14. File > Import and select your new .stl file!
15. You will have to clean it up a bit, I suggest the free CleanUp extension (Does a lot of the work for you)
16. Then I erased all but the top layer of my extrusion so I could work with it as a straight imported logo, which gave me the flexibility to manipulate it in Sketchup in the manner I was most accustomed.
And there you have it, A Free, albeit arduous, method to get your AI file into Sketchup.
IF you have found another way for this process not to suck that is free, please let me know 😀
Edit:
Dang. Found something WAY easier. Save your AI file as an .SVG, then upload to http://svg2stl.com/
All the wasted time…

Flexible Filament Fiasco

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3D Printing has come a long way since the first days of additive manufacturing. So much so that alternative materials are the norm however they are so difficult to print with. One such material is Flexible filament. The brand that I have been experimenting with is called GP3D and is readily available at Fry’s Electronics, which in and of itself is a great convenience and one I plan on taking full advantage of.

However there are a lot of articles out there warning of the difficulties of printing with this troublesome filament. Some of those difficulties include:

  • Inconsistent prints
  • Stringy prints
  • Pimple prints and other surface defects
  • and most pressing, Poor Print Bed Adhesion.

 

Some of these issues can be taken care of with slower print speeds, increased extruder retraction to minimize ooze, better slicers to reduce point to point string connections. I have printed a whole spool of this material so far and the only solution that helped me to increase print bed adhesion, I haven’t seen on the net so far.

That solution is to dual print your raft. What I mean by this is printing with a material that has great bed adhesion, PLA, then switching to your flex filament. To be more exact, my process was this:

Printing on a Makerbot Replicator 5th Gen, Smart Extruder, Out of the box print settings: (Temp: 215, 200 microns, Standard print settings).

  • Begin the print with the PLA of your choice, (Natural “Color” is more inexpensive usually)
  • Before the last layer of the raft begins to print, switch to the flexible filament
    • The standard settings for the raft use one base layer, two intermediate layers, and two finishing layers
    • Using the last layer for the switch allows for proper raft to model adhesion while providing the superior bed adhesion with the PLA
  • Let your print finish as normal

 

This method allowed for great bed adhesion throughout the entire print. Before trying this, I used the flexible filament for the entire process and saw the print lift from the bed mid-way through. This warping on the base layers, similar to other materials with the same lifting problems (Like ABS), would affect the rest of the print by pushing the print in the later paths of the extruder head. This causes a few issues, the extruder head to digs into the print, little to no material is laid down, and frequent filament jams. If you experience this, it is always better to cut your losses and save your material rather than try to rescue or force the rest of the print. You will not be happy with the results. But I digress, the process outlined above allowed me to successfully print a pair of Sandals for my Fiancee (A thingiverse.com model remix I made).

An Example of a flex Filament Jam

An Example of a successful print with a PLA raft

Thank you for reading!