3D Printer

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AllHandsActive has two Makerbot Industries Cupcake series 3D Printers. The printers are both heavily modified from their original state so aside from the chasis saying Cupcake, refer to documentation shown below.

3D Printer workstation

About

A small netbook (host name: FLICKY) sits with the 3D printers. Use the 'AHA' login with the usual back room password. ReplicatorG is installed (on desktop) and setup for use with Creamcheese. It has an SD card slot so you can also use it to build to card and print from that. Feel free to use the netbook and take it along when you transport printers. Unplug and shut down when not using it. No need to burn out the power supply/battery.

Known issues

Replicatorg loads full screen, right click on program in XFCE top bar and say always on top, this will then put the window in the right place and allow you to resize. Alternatively attach a larger monitor.

Maintenance and upgrades

Machine is maintained by: Tyler W.

Creamcheese

This bots history

This machine started as a Cupcake with Gen3 electronics and Gen3 Extruder. The extruder never worked right and became a hacked version of the DC extruder and a makergear hot end. The X and Y axis were changed to be quieter and more accurate. The DC extruder died during a 3D printing talk at Penguicon 2012. We discovered that we cannot easily source many of the parts we originally used and decided to build something that we could repair in the future. We decided on a Stepper extruder with 3MM filament feed as we had many pounds of it sitting around. We use Rob G's 5D firmware with a cable hack (similar to just using the 5D shield). Recently we added 3 pololu stepper drivers on the A, X and Y axis allowing us to push the machine a bit faster. The below settings may work for you if your bot took a similar upgrade path (or are somewhere along the way).

Things this bot has:

How Do I run Creamcheese? (UPDATED 6/10!)

Once you have the bot configured, but before printing.... move the nozzle up and run the extruder manually from ReplicatorG to ensure it is feeding properly. This only needs to be done for the first print or after changing colors.

  • Get ReplicatorG 0029 R2 (MUST BE THIS VERSION NOT NEWER!) - Google Code Listing
  • Get the Creamcheese config files from here: Tyler's repository of cool stuff! - UPDATED 6/10
  • Put the 5D Creamcheese Cupcake.xml file in your replicatorg machines directory
  • Put the SF40-Cupcake-3mm-.35 and

SF40- Cupcake-3mm-.35SD folder in your sf_40_profiles folder. On linux this is in a hidden home folder directory (ex: /home/worman/.replicatorg/sf_40_profiles

  • Start up replicatorg and pick machine type of Creamcheese Cupcake 3G 5D (RPM)
  • In Replicatorg: GCode->GCode Generator pick Skeinforge 40 (Experimental)
  • Use the following settings when you generate GCode...
    • Base Profile: SF40-Cupcake-3mm-.35SD (if you put the config in the right place this will show up). The SD version is setup to print from an SD card. The other version is not but will saturate the USB cable link and pause during printing. Don't use it unless you know what you are doing.
    • Raft: Your choice, on or off.
    • Support Material: Your choice, on or off
    • Use Print-O-Matic: YES!
    • POM-Settings-Object Infill: 30% (Less and you get a hollower object, more and it is more solid.)
    • POM-Settings-Layer Height (mm): 0.25 (Smaller and bot moves faster stretching the plastic, larger and it will tell you can it can't print thick layers because of nozzle size)
    • POM-Settings-Number of shells: 2 (How many solid outer layers you get)
    • POM-Settings-Feedrate (mm/s): Variable. 35 is a good slow number, 45 is decently quick.. in theory if belts don't slip and the bot doesn't shake too much we can run around 70-80mm/s.
    • POM-Plastic-Material type: ABS
    • POM-Plastic-Filament Diameter (mm): 2.94 (This should be an average thickness of the filament you feed in. It does vary by color and over lengths of filament. You might want to play with this when changing colors. Measure every 6 inches to a foot and average..)
    • POM-Extruder-Nozzle Diameter(mm) - .35
    • POM-Extruder-Drive Gear Diameter(mm) - 10.58
  • Click build to file (NEW 6/10!)
  • Save .s3g file to an SD card (or usb stick and then transfer to SD on the mini computer.) Be sure to use 16 CHARACTERS OR LESS in the file name!!!!
  • Put SD card in bot (while it's off or on, doesn't seem to matter).
  • In replicatorG tell it to build from file and pick the file from the list.
  • Watch it go...

PRINT!

FAQ

  • Why can I no longer print over the USB cable? We added the 1/16th step drivers and it creates a lot of traffic that the USB cable link can't handle for parts with lots of little tight corners. We provide the non SD profile just in case you are printing a really big 100% infill box with no tiny motions that you really want to print over the USB cable but really just use the SD card.
  • But a USB cable is super fast! Do you just not know what you are doing? The USB cable looks like a USB cable but it is really a USB->Serial cable. The makerbot talks to the computer over serial and that is significantly slower than the USB maximum.
  • My print didn't work. It said it printed but it did nothing. What did I do wrong? Make sure you used a short file name when making the S3G file. Long file names cause the bot to do this.
  • My print didn't work and I used a short file name, what did I do? Make sure you generated it with the SD version of the skeinforge profile.

Making your own configuration files

3D_Printer:Creamcheese:Config How we configured it, calculations included

Contact

Questions? Can you borrow it? Break something? Contact one of the following people!

  • Tyler W.
  • Nate Y.
  • Josh W.


Ox's bot

Things this bot has:

  • Gen4 Electronics
  • Extra Stepper driver for Mk6 Extruder
  • Mk6 Extruder
  • Acrylic Platform
  • .50MM Nozzle
  • MBI firmware.

How Do I run Ox's Bot?

This bot is currently not functional

How can I help fix Ox's Bot?

  • Remove insulation from extruder head, wrap thermocouple in Kapton tape and re-insulate everything
  • Ground the extruder head
  • Attach new Thermocouple chip to extruder board and remount board (part is in small makerbot pieces box). Traces need to be fixed that were ruined when removing the old chip
  • Check resistance on the heaters, suspect one is blown causing the whole thing to fry in the first place..
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