New Owner of 2X Experimental

[jmburnzy]

Hello All,

I just dove into 3D printing this past week and purchased my first 3D printer from Makerbot. I'm retired  and a huge tinkerer. That is one reason I chose the 2X. Just wanted to say hello, I got a lot of reading to do.

[tunell]

The Rep2x is great for tinkering. It's a bit harder to dial in than the Rep2 was, but shouldn't bee too difficult for somebody who can use a wrench.

Make sure to upgrade your extruders and loosen your X axis cable. Those are the two main mods for the 2X.

Running Sailfish is also recommended.

[Scottbee]

I'm not sure I agree with the "upgrade the extruders" opinion... although I realize that a lot of folks do it out of "knee jerk" reaction.

The stok R2X extruders aren't horrible... and I have many, many hundreds of hours on mine.  They're not perfect, and  can use some "blueprinting" and minor mods.... but generally speaking they're OK" and get the job done in most cases.  And they're substantially better than most units when it comes to "exotic" filaments like NinjaFlex (due to a well contained filament path).

[tunell]

We've had our 2X for a while and have NOT upgraded the extruders and have had a lot of extrusion problems. The 2X is not in my office, but down the hall and they have done troubleshooting on almost everything, but still haven't upgraded the extruders.
That's the only reason I say to do so. I think that everybody should get to know their machine first, though and see how it works before doing a bunch of mods to it assuming it won't work out of the box.

[Adam P.]

I've got 300 his on my R2x since March with the stock extruders and I didn't touch the x wires. I did mod the build plate to be flat, though.

[Count Spatula]

Don't mod anything until you've played with it awhile. If it's working don't worry too much. Sailfish firmware is easy to do and adds nice features. The plastic xends on my 2x eventually cracked so I would recommend Carl's aluminum replacement vat we point. I can also recommend his aluminum extruder block which finally made primting PLA possible. Make sure the print bed isn't warped before you get into things.

[Rob Griesbeck]

Agreed, don't mess with it unless you're having issues, or at least until you're more comfortable with it. I've got 2 rep2x's, one with 2000 hours, one with 1200 hours. Both are bone stock.

Get some good, cheap filament and go nuts! Go see the boys at toybuilderlabs

[Adam P.]

The only absolutely necessary mod you should do is add a print cooling fan. I'm using this one,http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:228055, and it has many the difference between making small delicate parts and not.

[jmburnzy]

Wow thank you all for the information. I never thought my posts made it up here lol. I guess it takes a few days for a noob lol. anyway one big thing is that they never shipped me the cover for the 2X they were on back order. so one will ship out end of this week. I will use all the info you guys gave me and give it a shot. thanks again for all your replies :)

[Drew in Sunny Florida]

My clear plastic cover arrived about 6 weeks after my R2X.  It was a good thing it did because when I print with it on the prints fail.  I got to play for 6 weeks with the printer before the cover arrived and the thing stopped working correctly.  Now I leave the cover off if I want the prints to come out correctly.  My guess is that too much heat builds up in the dome area and pre-heats  the incoming filament ( thru the polypropylene guide tubes ) and soften it just enough to allow for feed failure ( air prints ).  I suppose it could be that the feed block is too hot due to the in-ability to reject heat into the hot space but that too is only a guess.  The failure happens about 30 minutes in so it must take that long for the heat to build to an unacceptable level.   Short and long of it.... if you are printing good before the cover arrives and then printing bad after you install it, it may be the cover that is messing up the prints.  I tore my printer apart before coming to this obvious conclusion.  

[Ryan Carlyle]

Drew, there's something wrong with your printer if it fails with ABS with the hood on.

And the feed tubes are PTFE, not PP. Polypropylene doesn't work very well in this application because the coefficient of friction is too high. If you're using PP, stop doing that.

[Adam P.]

I agree with Ryan. I have over 300 hours now - all with the cover ON. The cover is essential to maintain chamber temperature during long and large ABS prints to reduce inter layer delamination due to shrinkage.

I remove the dome when I'm doing very small and delicate parts to control the chamber temperature, though.

On Jul 10, 2014 10:15 AM, "Ryan Carlyle" <temp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Drew, there's something wrong with your printer if it fails with ABS with the hood on.

And the feed tubes are PTFE, not PP. Polypropylene doesn't work very well in this application because the coefficient of friction is too high. If you're using PP, stop doing that.

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[ellasaro]

Mine is 290 hours and already had problems with it about five times...and all of them different issues. The last one recently and I really don't think it will work again. I'm used to working with this kind of equipment so I treated really carefully and it was no use. Beware.

Regards and best of luck to you.

[Adam P.]

What problems?

[ellasaro]

Apart from continuous clogging (which makerbot couldn't give me any useful feedback) check out my latest topic titled "WELL, THIS SUCKS" in this same group.

[Brandon Andrzejewski]

The only time I take my cover off is for very small layers (solved with minimum layer cool time if I'm not lazy) or when I am using the second extruder for HIPS.  HIPS at the Makerware default of 250ºC will commonly jam on me due to heat creep on large layers with little to no HIPS (ie lots of idle time).  I suspect this can be solved by increasing retraction distance but I have never bothered because I haven't noticed a loss in inter-layer adhesion strength on the ABS side of things due to the hood being off (that's not to say my parts aren't weaker, just that it hasn't bit me yet).

[Drew in Sunny Florida]

I know something is wrong but not what.  I have replaced everything under that clear plastic hood at least twice and it still fails every time I put the hood on.  My Bot came with semi translucent polyethylene tubing ( sorry miss typed Polypropylene).  It was not PTFE (Teflon) tubing.  I cut it too short in one of my many attempts to fix the feed problem and replaced it with more polyethylene plastic tubing from the Hardware store.  That is the stuff that usually feeds 1/4" cold water lines in ice maker kits.  

I ordered PTFE tubing from McMaster Carr but it was nowhere close to the right size to fit the holders so I set it aside and just stopped using the cover.  Are you saying I need to find bright white non translucent PTFE tubing so the friction load is reduced on the filament when the cover is installed ???   Where does one get the feed tubing that works for a R2X ???

[Scottbee]

We stock the PTFE tubing here at my factory (we use it for a different application).. but if memory serves me correctly, this was our source before we found a bulk supplier:

Teflon tubing

And yes.... .250" OD is perfect.

[Joseph Chiu]

I had used a 2X (was fixing it for a friend) that worked great with ABS as long as you cracked the front open a little bit.  If the door was closed perfectly, it got too hot and the prints would start to fail after a while.

On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 7:15 AM, Ryan Carlyle <temp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Drew, there's something wrong with your printer if it fails with ABS with the hood on.

And the feed tubes are PTFE, not PP. Polypropylene doesn't work very well in this application because the coefficient of friction is too high. If you're using PP, stop doing that.

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[Adam P.]

One thing is for certain and that's these machines all have a unique personality!

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[Drew in Sunny Florida]

Thanks........ that was my next guess.   Have the right stuff on the way now.  

So is the polyethylene or is the PTFE Teflon feed tube what comes stock for everybody ???   I can imagine there is a big difference in drag on the feed line ( at elevated temperatures ) from the wrong stuff.  

[Scottbee]

Pretty dern sure that the stock filament guide tube on the R2X is PTFE....

[Ryan Carlyle]

Stock is PTFE, you can tell because it gets permanently deformed pretty easily in the little clips on the back. Teflon creeps under load; polyethylene and polypropylene do not. But the teflon has WAY lower coefficient of friction so it's important to use the right stuff.

[Ryan Carlyle]

FYI, my stock R2x parts work just fine with >50C in the chamber. That's stock superstruders, stock cooling bar, nozzles, insulation, feed tubes, everything. Everybody's should work with ABS with the chamber hot -- but I have NO IDEA why some people's R2x's would be more sensitive to heat than others.

[scott spencer]

Hey rob I have a 5gen that Im downgrading to and wonder what issues did / do you have with your 2x?