Replicator 5th gen quality/speed questions

[911Ducktail]

I bought a 5th gen replicator on monday (in retrospect from reading here it wasnt a good idea I guess,) and ran through its calibration/bed leveling and test screw print

last night I went to print a piece that on my Afinia H480 takes about 5-6 hours to print - the same print on the 5th gen took 11 hours - is this normal? can it be sped up? Also, it doesnt seem like its filling in the top layer completely 

I've attached pics 

group photo from L-R: 60% fill 5th gen, 10% fill 5th gen, 30% fill Afinia, 30% fill Afinia

you can see on the two pieces from the 5th gen the top layer of both flanges isnt filled in all the way - and when I print with the Afinia it builds a second raft to base the top flange on, whereas on the 5thGen it doesnt and so I get dangling string - is there a way to change the support settings? 

to be honest Im completely underwhelmed with this thing, especially for the price, if these are 'known' issue is there a timeline/plan in place to address them or am I better off returning this and looking at the CubeX or just messing with my 300mm^3 reprap?

thanks in advance

[Dan Newman]

On 15/10/2014, 6:04 PM, 911Ducktail wrote:
> I bought a 5th gen replicator on monday, and ran through its

> calibration/bed leveling and test screw print
>
> last night I went to print a piece that on my Afinia H480 takes about 5-6
> hours to print - the same print on the 5th gen took 11 hours - is this
> normal? can it be sped up? Also, it doesnt seem like its filling in the top
> layer completely
>
> I've attached pics
>
> group photo from L-R: 60% fill 5th gen, 10% fill 5th gen, 30% fill Afinia,
> 30% fill Afinia
>
> you can see on the two pieces from the 5th gen the top layer of both
> flanges isnt filled in all the way - and when I print with the Afinia it
> builds a second raft to base the top flange on, whereas on the 5thGen it
> doesnt and so I get dangling string - is there a way to change the support
> settings?
>
> to be honest Im completely underwhelmed with this thing, especially for the
> price, if these are 'known' issue is there a timeline/plan in place to
> address them or am I better off returning this and looking at the CubeX or
> just messing with my 300mm^3 reprap?

Return it immediately. The red prints shown in all the Makerbot stock photos
weren't even done on Gen 5 printers. They were done in Replicator 2's before
MBI had the Gen 5's working. (Indeed, when they showed them at CES 2014 and
got their 6 industry awards, the printers weren't yet working. The people
bestowing those awards never saw the printers operate because they weren't
yet operating.) If you go through this forum you will see plenty of
disaster stories. In short the printer printer doesn't work as well as
MBI's Thing-o-Matic of 2010/2011, their Replicator 1's of 2011/2012, nor
their Replicator 2's introduced in 2012. Quite disappointing. Get
your money back now before you discover that their e-mail support is
a disaster and for phone support you will need to buy a support plan
or pay per incident. (That's them "improving" their support system,
BTW.) If you go the free support route, you are very unlikely to make
much progress and will see your return window disappear.... So, get your
money back now while you can.

Dan

[911Ducktail]

wow thanks, thats a pretty serious first reply. do you have any suggestions for a printer that does large prints? I think Im liking ABS over PLA considering the prints I have, but Im looking for an off the shelf unit that can print something bigger than the 5" cube my Afinia does, and I guess the 5th gen isnt that much larger

is the lulzbot TAZ the best larger print printer? what about resin printers?  

does the replicator 2/2x have a better reputation than the 5th gen?

[Jetguy]

Welcome to the 5th gen disaster. Dan says everything a lot nicer than I am about it, but again, this just the straight truth.

First off, the whole smart extruder thing isn't. It should detect underextrusion conditions but never does anything about it. Besides that, it should never underextrude- hence poor top layer fills.

To really grasp the problem, understand that NO you can't edit a profile setting and "fix" the problem. The extruder jams internally and doesn't extrude the volume of plastic being commanded, but this jamming is impossible to predict. So telling the extruder to extrude more does nothing but cause more problems in places that the extrusion was fine. In a Replicator 2 or 2X, we'd call this problem extruder clicking because you could hear the extruder motor skipping steps. Because the 5th gen is so noisy, you can't hear the extruder over all the other noise. There is just no way software can predict when this thing fails to "do what it's told". I think they aren't using the sensors because they realized it's failing hundreds of times in every print. You'd never get a print finished because it would keep telling itself the extruder was failing.

Problem #2 is that because the extruder hangs WAAAAY down from the mechanics, and the smart extruder is only attached with magnets the system must have acceleration turned waaaaay down in the firmware (A setting you cannot touch anyway).

So, setting feedrate faster does nothing since the acceleration is so low, you never get to the feedrate you set. Again, this is a mechanical disaster. They compensated by slowing the machine down. You can attempt to fool yourself in telling it to print faster but it won't actually do it. Even if you did go faster the huge and heavy extruder hanging down bobs like a pendulum in an old grandfather clock. You get ringing and all kinds of other problems.

Then back to the other disaster of the smart extruder, Z axis homing. The idea was OK, the nozzle system can rise and fall in the extruder and to home, they sense when the nozzle hits the build plate and rises inside the extruder housing. That might be OK but nothing ensures the nozzle returns to the exact same position in X Y Z coordinates. The heater block is supposed to guide this with the cone shaped bottom and the stamped stainless cage that surrounds the hotend. But, because of cheap manufacturing, the entire stamped cage can move around slightly an the hot aluminum heater block against the stamped stainless cage kind of binds up too during operation. Now, to the lay person, they look at it an go "so what". Well, if the nozzle isn't rock solid to the entire extruder housing, and the enter extruder housing can shake and wiggle hanging down from the overhead gantry, your accuracy of nozzle positioning is just crap. I refuse to sugar coat this, it's just all insanely bad.

Prove this to yourself with the nozzle cold obviously. Simply push the nozzle side to side by hand and you can see in operation, it's going to slop around like a wet noodle. It only has to move a fraction of a mm for visible defects in the print to show up in vertical walls where each layer should be stacked on top of each other. Every time the filament retracts during a print, the nozzle rises up (which first off, negates some of the retraction distance inside the hotend and likely contributes to the stringing) and secondly, because the nozzle is not securely guides by some type of linear bearing system, there is zero chance of it returning to the same position each time extrusion begins. This is painfully obvious in prints that I have done.

You can even see it in your prints in the vertical walls.

So, given the mechanics are a HUGE limitation, and even if they did "fix" a new smart extruder, do you really ever think it's going to be "right" in comparison to known machines on the market? I certainly don't have that faith and I'm stuck with a MakerBot mini. 

On Wednesday, October 15, 2014 9:04:39 PM UTC-4, 911Ducktail wrote:

I bought a 5th gen replicator on monday (in retrospect from reading here it wasnt a good idea I guess,) and ran through its calibration/bed leveling and test screw print

last night I went to print a piece that on my Afinia H480 takes about 5-6 hours to print - the same print on the 5th gen took 11 hours - is this normal? can it be sped up? Also, it doesnt seem like its filling in the top layer completely 

I've attached pics 

group photo from L-R: 60% fill 5th gen, 10% fill 5th gen, 30% fill Afinia, 30% fill Afinia

you can see on the two pieces from the 5th gen the top layer of both flanges isnt filled in all the way - and when I print with the Afinia it builds a second raft to base the top flange on, whereas on the 5thGen it doesnt and so I get dangling string - is there a way to change the support settings? 

to be honest Im completely underwhelmed with this thing, especially for the price, if these are 'known' issue is there a timeline/plan in place to address them or am I better off returning this and looking at the CubeX or just messing with my 300mm^3 reprap?

thanks in advance

[Dan Newman]

On 15/10/2014, 6:44 PM, 911Ducktail wrote:
> wow thanks, thats a pretty serious first reply. do you have any suggestions
> for a printer that does large prints? I think Im liking ABS over PLA
> considering the prints I have, but Im looking for an off the shelf unit
> that can print something bigger than the 5" cube my Afinia does, and I
> guess the 5th gen isnt that much larger

I'll let someone else answer: I don't have much call for large prints
and thus don't myself use large format printers. As such, no practical
advice to offer there.

> what about resin printers?

You have to pay well north of $10K to get a large format resin printer.
The less than $10K ones are not much bigger in volume than your existing
printer,

Form 1+: 4.9 x 4.9 x 6.5 in
B9Creator: 4 x 3 x 8 1/8 in

There's a few other commercial, low end resin printers with less of
a track record. I'm not sure of their build volumes.

However, you need to first know what you want to use the printed parts
for before choosing the printing tech. What sort of parts and uses
you have for them will dictate both the types of plastics you need to
use and what sort of printing technology you can or cannot use.

Dan

[911Ducktail]

Jetguy - Ive followed your posts on this forum and I think the old "operators" forum that MBI 'archived' for some reason, huh? thank you for your contributions, had I read it before I bought it I wouldnt have. 

the way you explain it makes perfect sense as far as the head vs speed and moving something so heavy around quickly. 

Dan-

the parts in the picture are meant for rapid prototyping single body intake manifolds for my race car - winter project is to convert it to EFI and printing each iteration as I figure out fuel injector placement, clocking of the throttle valve and fuel rail design really cuts into have stuff CNC'd/cast

I am totally convinced that the prints off my Afinia would actually take the abuse of a running air cooled 6 cylinder for diagnostic purposes, long term Im fairly certain theyd fail from heat fatigue. Whereas I have no faith in the 5thgen prints of the same item - they just feel chintzy.

so once I get the single intake done I will build a bank, and then the fuel rails and some various adapters which is why I was asking about a large volume off the shelf box

[teamca...@gmail.com]

If you really like the Afinia (which is a re branded Up! Plus printer from Tiertime) wait a little bit if you can. Tiertime has a new printer releasing in November called the Up! Box. I think it was stated to cost around $1800-$1900 when it comes out You can read a little bit about it at their website www.pp3dp.com It has a pretty large print area, and is enclosed. I own two Up! Pluses and a replicator 2. And I can't tell you how excited I am to get a larger printer from Tiertime!!

[Rikard Karlsson]

Also Zortax M200 is a good buy with simular way to create support as Afina. Link: Zortrax.com

[TobyCWood]

I have access to a Lulzbot Taz4. It is not an ideal or optimal machine... the Z axis dual threaded rods are Allthread and attached to the steppers with tubing and zip ties. All riding carriages have plastic bushings with significant play and as such the prints show significant ringing and overshoots. The HBP is glass but it is glued to the heater... unit we removed it... However, that said it can be tuned and upgraded to be a very reliable work horse for the kind of parts you are describing. Our Makerspace is about to get a second one.