Critical failure. Need guidance on a rebuild.

[Matt Stone]

I broke rule number one; never leave a machine running unattended.

I was running a print on my Makerbot Replicator 2 at work and left it to run overnight. Not sure what, exactly went wrong, but the end result as you can see in the pics, was pretty bad.

I'm hoping someone can volunteer a little digital time to help me asses the damage, figure out what pieces I'm going to need to order and replace and maybe a little mechanical advice to make sure I re assemble it correctly. We've added a Shapeoko 3 cnc machine and a small, flat bed printer to the office, so I've ended up with a pretty good playground maker space if I can just get this blasted MB R2 back up and running. It was always a little finicky, but it does not deserve the ignoble death I have given it.

I'm not in any rush, it's been sitting broken for weeks, and with Xmas time here I'll be doing the usual seasonal rounds of visits to friends and family. If a person or two is willing to help me out it would be greatly appreciated. I can provide pics as needed, of course, and am a relatively handy guy so explaining it to me shouldn't break you.

Thanks

[jmpr...@gmail.com]

If you turn on the machine do you still get a temperature reading? If so it might be possible to come out of this without too much damage depending on how far up the filament went.

Your issue is removing the blob without hurting anything. I had the exact thing happen to me 4 years ago and I'm trying to think what I did. I may have just turned the heater up and it melted enough for me to remove most of the plastic at once. It did break my Thermocouple wire and that had to be replaced. Myself I would try to see if just turning the heater on makes it soft enough to pull off and if not I would try to start cutting away using a hot knife or a soldering iron, I'm pretty sure I attempted a dremel at first and that didn't work at all.

[Jake Clark]

Process I'd follow:

1) select "preheat" and see if it'll read/heat up like jmpr said.

2) If it heats up, allow it to heat up for a little bit (~10mins) and 'lightly' move the blob around in a circular motion

3) Tug on the blob while doing the circular motion. If you pull with too much force you'll rip the TC and HC wires out for sure.

4) Repeat 2-3 until it is off. You might need to use a needle-nose pliers to remove smaller portions of the blob.

Replacement parts can be found here for virtually anything Rep2/2x related: http://www.fargo3dprinting.com/product-category/parts-and-accessories/pa-makerbot/ If you have any questions on there just go to the contact us page.

Lastly, be sure to flip your front fan around so the green letters don't show :)

-J

[adam paul]

A heat gun also comes in very handy for this.