Extrusionbot first impressions

We just got back from Spring break but just before we left the Extrusionbot unveiling took place.  To put it simply...Fantastic!  The students were all over the machine and following a few initial questions and issues (mainly due to the fact that we had 6 kids working together...) we had our first filament extruding.  Set up was simple and straightforward and the machine itself is very solid, well thought out and incredibly well made.

There was a small crowd visiting us for the unboxing including our own Principal, a Principal from another school, our curriculum director for the school district and even our Superintendent of Schools!  We also had our representative from the Southern Oregon Educational Services District and quite a few teachers from our school.  As you can imagine, everybody wanted to get their hands on the machine and help with the set-up.

We followed the instructions that came with the machine and within an hour or so we were printing filament!  We started with clear PLA and neon orange pellets at approximately a 2 to 1 ratio of PLA to colorant.  The folks at Extrusionbot sent us a bewildering array of raw materials to work with and we have a couple of students working on building extra spools to carry all of the new filaments we will be creating.

After a couple of errors on our part the filament was coming out perfectly.  We checked the diameter and it is coming out at a consistent 1.8mm which is what we expected to see.  This diameter matches what we have purchased in the past so it should work well with all of our machines.  We are going to start printing with the new filament this week and we will begin to record how it performs under differing conditions. 

Once again, a huge THANK YOU goes out to the folks at Extrusionbot for the exceptionally generous donation.  Our students are sooooo excited about the prospect of creating their own filaments and trying out different mixes.  The more they can make for themselves as opposed to buying material, the more they will learn.

We look forward to meeting the people at Extrusionbot during the OACTE conference next week in Sunriver, Oregon.  We plan on really showing the machine off to everybody there!

Extrusionbot is here!

Our new Extrusionbot is here!  A big thank you goes out to Gina and all of the folks at Extrusionbot in Chandler Arizona for the donation of the extrusion machine!!!  We can't begin to tell you all how nice it is to see businesses like yours supporting our kids in education.  No photos of it yet because we are going to let the students open up the box and get it up and running tomorrow.  The whole thing will be filmed and edited by our students in the video production department at the end of the day (thank you Chris Rosetta!).  You have no idea how difficult it is for the adults involved in this NOT to have opened up the box yet!  Alas, it is the students who should get first shot at it since they are the ones who will be using it every day.

Once we get all of the video completed and approved by all those involved we are going to post it on this blog as well as on You Tube.  We expect that Extrusionbot will have it on their website as well.

Check back with us in a few days for the unveiling!

Replicator 2 issues, continued...

We have heard back from Makerbot regarding the x-axis shifting of the prints and they are going to send us a new xyz motor harness cable.  I am pleasantly surprised at the response time for their support team simply because we all know just how difficult it can be to get decent service from any company these days.  We are looking forward to getting the replacement part and having this machine up and running again.  We want to take it to the OACTE conference in April along with the original Replicator, the Afinia and our yet to be delivered Hyrel System 30. 

On another note, Extrusionbot of Chandler Arizona has shipped the extruder that they are donating to our program and we can't wait to start making our own filament.  They will "present" it to us again at OACTE and since we are presenting at the conference it is hoped that we can get them some well deserved exposure among the educators that will be present at Sunriver.

Makerbot Replicator 2 issues

We have well over 200 hours on our Replicator 2 and it has decided to throw us a curve.  Prints are shifting along the x-axis after the raft is laid down.  Some of the raft on several of the prints has been incomplete as well.  This was happening randomly for a while but now it is a consistent issue with each and every print. 

We contacted MakerBot support and they suggested the following;
1.  Update the firmware to 7.5 through MakerWare.
2.  Double check the pulleys for tightness.
3.  Perform a "Factory Reset" via MakerWare.

So...we did all of the above.  Below you should see the result of all of this.  The raft skipped and completely missed a portion to be printed while the build itself shifted to the right along the x-axis.  the only difference that was encountered after the above changes were made is that the print shifted to the right instead of to the left as was occurring previously. 

We currently have another request sent in to MakerBot and are hoping that this issue can be resolved before the OACTE conference in April.  If not, then she stays home while the others go to the show.

Afinia up and running

Thank you Afinia support!  We got our print head back from Afinia at the beginning of this week and she is up and running again.  The repair folks couldn't find anything really wrong with it but they gave us a new heating element and extruder tip. 

The repair process was quite painless.  We notified Afinia of the problem, they offered several tips to correct it but none of them worked.  A day or so later they generated an RMA number for shipment of the part to them and off it went.  We were asked to provide samples of the filament that was not feeding into the extruder which we did.  They wanted to test the part under similar conditions in order to replicate our issues as closely as possible. 

Somehow, my email address got jumbled and a request by Afinia support for more filament didn't reach me.  So, they just shipped the extruder back with the new parts and we are back on track.  We still don't know exactly what was wrong with the thing but if constant use has anything at all to do with it then there's your culprit.

Once again, thank you Afinia for addressing our problems quickly and with professionalism.  We are extremely happy to be back and printing again!