Maintenance

Maintenance tips and guides for your Replicator 2, 2X and 5th Generation.

Tightening Replicator 2/2X Belts

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If your prints are turning out significantly smaller in size in one direction, it is possible that it is being caused by backlash. This is when the extruder isn’t being moved as far as it should to make the proper size. The reason the extruder won’t move far enough when you have backlash is that due to a loose belt, the teeth of the gear allow slight play on the belt causing the extruder to drag as far back as possible on its teeth because that is where it will actually catch. Any change in direction  immediately moves it to drag the opposite side, this means the very edges of your print won’t ever be reached properly. Loose belts can be more severe as well if they allow slippage to occur and miss-align your gantry, but the solution to a loose belt is generally the same regardless of severity. There … Read more

Replicator 2/2X Gantry Alignment

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During shipping, rough handling or over time it is possible for a gantry to come out of alignment on the Replicator 2 and 2X. This will be noticeable by your printer grinding because it won’t hit an endstop or printing objects at an unexpected angle compared to the front of the platform. This can be obvious on the initial bead of filament the printer primes its nozzle with at the front of the platform. If your gantry is out of alignment, the first thing to do is check to make sure you don’t have any loose belts that caused this as fixing this and leaving a loose belt with allow it to get out of alignment again. Once you have all your belts properly tightened you can then begin the process of aligning the gantry. To check the current alignment slide the gantry to the front of the printer and look … Read more

Replicator 2X Nozzle Calibration

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Previously we discussed how to level the two nozzles on your Replicator 2X. Leveling the nozzles gets your nozzles aligned on the Z axis, today we will discuss calibration of the nozzles, which is aligning them on the X and Y axis. This process is the same on both the Replicator Dual and 2X. You know your nozzle calibration is out if you print something with vertical layers that are designed to be perfectly aligned and they wind up offset from the previous layer either on the X or Y axis, or both. Prior to calibrating the nozzles, we recommend you level the nozzles as this will make determining the proper calibration slightly easier as you will be looking at two comparably thick lines. The next step is to load filament into both nozzles and make sure your platform is level. Once that is done you will go to Utilities> … Read more

Replicator 2X Nozzle Leveling

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When working with a Replicator 2X one very important factor when doing dual extrusion printing is to ensure your nozzles are level with eachother. If one is too high or low, that means that there will be poor layer adhesion between the parts printed by each nozzle and it will also result in the higher nozzle being unable to stick to the platform in extreme cases. On most of our dual extrusion printers we use our right extruder as our main nozzle and the left extruder for support and dual extrusion. For this reason if we can’t quite get the two nozzles perfectly level we put the right nozzle slightly lower as it gets the most use. The Leveling Process When leveling it is important to remember that there is a limited range of motion that the nozzle and thermal tubes can move in(too high and the thermal tube will hit … Read more

Sailfish for Replicator 2/2X

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On most of our MakerBot Replicator 2 and 2X 3D printers, we make use of different firmware than comes stock on the printers. The firmware we use is called Sailfish. It is at a glance very similar to MakerBot’s version of the printer firmware but it has several significant differences that we find improve the capabilities of the printers. Added Features The first major feature we make use of is the option to Ditto print on a dual extruder machine. This allows you to print 2 of the same single color object at the same time, which is a great way to double the production of printed items that are smaller than the width between the nozzles. A second that can be a big help is the ability to override temperatures generated on your Gcode as well as fine-tune them mid-print.Sailfish also allows you to fine-tune your print speed mid-print. … Read more