If you thought the Cupcake build went too smoothly over the last few days, think again. It’s all action and adventure here in the workshop!
Seems that the Cupcake needs a little adjustment.
The pinch wheel on the extruder occasionally slips, but moving the idler wheel further in and tightening it even more seems to have fixed it.
Another issue that I’ve come up against was the Y-stage slipping during builds. While moving it via the control panel it’s fine (unless I attempt to move it too fast), but during builds the belt slips and the Cupcake doesn’t realise that, and continues to print, thus breaking the model. It was rather annoying that I had to partially disassemble the X-stage just to re-tension the drive belt. It’s a rather poor design if you ask me.
And lastly, if one was to follow the instructions on the MakerBot wiki, you’ll end up with 30-40mm of threaded rod extending past the Z-stage pulleys, only to be told later that you could reposition the nuts so that you move the excess rod downwards into the machine itself. It would have been useful to have been told that BEFORE almost completing the machine’s body… Since building and adjusting the threaded rods for the Z-stage is terribly time consuming. But since I was already taking apart the machine, I figured that I’d make this cosmetic change too.
I still haven’t printed anything yet. Mostly playing around in ReplicatorG’s control panel.