[Noisebridge-discuss] MakerBot Update

[Martin Bogomolni]

The MakerBot has been repaired and upgraded.  The extruder assembly
has been upgraded to the mark-4, with a new idler wheel and bearing
assembly.   This means that the ABS rod will now move more smoothly
and with precision.

Also, the thermal jacket around the nozzle head has been replaced with
a high-tech material used for thermal ablation on the space shuttle.
 This adds plenty of thermal mass to the head, and we have acheived
very good thermal stability now.

The MakerBot motherboard has an issue where an internal layer on the
board has either separated or is no longer making good contact.  The
"shim" works by gently flexing the board, and allows the board to
communicate with the extruder component.  Please do not remove the
folded paper shim.  A new MakerBot motherboard will be procured as
soon as they start producing them again.

A number of objects were printed using the latest version of
ReplicatorG, and skeinforge 0005 using mostly default settings, and
are next to the bot.

There are -two- spools of ABS wire.  A tighly bound spool of clearer
material, and a loose spool of harder, less translucent ABS.  Use the
harder ABS, it results in a better print.   We need to determine what
temperature settings /might/ work with the other spool.   So far, no
luck.

At this time it's pretty ready to go.  Be kind to the machine, as it's
somewhat fragile.  There are good tutorials online on how to use
skeinforge and ReplicatorG.  Using the machine is a complex enough
task that you really do need to read through them before even trying.

I will try to put together a wiki page and a tutorial as soon as I can.