Assembling our MK6 Stepstruder Upg Kit
Assembling our MK6 Stepstruder Upg Kit
by PedroR
Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:36 pm
Hi all
We've finally received our MK6 Stepstruder Upgrade Kit to assemble on the machine we have at the office.
Bellow are the pictures of the unpacking process.
The Upg Kit consists essentially of the new NEMA 17 motor (Stepper Motor) + Stepper Board (to enable Micro Stepping) and 2 sets of plates. one to use 3mm plastic and the other to use 1.75mm plastic.
In addition, the kit comes with a fan (for cooling the NEMA17 motor) and the usual cables, nuts and bolts.
NEMA 17 Motor and the Y cable for the ATX power supply.
The fan is quite small (for you to have an idea of scale, the blue tin on the side is WD-40).
But then again, air drafts are not what we want when the model is cooling; uneven cooling can create deformation.
The Stepper Motor Driver board (next to the stepper motor). This is inline with the design of the whole ToM: to move the X/Y/Z axis, Stepper motors are used and also connected to Stepper Motor Driver boards.
This creates microstepping and it's how Makerbot claims the high resolution on the specs.
For this new MK6 Stepstruder Makerbot announces a resolution of 0.2 degrees (or a revolution) using this technique.
Finally these are the new plates: the black plate is for 1.75mm plastic. (for 3mm you re-use the one from your MK5).
When using 1.75mm you don't have any screw to tighten; the plastic itself has a curve/bend that pushes the thinner filament against the shaft.
On the upper side of the picture you can see 2 plates of Plexiglass (to complete the assembly of the filament drive system). On the left the one for 1.75mm and on the right the one for 3mm filament. Notice the one on the right (for 3mm) has a small cut (shaped like a T) on the right side to hold the screw that tightens the filament.
The plate for 1.75mm on the left doesn't have this cut as it doesn't need the screw.
Nuno is finalizing the assembly (which was about 1.5hrs) and should expand on this report soon with his thoughts about the assembly and first prints.
Regards
Pedro.
We've finally received our MK6 Stepstruder Upgrade Kit to assemble on the machine we have at the office.
Bellow are the pictures of the unpacking process.
The Upg Kit consists essentially of the new NEMA 17 motor (Stepper Motor) + Stepper Board (to enable Micro Stepping) and 2 sets of plates. one to use 3mm plastic and the other to use 1.75mm plastic.
In addition, the kit comes with a fan (for cooling the NEMA17 motor) and the usual cables, nuts and bolts.
NEMA 17 Motor and the Y cable for the ATX power supply.
The fan is quite small (for you to have an idea of scale, the blue tin on the side is WD-40).
But then again, air drafts are not what we want when the model is cooling; uneven cooling can create deformation.
The Stepper Motor Driver board (next to the stepper motor). This is inline with the design of the whole ToM: to move the X/Y/Z axis, Stepper motors are used and also connected to Stepper Motor Driver boards.
This creates microstepping and it's how Makerbot claims the high resolution on the specs.
For this new MK6 Stepstruder Makerbot announces a resolution of 0.2 degrees (or a revolution) using this technique.
Finally these are the new plates: the black plate is for 1.75mm plastic. (for 3mm you re-use the one from your MK5).
When using 1.75mm you don't have any screw to tighten; the plastic itself has a curve/bend that pushes the thinner filament against the shaft.
On the upper side of the picture you can see 2 plates of Plexiglass (to complete the assembly of the filament drive system). On the left the one for 1.75mm and on the right the one for 3mm filament. Notice the one on the right (for 3mm) has a small cut (shaped like a T) on the right side to hold the screw that tightens the filament.
The plate for 1.75mm on the left doesn't have this cut as it doesn't need the screw.
Nuno is finalizing the assembly (which was about 1.5hrs) and should expand on this report soon with his thoughts about the assembly and first prints.
Regards
Pedro.
by nunogato
Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:33 pm
Just finished the assemble and test process of the MK6 upgrade kit.
During assembling nothing unusual but some questions remain in the air.
1. What's the purpose of the 4 nuts inside the sandwich of acrylic?
2. If we want to keep hot the object that is being printed why the new fan is directed down? why not sideways?
3. Why there is a huge hole in the plate D if we will not use the bearing in this assembly?
4. Why Makerbot does not provide a connector to connect the FAN instead of cut the wire and solder?
5. Why the cable of the new motor is so small? you need to almost close your makerbot to connect the cable to the pcb
After assembling just configured the minimum Z as made before and updated the file for the "thing-o-matic ABP MK6" template and start print.
As it's already late we printed a small item just to check the print quality and if we need more adjustments, we choose the HalfLife logo. Print was very good [ right out of the box with the default settings ], we even noticed the small 2 in the upright corner, the last time we printed we thought that it was a small hole to put in a key chain...
The raft continues with some bubbles, I don't know why... maybe plastic quality???
[ EDIT: turns out the bubbling effect on the raft was caused by w wrong setting on the Z axis. The machine was depositing the first layer too close to the build platform and that was causing the bubbles to appear.
The quality of the plastic from Makerbot has proven to be quite good. Printed parts are very sturdy. Also, when you receive a coil of plastic it even comes with those little bags to dry any moist that may exist in the package ]
Tomorrow I'll bring the camera and take some photos.
Regards,
Nuno Gato
During assembling nothing unusual but some questions remain in the air.
1. What's the purpose of the 4 nuts inside the sandwich of acrylic?
2. If we want to keep hot the object that is being printed why the new fan is directed down? why not sideways?
3. Why there is a huge hole in the plate D if we will not use the bearing in this assembly?
4. Why Makerbot does not provide a connector to connect the FAN instead of cut the wire and solder?
5. Why the cable of the new motor is so small? you need to almost close your makerbot to connect the cable to the pcb
After assembling just configured the minimum Z as made before and updated the file for the "thing-o-matic ABP MK6" template and start print.
As it's already late we printed a small item just to check the print quality and if we need more adjustments, we choose the HalfLife logo. Print was very good [ right out of the box with the default settings ], we even noticed the small 2 in the upright corner, the last time we printed we thought that it was a small hole to put in a key chain...
The raft continues with some bubbles, I don't know why... maybe plastic quality???
[ EDIT: turns out the bubbling effect on the raft was caused by w wrong setting on the Z axis. The machine was depositing the first layer too close to the build platform and that was causing the bubbles to appear.
The quality of the plastic from Makerbot has proven to be quite good. Printed parts are very sturdy. Also, when you receive a coil of plastic it even comes with those little bags to dry any moist that may exist in the package ]
Tomorrow I'll bring the camera and take some photos.
Regards,
Nuno Gato
by PedroR
Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:16 pm
We've been busy printing 3D stuff since we got our MK6 Upg Kit.
This is our experience so far:
Printed Models:
We've been experimenting with printing grippers for a Robobuilder, printing some intricate parts to check the build quality and also printing some test models that potential buyers sometimes request to evaluate the quality and capabilities of the machine.
I must say this change to a Stepper Motor (on the MK6) is huge enhancement in the build quality and overall experience.
Calibration of the MK5 vs MK6 and Print Quality and Resolution
With the original MK5 we needed to go through a series of steps to calibrate the machine and still we never got quite as good quality or resolution as we get with our MK6 using the default settings. (yes, there was no need for any tweaking on the MK6 settings so far; we're using the default ones).
Sure, if you're a perfectionist you can always fine tune settings for the MK6 (there are plenty of them to tweak around) but out of the box it's been behaving very well. Great print quality and greatly improved print resolution.
If you have a lot of overhanging elements the strategy is still the same: you need to print with support material and be intelligent when rotating/positioning the object for printing for best results.
What we'd really love to see is a makerbot with a double print head: one for plastic and one for Water Soluble plastic that would fill in the gaps during the print. After printing we would just "wash away" the excess plastic. This is how the really expensive 3D printers do it to get the best results.
"Stringing" effect:
One other thing that's been significantly reduced (if not eliminated at all) is the little strings that used to form when the head stops printing and moves from one place to another to resume printing. With the old MK5 this often resulted in some strings being left; the new MK6, out of the box, reverses the motor and fillament just enough to reduce this "string" almost to nothing. (you can actually further fine tune this if you're a perfectionist and want absolutely no stringing)
Dropping the ABP and using just the HBP:
One final thing that we've done was disassemble the Automated Build Platform and Assemble it just as a Heated the Build Platform.
The main difference between ABP and HBP is that you remove the motor and the plastic belt that ejects objects after printing (but keep the heating element in the base). Sure the ABP is cool if you're doing small batches of things as it ejects the platform when it finishes and starts printing the next object immediately after that.
But in our day to day printing here at the office, we're doing one-off prints and the ABP was becoming more of hassle than a benefit for us.
Our main reason to drop the ABP for now was that the belt was wearing out. Because of that it was forming bumps in the middle which in turn were deforming the base of the models.
We could have exchanged the belt (the kit comes with 3 so we have spares) but since we're not doing any batch printing, instead of replacing it we just removed it (along with the ABP motor) and made it into a simple Heated Build Platform.
This also gives you aproximatelly 1 extra cm in the build height (Z axis) to print your 3D models.
The parts to do this change are all included in the Standard Thing o Matic Kit.
We'll try and post some more pictures of what we've printing.
Pedro.
This is our experience so far:
Printed Models:
We've been experimenting with printing grippers for a Robobuilder, printing some intricate parts to check the build quality and also printing some test models that potential buyers sometimes request to evaluate the quality and capabilities of the machine.
I must say this change to a Stepper Motor (on the MK6) is huge enhancement in the build quality and overall experience.
Calibration of the MK5 vs MK6 and Print Quality and Resolution
With the original MK5 we needed to go through a series of steps to calibrate the machine and still we never got quite as good quality or resolution as we get with our MK6 using the default settings. (yes, there was no need for any tweaking on the MK6 settings so far; we're using the default ones).
Sure, if you're a perfectionist you can always fine tune settings for the MK6 (there are plenty of them to tweak around) but out of the box it's been behaving very well. Great print quality and greatly improved print resolution.
If you have a lot of overhanging elements the strategy is still the same: you need to print with support material and be intelligent when rotating/positioning the object for printing for best results.
What we'd really love to see is a makerbot with a double print head: one for plastic and one for Water Soluble plastic that would fill in the gaps during the print. After printing we would just "wash away" the excess plastic. This is how the really expensive 3D printers do it to get the best results.
"Stringing" effect:
One other thing that's been significantly reduced (if not eliminated at all) is the little strings that used to form when the head stops printing and moves from one place to another to resume printing. With the old MK5 this often resulted in some strings being left; the new MK6, out of the box, reverses the motor and fillament just enough to reduce this "string" almost to nothing. (you can actually further fine tune this if you're a perfectionist and want absolutely no stringing)
Dropping the ABP and using just the HBP:
One final thing that we've done was disassemble the Automated Build Platform and Assemble it just as a Heated the Build Platform.
The main difference between ABP and HBP is that you remove the motor and the plastic belt that ejects objects after printing (but keep the heating element in the base). Sure the ABP is cool if you're doing small batches of things as it ejects the platform when it finishes and starts printing the next object immediately after that.
But in our day to day printing here at the office, we're doing one-off prints and the ABP was becoming more of hassle than a benefit for us.
Our main reason to drop the ABP for now was that the belt was wearing out. Because of that it was forming bumps in the middle which in turn were deforming the base of the models.
We could have exchanged the belt (the kit comes with 3 so we have spares) but since we're not doing any batch printing, instead of replacing it we just removed it (along with the ABP motor) and made it into a simple Heated Build Platform.
This also gives you aproximatelly 1 extra cm in the build height (Z axis) to print your 3D models.
The parts to do this change are all included in the Standard Thing o Matic Kit.
We'll try and post some more pictures of what we've printing.
Pedro.
by billyzelsnack
Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:14 am
How do you switch between 3mm and 1.75mm? Yesterday the makerbot rep talked me out of getting this for my MK5..
http://store.makerbot.com/mk6-ptfe-1-75 ... e-set.html
because he said that you can't just take out smaller tube and run 3mm. Does the upgrade kit also ship with this too..
http://store.makerbot.com/mk5-ptfe-coretube.html
I'm not seeing it in the pics.
http://store.makerbot.com/mk6-ptfe-1-75 ... e-set.html
because he said that you can't just take out smaller tube and run 3mm. Does the upgrade kit also ship with this too..
http://store.makerbot.com/mk5-ptfe-coretube.html
I'm not seeing it in the pics.
by billyzelsnack
Sun Apr 10, 2011 2:23 am
I already converted my MK5 to a stepper extruder. The MK5 and MK6 barrel are the same as I can tell so it seemed like I could just grab the new PTFE tubes and be set. I figured it could be used for both 1.75mm and 3.0mm filament, but I guess not. I looked at the MK6 assembly page and saw that it ships with a red PTFE for 3.0mm and two clearish ones for 1.75mm.
by PedroR
Tue Apr 12, 2011 2:43 pm
Hi billyzelsnack
I think the MK6 Upgrade Kit already ships with the thinner PTFE tubes. If not, I would advise you to contact Makerbot as it makes sense that it is included in the kit.
Since their sending the plates for 1.75mm they should be sending the PTFE tubes as well.
I think we got those in our kit. But I need to check it with Nuno because he was the one who did most of the assembly (I did the photo story
)
The PTFE tubes came inside one of the bags and since I only took pictures of the included bags (and didn't open all of them to expose all the parts) that's probably why you're not seeing the PTFE tubes in our pictures.
Regards
Pedro
I think the MK6 Upgrade Kit already ships with the thinner PTFE tubes. If not, I would advise you to contact Makerbot as it makes sense that it is included in the kit.
Since their sending the plates for 1.75mm they should be sending the PTFE tubes as well.
I think we got those in our kit. But I need to check it with Nuno because he was the one who did most of the assembly (I did the photo story
)
The PTFE tubes came inside one of the bags and since I only took pictures of the included bags (and didn't open all of them to expose all the parts) that's probably why you're not seeing the PTFE tubes in our pictures.
Regards
Pedro