MakerBot Industries

Sean of Butterscotch swung by our booth at CES and did a great interview with us. Check it!

How to get better results from your 3D printer: Calibrating Hardware

With the recent launch of the Thing-O-Matic, I’ve collected a number of ways to get a better result from a 3D printer. ¹  If you’ve got a suggestion, please let me know in the comments!  Some of these tips are more important to the Cupcake, some are really only applicable to certain versions of these printers, but they’re all considerations when trying to get the best possible prints from your robot.

• Calibrate Hardware. The most obvious way to get a better print is to calibrate your machine’s hardware.  These kinds of tweaks could take a number of forms.  You could:

1. Make sure all of the bolts/nuts are tightened properly.
2. Make sure all pulleys are tightened properly to their bolts.
3. Get the right tension on the belts by setting the proper tension on the pulleys.  There are a few pulley tensioners on Thingiverse that could help with this issue for Cupcakes.
4. Make sure the bearings on the X and Y axes slide smoothly.  If the hole the bearings slide into are too tight, they will cause the bearings to bind up on the precision rods.  The solution is to sand the hole slightly to widen it.
5. Insert something springy between the X or Y axis end caps and the X or Y axes. ² This reduces play, noise, and will ensure a slightly better print job when it comes to small details.  There are printable end caps that help reduce this problem.³
6. Make sure the extruder has the proper filament tension.⁴
7. Adjust your stepper motor torque for the Thing-O-Matic or Cupcake.  You want enough power that the stage moves in a responsive manner and won’t lose steps, but low enough that you’re not overheating the motor or operating in a needlessly noisy way.
8. Thing-O-Matic:  Make sure the endstops are properly and securely adjusted.  If there is any wiggle, you could get variable starting build heights.
9. Thing-O-Matic:  Make sure the cables running to the X and Y stages have enough slack to work and but not so much they will get caught on something.
10. Thing-O-Matic:  Make sure you’ve run the wires down the proper sides.  Even if you have your Thing-O-Matic wired properly, running the wires near to the wrong wires can lead to EM noise which could case printing problems.
11. Cupcake:  Level your build platform.
12. Cupcake:  Level your Z stage.
13. Cupcake:  Reduce the play between the XY axis stage and the XY build platform.
14. Cupcake:  Make sure there is no grime in the Z rod threads.
15. Cupcake:  Replace warped Z rods.
16. Cupcake:  Add Z axis wobble arrestors.
17. Cupcake:  Widen the Z axis holder on the Z platform by sanding the notch if you’re having a problem with just one bent rod.
18. Cupcake:  Take the clamp off the worst Z axis rod and double-clamp the best Z axis rod (via the MakerBot Support Stream and Charles Pax).

More tips on getting better print results tomorrow!

1. Photo courtesy of MakerBot [↩]
2. I use little bits of paper towel [↩]
3. I’m having trouble locating these Things.  If you can leave a link in the comment, I’ll update the post. [↩]
4. This is SO much easier with a MK5 Plastruder it’s not even funny [↩]

As someone who spent a bit of time at Stanford myself, I couldn’t help but notice this Thingiverse item: Hoover Tower by tshannon – Thingiverse

And look at that picture!!  3d Modelers: I suggest that you always take a picture like this, right after you finish your first print.  This one is just perfect…it looks so good that I bet the carillon in the tower even works.

OK people: now who wants to model the Dish? Or at least the Knoll?