MakerBot Industries

ReplicatorG 0029 is now available. This release is a minor update, with only one new feature, one click Print-O-Matic defaults. MakerBot operators indicated that they wanted a better and easier way to put Print-O-Matic settings back to the Defaults we recommend. So we added a ‘Defaults’ panel to Print-O-Matic for resetting to the Factory defaults for all of our Stepper based extruders. Since there are a lot of new Bot Operators during the Holiday season, we choose to roll this now to make it easier to tinker with their new bots.

If you are new to 3D printing, this is a really helpful set of buttons. New users can now test and experiment with Print-O-Matic settings to their hearts’ content, safe in the knowledge the factory defaults for Print-O-Matic are a button click away!

Ye olde workhorse of 3D printing, ReplicatorG,  just got a new release!   Along with the shiny shiny new revision number (which is a perfect number!). it has some great added features.

• Pre-heat for build? Check.
• Build right from the STL View window? Check.
• Better support for international number formats? Check.
• Temperature info right in the Machine Status Bar? Check.
• Squashed some small user reported annoyances? Check.

If you do a lot of 3d printing you’ll love the new updates in ReplicatorG.   The Pre-Heat system will speed up printing on older bots. The ‘Print from STL View’ will make it easier to just click ‘print’ and go.  Plus with temperature info in the Bot Status Bar at the top of ReplicatorG, gone are the days of wondering ‘Is that Bot at temperature yet?’

Overall this update doesn’t add any crazy new features. It just makes printing a little faster, a little easier, and a little more fun.  But why take my word for it?  Why not go download it for yourself.

We constantly get great ideas for additions or improvements to ReplicatorG from our users. They range from the fantastic to the fantastical. Almost always it’s hard to tell someone: “No, sorry, we can’t work on that right now.” Since our hardware and software are Open Source, it’s possible for people to add their own features to it, but it’s not always practical.

I’m sure many of our readers know that what Open Source is, but I want to take this paragraph to explain as a refresher. While there is some lawyering as to the exact definition of Open Source, the general idea of Open Source is: Users get the design docs as well as the product, so they can understand and modify what they use. For MakerBot that means our hardware designs as well as our Source Code are available on the web for our users (and anyone else) to inspect, mutate, or just ponder. A great example of how open source super-charges innovation is some of the great work Rob Giseburt has done to tweak his own setup, and support the MakerBot community. Because we open our designs to the community, Rob has been able to create nifty hardware add-ons as well as some great software updates.

We’d like to make this kind of innovation easier for MakerBot users, to help them expand, tweak, and improve their own setup. To that end, we are hosting a “Tinkering on ReplicatorG” class for the New York MakerBot User Group and other makers. It will be an introduction to updating and changing ReplicatorG. The class will be on December 8th, from 6:30 to 8:30PM, at the MakerBot Workshop (314 Dean St in Brooklyn). Hosted by MakerBot’s own Software and Support folks, it will be an hour of setup, tutorial, and discussion, followed by an hour of DIY workshopping. We will have experienced ‘botters on hand to answer questions, help out, and give suggestions.

If you every said “Geez, it would be really cool if this window did X” or “Wow, if only I could make the program also Y” this is your chance for some hands-on help doing that. All you need to bring is a laptop that has a USB port and runs Windows, Mac, or Linux. Well, that and some curiosity and creativity!

The Skinny:
Tinkering on ReplicatorG Class
Dec 8th, from 6:30PM to 8:30PM
@ The MakerBot Workshop
314 Dean Street (between 3rd & 4th Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11217

Hot on the heels of ReplicatorG 0026, we are already releasing a new version, ReplicatorG 0027. Most users will see no major feature additions in this version, but there are a stack of bugfixes, including the automated build platform belt issue, as well as  some important user interface improvements and other tweaks. However, for advanced users, we did include support for our experimental DualStrusion process into this release as a full feature, so it’s easier to get those awesome multi-color prints. The UI tweaks come compliments of Rob Giseburt, one of our community contributors. He had a great idea for a design to simplify skeinforge settings selection, and it worked so well we included in into our codebase. Many thanks to Rob!

Some details on the interface tweaks after the jump!

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If you’ve been using any recent versions of ReplicatorG, you may be familiar with this dialog box.  It’s Print-O-Matic, a feature that was added to RepG in version 0025 (which should be pronounced “double-oh twenty-five,” as in “double-oh seven”) which is designed to make it easier to find workable Skeinforge settings for various layer heights and speeds.

While Print-O-Matic is fairly straightforward to use, we’ve had some requests from power users who wanted to know a bit more about exactly what it does, and some requests from less-advanced users who want to know good strategies for using it.  That’s why we’ve whipped up this documentation page which has both sorts of information.  You’ll find basic usage info there as well as tips on how to go deeper if you want to.

If you’ve been wondering about that “Print-o-Matic” thing, hopefully this will answer your burning questions.

This week on MakerBot TV I’ll get you acquainted with some brand new colors and my brand new printing partner!!! We’ll also share the scoop on experimental dual extrusion and deliver some helpful tips for using the new Stepstruder® MK7, ReplicatorG 0026 and the firmware update v3.0.

Thanks to Ben Rockhold and Ethan Hartman for your help this week. As well as Alan Bjorklund, Goto80 and Latché Swing for the music.

ReplicatorG 0026, Firmware 3.0 and Tigers, Oh My! Ok, ok. I admit, tigers may be a bit of exaggeration. ReplicatorG 0026 and Firmware 3.0 are now available for all users, in a handy download package, or directly from our source code repositories. This includes a lot of updates, better GCode profiles for the new Mk7 Steptsruders®, and a plethora of bug fixes.

What new about ReplicatorG 0026 ?

Most importantly, ReplicatorG has been updated to include an Stepstruder® Mk7 profile. This makes it easy to get excellent prints out of a Mk7. The Mk7 specific profile means filament control has been optimized for cleaner, better prints overall. And along the way a lot of bugfixes have made it into ReplicatorG, including better panels, updated commands, and easier logging.

What’s new about Firmware 3.0?

The Firmware 3.0 codebase has been cleaned up and extended to support multiple extruders. The firmware is more stable, and power users can more easily build and test variations of it. As always you can upgrade your firmware from Machine | Upload new firmware… in ReplicatorG.

Unfortunately, we had to change some of the core firmware to do that. That means you need to update Extruder Controller (to 3.0) Motherboard (to 3.0) and ReplicatorG (to 0026) together when you upgrade.

What else do I need to know?

Firmware 3.0 requires ReplicatorG 0026 to run.  Also, we’ve renamed a number of machine drivers for clarity, so you’ll probably need to re-select your driver in the Machine menu when you first start up.

Firmware 3.0 Support:

As always, we love to watch and help Makerbot users to upgrade, tweak, and innovate. Unfortunately, we can’t support every single variation of bot out in the wild.
Makerbot pledges full support for ReplicatorG 0026 and Firmware 3.0 on our most popular bot configurations:

• Gen3 Electronics (Cupcake) with Mk5 Plastruder
• Gen4 Electronics (Thing-o-Matic) with Mk5 Plastruder
• Gen4 Electronics (Thing-o-Matic) with Mk6 or Mk7 Stepstruder®

If you are using some other configuration, we’ll do our best to help, but we cannot promise that we can solve your problems.  Tread carefully before updating your firmware to 3.0 if you’re running a custom configuration!

Thanks to all-star developers Adam Meyer, Matt Metts, Koen Kooi, Noah Levy, Marius (and new MakerBot developer Far McKon! -ed.)  for their hard work and great code.

Those of you who got a chance to stop by Maker Faire this weekend (or read our earlier blog post) are probably wondering when you too can experiment with dual extrusion heads. The answer is: now! We’ve integrated tools into ReplicatorG that simplify the process of creating a two-material print. They’re not in the released version of ReplicatorG yet, but they are available in a git branch for experimenters who want to get a jump start on the future. And who doesn’t want to get a jump start on the future? Details for the bold below!

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Slicing with style

Gian Pablo’s excellent tutorial on how to manually edit Skeinforge profiles on Mac OS X got me thinking that manually editing Skeinforge profiles isn’t exactly intuitive for just about any operating system. ¹  For instance, Windows Vista will store Skeinforge settings in one of two locations.  These profiles are located either in a sub-folder where you have ReplicatorG installed or a sub-folder of your user profile.

1. Location of Skeinforge Settings in ReplicatorG
   • replicatorg-0024\skein_engines\skeinforge-35\skeinforge_application\prefs
2. Location of Skeinforge Settings under User Profile
   • C:\Users\USERNAME\.replicatorg\sf_35_profiles

The settings folder within the ReplicatorG sub-folder should contain a series of sub-folders with the stock profiles:

• SF35-cupcake-ABP
• SF35-cupcake-HBP
• SF35-Thingomatic-ABP
• SF35-Thingomatic-ABP-Stepstruder
• SF35-Thingomatic-ABP-Stepstruder-1.75
• SF35-Thingomatic-HBP
• SF35-Thingomatic-HBP-Stepstruder
• SF35-Thingomatic-HBP-Stepstruder-1.75
• SF35-Thingomatic-non-heated

It seems that when you create a new Skeinforge profile within ReplicatorG the new settings profile will be stored under your User Profile.  The profiles themselves are basically a collection of text documents laid out in the exact order you would see them in when viewing Skeinforge.  Changing the settings manually is merely a matter of opening one of those text documents in a text editor and changing the relevant values.

1. Photo courtesy of pj_vanf [↩]

Sometimes you need to manually edit or delete a Skeinforge profile. The built-in profiles are stored with ReplicatorG in its installation directory, but the user-created profiles are in a hidden file within the user’s home directory. On Mac OS X, if you want to edit these profiles directly, say to edit the start.gcode file, it can be awkward to find and open the right directory. Fortunately, there is a simple way to access it, with no hacking or trickery required! Here’s how it’s done:

First, make a new Finder window. It should open in your user directory. Then, go to the Go menu in the Finder, and choose the Go To Folder… option.

Then, enter the name of the folder where ReplicatorG stores all the user stuff, which is usually “.replicatorg”:

And voilà, the folder opens up!

Your Skeinforge profiles will be in the folder labelled sf_xx_profiles, where xx is the version number. The start.gcode and end.gcode files are in the folder “alterations” within each of the profiles, and can be edited with TextEdit, or any other text editor. The “profiles” folder within each profile contains the settings for each individual module within Skeinforge. You can edit them directly if you are brave, or more practically, just copy the profiles to back them up or move them to another machine.¹

1. This trick works great when using ReplicatorG 24 and earlier. Stay tuned — or take a peek at the beta early — to take advantage of the new “Locate” button in the Skeinforge window when you “Generate G-Code”: automates this for you. [↩]