Hi. If you've been following my tweets and on the Forum then you may have known that I Had a few issues with my new MakerBot replicator here and um in the unboxing I uh complained that I couldn't find the SD card where I finally did find it Loose hidden Down Under the flap in the bottom of the Box just as I was about to throw it out. so I thought beauty, you know I'll stick it in here don't know which way it goes up and I'll print something from it. So I printed What's um on here, it's got a spiral box example down here.

So I printed this one and this is what I ended up with. you can see it's it's printed the raft on the bottom properly and then it started to print the spiral box and then it went absolutely berserk. I wasn't here when it actually, um, did this and uh, you may recall that I did note that um, it was, you know, violently shaking the machine while it was doing it. So maybe when they've uh, rendered this spiral box.

example I don't know, they've set it to like maximum speed or something like that and the box was really shaking and vibrating and and I do have the rubber feet on it. By the way, a few people complained oh I broke it because I didn't have the rubber feet on it Anyway, what happened was I you know it failed to print this. Okay right you get a failure but then after that it seemed to have permanent killed the MakerBot Everything in the y axis was dead. So I thought did, uh, troubleshoot this see if I can fix it now.

First of all, I'll try and get a shot of what the actual issue is. You'll notice the raft over here at this end up here. When it comes back, you'll see it. but it's supposed to be like a circle like at this end over here.

but it's not. You can see that it's actually skipped like it's gone back like that. It's supposed to have a flat top and a flat bottom. just like just like this here, right? It's supposed to look like that because it printed.

uh, that good raft. this is I'm printed exactly. uh, the same thing. so it's uh, printed that good RA there.

but it doesn't look like that. Now you see, it's all skewed in this wide Direction back and forth. Here it's it's it's uh, completely buggered and this is because it's going very slowly here. This is actually, um, doing quite well.

Usually it fails. like, like, totally and uh, it's like halfway out in the Y axis. And here I've got it printing my microcurrent uh case and you'll be able to see in a second. Oh See, it's already skipped that line there.

You see that square on the right hand side that's not supposed to be there. It's already skipped a couple of cm. In the Y direction, you can see those circles are supposed to be on top of each other and they're not. and and that cross in the middle.

there is not supposed to be there. and uh, it's completely skipped and you may be able to see some skipping on this axis. Perhaps you've got to watch carefully and it's only in the Y direction of course, but you might might be able to catch it. perhaps I don't know, it's hard.

Anyway, it's definitely skipping in that Y direction. Total fail. Look at that. It's quite artistic though.

I'll give it that. So let's now have a look at this Y AIS here. And of course, due to that, Rod going all the way under the back there. Of course it's uh, there's there's two sides to this thing.

so as I move it here, we go as I move it manually back and forth like that. Not only is there the belt on that side, but there's also the belt on this side as well. duplicating that. But of course, the motor for the Y-axis is down in that corner and that vertical belt and that Rod drives the other side over here.

So uh, my first thought, of course was that oh okay, the belts. you know, slipped or something like that. But if I get in here, that is. It's got the belt tensioner spring on there and that feels like absolutely ideal tensioning.

There's no issue there at all. There's no, seems to be no issue with the retention. Uh, the belt retention Clips down in here either. They they actually look like nothing's gone wrong there at all.

and uh, if I inspect these cloes and things up in here here, you I you know I don't notice any issues at all with um, any of the belts or anything like that. So really, it's uh, it's quite a bit. quite puzzling what's actually going on here and uh, but it seems you know I push it back and forth here and the motor turns. No problems whatsoever.

so you know I really? Um, when I first looked at this thing I was at a loss to, uh, figure out what was going on here. and you know, being an electronics engineer, naturally my mind gravitated towards um, you know, something happened to the motor controller and now it's not getting enough torque and due to the you know, the violent, uh, nature that it was, uh, printing, you know it was really shaking the machine and maybe causing you know, some serious uh back EMF issues on the motor or something like that could have something could have gone wrong with the controller perhaps and uh I thought that you know that's the level that I would have to go down to. but uh, it's not I did actually find the issue and if you were Keen uh eyed, you may have already spotted the problem. Now what's happened here is I was cleaning out a few, you know, just little odds and ends from in here and and I uh noticed something down in one of the corners here and you might recognize this little sucker.

Well, hello there. Mr Grub Screw. Now, ordinarily, you wouldn't expect to find a grub screw sitting on the base of a makeer b you thought, oh, you know, come straight from the factory should work And it was working until this thing was rather violently. uh, shaken by that test print on the SD card.

So I bummed around a bit more. What did I find a second grub screw? So I went and looked at all of these cogs and you can see there's two grub screws in there for each one and uh, they all looked to be in place and there's actually eight of these total on the two large rods which run the length of the MakerBot on the top of the unit here and they're all in place. There were. there's none missing whatsoever.

So I was wondering where these things had come from. and as it turns out, here's the motor. the Cog attached to the motor Tada Two missing grub screws. They have clearly shaken themselves loose out of the motor.

What gotcha? So there it was. The culprit was down in the Y-axis motor there, and with hindsight, it's pretty darn, uh, easy. and uh, obvious that, uh, you know that was the case and if you methodically troubleshooted this thing, um, You probably would have found it, but I had a you know, a 10-minute cursory glance around this thing and I didn't notice any grub screws missing. So I was about to go on a jump off the rails and go on a campaign of you know, ripping this thing apart and troubleshooting it.

jump on the forums trying to, you know, figure out if anyone else has had the same problems whether or not there's motor current issues cuz I had those in my previous make aot thinger Matic I had uh, those issues where you know it. it was a little bit, uh, touchy and uh, the I had the wrong current drives as you probably saw in a previous video and so naturally my mind was all you know jumping towards those sort of conclusions. But it was only by a sheer chance that I happened to find uh, you know, a grub screw down in the bottom and I eventually found the second one if it, uh, you know, fell down one of the uh, one of the things in the corner there. if I tilted the machine, it would have rolled in there and I would have never found the thing.

and they're They're only tiny. They're absolutely tiny so they would have just been gathered up in the uh, you know, in the dust and crap on my bench and could have been tossed out. and really it was. uh I really didn't notice? um that it was missing the grub screws in there at all.

but there you go. It pays to have like a methodical uh procedure to thoroughly check out this thing. It would have been easier if I built it cuz then I would have known and remembered that oh yeah, there were grub screws in there and yeah, you had to do them up tight, etc etc. But because this thing I didn't build it unlike the thingo Matic um it you know I just expected it to work and not fail.

So I don't know what the these things weren't done up tight enough? I'm not sure maybe they should put some lock tide in them perhaps but the good news is that make Aot does come with a whole bunch of Allen key. so I found one that fitted and uh really? I should like print a little uh tool holder to hang on the side of this thing or something you know containing all the Allen keys and stuff to fix and maintain this thing to keep it in operational order. and if I check the other grub screws on the uh cogs on these uh Drive shars on the Y axis here I I can tighten those up a little bit. they certainly weren't fully tight.

not sure how tight you're supposed to do them up, but I could certainly some of them I could certainly do another half turn on them or thereabouts. Um, fingertight. So really, in my opinion, that's not good enough for a consumer level machine like this. If you got to keep you know, maintaining and massaging the thing with Allen Keys maybe putting your own locktite on it or something like that, that it, you know it, it.

it's just not going to cut the mustard for them to be successful. and for this thing to be a robust consumer bit of Kit they need to do here is re-engineer these shafts just so that they're not, uh, smooth on the ends. like uh, actually get them machined or something. uh so that the uh, you know, like so they have teeth on them so that it can slide into a a cog and don't need those little uh grub screws on it to grip onto a completely smooth round shaft like that.

Because these things, you know, if these things will go for hundreds and thousands of hours of operation, these grub screws are going to come loose and just you know, supplying an Allen key with it and maybe you know putting it I Don't know I haven't read the manual I haven't said anywhere I Haven't read anywhere about maintaining this thing. Maybe there is a page for it somewhere, but they don't include like a maintenance uh guide with it or anything you know, a a preventative maintenance type guide uh in the box. So really, it really doesn't cut it. They need to re-engineer that solution so it you know it just works and continues to work over the operational life of the unit.

And the interesting part about this failure here is that really, it failed on the only point in the system which can fail in that mode, the most vulnerable point. And what do you know, it failed at the most vulnerable point because on those grub screws on a round shaft, the Y axis is particularly vulnerable cuz it has two here. two over in this corner, two in this corner here, and two over here. So there's eight.

You know there's five failure points in the Y axis system there to fail. There's only one faure point in the X-axis system, so you know statistically speaking, you'd expect that to fail less often. You know it's obvious that it failed at that point, but it shouldn't have to. The damn thing was engineered properly and we're all fixed up now.

And we're printing the microcurrent case here and with no raft of course and it's working a treat. No more slippage in the Y direction. I Think we got a winner. Check out the fine detail on the walls of this box.

Absolutely brilliant. I Love it! Well my print's finished and look, look down here. 84% complete What? Sorry. So what on Earth is going on there? It's not like it has to wait another 16% of the time for it to cool down.

It looks like it's not even uh uh, switching off the heaters there. So what's you know? what's going on? My printer is finished, it's all done, all done and dusted 84% Jeez. Get your algorithm right right? So now I'm going to hit Home Axis and oh holy oh what's going on? Hang on. Quit this process.

It just moves the platform up. What the hell? I I Think it's going to continue to go back to home and probably destroy my print? I'm assuming I I'm pretty sure I've seen it do that before. So yes, I want to quit this process? This is crazy. Yes.

Finished. Okay, okay, let me move this down manually and uh, scrape it off first and then print the home and then do the home button. huh? All right, I've taken my print off and uh, let's do that home thing again. and I I had to cancel the print by the way, cuz it still had 16% left even though it was finished.

and uh, so maybe there's a bug there where if your home axis, um, uh, before it's actually finished and after you, uh, cancel it. So let's see what I'll do home Axis Here we go. So it's going up and imagine that print was still on there. Okay, bang bang.

It probably would have went right through my print there and who knows what damage it would have. Maybe it didn't wouldn't have done damage, but it would have hit my print and Maybe moved it off. Axis or it could have damaged the print if it was Del it. That's just that's crazy.

They need to work on these little things like that. That just ruined the experience. But anyway, here is the final print and that's my first one that's really worked well. With no raft on the bottom, you can see how relatively smooth that is actually really quite smooth.

You can still see all of the little uh, you know you can see the printed bottom on it but that is that feels really smooth because it was on on the Um Capt on bed there and that's that is really work. A treat and this is a beautiful, beautiful print. Just look at all those well. I've looked at these before, you know? I've showed you these before, but the thin walls, brilliant and uh, let's have a look at the uh, the microcurrent printed on the surface there.

it's still a little bit little bit, you know, dodgy over here, but geez, that's that's pretty good. I mean you know it's not up to a commercial case. uh, injection molded case? I mean it's nowhere near it, but just got the little daggies here. so I just rip those off.

but uh, that is an absolutely beautiful print. Oh I Love it! So my Make Aot replicator is certainly back in business. Beauty And uh so I that was just a little troubleshooting video that getting it? Uh, back up. If you want to discuss it, jump on over to the Eev blog forum and if you like the video, please give it a big thumbs up.

Catch you next time.