Makerbot Replicator Mini. Thank you!

[nerys]

First. wow. $150. Serious ouch. that hurt a lot. and while my butt is still sore over that it feels alot better a few days and a few dozen prints later.

I got the makerbot repplicator mini. I have been wanting one of these for so long it hurts (3d printer not this model) its got a lot of aggravating factors namely the tiny print volume.

but man $150. I could not pass up. I mean you would have to be nuts to pass that up. ok $299 but it came with 9 rolls of filament. so really about $150 or $200 for the printer itself.

so far it has worked 100% flawlessly as far as function but print quality while spectacular in my opinion requires a lot of clean up especially the damned angel hair wisps. Grrrr. and the rafts always left that one surface "rough" and not pretty.

then I got your software.

holy crap what a difference. its literally not the same printer in "result" as before. not only can I print with no raft but the prints are simply orders of magnitude better NO exaggeration! it truly is remarkable.

so far all my prints have required almost ZERO post clean up. none. nothing. no sanding. no scraping no pulling tweaking nothing. absolutely stunning perfect prints. truly remarkable.

the only problem I have and the point of this post is for others to be able to get around this.

NO bed leveling. so getting that first layer to both stick and "work" is critical.

you need to change two things once the software is installed.

First you need to goto edit process settings and change the SCRIPTS from what it is to THIS

M104 S[extruder0_temperature] T0
M126 S[fan_speed_pwm]
G1 X-60 Y-50 Z1 F9000 ; move to wait position off table
G1 Z0.1 ; position nozzle
G1 E10 F300 ; purge nozzle
G1 X-45 Y-50 Z0.2 E3 ; slow wipe and 3mm extrusion to drop the nozzle

Next NO skirts. they never stick right and are not needed with the slow wipe that code does (does the same job gets the filament going smoothly)

Next under g code you need to play with the Z offset. mine needs to be between -0.45 and -0.80

wait. not one? nope. it FLUCTUATES and VARIES. pick the printer up and move it. z offset is wrong. prepare to tweak it again.

you can't lay down a bead. you need to squish it good and flat to get it to stick right (but not so much that you stuff the nozzle)

the other problem is the bed is never "level" the front edge of my bed is slightly lower than the rear edge. so you need to tweak for an average. should result in slightly too thin a layer in the back and slightly too thick in the front.

for smaller base prints this is fine but larger prints what I do is I use my finger to very gently "lift" the front of the bed just ever so slightly for that first layer when the nozzle is toward the front and let it go when its in the back.

once you get that first layer you can walk away and it will be fine but you need to make sure that first layer is nice smooth and sticks.

I use buildtak expensive as crap but it works VERY well and really helps with both sticking and print quality.

so you have to do some manual tweaking and manual "work" but wow the results are simply spectacular. just search for me on thingiverse almost all the pics I posted the last few days were on the mini with simplify3d

truly amazing the results I am getting out of this printer. amazing.

thank you so much! now I REALLY want that wombot modus badly but its going to take me a very long time to save up that kind of money.

[CompoundCarl]

Nice! So you have a buildtak bed on the mini already?

[nerys]

yes. tired of the bluetape pretty fast. works great with the makerbot software which enforces a mandator raft but the improved FINISH of the model sans raft is so much better.

as long as I can get enough prints out of it I don't mind the price.