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MakerBot
After graduating from the University of Washington Mechanical Engineering Department, I decided to buy a MakerBot Cupcake CNC so I could continue to experiment with rapid prototyping machines in my free time. The Cupcake CNC is an open-source fused deposition modeler, similar to the Stratasys Dimension 3D Printer. Below is an image of all of the parts used to build the Cupcake CNC.
The majority of the assembly was completed over the course of one weekend. Below is an image of the x and y stage assembly.
The MakerBot kit was missing one pulley and the original motherboard was faulty. Shortly after these parts were replaced, the MakerBot was finished. An image of the completed system is shown below.
An image of the first test part design from SolidWorks is shown below on the left. An image of the printed part is shown on the right.
After making a few test parts I started having issues with the extruder. At first there was a problem where the plastic wasn't coming out of the extruder tip, but instead started to come out just above the heater, shown in the image below.
I took the extruder apart to remove the plastic that had been squeezed out. This is shown below.
After reassembling the printer I kept having extruder issues where the feed gear would strip the plastic and stop feeding in the middle of a print.
I eventually gave up on the MakerBot because of the extruder issues and also some adhesion issues with the build platform. After abandoning this project I decided to build a RepRap.
Page created: 2010