MakerBot Industries

First, since it's not released, the users like myself have had some light armchair discussions about the basic design, but without details, I'm not yet ready to "rate" it.

Next, and this is purely my opinion based on building no less than 13 different 3D printers, there are some things I like and some things I don't about the design. I built Cupcakes with the MK4 (and it STILL prints as good the day it was made), custom T-O-Ms, Repraps, Ultimakers, modified some of them to use gen4 electronics and MK6 extruders, built bowden filament drives on a Mk6, and on and on. Here's what I know today.

I love the Ultimaker for it's precision and speed due to the bowden remote filament drive and remote feed. That same + becomes a - when it comes to filament and ooze control where the MK6 and 7s will beat it so bad it's not funny.

I'm growing tired of my T-O-M due to the heavy X-Y stage and the fact that even well tuned, It prints best at 28mm/s (far slower than stock settings). One big gripe is the fact the design really needs the larger 5.5 kg/cm motors, but physically cannot fit in the design without modifications. Ultimately, the heavy moving mass is the weak point.

Repraps suffer from weak frame design in the X axis even with bracing. My Mk6 modfied design is the premium version, and Mk7 (if I didn't have so much 3mm stock around) would be the next upgrade, thus reducing moving mass and decreasing frame flex.

That should give you a clue how I feel about the Replicator. Since it is a box frame and basically the Z is very similiar to the Ultimaker, it is a good basic frame design. The key point is that it would be extremely rigid. The moving head is the melded combination of Reprap and Ultimaker designs. My only concern is the 2 head version with the moving mass and the retention of the current sized motors. Also, I see a potential flex point in the way the X rails hang down from Y rails in the X axis due to inertia of the print head. At the same time, I see a weakeness in the Y axis belt drive shaft due to the bearing supports being far away from the pulleys, relatively small shaft size (to use up existing pulley stock), and no bearing supports in the middle of the shaft. Since MBI/Replicator-G have yet to release firmwares including acceleration/deceleration, I garantee the factors above limit the speeds and introduce distortions in the print the faster you go. All that precision that is bragged about, is only going to happen in the 25-28mm/s feedrates that T-O-M achieves now.
This of course, does leave tons of room for user mods which can solve some of the issues:
Printable bearing supports for the Y drive rod at the back
Printable bracing to prevent flex in the X axis hanging down
Printable X brackets allowing for the longer motors to be installed
Acceleration based firmware mods

All of those items can improve the design and overcome the stock limitations. I know MBI is advertising higher print rates, but without one in hand, I cannot validate my opinions and I could be wrong, but the engineering side of me says that's where the weaknesses are.
Do I think it's better than the T-O-M, yes it has some advantages. Is it the killer machine out of the box, I say no and expect to see some mods as soon as it is released.

Things I know I would do right off the bat:
Add the Y bearing supports ($ plastic cost plus the bearings)
Upgrade the Y motor (Only $19 from Ultimachine)
Start figuring out a way to upgrade the X motor when using dual heads(single head is probably OK) $ Plastic plus the $19 motor
Take Ramps control board and run "Marlin" firmware with amazing acceleration (sucks because you loose the control panel, but you gain Netfabb instead of Rep-G and better print quality).
Look into porting acceleration into the current firmware and board

And all of that is moot for me because sitting on around 100 lbs of 3mm filament, I cannot afford/justify the new machine and the filament.

Also, a word about larger print area. In my experience with ABS, There is a finite limit to "how big" you can print something and not have distortions from ABS contracting as it cools. The largest single piece item I have seen is the large companion cube and it's square not the wide format of the new machine. If you want to build big, PLA is the answer. Both my Reprap and my Modified Gen4 Ultimaker both have the heated beds and I still have not been able to print large volume ABS objects without curling or later cracking from internal stress in the part.

Iv been meaning to reply to this thread but have been pretty busy. The people that have been here for awhile know that I like a few others have a vast variety of printers from RepRaps to TOM's, and an Ultimaker. I also now work for MB so naturally my opinion will likely be viewed as biased.

I'm sure I will miss a few things on the way as its pretty impossible to cover everything. The first thing I want to get out of the way is that things at MBI are constantly evolving. People sometimes have this notion that MBI just sits around and essentially does nothing, and then just takes other ideas and applies them to its products. We are constantly testing things in house, every day. There is a massive amount of testing that gets done before certain things are deemed good. Dual extrusion has been worked on for quite awhile.

I have to say its funny that people embrace this idea of open source but when different products start adopting good ideas from other products the only thing people can say is oh they copied that design.

The first thing that comes to mind is our new gantry system. It was pretty inevitable that moving around your printed part was not the way to go. I have already read a few comments on the google groups that we ripped of the Ultimaker design. Whats funny to me is that had the people who made these comments taken the time to actually compare the two systems they would see how totally different they are. People have gone so far as to say that UM came up with there design. To those people all I have to say is go open up an Etch a Sketch. This is not me denying there gantry system is good because it is. However its far from perfect, and trust me I have a lot of hours logged on my machine.

The print quality debate is pretty moot in my opinion. At the moment MBI is supporting an open source platform that has had a bit slower development than has been wanted. The high resolution prints you are seeing from the Ultimaker are done on software that is not open source and that the customer has to pay an extra $200 for. Those print resolutions are also achieved with PLA. ABS is a different story at those layer heights. I'm not saying it can't be done however it wont look as good as PLA because the plastic behaves totally different.
Iv have done .1 layer height on my TOM and the Replicator.

At those numbers you already have incredible resolution and the print times on any machine are going to be extremely long, and I have pushed the Replicator quite far in terms of speed. You tell me how you fit a 17+ hour print into a 1 hour class session. Heck most people are uncomfortable leaving there machine untended in the first place and with good reason. This doesn't mean that MBI is ignoring high resolution printing, the fact that the print no longer moves should be a pretty clear indication that things are changing. But were also focusing on some more important issue in my opinion. All the tools are there for you to do it however few have gone forward with actually doing it.

With the Replicator the idea was to provide a consistent reliable hardware experience for people. That is why we are also no longer selling kits but rather assembling and testing the machines in house. Unfortunately we will never be able to please everyone there will always be people that are unhappy.

Jetguy I can assure you there has been no flexing in the X axis rods what so ever and iv tortured it pretty well. I'm not sure though that I understand your second concern regarding the Y axis drive belt and the spacing of bearings.

GBurch Replicator is the way forward it will be our Flagship platform. If you upgrade your TOM's to MK7/8 you will be able to keep a consistent development line. However the speed at which both can print will be different. You will however not be able to do this if you are running Mk6 extruders with 3mm filament because your profiles will be different.

This has gotten very long so I will end it here I'm sure Iv missed a bunch of things and for that I apologize.

I hope nobody takes my comments the wrong way. The new machine is great and has some nice new features as well. I was trying to give my perspective as a veteran owner of the series of bots so that if you are already a Makerbot owner, what to expect from the new machine VS the one you already have. Clearly, the new machine is being marketed to new members off the street, rather than an upgrade for current owners. That's honestly a good thing to drive the price down.