Today I needed to use the Xacto knife that we keep in the IT staff room, as I was using it I thought to myself, I should print a small cap for this as the blade could cut someone. I went online to look for a 3D Print file, I found this one here. I got Jack to open the file in MakerBot Desktop so that he could export it to a format the printer could read and because I didn’t have the program on my laptop. I put the SD Card into the printer and started to print, I chose to wait as it wasn’t a long print, I’m glad I did… At 16% the printer stopped and started extruding plastic, this was odd. I restarted the print to see if it was a one-time error, but no, it stopped again at 16%. This lead me to think that maybe one of the steeper motor had a dead spot in it, so we tried to move the print to a different part of the bed.

Again at 16% the print failed, I then tried a different print file, this again failed but at 33% I then tried to print a 10mm x 10mm cube, this got to 99% and again stopped printing. I downloaded/updated makerbot desktop on my laptop to see if Jacks version was too old to print on the printer, this changed nothing.

I talked to Mr. Elias, he said to try to update the printer firmware as it had never been updated since we have had it. Matthew updated the printer and it was still stopping. I told Mr. Stock about the issue and after haveing a small chat we thought it would be a good idea to print from my laptop over USB instead of using the SD card. I tried to print my 10mm x 10mm cube, and this time it worked! I’m still yet to check if its the SD card that has failed or the SD card reader in the printer, but at this point in time we have a way to print so I don’t really want to mess around too much with it.

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Website and Systems Administrator

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