3/3/2017 – 21:21 
Sit Rep: I started printing the robot chassis with no raft about ~1/2 hour ago.  It looked good for the first 10 minutes and then the printer head obviously hit one of those sensors on the side of the chassis.  This screwed up the printer head alignment and caused the printer to “think” that the model had moved about a centimetre towards the front

I know blue on blue is really hard to see, so I added in some detail with MS Paint so you can see exactly what has happened.

3/3/2017 – 21:29
Sit Rep: I tried a Factory Reset from inside Makerbot Desktop because I found an option to “offset” individual axis, and because I didn’t know which one is which (just x or z, I knew which one the y axis is) as well as a whole bunch of fancy options that don’t really make sense.  I’m going to try and print again with a raft and see what happens.

 

3/3/2017 – 22:23
Sit Rep:  After factory reset, printer seems to be printing normally.  The raft is almost finished and it’s looking promising.

So, whenever something goes wrong with the printer, essentially all we need to do is turn it off and on again.  Twice.  With a factory reset in there somewhere.

 

3/3/2017 – 22:51
Sit Rep:  Robot has started printing (i.e the raft has finished) and it looks like it might be okay.  I just hope there will be enough plastic.

 

4/3/2017 – 08:51
Sit Rep:  Robot has finished printing, it looks like it will need some sanding and filing but I don’t think that we’ll be able to print another one.  There is only about a metre of plastic left on the spool, so I’m glad I didn’t faff around any more trying to print without rafts or with supports.

 

 

 

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