Binned

Today was the day I put the Makerbot Cupcake #170 into storage.  Part of the new year is cleaning up and getting ready for some remodeling projects in our house.  I realized that one thing on my workbench has slowly made it's way to the far corner.  Long term storage for the Cupcake has been put off too long.  So many great memories four years ago, pushing out that first hot plastic.  The feel of that first sample pulley model coming off the platform (no such thing as a heated one at the time!)  I have to believe there was actual magic involved because no way could I assemble something that complex and have everything work the first time otherwise. Unfortunately, that was proven out again and again with frustrating issues from temperamental extrusion hardware and inconsistent quality plastics.  It's impressive how many mendels were printed out with this machine, plus my MakeNBreak gcode hacking.     http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8283

Even with rose colored glasses it wasn't all good.  The Cupcakes big brother The Replicator and modern RepRaps are marvels of maintenance and reliability in comparison.  So much wasted in time and plastic due to failed parts or pushing out the whole hot end assembly.  You could say this sparked a lot of innovative solutions right along the vein of genetic evolution mindset of the Darwin printer. (Where do you put this washer? Do you use heat on the platform?  Rick at Makergear is selling a sweeeeeeeet upgrade for that!)  My secret was a space heater used to get the platform toasty right before starting a job.  It's been well over a year since the machine was put to work, but up until now I've had great expectations for putting it back into service.  Maybe finally get that Charles Pax's automated build platform to finally work....

At it's peak I'd replaced all the extrusion mechanisms and gone to a heated platform.  Just the stepper motor hack was performance art, but worked insanely well for me.  Replacing undersized MOSFETs was super fun, I swear.  By far the worst was learning by trial and error how to hand machine hobbed bolts for wades extruders. I have a drawer full of screwed up ones!

Nothing right now can compare to that excitement of something so new.  Having a small band of folks trading tips online or finding out there was a closeby meetup https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/central-ohio-reprap-and-makerbot-operators.  Plus fixing the knob my wife's car A/C earned me a ton of points.

Thanks Cupcake :)