APRIL 24, 2020
Something is up with GoFundMe right now and I can't put up a new photo so please check out the 3D Printing Instagram and twitter @wemakethings3D to see the super awesome picture of the 380 ear savers I dropped off yesterday.
I got some good news and I got some bad news. If you have been following the updates regularly I try to keep these all super happy because with the state of the world no one wants to read downer news. Well I need to share some bad news: The MakerBot is down. It provides nearly half my daily output of ear savers, but there is a break in one of the 4 x-axis motor cables and it needs to be replaced. I know it is one of these because I formatted and re-added the file on the drive. Then updated the firmware of the bot itself. The problem, X-axis skipping, was still occurring. The nozzle skips violently in one direction shifting the extrusion point by a cm to the left. It will keep doing this throughout the print,causing the print to creep across the plate. It can also seriously damage the printer if the extruder cradle runs head first into the bars that hold everything up.
The icing on the cake is that during my delivery run yesterday, one of my prints came dislodged for an unknown reason and then that Ender would not bind to the build plate. I had all printers down for almost 4 hours yesterday running and tuning and rerunning and more tuning. It felt like I was an ER Dr. doing surgery on a black box problem: I know how i want it to come out, but im unsure of the steps to make it there.
But, and here's the good news, as of this morning both Enders are running, mostly silently, and their builds are sticking. I found a new ear saver file I am running that is 18 minutes faster than the previous version and use two grams less material which is massive! 9% less material or for every 11 prints I run I get one more made for free! Yesterdays deliveries included 380 to Elmhust hospital. 20 Shipped to Kalamazoo, MI. 50 Delivered to an animal hospital, and 8 delivered to a Whole Foods Employee and her family. Please keep sharing these updates. Please be patient while I wait for the new cables to arrive. Pray to Hephaestus I don't have any more "Triple Down" Keep 6' away. Wash your hands. Call your friends and tell them you love them. Write a letter to your family. Color a picture. JUST STAY HOME! We will beat this!
