Umar

About Point 3, precisely speaking, as far as I have observed, it is even better than how I have described earlier. The Z height of the table is not the same at the beginning and the end of this straight line. It start from a higher point (visually estimated around 0.5mm) and drops down to the layer height specified in the slicing settings during the 15-20cm travel.

Thank you for such a useful post. Makerbot is ideal when you need a device completely working out-of-the-box, but there is no denying that the slicer is a complete headache because of the limited options it offers. The method explained in this post works like a charm. I would like to add a couple of suggestions in the start G code for the machine. 1. Before heating up the extruder, it should home the Z axis, at least, and then move it a couple of centimeters downwards. Sometimes, if we have just finished balancing the plate (which needs to be done quite often with the Replicator), we forget to move the plate downwards after the process and when the heater heats up, it melts material right on the plate and even damages the adhesive PVC coating. 2. It would be better if it also homes both X and Y before heating up so that no residue falls on the plate before the printing process begins, 3. The original maker bot extrudes a straight line, 10- 15 cm long at the beginning of the print at an extreme of the build plate. This cleans the nozzle off any residue filament accumulated in the pre heat process. We should add a similar code in our start code. 4. Last but not the least, the first layer is deposited at 0 position. Which means that the build plate needs to calibrated in such a way that 0 position leaves an 200-400 microns between the nozzle and the build plate. The original maker-bot setting settings assumes this distance to be 100-150 microns compensates for the additional distance either in its start code or the slicing. I say, we don't do anything about it and just ask the users to use a thicker paper to calibrate the plate.