Replicator 1, still working as new after 200 hours of printing...

Replicator 1, still working as new after 200 hours of printing…

Brilliant! Our UP! packed in after about 2 hours!

The only question is, how well did it work when it was new?

My Mendel90 has probably accumulated north of 2000 hours by now. It’s still working as new :smiley:

@Tony_Olivo It worked Great! It took a few prints to get everything sorted out, but that’s what happens with evolving technology. Sure there are things you wanted to be default. But hey, just print out new parts :wink:

Glad to hear it! Just had to have that vital piece of information, because something that’s DOA can still function as new indefinitely!

My Mendel Sells hasn’t worked reliably for even 10 hours at a stretch. Maybe 200 in 1.5 years of ownership.

As new != stock parts. :wink: Which extruder upgrades are you currently running with?

Cool, its interesting to hear how long most printers can chug along. @Thomas_Sanladerer 's Mendel90 is most impressive if that’s the case!

Our own Replicator2 is almost hitting 100 hours now and still going strong :slight_smile:

Sure @Andrew_Plumb , “As new” isn’t really the same as no mods made… Iv’e installed a hot-air-redirect that I created in Rhino. It just simple redirecting unit to draw cool air from above and shoot out hot air upwards in the sides. Nothing fancy, just to avoid turbulence around the printsurface. Other than that it’s stock!

Get at least one of the spring-loaded extruder variants printed (in ABS) and installed ASAP. That will save you grief in the not-too-distant future when the stock delrin plunger-based extruder block fails beyond recovery and/or you want to explore other filament sources where filament diameter varies more significantly.

We’ve logged about 800 hours on our Rep1 Dual and new out of the box it was okay. But as @Andrew_Plumb notes, the extruder upgrades took it to another level. Preheat and level with a dial indicator increased further quality. Then Jetty and Dan released Sailfish, and it became wicked fast and reliable. Enclosed, you get no edge lift off the plate. Hacks and upgrades said and done, it’s nearly always running (we primarily use it for rapid part design tests). We’ve got others that simply have not been as reliable.

Definitely get running Sailfish. In addition to @Justin_Ribeiro 's notes, support for subdirectories on the SD card helps keep things organized and being able to dynamically speed-up/slow-down printing speed is really handy when you don’t want to re-slice every time.