MakerBot Smart Extruder Plus with Improved Components, Enhanced Sensor System for PLA Filament, Replicator Plus, and Mini Desktop 3D Printers

Well I can finally print again without the fear of it false jamming and really jamming on every print job.But it's going to take awhile before I can forgive Makerbot for the treatment of the early Makerbot customerswho bought 3 or more of the extruders during the early years. We stuck by them but never gave up, yet forced to buyyet another extruder at full price until the problem was solved. But writing this to let others know that the fear ofbuying another new extruder seems to be fixed. And feel free to take the plunge and get the Makerbot printer outof mothballs and start printing again. And it's not just the jams as the new extruder is doing stuff the first extrudercouldn't do even when it didn't jam.

These are absolutely awful. I truly cannot say enough awful things about them, but here goes anyway. I am on extruder number 5. Every extruder, from my original smart extruder through these 5 replacement smart extruder +'s have clogged or had total sensor failure. I run my makerbot with the slip detection (or whatever they call it) on so that I don't void the warranty on the extruders. With the setting on they still jam, pull prints off bed and fill themselves with gobs and gobs of PLA. The filament sensor doesn't detect the failure and it literally pumps the play up INTO the rest of the extruder. I have one extruder that is permanently shot because the control board and optoelectronics are covered in solidified PLA. I have another one apart on my desk right now trying to get the PLA off of the extruder nozzle, heater block, and the aluminum plate that goes between the block and the heatsink, this will take hours if my experience is any indication. One of the extruders works half the time after I removed clogged PLA previously. Another one stops mid-print every time and yet somehow keeps 'running' anyway.I've been in touch with Makerbot support so many times that I'm ready to give up. They keep sending replacement extruders and they keep dying, or rather suiciding. I"m at a loss here, Makerbot suckered me into paying the warranty extension after my printer failed outside of basic coverage. As far as I see it, I'm a lot of money into a product that the company must know is faulty. The fact that Makerbot never asks for the old extruders back suggests they know what the problem is and don't need or want to fix it. I work in an industry where broken bits are shipped back for inspection and processes are refined and parts redesigned to prevent further issues.If someone at Makerbot reads these and wants to make this right, you can find me via my last support ticket from 3/31/2018, that extruder self destructed yesterday leading to this review. CASE NUMBER: 00639248

The only reason I didn't rate the print quality 4/5 is because I've grown accustomed to my Prusa i3 Mk3 quality. The quality of the Makerbot, albeit an older printer, is still good, but not up to the standards of my other printer. However, I give it 5/5 due to for it being an older printer it's great quality.Old extruder died after a VERY long time (I forget the stats, I wish I recorded them!). Popped a new one in and ready to go out of the box. Packaging was also pretty nice.

I sure wish I didn't have to spend $250 on an upgrade to my printer. Obviously Makerbot realized the problem with the original extruder and created this one, but why do I have to buy it when I paid $2k for the printer... Having said that.. it really is much better constructed than the original... here's why:The original extruder has a problem where if you let the filament run out you can have a small (1" long) piece of filament clogging the feed from allowing new filament to be loaded. On the old style you can take it apart and pull the filament out, but the clips on the side of the extruder are prone to breaking if you do it too many times. This new design is better constructed so that it minimizes the clogging... but if it does happen the extruder is screwed together so you can easily take it apart (and void the warranty with a VOID sticker)- but you can think pull out the clog and be back in business..I would give 5 stars because it is a big improvement, but at $250 I just think it's too expensive.

I'm one of those customers Makerbot is desperately trying to push down the memory hole: first-time buyer of a Fifth Generation, the overpriced piece of alphaware that they foisted onto an unsuspecting public.So, after jamming far too many jammable Smart Extruders in my 5th (and getting blindsided like everyone else by their "ha, we fixed it, no more replacements" policy which turned out to be so much more lies), I eventually bought a Smart Extruder+ as the last extruder: once it died, so would my 5th Generation and Makerbot would not get another cent.Eight hours of printing later, the unjammable Smart Extruder+ jammed.Ha.It comes apart with four hex-head screws, so that's a fair improvement on the previous Smart Extruder's plastic clamshell. Mechanically, it's laid out better and there are fewer gaps where jams can form--specifically, they removed the gap between the heat sink and the heating element, which would inevitably form plugs as hot PLA got squished into the void between them when they clicked together. They also added a filament guide before the heat sink, meaning that filament /should/ break before then and it can be extracted with some needle-nose pliers.No such luck in my case; the blockage formed in the solid metal channel that is the heat sink/heating element/nozzle assembly. I managed to get the nozzle off, cleaned it up, put the nozzle back on, and then melted the jam out. If they were looking to make it more maintainable, they succeeded, but their "never jam" sales line is still bupkis.