Discov3ry Paste Extruder

So a hacklab member (me, User:Tdmckee) supported the Discov3ry Paste Extruder on Kickstarter (#304!), and just recently received it. Its currently in the lab, attached to the Makerbot. Here's a [tweet with a picture.]

We were initially having some issues with getting extrusion to work (as documented below in troubleshooting), but it all turned out to revolve around the fact that the printer firmware would interrupt if it didn't read an extrusion temperature (because we had disconnected the extruder thermocouple along with the other filament extruder parts). Plugging the thermocouple back in, and removing some limits associated with extrusion speed (due to high gear ratios between the paste extrusion stepper motor and the actual plunger), we were finally able to [successfully extrude a blob of acrylic painters caulk] (our test paste) onto the Makerbot bed!

First demo paste extruder print

---

Troubleshooting

• Were experiencing a MINTEMP error.
  • Manually adding M302 (enable cold extrusion) into the start gcode in CURA, and commenting out / removing any M109 set temperature commands, fixed this error, along with plugging in an extruder thermocouple to read out _some_ temperature (as would otherwise encounter a MINTEMP error, code 0, preventing the print from starting). Asked the [structur3d.io forum], received [this reply]... I don't have sufficient clue to talk gcode directly to the printer at this stage of my 3dp learnings so I'm deferring to someone more expert in these sorts of things things...

• [here's another forum post] with some other settings to try...

Stuff to extrude

Apparently structur3d have a list with some settings to try (though hopefully somewhere more organized than that forum, which seems a little free-for-all unstructured)

My list:

• Silicone Caulk
• Wood Filler
• Various edible things
• ... other? Happy to field suggestions...