Original PostMy office has a Makerbot Replicator that had been sitting for months because the “extruder was broken”. My company doesnt necessarily need a 3D printer, so nobody bothered to fix it. I’m a tinkerer at heart, so I couldnt let that happen.This routinely happened to the hot end. The filament kept getting stuck and having a weak flow rate. I hadnt changed any settings at this point, and was just seeing what happened. It turns out that the tube that guides the filament is too small or something, and the filament is REALLY hard to pull through, especially for an extruder. I resorted to pulling out a length of it and draping it over the side of the machine so that theres no resistance.Progress! The print started to go all squirrely so I stopped it, but it had good adhesion at least.Makerbot’s software had added a raft that I wasnt aware of… oh well. It’s going well at least!Holy crap! A Benchy!Finished w/ the raft removedThings I learned: The raft is super critical to a good print on this machine, but it leaves a crappy finish on the bottom. Otherwise, it works really well despite the weirdness with the extruder! http://ift.tt/2gKUQ8j