Say Hello to "Wintermute"

Wintermute, the serial-number free Makerbot Cupcake CNC

This is my clear acrylic MakerBot Cupcake CNC. I call it "Wintermute."

It's has a Drop in Paxtruder derived from Paxtruder-0.2 (and lasercut) by Craig Berscheidt. (He also lasercut the whole acrylic bot body for me. Awesome work!)

It also has a Heated Build Platform v2.0 (HBPv2) from MBI. (That's what is making the pretty red lights.)

I moved the Extruder Controller to the side of the Cupcake (following Keith's excellent post) partially so that I have room for the heat sink. I also wanted to be able to see the filament better. (The photo above is before I did this.)

One common problem with the HBPv2 is that the MOSFET overheats. A common solution is to make a relay circuit, and I might still end up with one, but as a quick solution I rigged up a quick heat sink from some 20AWG hookup wire (of the RadioShack flavor) with the insulation stripped off.



Then I soldered it onto the ground tab of the MOSFET.




You can see that it sticks out too far to clear the top of the Cupcake's frame, so mounting the extruder controller was required. In retrospect, I could have made the heat sink considerably smaller with the same amount of wire, and not had to move the EC, but I like it better this way.

I've been able to make a few prints, but then I started having extruder problems. Right now I'm rebuilding the extruder.

Wish me luck!