Smart Extruder+ for the MakerBot Replicator Z18

I was sent one that was used, then was replaced by Amazon which was very good of them. The replacement lasted 1/14th of the oem unit it replaced. 94 hours as opposed to 1400. I received 0 care and of course by the time I had any time on the unit I was past warranty. Bad deal.

El producto, no funciona en impresoras Z18.

Perfect replacement for the one that wore out. Great price too, free shipping and super fast delivery!

Most of you that are having problems the real cause is that the encoder wheel that works optically that tells if the filament is slipping or not is made of rubber this rubber overtime will shrink about 1000 of an inch doesn't sound like much but it's just enough to allow the filament to slept my work around for this is about a 59 Cent fix there are some extremely small rubber bands girls use for their hair (polybands) and they're only about a quarter of an inch in diameter but when they're stretched out they're only about a thousandth of an inch thick over the encoder wheel typically you only need to put one of these on the encoder wheel and the extruder is fairly trouble-free. The print quality from the new software don't get it confused with the old software which is easy to do it's actually very good.

I purchased the Smart Extruder+ because my original Smart Extruder would consistently slip and jam on my Makerbot Z18.Initially, the new Smart Extruder+ was a huge improvement. Prints ran well for 10-15 hours and I never had to unload and re-load filament. But after a few weeks and less than 200 hours of use, the new extruder failed. Prints were under-extruded, with gaps between layers that produced brittle parts - and I only used MarkerBot PLA. This isn't a filament issue, the problem doesn't appear if I change extruders.Problems with MakerBot extruders are well known, so I figured MakerBot would easily replace or fix the extruder under warranty. I was wrong, after 2 weeks of emails with MakerBot support their recommendation is that I buy another extruder and purchase MakerCare!! And we're talking about a 2-month old faulty extruder that should have a 6 month warranty.I'm very disappointed in MakerBot, they know their products have "issues" and yet they make it difficult to receive warranty service.