How about listening to problems customers have with their printers?

Well put buddy. Hopefully we can put this thread to rest lol.

 

Thanks and I hope so too lol!

 

I know I'm a bit late to the thread but... I am printing happily. Within 24 hours of getting it, I was up and printing on my Robo (no issue with the printer itself, just learning how to use it), printing really well within a week, and did great despite some hiccups. I've got my printer to a point where I know that right now, I can go out there, flip it on, load some gcode, heat things up, get a print started, and it'll go great. As long as the filament feeds smoothly (which is more an issue with the filament than the printer), it works fabulously.

 

Fair enough, when I say printing happily I mean just setting it up without ever needing to play with settings, mods but if your not having problems can we switch printers please. Lol

 

Well the only mod I've done is the E3D. Other than that it's stock everything. And I've not had to twiddle with settings in ages. I just know which slicer and settings to use based on the piece I'm doing (usually, small detailed stuff in Slic3r, larger pieces or those that have a hole in them like a tube bead I do in Cura - Slic3r fills the holes with support and it's impossible to remove), and away I go.

And no, I love my printer to bits and I'm gonna buy some giant googly eyes for it and knit it a cozy.

 

I would say you can't generalize everyone's printing experiences.
In the end it's all about your own personal perspective and setting proper expectations.

3D printers are complex electromechanical devices. They will always need tuning, tweaking and maintenance just like any other complex electromechanical device. This is a fact.

There will also always be lemons, devices that just have too many problems to ever get them fixed correctly. As a device builder one of their goals is to reduce the percentages of those devices and improve upon the technology. A good support infrastructure is also something that needs to be developed.

Take automobiles as a good example of an electromechanical device that has been around a very long time yet they still need regular maintenance, tuning and repairs. The technology has matured enough to reduce the amount of those needs, but they are still there. They also have their own fair share of lemons as well as a much, much larger support infrastructure.

Compared to the aged technology of automobiles, 3D printing is still in it's newborn stage. But it will mature, get better and have plenty of growing pains. I personally think people should set their expectations accordingly and hope that the unfortunate people with the lemons are able to get a properly functioning printer so that they can join in with the rest of us.

 

Well the bolt seemed to help my feeding issue but now every single time I print something or start another print the Z axis gets lost and my nuts get thrown. What I suspect is the cause of this is the left side of my bed ( where it goes when you home it) has a considerable amount of flex or play in it and every time it homes the Z axis the nozzle ends up actually contacting the bed and pushes it down causing the nuts to get lost and then I have to reset everything! I have the bed levelers in place and I have that front left side tightened down as much as possible but I think the rail is so warped that it sits on, it doesn't make any difference. Idea's??

 

Dime, did you update your Marlin firmware. Homing works a little differently.

http://forums.robo3dprinter.com/index.php?threads/marlin-firmware-update-2-6-14.1725/

 

Actually , thinking about it I think this change may have been in the previous version. Homing should find the limit, back off and fine it again.

 

It homes out fine it's just that because my bed sits up higher on the left side when it homes out it contacts the bed and keeps going down until I e stop it or hit the switch myself. If I raise the left side rod to where it's not too low to hit the bed it won't be the right height to print.

 

Wow the rails sound really bent out of shape. Are your getting the Y rail upgrade?

 

I am not sure I wanna put any more money into this thing if anything I would like replacement rails or a solution to this problem. It does sound like a good idea though as far as the upgrade goes.

 

I would ask robo3d for replacement sliders. I'm confused about the problem. So, with the bed pushed all the way back to the home position if you push down on the glass at the left home position, it gives a lot? Does this mean that the slider bearings are not intact or the bottom part that holds the bearings is bent such that the bearings can move out of the way when you less down? I'm having a hard time visualizing what is happening. Did this never work properly or did it get bent at some point? Maybe you can bend it back at least temporally. This risks freezing up the bearings all together though.

 

Yes that's correct when homed out all the way to the left side and the bed is all the way back, I can push down on that corner and it flexes quite a bit not so much on the other side though. I'm not sure if it's the bearings or the slide rails themselves but it is a considerable amount of movement downward. I'm gonna talk to them and see what they can do or what they recommend.

 

Adjust the threaded rods so that when you manually move the head left to right, it's level with the bed - it doesn't matter if physically the left side is higher or not, as long as the nozzle is the same distance from the bed all the way across on the X axis. You can do this at the front, back, or middle, just make sure you put your print in that same general area when you do your slicing.

Then adjust your Z stop so that the nozzle won't hit the home corner to throw your nuts. This will mean that if you home the Z when the nozzle is actually above the area you're planning on printing over, it'll be hovering above it, far too high to print. That's okay.

When you do your slicing, set the brim to about 10-15 loops, or 5mm. Big damn brim. No skirt necessary.

Then get everything warmed up, load your gcode, and start the print. It'll home, and then head over to the print area. As soon as it starts moving, reach in and grab both threaded rods, one in each hand, and turn them to the right at the same rate, until the nozzle gets to printing height. You can fine tune this as it's printing the brim, until the brim looks right. Having it a little bit too low is better than a little bit too high, as at least things will be well-stuck, and you can always twiddle them a bit higher if you decide it's mashing too much. If you get any large blobs from the very beginning of the print (from thrown filament before the nozzle gets low enough for the filament to grab), you can pluck them off with tweezers - just be careful, as you can lift the whole print up doing this by accident, and small blobs usually smooth themselves out anyway.

I have the very same left-front corner issue, and this is what I do with every print till I can upgrade the rails. It's a little dumb to have to do, but it works just fine, is very fast and easy once you've done it once or twice, and doesn't interfere with the print quality.

 

I was hoping you would pop in Autopsyturvy I thought I read another thread where you did something else to stop the nuts from being thrown but it might have been the description you just gave. This method is the one I currently have no choice in using and I do agree that it is ridiculous that it has to be done every single time, and paying more money for an upgrade for something that should be right from the beginning is a little hard to swallow. I realize other people who got the kickstarter versions had a crappy bed and that's fine but mine is the glass bed which was an upgrade in itself. A little tweaking here or there is fine I realize it will need adjustments but to do it every time is very frustrating especially when you forget and then have to re do everything. hopefully robo will respond and send rails or whatever the issue is to fix it. Thank you for your help though I do appreciate it.

 

Dime. Once things are properly set, they stay that way for a while. Unfortunately for you they also stay bad when not properly set. Two things: There is an adjustment screw for the vertical axis (z) end stop on the right side of the printer. It is attached to the smooth guide rail. If you are throwing your nuts every time the machine homes, turn this screw clockwise two turns, then home again. That screw hits the end stop to keep the print head from going any lower - and throwing the nuts. Once you get it to stop before hitting the print bed, you can make the fine adjustments with the threaded rods as Topsy describes above. A piece of blue tape at each corner is a good starting height so the hot end should just barely touch the tape.
You really don't need an upgrade. I replaced the original screw with a socket cap screw that was a bit longer so adjustments are easier. $.53 at the local hardware store, but that's optional.
If for some reason you have completely run out of adjustment space on that screw, it means your head adjustment is way out of whack. You can raise the print head assembly with one hand and then raise the nuts on their respective threaded rods independent of each other until the whole thing is high enough to clear the bed. Be sure to get both sides an equal height (some people use a dial gauge to get this exact but I find an eyeball is an amazingly accurate tool) so that both sides are equidistant from the bed. Once you are there, be very sure that both nuts are re-seated inside the plastic mounts, then home again and proceed as above.
It sounds complicated, but n practice it isn't. Once you have the system in your brain, and once it is all properly set up, you can print for a long time before needing anything but minor adjustments here and there.
Print away, Dime. Print away...

 

Yes I do know about the z screw, and I understand how that works when setting the height, but when you do that like you are saying and the z height is set, when you adjust the rods manually you also have to readjust the z screw depending on how high or low you need to adjust the threaded rods, meaning that the switch you adjust the screw on will either not click like it's supposed to or you will go too far with the screw and have to back it off resulting in the same problem lol. is there a certain height that switch is supposed to be and maybe the bolts got loose and dropped down further than it should be?

 

Try 45mm up the shaft. Perhaps it isn't tight enough and gets pushed down when the carriage homes? Installing Tesseract's z stabilizers will automatically fix the switch height as well as provide a much better guide rod set up.

 

OK I will try that and see what happens will also try to print those if I can get it to print consistently.