Solved 8 day journey to making good parts

Let me be honest, I was about to give up on this printer and take it back to Fry's.

Fortunately, It is now working, it seems to print as good of parts as the Makerbot Replicator 2 that I use infrequently at my real job. The large print volume and heated bed were the big selling points as well as the price, that swayed my decision to purchase. I was aware of the spotty reviews this printer has received over the last year. I think Robo3D wants to provide a turnkey printer, but at this time is much closer to a do-it-yourself kit.

Unfortunately my experience, was one stumbling block after another. In retrospect most of the trouble could have been avoided. Preferably, all this should be handled before the printer is put in the box in whatever far off land it is being made. Since it appears their control over the manufacturing processes are not mature yet. Robo3D should make lemonade out of lemons by establishing a systematic checklist to go thru prior to printing a part. As all of the manufacturing errors were minor in my case.

In addition to what is shown in their video, they should have:

• All software and drivers needed: Arduino, Rumba USB driver, as well as the MatterControl
• Printable thread gage, to verify the z-axis thread pitch, and video how to see where the z-axis scaling is located and procedure to make it right
  
• Video showing proper belt tension and adjustment for x and y axis
  
• Video showing proper filament preload adjustment
  
• Video showing where fans are and description of when they are supposed to be operational and flow direction
• VIdeo showing how high the printer has to be above a flat surface for its cooling fans to work properly
• Video showing to print a specific calibration part that verifies the printer is set up and working properly

If such a checklist existed, I would have been printing good parts within a couple hours of opening the box.

As it was I had the following issues:

• no USB thumbdrive with install software
• download links for Windows 7 didn't install the USB driver properly
• filament ground on first print
• z-axis scaling was off
• y-axis belt was loose
• x-axis belt may have been loose, I tightened one notch
• arduino fan may have not been working or height of printer off flat surface wasn't enough, this problem was the most insidious because the z axis steppers weren't always advancing properly so on simple calibration parts the height just varied and on a real part, the extruder head would drag across the already printed making an ugly mess

Hope this helps someone.

 

While I have been able to make a number of good prints. I ran a tall job that ran for nearly 9 hours. Part finished but layer adhesion was so poor that the part broke easily in a number of places. When I tried to run more prints, the z-axis was only advancing up in positive. In the process of trouble shooting. I noticed that one of the threaded rods was loose in flexible coupling, at the base of the coupling the locking compound used at the factory had extruded up around the thread. Which explained the poor layer adhesion on the long duration print.

A note of warning, it appears they are using a thread locker on the lead screw as well as the locking screw, so if you are checking to see if the locking screw is tight it will appear to be. However if you torque it tighter, the locking compound will give way the screw will turn tighter. Had to do that significantly to get the threaded rod to quit slipping in the flexible coupler.

After that tightening, my z-offset shifted another -0.8 mm.

 

The threaded rod wasn't loose with respect to the flexible coupler a week ago. I twisted the rod while holding the coupler.

The cooling air flow was definitely my initial problem,