Has anybody checked out my review of the Robo3D on Amazon?

I have spent several days (over 30 hours) writing a review on the Robo3D as a new purchaser and I would like to know if anybody likes it or not? I also (in the same time frame) have created a video set about repairing the leaking extruder which my printer had (5 total - over 2 hrs of video).

You will see my review on Amazon authored by "Roberts Grip" and there is a URL toward the end of the review to my YouTube videos (also authored by "Roberts Grip"). The YouTube videos are NOT Monetized (haven't figured all that crap out yet), so I am not trying to get hits on my videos for anything other than criticism on how INSANELY friggin long they are! This is the first time posting to YouTube (and really bothering with reviews on Amazon for that matter), so they probably suck.

Thanks
Robert

 

Thank you for taking the time to look at this stuff!
I really believe those guys have a good product and should be given a fair chance. Most people don't realize what people go through starting a business, let alone a business like this. Everybody which actually starts their own business the hard way (who isn't already rich or has a very rich person dumping millions into the new venture) goes through these issues....just some are better at hiding it than others. I thought the other negative reviews on Amazon were not completely fair. I do respect their opinion and think it if unfortunate they had problems, and its okay if they sent it back in frustration. But the product IS NOT TOTAL GARBAGE....that is NOT fair. If that were true, I would not have given it a good review....but it STILL would have been a fair one even if I had not been able to fix the leaking extruder and just sent it back. This product was good enough to deserve that even under that circumstance.

And yes, that Davinci thing is insane! I wonder to what extent they actually brick it. Probably, they write garbage to their MCU and write protect it to prevent it from further modification without hooking an ICP to it in some (probably difficult... perhaps solder wires to the right fine-pitch SMD pins) way. In that case, I would see a class action suit against these guys possibly (depending on how many victims there are), or at the very least a loss in business. Those guys do deserve to be bad mouthed if they are doing crap like that...especially if the "brick" is permanent (like I said earlier).

 

I also read your lengthy reply which sent me in this direction where I just signed up to these forums. I appreciated your candid review and felt the honesty. I have not yet purchased a unit yet, but would like to once I figure out what I need. I want to go directly into some type of parts production and don't want to invest in a machine that might be too slow. That being said, trying to find out how fast 3D printers print in the real world is nearly impossible due to most folks wanting to be hair-splitters and cheese slicers instead of focusing on how long it takes to print. Once I figure this out (or get some kind help) I will then purchase and move ahead quickly. Being a Master Machinist I will have no problems making the machine work. Thanks again for the good review!!

 

I am happy to hear that you liked my review!
The reply to your post is going to me long...I can see that I have a lot to say here in response to your post, so this will be a multi-segment post (due to time and thought in my response).... so just bear with me on that (I may be posting replies for the next few days).
Firstly, you might note that I have posted all 5 videos on the repair I went through. You might find Video 5 worth watching since I did an earlier (pre-repair) review of the printer in it and it contained some extra interesting details on printing that you don't get in Video 1. I don't think it will answer your questions, but I think you will find parts of it interesting since you are new to 3D printing (it is only about 15 minutes or so long).
I will post another reply a bit later, but I just wanted to reply to you so you will know "Im ON it" in replying to you...I have a lot to say here.
Thanks
Robert

 

Okay, here is a little more on my reply (don't have enough time to get more detailed until perhaps tonight). My plan when purchasing my Robo3D (and still this is my plan and reasoning), is to have at least TWO printers from TWO DIFFERENT manufacturers. Therefore, you have two different technologies which will likely hive different failure cycles. If you are in production of any kind, this would be sage advice since you don't want a bunch of irate customers due to a down printer. While I am not planning on going into production (necessarily at least, although for small batches of 'whatevers' like that square plain looking cap on my videos, who knows), if I WERE, that would be a very wise course of action.

I definitely think that for the price, the Robo3D is a good 'first of at least two' printer to have in your arsenal. Given its decent print volume, which is half-way useful for more than just printing trinkets or small toys or coffee cups, and its ability to use more than one type of filament and open-source nature it is a decent bet. When you are new to 3D printing as I am, it is good to minimize your risk and maximize your reward...especially since 3D printing no doubt is a learning curve for anyone. By minimize your risk I mean that you are taking a risk on 3D printing for your PARTICULAR envisioned need for it. Will it have (as you are interested in) the speed, print quality, precision, surface finish, etc are questions you will want to know, and for the most part there is (after 350 hrs of research) only one way to REALLY start to find out if it is suitable to YOU.... and that's get your hands on one and find out.

And with regards to speed, my video (as I am sure you are aware) talked about those things on everything I have printed so far. I was very keen on stress testing this thing to determine whether to send the thing back (in my 30-day window) to Amazon or not. But I have not printed anything else since then now I am confident it is worth keeping because I have some other fish to fry before I get back to it and get really serious about putting it to work. I have to fix my K2 right now. That is what that circuit board on my desk you will see in some of my videos is...a break-out board for my K21414 I bought in 2006 that I bought off Amazon. The K2 is a small CNC router with a 14"x 14" with 7" z which you can use for general milling/drilling (limited with my porter cable laminate trimmer as a spindle) in case you aren't familiar with K2. I mostly use this to make circuit boards and the upcoming projects I have on the Robo3D will need circuit board which I can do fast and in as much variety as the different ideas I can explore on my Robo will mandate. So I have to get that fixed (will likely post a Youtube video on that too since it may help the one or two people in the universe which have one of these and have my same problem.

After I get that fixed, I will likely jump back into the Robo3D and try to figure out (through this forum no doubt) why I cant get the slice3r engine to work (this is supposedly the most accurate slice engine robo has in their software package). But I WILL find a solution to this problem (the problem I talked about in my video with 'parts that were too fat') since I can always use repeater host or whatever the guys in this forum normally use. Honestly I haven't spent too much time AT ALL reading through this forum yet (intend to) due to being pressed for time...so hopefully the solution is out there already and I just haven't looked hard enough for it yet!

Before I reply further on this, I am still debating whether this forum is the right place to talk about other printers (in a good or bad way.... a good way about the printer I have already settled on buying (before my Robo purchase) as my second printer (but over 2x the price).

More to say later
Robert

 

In conclusion...
I will say that I am looking strongly at gCreate as the company for my next printer. Generally these are in kit form (except one) so it is nice having something like a Robo3D which is ready to go right out of the box for my first printer. Again, I am still not sure if I will piss these guys off talking about another printer on this forum so I will keep this brief. Their new printer models are not yet well veted (old model discontinued) so it is good to wait several months...but this might be a good production printer, but at a much higher price. Basically the result of all my 350 hrs of research lead to two real candidates...gCreate and Robo3D. DaVinci was a definite 'hold my nose' distant third option, with ALL other sub $1,300 or so printers being marked as 'avoid at all costs' due to either small print volumes, LOTS of extra bad reviews (ie ez3d, Solidoodle, etc). Robo3D is a great backup model to gCreate (studying them will show you why, since they cant print anything other than small objects in ABS, etc).
If I actually OWNED one I would probably do a review on it on Youtube. But for right now, it has the best 'feel' for all the issues I am concerned about and may be fairly fast on lower quality settings by the way. When it comes to speed, this isn't something that you can just look at the printer specs and determine...it is almost entirely a statistical thing which depends not only on physical parameters and limits of the machine, but the efficiency of the tool paths created by the slicer and the design of your parts, infill, size, etc...so again, minimize the risk and buy a printer and get something to actually get your hands on to test for your particular paradigm like I have would be my best advice since there is only so much you can find out on the internet without getting your hands dirty.
You can of course download the robo software from their site and set it up for a Robo3D printer (the videos are on their site I believe) and try to run some sample parts on it. It will estimate the time on a part (when you hit 'generate' on the lower pane that is). For the time it estimates, I would DEFINITELY add 15 to 20% to the estimates as they are optimistic estimates (at least for larger parts they are). For example, on my first video, that 'dog tag' part (looked like a dog footprint) which was flat at about 155 mil (or 155 thousands for you as a machinist) and 1,881 mil x 1,870 mil (1.8 x 1.9 inches) as a foot print. It had a 25% infill (this part is from the library included with the software), was totally printed with default settings on the program as well. The time to print was 21 minutes, which was fairly accurate (+/- a couple of minutes if I recall), but expect the error to increase as size does. Like that cityscape was supposed to be around 8.5 hrs if I recall, and it took about 11 hrs. And that measured (with 15% or so infill) about 6.25" x 8.25" footprint x 1.65" tall for the tallest building. Both those parts were set to medium quality on the default slice engine or Matterslice (again, not very precise engine). But playing around with it may give you an idea of speed. Keep in mind the software does have some bugs, but it is fairly simple once you look everything over and turn the "show all settings' and 'show help' checkboxes on under the "SLICE SETTINGS" general tab (part of the set "CONTROLS SLICE SETTINGS CONFIGURATAION").

In any event, I hope that helps your decision.
Robert

 

I forgot to mention that the Robo3D looks like a pretty simple machine at heart and thusly (with shroud removed) is not only easy to work on, but it looks like it might be fairly robust.... again along side a second machine (for production), this is a good combo (especially since you can increase production rates with more than one machine).
Thanks
Robert

 

I do have a lot of nice things to say about gCreate, however as I said before I am reluctant to do so on the Robo3D forum. I noticed you are the moderator...I thought you were going to gripe me out (when I saw my email of your post) about mentioning them in the first place!
In fact I told Robo3d quite a bit about gCreate. Robo3D told me about their upcoming machine, which sounds cool (and if I have the budget perhaps a nice 3rd printer), but one of the gCreate machines will likely be the next printer I buy (unless their new models have some sort of issues which materialize between now an then, but I insist on my 2nd printer being from a totally different manufacturer (as I discussed in some earlier posts above))...but gCreate... they are my odds-on favorite over any other (even verses Type A Machines, who was gCreates only real contender in my mind earlier this year, AND who decided to raise their price by $500 after I sent them a lot of e-mails praising their machine...probably a coincidence, but it DOES make me wonder...and furthermore, raising their price ...that...yea, that dog won't hunt!
But again, I don't want to cost Robo3D any business since I DO feel for these guys (given the vicious attacks they have had in many reviews, plus understanding the road they have to hoe and the mountains they have to summit), and I do think they have a great product and would be a good first 3d printer to say the least...again not perfect, but surprisingly decent. Also given the fact that I haven't had my hands on any of the competitors products (and wont until the budget allows it), it would perhaps be unfair to brag too much about something I have no real experience with at this point in time. I mean, it could be the worst product I have ever used for all I know (I don't believe that, but you never know), whereas the Robo3d is a KNOWN QUANTITY....and I find it rare in products of any kind to have an actual surprisingly good experience with these days (until the extruder leak, and since the extruder was fixed that is).
As an aside, you should note that I don't traditionally browse forums that much since (all forums) are rather disorganized, so I am somewhat new at this and have posted few things on ANY forum historically...so figuring out what is acceptable is a learning curve for me to travel. I was a fairly early adopter of the internet (on it since 1995), but even my mom actually has far more hours on it than I, since I have traditionally only used it for things like business research and shopping (for business items for the most part), etc...not even e-mail THAT much since I usually like dealing with people face to face (best) or by the phone (only way you can really read people in business). Had a web site once back in 2003/2004 but an employee of mine did that for us.
Anyway, thanks for your interest in my posts!
Robert

 

Thank you very much, Robert. I appreciate all the time spent writing the replies.
I am very much like you in all communication aspects, except that I am highly skilled with computers---not the ones we all use, but what we call the 'big iron' used on the backend of companies.
I would like to talk with further and would send over my personal info, but after 20 or so minutes on this site ( I am new here) I have not been able to suss out how to send a private message. I don't think they could have hidden it better even if they tried. Maybe someone will read this and take pity on me and send me the info on where the damn thing is located.......

 

Click his name, then Start a conversation

 

I believe, as the LEGENDARY Mike Kelley said, that if you were to click on my name (below any of my messages like the one over
/
/_______________________ HERE (near abouts)
\
\
a black box will pop up. Click on my name in that black box and it will take you to my profiles page. You will notice a text box for a message on the upper right 2/3 rds of the screen with a 'post' button below it. I assume this is what Mike is talking about.
Try it with some innocuous information (no private info) and see if it posts anywhere (except to my e-mail). Definitely see if it posts to my profile page also by closing your tab and trying to get back to my profile page by navigational means. If it does, than ask Mike again about it since this MIGHT NOT be private (don't have a clue myself).
Thanks
Robert

 

No clue? Than it must be really really EASY and intuitive!

 

Apollo 14 acknowledged, over.

 

If you are sending me a reply to my last post, I have no clue. I was able to log into my e-mail by the luck of the leprechauns to get your 'test message', but now... just spinning circles. I think the guys at Cox communications must be messing about with their web e-mail system of something (only rare luck will let me log in for the last day or so). When I am lucky enough to get in, it friggin logs me out after a few minutes (and has ALWAYS done so)...so I will just have to hope the thing works tomorrow!
Send me a detailed message and I will try to respond tomorrow.
Thanks
Robert

 

Hi. I will reply soon but currently I just taking off on a flight to the Dominican Republic for a week on the beach etc. Aloha

 

Oh, I get it. When Mike said "Click his name, then Start a conversation", he meant

Click his name, then [click] 'Start a Conversation'

"Start a Conversation" is a link of some sort (a button more or less) in blue letters in the middle of the black box that pops up when you click on someone's name. My eyes are really bad, I didn't notice that at first. Don't know what it does though.

Robert