Answered Hotend Leaking [Dirty Prints - Blemishes]

I can't tell you anything besides 3D printing is incredibly new and incredibly complex. I don't really have sympathy for people who expect certain things in the same way you wouldn't accept our explanation. There's no such thing as a hands off printer, unless you buy a stratasys and pay for the service so someone else fixes it when it breaks.

Doesn't matter if you spend 200 dollars or 2 million dollars on a 3d printer. At some point it WILL break and you WILL have to fix it. Consumer expectations need to be based in reality.

 

The expectations should be set by the vendor.

 

If you want a Hexagon all-metal end, I will be putting some up for sale on eBay soon (brand new -- it's just that it was significantly cheaper per unit if I bought them in bulk)... I will be setting the price lower than any other site I have found out there. (Most sell at around $75. I'm going to sell mine under $60. Printed Solid had them at $59 with free shipping, but they are out of stock. I'll probably sell mine at the same price)

 

I don't even know what this means? You think a vendor should say "Because you bought this assembled, you'll never need to touch a nut or screw ever!"

That's just not realistic.

 

I think we're stuck in a logic loop here, I basically said spare your explanations because all I see you do on any thread is blindly defend the company's position and I don't want to hear it. What I am interested in is opinions from experienced people about what's going on, which so far you guys have provided.

From your perspective I had my issue because maybe I was running it too hot, but I wasn't. So then you move on to suggest I over tightened it, which considering I hadn't touched it that couldn't be true. It is always going to be "I, I, I" what I did wrong to break this? It must be my fault.

What's an alternative? Perhaps defective from the supplier either by being a defective component or improper assembly (which my list of what else has been broken on the printer would seem to support). Stripped screws aren't my fault, that's an assembly issue. A 6 inch gouge in my print bed upon unboxing isn't my fault, thats an assembly / QA issue.

So at what point will you concede that the responsibility lies with the manufacturer, and it's not the demanding consumer's fault for having unrealistic expectations? Straight up, like I said we pay an over head for assembly versus a kit, so the consumer expectation would be that the unit is assembled by professionals with quality, and the results should be better than a new first-timer assembling it himself. (assuming my current issue is due to assembly)

This issue has been occurring for a long time now which I mentioned, the issue is that until now I didn't have the experience and confidence to identify it.

I think you're blurring the lines between a consumer having unrealistic expectations about a plug and play system, and a consumer have reasonable expectations about QA and warranty support. They offer a 6 month warranty and at the same time it took 8 months to finally get someone to respond to me about replacing the bed for example. See the prob there? I'm a little off topic now but holy sh!t, seriously man. Talk about being entirely insulting while simultaneously missing the point.

 

You're blaming me for being the victim of a known issue/defect occurring withing completely normal print thresholds.. I don't know what else to say here.

And your response doesn't make sense. No the vendor should say the opposite of what you proposed, "for $800 you're getting a half decent print head, which has been known from time to time to need some parts replaced as they can crack under certain conditions and leak, this is just the way things are with printing these days, so be warned before you buy, you might want to budget for an upgraded print head which has its own set of challenges so make sure you read up on it and make an informed decision"

 

I have to insist if you go to their kickstarter they sold this as "high quality, low priced, easy to use, great for beginners" Can't hide behind your usual excuse of "what do you expect for the low price, it's the best they can do" when "high quality" for "low cost" is one of the selling points.

 

I guess I've heard your complaints enough to hear a small violin being played when I read it.

You have your expectations, they weren't met, because they weren't based in reality.

Parts break, nozzles are replaceable for that reason. Point in case Makerbot selling their crappy hot ends as a 3 pack because they fail so often.

Just be thankful you bought an open source printer so swapping in a new extruder is only $50 instead of the makerbots $175

I never blamed you for anything.

 

They are improving. These days (now that my printer is out of warranty of course), they are pretty quick to reply to support requests. I've asked them to send me a new tube and I have a high level of confidence that they will even with the printer out of warranty.

 

Thanks, and considering I get mostly good prints with this leaking head and have been for, well since I got it in the summer, I'll just leave it, ride it out, and I'm sure it will get worse and I'll have to act at some point.

I printed a giant super mario star (12 hour print) last night with basically no leaking. No leaking to the point where it dripped down the side, burnt and landed on the print. So this is greatly improved from the beginning of this thread. From the beginning, short prints would be fine, but anything over say 3-4 hours would build up enough "leak" to spill on to the print or to form a large droplet that fall off like a tiny sphere. I'm doing another 12 hour long star print right now and I expect good results.

The main goal was to identify the source of the problem which I happened to figure out on my own. And also how to work around it. Then reaching out to you guys to understand what it all means, which you've delivered on, and that's all I wanted, so thanks.

The synopsis is that printing with the current state of my print head will cause leaking if the z-offset is .1mm too low to the print bed. The back pressure causes it to leak out. How the print head got "broken" in the first place to allow this? I do not know.

Additionally, considering I identified the issue by myself, please realize that I went through the effort to snap pics and post findings as I go, not only in hopes of getting help from the community but also to serve as data to help other people. It serves as a log of troubleshooting, it might help someone who reads this many months from now. This thread's a little messy now so it hinders that a bit, but regardless the sentiment hasn't changed.

I'll wait to see what tech support says and most likely if I'm spending money I'll be replacing the print head entirely. Here is ROBO3d's video where they demonstrate how to replace PTFE and they claim they will replace the part by contacting them. Now this is for a clog, not for my issue.

My whole "going off the wheels" rants was about my unit showing up with so many broken parts as I've outlined(it was an incomplete list btw). BROKEN, NEW OUT OF BOX(and yes I feel like for some reason I must capitalize that) combined with a wait time to rectify that exceeds the warranty time. This is not to be misconstrued as an irrational person who's handed a part that's fully to spec and as designed, but being too impatient or unwilling to tweak and calibrate in order to have it work. That's not what I was talking about and my blood boils when I have words put in my mouth insisting otherwise, with no headway made as I make further attempts to clarify. It's not like I hadn't put at least a minimal degree of thought into what I said before I say it. I wasn't talking about tweaks and adjustments or even wear parts..

Take car brakes as a "wear part" example. A rational person knows their is an ongoing cost associated with a wear part like brakes. An irrational or a somehow uninformed person gets pissed off every time they need to drop hundreds of dollars on new pads and rotors... every single time.

That's not me here. If the situation really is that a print head with PTFE tubes sometimes-often need replacing, then to me it's a wear part. If it's communicated that way, if the expectations are set, it's not unreasonable for me to then go buy a few ahead of time or suffer the potential downtime if not. Just because my engine is expected to last 500K doesn't mean I shouldn't expect to service its air intake and oil every 25k. It's kind of impossible to debate the logic against something like that, but some will try. I have to insist it's easy to misconstrue something that is inherently convoluted.

I think post #12 of this thread does a concise job of explaining what my original complaint was, how I've taken ownership of my part in the responsibilities, how I think the company could approach taking ownership of their part, and how I understand and expect the types of problems that I'm encountering. I would refer to that post for clarity because as you can see, typically I am anything but concise. Cheers

 

Mike Kelly... I am new to this forum and have found you to be knowledgeable and talented. (when a comment starts that way always look for the "but")

Your thread of replies to "ssshake" takes on an antagonistic tone that an "admin" on a public forum set up to benefit customers of Robo 3D. I, like "ssshake" believed the "this is the product you've been waiting for" and am still too ignorant to know all of the relevant questions to ask.

I bought one for my classroom. (I am an EE with >20 years in design, turned teacher) My ROBO has followed the same course "ssshake" described. As the geeky side of me has no problem digging in and fixing as things break, the printer has been down too many times that I needed it up for students to work with, that my administrators have decided (after the Molex to the bed heater burned up and set off the smoke alarm in the school) that if this is to be a district wide program it will be with another printer as expecting "non-geek" teachers to work with something that requires that much "fixing" is not reasonable.

That said... it isn't unreasonable to expect a piece of equipment to work, whatever the cost. To encourage someone to be thankful that they have cheap parts to break and not more expensive parts is not a encourage marketing strategy and doesn't speak well for the product your are supporting.

Not trying to but your chops... but word of mouth advertising (good or bad) cant be bought nor can repeat customers.

Try to consider the frustration "ssshake" has experienced and when you fire back as you did, whether you intend to or not, you are representing ROBO.

my 2¢...

 

This just goes into consumer expectations vs informed consumerism.

If you want a printer that "Just works" you need to spend a lot of money on one. 3x the cost. When researching printers before buying one I knew that if I wanted a printer that worked reliably from start I'd need to spend at least 2k, which was out of the option.

Then I started researching sub-1k printers. Not feeling confident in my ability to build my own printer I looked at assembled ones. 2 years ago when I was researching this almost all sub-1k printers were smaller than 6"x6"x6", which was too small for my desire. I knew a cheap printer would require more hands on work based on reading user reviews and literature reviews.

If I expected a sub 1k printer to just work, I would have been disappointed. But that would have been my fault for not researching the issue before purchasing. I had a realistic understanding of what to expect from this printer and it (mostly) met these expectations.

For the non-geek teachers, the only printer I would suggest running is either the Ultimaker 2 (very expensive) or the Makerbot Replicator Gen 5 (ugh).

This means you'll be spending $2900 per printer. And when (not if) your extruder jams and breaks you'll get to spend $175 PER NOZZLE. There's simply no way to replace it without voiding your warranty.

This is the current consumer standard for a printer that "just works" if you didn't do the research to find this that's not really robo's fault. They have their agenda and are not required to say every little detail, that's the whole point of consumer reviews.


As for my affiliation, I do this voluntarily. If people choose to associate me with RoBo that's their prerogative. I have no affiliation and no ties to the success of the RoBo. I've actually been trying to get my "fake" admin status removed because it gives the user a false sense of responsibility.

I primarily do this because the RoBo is such a complex beast and people struggle with it. It's not the best printer out there, nor the one I usually recommend.

Buying an open source printer is as much a gift as a curse. You gain complete freedom at the cost of open source support.

 

Fwiw, even the Makerbot gets bad reviews due to jams, maintenance, unreliability. (Only difference is you will probably get far better support) Go look at the amazon reviews for it. That's when I realized, pretty much any of these are going to have some issues, so I might as well try a cheap one. (Btw, the cost for a decent machine these days probably isn't $2k+... it seems to be about $1300. That's the price of a FlashForge, which comes with LCD and nice casing, and has a 9 x 8 x 6 print size I believe. Or you could get a SeeMeCNC Orion delta printer with slightly smaller envelope but good speed and print quality.

now, if I had been in the original Kickstarter I probably would've been disappointed, too, because it seems Robo released a beta prototype that needed a lot of bugs worked out (the j head was understandable... i think even the new Dremel Idea Builder uses that or something like it - but using SAE threades rods seemed like a total rookie mistake)

However, by now it seems they have worked out most of those kinks. My biggest complaint is this: it seems like they need to do a better job of documentation and communication. Since there are so many incremental changes, they should be printing versions or something on the machine itself (maybe just a sticker) so that troubleshooting goes more easily. They should have a running Wiki or something for documentation... including recommended settings for other common software (Cura includes configurations for dozens of machines, but not Robo)

 

Prices on high ends are definitely dropping. When I bought my printer the flashforge didn't exist (which is just a clone of the replicator 1). Though it's baffeling that the rep gen 5 is more expensive than previous generations. Though I will give makerbot that they have excellent support, at least until your warranty expires (hence why they sell extended warranties)

I definitely agree with all your criticisms and I convey this too them a lot. They are letting fear of criticism stop them from making progress or admitting to design flaws. SAE isn't "that" bad, but it is kinda annoying.

Back in august I was told new printers were going to come with serial numbers, that didn't happen. I've also been nagging them to have a page for additional configurations. They generally view through rose colored lenses thinking that mattercontrol is used by most people and that firmwares don't need much information since people use mattercontrols updater.

 

Well, if CuraEngine worked okay, I'd be fine with sticking to MC... but it's just as beta and buggy as the Robo is/was (in other words, MC still has a few kinks to work out), so that forces my hand...

 

When I was shopping for my printer last month, I was willing to pay up to $3k for one and came this close to buying a MakerBot. I truly didn't know a thing about 3D printers, but we have a few MakerBots at my company's headquarters, and everyone there suggested I buy a Replicator 2.

After reading a lot of reviews for a bunch of different consumer printers, I opted to stay away from the MakerBot because of the expensive extruders. I read about too many cases of people who needed to replace them after 6 hours of printing, and at $175 a pop, that's too much for me to bear.

I even found a twitter feed or something where a MakerBot representative was announcing their new "improved" version of the smart extruder that supposedly had some of the initial bugs worked out. The thread quickly degenerated into a bitchfest from unhappy customers, and the rep's stock reply was that extruders "are like tires" and are expected to wear out, but they would be happy to sell you a new one to replace the initially faulty ones at $50 off or something ridiculous like that. Someone who just dropped $2800 on a printer and used it for two days doesn't want to hear that they need to shell out $125 to replace their now "worn out" extruder. That's what turned me off, instead of the rep acknowledging that the extruder should last for longer than 6 hours, she would just reiterate that they wear out and need regular replacement. I read about some people taking advantage of the three-pack so they would always have spares on hand...

I even went on this forum before making my purchase to read what folks here had to say. The "feel" of the community and the amount of help voluntarily given here made me decide to make Robo purchase, even with advance warning of potential build quality problems. With the money I saved, I can do some of the small upgrades and build up a stash of spare parts.

For what it's worth, my prints come out looking better than what HQ sends me from their MakerBots.

I need the printer to print a few little parts for a product that I'm selling, and the machine does a beautiful job doing so. When it's working (which isn't always!) I'll print up a few dozen of the parts, then get back to playing around with it printing stupid stuff and learning how to tune it for better performance.