Intel from my visit to Robo3D

I picked up my Robo3d this past Monday at the Robo3D world headquarters in San Diego. What a great experience! Yes, Robo3D is now their full-time job. They are committed to making this project, now business venture, a huge success. They welcomed me into their shop and were happy to show me what they were working on. I would have stayed and talked longer but, wanted to be mindful that everyone is anxiously awaiting their printer and the longer I talked...the longer everyone else would have to wait.

• Robo3D is QC testing every one of the printers before it ships--I watched them test one briefly. It obviously slows down shipping but it also shows their commitement to making sure you receive a quality printer, and it will help them work with their supplier to improve future production runs.
• Plenty of filament on the shelves. Get your orders in. I bought two spools while I was there.
• These guys are taking this very seriously. They are quick studies, learning a lot as they go. This is exactly why I wanted to back this project; it was my first. You should feel good about backing these guys. This is exactly what Kickstarter was meant to do.

I haven't unboxed my printer yet. I will put together a video once I do but, I have some business travel coming up and I don't want my teenage sons to have all of the fun while I'm gone. So...it's patiently waiting in my office to be set free.

 

Did you ask them if they plan to provide support for problems that slip the QC process or just occur during/after the delivery?

-yes, sarcasm-

 

Sorry, no.

I will concede they have a great product but their complete and total lack of organisation with shipping their product, keeping customers appraised of how far their order is along and getting the orders in the RIGHT order is rather shocking.

I should of received my shipping confirmation by now as I was a May non ABS backer but here I am in November still waiting for a product over six months later.

Now projects running over their ETA is a given with Kickstarter and is to be expected, what I am complaining about is the utter apathy being shown by Robo3D to get their orders out in a timely fashion and keep their customers (who believed in them enough to actually part with cash in the first place) up to date on what's happening.

If/when my printer does arrive I think I will be very happy with it, but would I buy another product from Robo3D? I'm afraid I'll have to get back to you on that one.

 

@Alex, I hear what you are saying. My point though was that I invested in this project, not because I needed a printer but rather that I wanted to support some young Engineers "going for it". They have many lessons yet to learn and yet they have a product that works, have dealt with contract manufacturing, international business, facilities and leasing, staffing, finance,etc. Thats impressive. Celebrate the successes as long as they keep moving forward.

@Everyone, I unboxed my printer today! Cut the tape at 6:30 and was into my first print by 8:30. This was the first time I ever touched a 3Dprinter of any kind. I us boxed the printer, placed it on the table and followed the manual. It was fairly straight forward. Biggest obstacle was getting communication working between the printer and robo3d. We were using an old vista laptop we had in the closet. Eventually we figured out that we needed to download a driver for the USB to Serial controller. The next hurdle was that while I was surfing the web, my son tried to level the bed by adjusting the a-axis limit stop! Oops. We corrected that and it turned out that the bed was level as delivered from Robo3d. We started printing the calibration cube. It wasn't extruding on the first perimeter but by the time it got to the actual part, we were good. First two rows of cubes wee good, on the third row, z-axis stopped going up and the head crashed the part. We are not sure what happened. We manually moved the head through its range and all looks good. Reprint is in progress-almost done and looks good. Here are photos of printer and "bad print". Pretty good for someone completely new to this.

 

More photos.

 

i had fun reading this

thanks Carl!

 

Carl have you tried just doing a 15mm cube? Not sure why it's crashing on you. I would verify the nuts are securely in place on the z carriage when it's homed and that they're not slightly off their seat.

 

I just dropped by yesterday myself and I'm printing my first print now, the cube. I had some issues getting the print to stick but with some painters tape it seems to be finally getting the job done. Great group of guys. I even dropped off a flier for my LAN party haha.

 

I'm traveling now but, before I left I was able to play a little more. My original problem was not really a head crash like I thought. The print moved on the platen. Second print did the same. Sine I have the ABS and was printing PLA, I had the bed set to 70 degrees. The platen heat turned off for some reason before the print was finished. Happened near the end of the second print too. I got the hot end dirty with that mess and the next print attempts failed due to the dirty head and looping etc. I haven't investigated how to clean as I had to leave. I'm pretty sure it's posted here somewhere. With any luck, my son will have it all figured out when I get home.

Still having fun. Lots to learn.