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Need a Printer for Elementary School

Discussion in 'Off Topic' started by Michael Oakley, Feb 8, 2015.

  1. Michael Oakley

    Michael Oakley New Member

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    Our school has been looking for a 3d printer and most of the reviews always end up with a lot of special tweaking.
    Teachers are not experts in tweeking these printers, so i'm looking for an honest assessment of the Robo 3d
    I realize there will be minor things like unclogging print heads
    Recently had a bad experience with the Cube 3, with clogging heads. Great print results but not the type of printer you can set aside for a couple weeks then come back and get a good print.
     
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Well, the Robo still is going to want tweaking. Once setup and running well though it is usually pretty stable for a long time (barring any mechanical adjustments or changes being made, which means going back through the calibrate and tweak cycle--again).
    Consumer 3D printing is just not at a point where you can buy a (consumer grade) printer and not need to fiddle with it.

    Any teacher who is planning to do this (a GREAT idea by the way) is going to become a lot more expert on it along the way.
    Nature of the beast at present.
     
  3. Michael Oakley

    Michael Oakley New Member

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    Would you recommend this printer for teachers?

    Thanks for the quick response.
    What types of tweaking are you referring too?
    Tweaks that require taking things apart and replacing with mods?
    Or tweaks that are supported like going through calibration processes?
    thanks.
     
  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    I mean 'tweaks' required to get the printer printing correctly.
    Somethings are normal maintenance and others are experimentation to learn how to do 3D printing.

    Most printers (I'd say 'all', but then someone would have a good one) are not going to print perfectly out of the box.
    Even if you know what you are doing with one...

    They are going to require some fine tuning and adjustments. In my opinion though, learning to do what needs to be done (and how to determine something needs to be done) is all a good learning experience for the technology.

    For example the following are all things you may have to do when you first get the printer:

    1) adjust/tighten the belts that drive the X or Y
    2) adjust/tighten components (like sprockets) in the belt drive
    3) adjust the carriage (it can get mispositioned) so that the Z axis leveling works correctly.
    4) adjust the Z offfset to get the first layer nailed down.

    Some of these (i.e. belt adjustments) may have to be done as you use the printer. This is all while you are learning the software side (modeling, slicing, etc.) of 3D printing.
     
  5. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    To be clear, nothing needs modification on a Stock R1 to do what they claim it is capable of.
    The modifications are generally to improve what it can do.

    They have had issues with quality control (leaking extruders and the like) which hopefully have been sorted. That can also be fixed by the user, but a novice is going to need to learn how to do it :)
     
  6. Taylor

    Taylor Member

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    I will also chime in. I agree with what Mark is saying. The ROBO is an AMAZING printer,the prints I get off this thing is comparable to prints that come from much more expensive printers and I have done no mods to the printer besides adding an LCD screen. The only tweaking you may have to do is find your correct z offset (this is the high from the tip of your nozzle to your bed). One thing that I did pick up on,After working in a elementary school before kids LOVE to touch things and some aren't very gentle either. If you have it within reach of the children you want to make sure they dont touch the bed or extruder as its very hot, and the more important thing is touch the print,The last thing you need is to be working on a 5 hour print and a student decides to touch it and knock it over.

    Overall this is a great printer,In fact ill be ordering the new R2 whenever it comes out. Which I hope is soon.
     
  7. Ryan Love

    Ryan Love New Member

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    I just got an R1 for my classroom through donorschoose.org (great experience, btw). I've had it for less than a week but it is amazing. The quality of the prints is fantastic. The only "tweaking" I did out of the box was the required first bed height calibration. My only issues have been needing to have administrative rights (but not having them) to my teacher computer in order to install software/drivers and I can't figure out how to print from the SD card. Our computers auto shut down at 6pm so setting a print to start at the end of the day is currently out of the question. Other than those two minor issues, I would highly recommend this printer for a classroom.
     
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