Answered R2

There will likely be no independent reviews of the R2 before it is available and all you will see are reviews from people who actually bought them. Robo appears to shy away from giving review samples to people who have large followings.

I am not a fan of buyer reviews because they tend to be initial impressions only and no one likes to admit they made a mistake if the product isn't all it is promised. That is only a general assessment and not specific to Robo.

 

I found a couple (C2 only):

http://www.aniwaa.com/product/3d-printers/robo-3d-c2/

 

Sadly none of the more trusted reviewers have done one on the C2 likely because of availability (i.e. Robo did not provide them a review unit).

Until/if that happens it it what it is. @WheresWaldo nailed it for the R2 -- there are none out there TO review yet. Same thing will be true with them I expect in that unless a reviewer bought one and reviews it, we are not going to see much in terms of official reviews.

My tear down and rebuild is as close to a review as you are likely going to see for a while.

 

I don't think so and look how that turned out.

 

I don't know all the details either but the word 'hate' comes up a few times when Barnacles is asked about Robo. He doesn't mention them unless someone specifically asks him about what he thinks, so it's not like he is all hung up on what transpired, whatever that was.

It is very hard to be objective when you plunk down real money for a product. You really have to be in bad shape to give something a more objective review and then usually you end up going to the other extreme. Very few items are either all good or all bad. I wished they would just send one to Thomas Sanladerer, he can and usually is pretty objective in his reviews.

In my product testing past I have usually found that doing all your testing internally and not releasing product to reviewers or beta testing outside of paid employees comes from a place of fear. There is something that just doesn't add up between marketing and reality that you would rather not have anyone find out before purchasing. And every manufacturer should always remember perception is reality.

 

Amen to that.

The issue from a company perspective is that it is an unknown quantity, but IMHO if you are confident enough in your product it is a risk worth taking.

There are a lot of really nice design changes with the C2 compared to even the R1+ (not capabilities -- design) and if they can manage to leverage that into the R2 it will be a nice machine from a technology standpoint (price is another issue, I just mean the tech).

It is unfortunate that they have not scaled their support to meet the C2 (and certainly not the R2). Sure these are much more user friendly and will attract less technical minding folks, however then you need to be ready to support them when they DO have issues since there is a lot less to troubleshoot. With the C2 a significant portion of it comes down to "I need a new part" and the only source of that will be Robo. I can't imagine the R2 will be any different so I sincerely hope for their sake that they have plans to scale that. They certainly have struggled with it enough in the past. The forum can help, but in the end if they need parts -- they need parts.

 

@daniel871 I usually don't watch build videos, too boring. But I know he loves the Ulitmaker so he can't have a real objection to CoreXY About how far into the video is it so I don't have to watch the whole thing?

I found it at 1:04 of the video, he doesn't actually rail against CoreXY just say it wasn't any better or worse than any other design. His words exactly; Design is "irrelevant".

 

Eh, he was just annoyed to get that question in that context I think

 

@colton81 I think the answer is a number of things, not having stock of C2 and R2 units, not having any good relationships with community advocates (Thomas, Joel, etc.), and not wanting reviews that don't match the hype. You can't really ask for premium pricing when you can't deliver premium service, whether that is initial product or after sales service or warranty parts. You also can't rely on the community to pick up the support slack which is kinda what Robo has relied on in the past. Evidenced by the people who have come and gone from the Robo fold.

 

Sounds like what I was saying in 2013

It doesn't help that is for sure.
Back then the reasoning used to be "post-kickstarter startup" but... that was then.
It is a hard space to succeed in, but you win with customer service. I hope they get better at that.

P.S. on the plus side (if you can call it that) I have dealt with a couple of other printer manufacturers and they were worse... yep, worse.