Unresolved Seriously bad build quality!

I'm working on getting this latest issue taken care of, so there may be some questions I have in a few minutes.

I completely understand that this is a sub-$1000 printer and that there may be problems, but I just ran into one that is inexcusable.

There have been a couple of things I've fixed that I could live with:

The Z-axis was WAY out of level when I opened the box. It was about 1/2" higher on the left side than it was the right. That was something that I could live with, so I just adjusted it manually and went about my business. It forced me to learn a bit about bed leveling, so it ended up teaching me something.

Then after using it for a couple of weeks, I realized that my hot end had always been leaking a tiny amount that over time was causing some trouble. After replacing the hot end, I realized why it was leaking and again, I chalked it up to a learning experience.

Today, I turned on the printer and plugged in the USB cable and went to start printing. I preheated the extruder and the bed, then checked to make sure that I didn't have any clogs. No problems so far.

After that was completed, I started my print. It was a small one, and the skirt printed fine just as I'd expect. Then I noticed that it stopped extruding filament, and right about the same time, I noticed that the hot end fan was touching the print. That's odd, I thought, and went to attach the fan back into place.

The fan shroud was soft and smooshy, and there was melted plastic from the shroud all over the silicone rubber. The fan was also not spinning.

Since I recently swapped the hot end, I figured that I must have done something wrong, though it had attached well and I've gotten about 15 hours of printing after the swap. In any case, after the fan shroud cooled down, I started examining it. The fan itself was damaged from the heat, and wouldn't turn. Luckily for me, again huge thanks to mediaguru for having the spare hot ends (I'm buying another one tonight) I had a spare fan to install. The shroud lost a bit of plastic on the bottom, but I think I can use it long enough to print a new one.

I started installing the new fan, and opened the bottom to get to the wiring. When I got to the terminal block where the fan screws in, I noticed that the red fan wire wasn't connected. Upon further investigation I noted that it looked like there was only a single strand of wire holding it in - the rest must have been lost when the wire was stripped.

In addition to the tremendously fragile connection, the wire was being moved around every time I plugged and unplugged the USB cable. There were no wire ties keeping those wires out of the way of the USB plug. Today must have been the magic day when the wire finally came loose and the fan stopped turning, causing the hot end to overheat.

I've reinstalled the fan and cleaned up the connections, securing the wires out of the way. I reassembled everything, and now my filament won't extrude. I assume that it's because the PLA melted in the hot end and I've got to clear it out - or just replace the whole thing. I'm going to try to clean it out, but I don't know how much time I'm going to spend on it.

I really love the printer, and I understand that there will be issues that I need to take care of, but the build quality is so bad on some of these that it almost seems like intentional sabotage!

 

Thanks for the encouragement!

My blood pressure doesn't rise with these kinds of things, because I kind of enjoy taking things apart and fixing them and so far it's served me pretty well.

As far as building things overseas, I realize it's a mixed bag. Some things can certainly be built very well, with great quality control, and some places don't. Regardless of the issues I'm having, I'm still very pleased with my recent purchase. I was very close to choosing a MakerBot, but ultimately decided on the Robo3D. Not because of the price difference, but because of the more open-source nature. I figure that any printer that I buy is eventually going to have problems, and the Robo3D seems like it's a pretty easy one to maintain - especially once the initial build issues are worked out!

Considering all that has happened, the fact that I'm currently printing a new fan shroud is testament of the ease of repairs that can be done. I just swapped the hot end with my spare, and I don't know if I'll even worry about clearing out the plugged one or just get another spare, or even try out a different model.

I'm printing the new shroud in PLA before I raise the temperature enough to print a real replacement in ABS.

Does anyone happen to know where I can get a copy of the original shroud? I can't seem to find one, but I assume that others here can point me to a good hexagon shroud that I can use.

Definite lesson learned here: Check your fans before you start printing...

 

My fan died on me at some point... wasn't the wiring, just the fan. Caused the jam (and maybe the leak, but I think that's actually a separate issue)

since this seems to occur with these fans, i wish Robo would have a clip-in connector at the end there like they do for the thermistor and heater. Instead, i had to cut the wires and solder them together. Just kind of annoying.

As for the shroud/mount... the original that came with my Robo was the junkiest piece of the whole machine... it was clearly a printed part, which is fine, but it was such a sloppy print that it didn't snug well onto the heat sink. In addition, the layers were oriented parallel to the screw-in... in other words, they were going to split easily when fan was screwed in (which, in fact, the fan was mounted in only 2 of the four holes when it arrived... and both arrived split/cracked at the screwholes)

There is a thingiverse fan mount somebody shared with me on herw which looked like a superior design, I will probably print it to hace it ready to install if/when i have another fan problem.

 

I thing I'm going to try one of those 40mm mounts that I see on thingiverse. Maybe it'll be a little less noisy.