The horror... the horror....

Well guys, I'm reminded of Marlon Brando's dying words in "Apocalypse Now".

Here's a short list of what I've had to do since receiving my R1:

Complete going over to tighten numerous loose screws

Belt tightening

Bed leveling -- what nightmare! My glass print bed had a slight bulge near the center that often caused my print head to stop feeding during a print. I'd place objects away from this bulge, but every time I tried to do that in MatterControl, the damned thing went nuts and tried to print objects on my couch cushions, window sills, you name it -- anywhere but inside the print area. So I had to take the glass and have it smoothed and leveled with high pressure water. Additionally, I found that no two magnets or spacers where glued on exactly the same way. I've had to drill four holes at the corners and rig up a leveling system just like Ultimaker uses. WHY is there no way to adjust the bed itself? This is lunacy, IMO. There went like a c note out the door right there.

Printed heat bed. Ok, everything that has been a problem here came from the root cause of some minor league dummy deciding to route the cable for the power and thermistor RIGHT NEXT TO the Y axis stop switch. This ruined several prints when the cable pressed the switch but more importantly, the constant kinking has apparently cracked one of the thermistor leads within the cable. Now I get to tear that mess down and fix it. Oh, and more thing; because of this constant kinking and coiling of the cord, the thermistor became detached from the heat element. I had to scrape that shit off and reattach it. I fixed the routing through the simple expedient of putting legs on the printer and routing it under and around the front of the printer. It ain't pretty, but it works.

Solder joints. Let me catch my breath from laughing, then I'll -- Oh screw it, it was a joke. An utter and complete Keystone cops thing. As I write this, I'm getting ready to resolder the LAST of the stop switches that I felt might just hold up for a while. It hasn't. It just lost one of the leads and ruined a 12 hour print 9:32 minutes into it. Lovely.

Buy the kit. Stay away from the pre-assembled unit, it will drive you to drink and wink at nuns.

P.S.: Before anyone thinks I'm being classless by posting here publicly, let me inform you that I have communicated with Robo on these issues and received an officious series of replies offering to replace things if I could provide photographic proof, fill out all the forms, accept their apologies, etc. No thanks. It took two months to get this thing and I don't have another two months of my life to waste on something that they should CLEARLY see is wrong in their company, namely, QUALITY CONTROL. It's nonexistent there. Sad, sad sad.

 

*shrugs* they're a new company still working out all the kinks. Bound to be a few bad apples from the first picks.

The newest batch of R1's look really really nice.

 

I printed a cable chain for the Y axis wire and that has solved my problem.. While i understand your frustration (i've gone through all of your problems and then some) for the price, its still a good value as long as you don't mind tinkering

 

I take it neither of you own or operate a business. Invert, I do appreciate your take on the value of the printer "if you don't mind doing some tinkering", but I think you grossly misunderstand the word 'value' here. In business, time is money. In terms of man-hours, this printer has cost us a shade over $3000 fixing the 'kinks' (as the good and worthy Mike calls them ). Wasted material has been a somewhat lesser but still appreciable cost. All in all, I think that I do not overstate things to call both of these replies glib, not to say naive. I do like the Robo 3D especially "for the money", but let me assure you both that never will I trust Robo to build another printer for me. I stick to my guns on the kits suggestion. The assemblers at that company have not proven themselves competent to me.

 

I'm a product and systems design engineer for two different small startups, but ok, sure.

Like I said, the new ones look really nice. Not sure what else to tell you.

 

Well considering Robo doesnt offer "kits" there no guns to stick to.

Like you say, time is money, but you also get what you pay for. If the time was THAT important to where you didnt/couldnt afford to tinker (especially if you did any pre-purchase research, you would seed they arent all perfect out of the box) with the printer, then maybe you should of looked at a more established company who offers "out of the box" printing and customer support. Stratsys is one that comes to mind, but you should be prepared to add a few zero's for their printers compared to the Robo.

I can say that while its taken me around $300-400 to get mine printing really nice, its still half the price of my buddies 3D printer and my prints are as nice if not better than his.

Like i said earlier, you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, to get perfect products and services the first time your going to have to pay more.

 

What you're saying here is not applicable. I didn't expect "perfect". I expected something less than a disaster, however. There is a big difference between just "not perfect" and "unacceptable".

Fellas, you're drinking the coolaid. (That's a reference to the Jim Jones thing in Guyana for those of you too young to remember). "Some tinkering" - sure, I expected some tinkering. I figured I'd have to upgrade the print head, print out some parts like legs and a holder for the lcd controller, like that. I expected to even have to make a mod or two like the heat bed cable thing. Sure.

What I didn't expect was INCOMPETENT work on the part of the assemblers (solder joints, loose parts, etc). And I surely didn't expect a glass print bed that isn't even level! Face it guys, the best thing you can do for Robo 3D if you want them to succeed is to be sober about what this product is. Glossing over it with glibness is tantamount to giving trophies to kids just for participating. The things that I had to do to my printer went well beyond tinkering. There isn't a single part or assembly that I didn't have to at least partly redo. That's a fact. And it goes well beyond 'kinks'.

You're right. However when I first researched printers, they were offering kits for around $100 less than the pre-assembled units. Looks like they've gotten away from that.

 

What I meant by owning and/or operating a business is, do YOU have to make the payroll? Are YOU personally responsible for making sure that everyone gets paid on time every time? Well I am. So I guess I see things through that lens. It's a good thing for those of you in here who earn a pay check from someone else that there are people like me in business. Different points of view, I suppose.

I am now debating whether to design and build my own or go with a product like the Ultimaker II. That is, unless Robo 3D can demonstrate to me (without me shelling out another 900+ or so with tax and shipping to check on their progress) that they have addressed these issues. Perhaps produce a video explaining how they've dealt with them? I'm willing to give Robo another chance if they can show that they're listening and responding to input. One way or another though, I'm going to need at least a dozen printers online and humming in the next few months. Are you listening Robo?

 

If you have the money to buy the ultimaker 2 id suggest that instead. The robo3d is a hobbyist grade printer. Not designed for professionals. If you bought it thinking otherwise that would just be poor consumer research.

Robo doesn't read these forums. You'd need to talk to them through customer service or something.

 

To some degree I think it depends on what type of business your trying to use this printer for. We bought our beta unit used and apart from a broken print bed from shipping it's worked great. We've saved some considerable time and coin fabricating our custom parts. We are upgrading the print bed to deal with some warping issues, but that hasn't prevented us from printing some great parts.

Co-Founder and Hardware designer at CleanO2 CCT (I sign the cheques)

CleanO2 Carbon Capture Tech

 

Well Mike, it was my first 3D printer purchase. I was looking for something which had a decent sized print bed, was open source, and that I could get some decent feedback on from a user. Robo met all of these requirements. My thinking was that I would at least learn something on which to judge our next purchases, and Robo has most definitely met that requirement. To be fair, I have to say that when the printer is actually printing, I am very happy with the results. After looking at Jerry Berg's reviews and tips on the Robo 3D (he bought his from a friend of his who was a Kickstart contributor to the project), I felt prepared to take on the challenge. As I've said, and which fact you guys on here keep ignoring, is that hobbyist grade or not, the problems with this printer are NOT related (for the most part) to it's design -- the cable routing on the heat bed is an exception to this. They are NOT related (for the most part) to the quality of manufacture of it's individual components -- the glass bed is an exception to this. No, the problem is in plain old fashioned shoddy workmanship during the assembly process. That has NOTHING to do with what grade or level the printer is. Consumers, whether hobbyists or professionals, do have a right to expect reasonably competent workmanship in the assembly of the product they pay for. If this concept doesn't make it through to you guys, I suppose there's nothing I can do to persuade you of the inherent ethical value of delivering a product as promised for the money spent. That's as fundamental as it gets. Robo failed in this regard.

See my original post under "P.S.". I tried and they they copped out on me. And by the way, let me say that if you think I buy that they don't read these forums or that they don't speak to some of those who do read these forums, I'm just going to go ahead and call you out right now. I wasn't born last night. For one thing, wouldn't that be poor product feedback research on their part? lol

 

I agree Jaeson, when the printer is in fact working, it does deliver some very nice prints. My only purpose here is to call Robo to task about the poor quality of the assembly, at least in my experience. I think that if they fix that one aspect of their enterprise, they'll have the best value on the market. Just for everyone's information, I have worked out most of the kinks and the prints are coming out very well.

 

Sounds reasonable.

CleanO2 Carbon Capture Tech

 

Trust me. None of them have the slightest interest in what we're doing here. How do I know? Because I talk to them.

The only time you'll see one of their names on here is if I link them to a thread.

The new printers are much better. That's all I can say on the subject matter. If you can't accept that I suggest you take your criticisms elsewhere.

 

Ok Mike. None of them have the slightest interest in what is said here, is that truly what you mean to say? I think that's ample evidence right there, if true, that the company is disconnected from its consumers. If Robo had treated my concerns with anything like genuine interest in making the situation 'right', this thread would not exist. Period. Tell them that.

Again, realize, I am NOT trying to single handedly destroy Robo's reputation. If anything, they should view this as an opportunity to show how much better they are. I would think a company which is trying to create a good product would be interested in doing that.

If you're threatening to ban me from this forum, I suppose you have the ability to do that as a moderator. In my view, if criticisms which are clearly founded in fact and are supportable are not accepted here, it would be no great loss. I don't sing Polyanna very well. I'm not here to be a rah rah guy, to put it another way.

 

I have visited Robo Headquarters a few times and have talked in person with the top brass and while troubleshooting problems I would often mention topics on the forums and every time they were totally ignorant to the tips and tricks that make up the bulk of this group. I do find it hard to believe that any company would not use the forum to gather feedback on their product, but I think Mike is correct that they pay no attention to the forums, at least not the technical stuff.