John from Solidoodle came back to me very quickly last night and has promised to dispatch replacement part(s) as soon as possible.

I gave the (temporarily clamped) printer a quick run through the axis and brief extrusion using the Standard Solidoodle software, which all appears to otherwise be working fine.

I've repaired and left the piece clamped/setting today so I can play with the printer further tonight.

I'm glad we were able to get back to you fast. Were you able to repair your Solidoodle?

I gave the (temporarily clamped) printer a quick run through the axis and brief extrusion using the Standard Solidoodle software, which all appears to otherwise be working fine.

I've repaired and left the piece clamped/setting today so I can play with the printer further tonight.

There is also quite an art to designing suitable parts. Shrinkage is a major factor and can ruin many parts if not factored in. Solid shapes do not work very well because of this. The part must be designed to only need a two part (male/female) mould, otherwise tooling skyrockets. Designing injection moulded parts in difficult, designing good ones is an art.

Alternatively, benchtop injection moulding which I imagine Jonathan does would probably be suitable for their application. Tooling can be made from a variety of materials and the parts will still come out a lot faster than 3D printing. Intelligent part design will still be paramount, but it is affordable to develop a design idea with prototypes and retool until it works.

http://www.injectionmolder.net/

i'm familiar with castign and molding (experience with arts and sculpture) the molds would be soemwhat expinsive tos tar if they used metal however they would be able to supply the STL files they use to print to mahine the molds so thats a large portion there. i found a cost estimater

http://chinaplastic.org/moldcalc_input.asp

as a test a part thats 1 inch by 2 inches by .75 inches with 4 inclusions/cavities
the mold woudl cost approximately 1681 usd with a per parts cost of 52 cents per part

so the question is how much a mold could cost how ironic would it be for china to be makign the parts to put them out of buisiness?

They will take care of you and get you printing but there is no warranty.

That's why I put the word in 'quotation marks'. Solidoodle made it clear in the FAQ that there was no official warranty and I acknowledged that before making the decision to purchase/pre-order.

I've just discovered that the damage to the extruder plastics is slightly more elaborate than I thought:

In addition to the fractured corner pieces there is a large crack in the outer layer (seen here above the third 'o' in Solidoodle). I doubt it will affect the printing capabilities of the machine, but I'm not sure how any of the damage to the extruder occurred. It wasn't in contact within anything else during shipping and shouldn't have been excessively stressed.

For now, use acetone rather than superglue.  You don't need to worry as much about it getting on the rails, and the plastic melted together will be a better bond.

That's great advice, thank you Ian.

I'll hang on until support get back as I don't want to do anything that might invalidate the 'warranty'.

Maybe they should consider using FedEx rather than Ace Ventura.

Couldn't resist.

I'm not sure without looking at the part more closely, but just because you can print it doesn't mean it can be made from a mold, you have to think about how the negative of the mold steel has to be and how the part would come out of there, even on a split mold.  But I think in keeping with the spirit of 3d printing they would take heat if they didn't print their own plastic components.

The thin design of the parts isn't about saving plastic so much as time, I think.  Printing is slow.  If injection molding isn't economical, I would think that there might be some solution possible using silicone molds and some kind of resin.  The cure time might not be any faster than printing, but it's easier to make a lot of molds than to make a lot of printers.

I've now returned home and have been able to properly unpack the printer, identifying the broken part(s).

It's the top part of the right-hand axis rail carriage.

Although it should be a quick fix, I'm amazed at how weak and poorly designed this printed part is. It's not just the part that broke off - the tabs that hold the bolts connecting the belt are also needlessly thin - a problem compounded by the torsional stress imposed by the way the bolts are attached to the belt.

I can understand the desire to save plastic, but even to a non-engineer, it is obvious that this component (which is supporting the weight of the printing carriage and rails) was going to fail during shipping.

Hopefully this is one of the parts that has been 'redesigned' in newer models.

Unfortunately this breakage has meant that the whole printer head and one of the axis rails has been hanging by the belt for an extended period of time, which can't have done it much good.

Unfortunately that isn't the only damage - two of the extruder plastic layers have snapped in one corner (shown above).

I don't quite understand how this could have been caused by shipping abuse, as this part wouldn't have been subjected to any additional stress. My guess would be that it happened during production and wasn't noticed before shipping.

I'll be passing these photos on to support shortly to get recommendations before attempting any repairs.

I believe the rail plastic can be repaired easily with some superglue (and later replaced with a better-designed printed part), but I'm not sure about the layered extruder parts.

I don't think appearance is an issue, plus the other companies printing would have the same issues of anisotropic strength. As Ian suggested reorienting the print might help.

All that being said, they seem to think their new design is 'virtually indestructible'. Therefore, problem solved, no need for new shipping company, injection molding, or anything else. Plus printing out parts for new printers is a good way to check quality of old printers.