Not ready for prime time (Page 1 of 2)

Oh, excellent. Just as I press Post my printer sparks and the lights go out. So cool.

And too be fair, you bought the least expensive preassembled 3d printer on the market. Not sure you should be looking for ease of use to be a main feature.

What sort of mysteries?
What sort of plug-ins?

I'm not aware of too many plug-ins for 3D printing software. The wonderful thing about 3D modeling, and Slicing as it is now is that it is in fact open source. If your files are not slicing correctly, you should be able to get a feel for why, and you have infinite recourse with the Slic3r people to complain about the buggy functionality of their program. Alex Radalucci is really nice about fixing bugs.

SD, it is disheartening to hear you respond that I have recourse with the other vendors and telling me to take up my issues with them, while not mentioning the issues I have with Solidoodle quality. See, most folks would have taken that bull by the horns. You ducked.

Why am I fighting with hardware problems? Why did my jigsaw shatter? Why does my extruder heater work intermittently? Why, after running autotune on it (and why do I have to do that?) does it still turn itself off (AND on!) and why do I have to watch the temperature like a hawk in case it decides to doze off in the middle of a part? Why did the wire break off? Why does it do it after I re-soldered the wire?

And guys, saying that I only spent $800 on a printer and am not really entitled to expectations of reasonable quality just shows me how assimilated you have become. Damn you Borg!

@#$%^^5!!!! No, it should work, at least for a few months, without falling apart, without have to be fought at every turn. $800 is a lot of money to some folks and to blow it on a crappy product really stings.

I know how far you have come, how cool it is in so many ways. I still get excited about the potential and think its really amazing when a part comes out right. But guys, you need to step back from new product development and put a lot of beef behind quality improvement and quality ASSURANCE. You won't make it in the market long if you have guys bitching about your reliability.

You asked about mysteries. Here's one. Why does my SketchUp let me make a perfectly good looking part, create an STL that passes muster as a clean water-tight drawing (according to some of the many plug-ins you say you're not aware of) and then Slic3r seems to think its okay to slice, but when its gets handed off to the printer, the printer starts printing in mid-air or prints something that has absolutely no relationship to any part of the drawing I made?

Why does NetFabb the "repair" it and give me a part in which all the holes, large and small have been skinned over, where I have ramps where there were none before and the part generally looks like it have been scribbled on by every tagger on the West Side? And then, likely as not, it STILL won't print?

I'm not imagining this stuff an I know I'm not the only one experiencing it. Yes, some of it is because I haven't yet learned all thousand and one little tricks the gray beards use to coax a drawing into printing, but it should NOT be that way.

What we need is a Steve Jobs to come in and kick the industry's ass from one end to the other, scanning, drawing, printing, hardware and software. Either the current players will up their game or get steam rolled when someone with deep pockets decides this is just too good to pass up, too many targets, too many easy kills, too many folks that think half-ass is good enough, just get it to market before someone else does. Hell, the Chinese do better than this.

To be fair, the slic3r comment was warranted based on this comment, and seemed to be what SD was referring to since he mentioned the mysteries and addons.  Problems with sketchup have nothing to do with SD. 

Heartlander I understand where you're at and how frustrated you are.  I'm one of the lucky ones that haven't had many problems and have been printing trouble free for a year with one replacement hot end only my biggest problem.  I know there are a lot of people here that will help you out though, and if you ask Solidoodle for help they most likely will help you with any machine related issues. 

General frustrations about the state of the FREE design software and FREE slicing software are really unfair to direct at solidoodle or have them reflect against them.   As others have said, you are buying into something in its infancy and hoping that it's tried and true technology.  We're not at the plug and play point with 3d printing at home, but if you're setting up a business around 3d printing I would have gone a different route and bought a professional machine myself.

Thanks guys. Yeah, I'm not dumping just on Solidoodle. I sold mainframe computers (as well as UNIX boxes, PC LANs and such for many years  before I got into development so I know how the hype can get ahead of the reality. But it was customers ranting like this that put our feet to the fire and brought forth change and excellence.

Sometimes you gotta stand your ground.

I just wasn't sure what you meant about plugins. To be honest, I didn't see the post about the sparks.

It sucks for anyone to have to do unnecessary trouble shooting. We do provide tech support by phone and e-mail for anyone who asks for it. By the sounds of it, most of the problems stem from an improperly set-up thermistor. A lot of people have difficulty repairing this section of the Solidoodle, as it has multiple points of failure.

I'm not sure why your Jigsaw is broken, but if it was damaged over time, it was due to heat. We make the extruder out of acrylic because of cost concerns, and sometimes this does happen. Most of the time it remains functional. As you can see from this forum, many users simply elect to replace it. We will be keeping this concern in mind for future versions of the printer.

The reason you have to run autotune (and you should only have to run it once), is that not all hot-ends / thermistors are the same. They must each be calibrated after a replacement. Else, the heating cycle will be off. Active electronics in the hot-end could reduce the need for that, but that the current method keeps costs low.

I think the wider question here is "why did I even have to repair my Solidoodle"? The answers depends on whether the damage occurred in shipping, or if it occurred after use. If it occurred during shipping, the answer is most likely "You might not have had to " - we often repair printers damaged in shipping for users. If the printer was damaged in use, that depends on how you used the printer, but it can be said that we are always willing to work with people who have had part failures. If it's our fault, we help. Universally.

That said, if you report your part failure 8-10 months after purchase, that makes things very hard on us. That is stretching very far for a machine that does not have a warranty. 

While we understand that you're disappointed, please do keep in mind that we are familiar with the frustrations some customers are feeling. We have already improved the design a great deal over the past year, to help avoid problems of this nature. You're right that the Solidoodle can't quite be compared to a microwave, but compared to home built model, it is often more reliable. I think that are you are entitled to a great customer experience. If we screwed up, we can look into it.

We understand that 3D printers aren't quite as user friendly as they could be, and we are working on it. 

We hear you loud and clear. We are always working to make the Solidoodle more reliable.

You shouldn't need plugins to make parts in Sketchup. At this stage in the game, you will need to monitor the output of any slicer. Slic3r is the best out there, but it is capable of making mistakes, especially with damaged files. Again, alerting the Slic3r folks of your errors will help eliminate this. Given the fact that Slic3r is 100% free, it is accomplishing a great deal.

Are you sending high polycount files to netFabb? We have seen this kind of thing when users have sent extremely high quality files through the service. Since there isn't a massive advantage to high poly count files in 3D printing, many 3D printing software packages do not do well with them. At any rate, sending them your errors, and garbled files will help them fix the problem. Also, do your best to avoid binary .STL files, as some programs cannot properly handle them.

Neither of these cases are examples of netFabb, or Slic3r being poorly developed pieces of software. 3D model processing, and tool path are tough computational problems, that do not have perfect results at the moment. What you see in Slic3r, is the the most honest effort to perfect the process I have seen so far. There is no guide to writing slicers at the moment, no O'Reilly book to follow, no stack-exchange.

This is cutting edge stuff, and I am frequently amazed that it works.

It really isn't that way in most cases. I bring a printer to demonstrations all the time, and simply press print to print. I've never had to repair a printer on site at a demo, and I've never had an issue that prevented me from printing. I'm not saying that problems like  this don't happen, obviously they do, but if the printer were so temperamental is to need thousands of tips, I think the support guys would have already pulled out our hair already. Generally, when we receive an "impossible, temperamental printer" we can get in running within 20 minutes.

We can't change the way the software operates in a meaningful way at the moment ( since we are purely a hardware manufacturer, and do not produce software in any form), that hasn't been our motive so far. What I can say is that you've had a bad time with the printer itself, and that sucks. If you get in touch with [email protected], I'm sure they can help work something out with you. We don't have hearts of stone.

The industry is moving quickly. Who knows what lies in store for future models, and future upgrades. Everyone at Solidoodle reads these boards, and realizes the criticisms against the product. However, we realize that criticisms like this are common across the 3D printing market. We do our best to help where we can, and we are pretty proud that we can provide our product at a price where even less affluent users can afford to 3D print.

It looks like you got things up and running. I hope you have fun, and let us know if there is anything else we can do.

I can certainly sympathise with Heartlander's experience, but reading through the posts here some of it does sound a little like asking a bit much from a series of essentially free tools.

Personally I've been very happy with my SD3, though it has some quirks, it's nothing game stopping or that I wasnt expecting from what is essentially to me an emerging technology.

I did a lot of reserach on 3D printers before I elected to buy a Solidoodle, and I knew I was sacrificing some user friendliness for a good value product. I feel that many of the more expensive printers simply pretty up what is essentially still a tinkerers hobby.

If my bussiness model was dependent on it, then I would be purchasing a more commercial solution. I'd also not be using free Sketchup software.

And here is where I think you may benifit from stepping up a bit. Not with the printer, but with the software, you need a good starting point and Sketchup is not it.

I use Rhino 3D, it's much easier to use than Sketchup, has many more features and tools for model creation, and exports very nice .STL files that so far have not needed any fixing by Netfabb. (of course I also have taken the time to reserach exactly what causes those problems and take care to avoid them in my model creation)

Rhino 3D costs money. But your starting a business, so presumably you have a revenue model and should be looking to spend appropriately to give your business the best chance of success.

No plug-ins, no 3rd party tools, just create, Slice and Print.

Now I noticed another issue you mentioned that no one has addressed, and that is the 'printing in empty space'. I've seen this too, but it's been user error, or perhaps, insufficient 'instructions'. When you plug your printer in and connect it's vital I believe to home each Axis using the manual controls panel. Justclick the X, Y and Z 'home icons before you start a print. If you do this every time you connect the printer wont start in odd spots.

I seriously wish you all the best in your endevours. I'm new here and learning a lot too, but I'm more than happy to try and assist with issues if I can. I have a long background in IT and IT support, with training in 3D modelling and a logical approach to problem solving. I think the biggest thing about a Solidoodle, and the thing you've really got going for you is that this community seems to be one of the more established and helpful ones.

A few points after skimming through this:

- I agree there are some quality issues with some of the parts on a new Solidoodle. Hot end wiring, thermistors and heating resistors come to mind. It is one of the cheaper printers however.

- I print with my Solidoodle, a Replicator and a Printrbot plus. All have had issues. The Replicator is mechanically solid but the software is inflexible. The printrbot so far is a pile of junk. I only ever get one or two prints in between catastrophic failure and large scale re-calibration.

- I don't mean to offend, but I looked at your Sketchup part that you posted in a recent thread and it was a dog's breakfast. I could only envisage fixing it by starting again. You were asking for help/technical support but considering my limited free time I put it in the too hard basket. I'd say much of your software troubles come from dodgy modelling and you might benefit from learning a non-free CAD program like others have suggested.

I do agree with your overall sentiment, however. 3D printing is definitely not yet plug and play. Any vendor claiming it is on their website (including Solidoodle) is misleading prospective customers to some extent.

Heartlander
I know what you mean, I've been struggling with my SD3 too. After SD couldn't gelp me they sent me to their customers (here).

I have some CAD experience with Pro E  and am developing parts to send out to get molds made. I saw the SD3 as a good for first or second prototype, before I send the parts out to a good 3d print company. Still haven't got the first proto done with my SD3.

I thought this would be plug and play with backlash issues and a few noticeable lines. That said I feel the good people here can help me get up and running.

When you read all about the printers never being involved in the 3d market. They all seem the same as far as spec. After the time I've put in I feel I should of got a replicator 2 but I haven't looked into them and don't know if they have problems like the SDs have.

I go through highs and lows with the my SD3, thinking i finally got it figured out. I read posts about printing Yoda and all these cool things and was hoping it would be out of the box and print a ok yoda, (Not a picture perfect one. Any how I understand your frustrations, and continue to hope I'm smart enough to figure this bad boy out

I think a lot of it comes down to expectations and experience.

My first problems were clogs. I didn't know that the Solidoodle thermistor placement meant temps were off by 30C, so printing PLA at the filament manufactures' suggested temperate of 195C was way too hot.

And in my quest for improved print quality I fried my microcontroller when I caused a short in my thermistor after clearing a clog.  Incidentally I was getting the best quality prints just before this, but felt quality had room for improvement, especially as "low" tolerance prints often did not work properly.

The Solidoodle troubleshooting page is a good start (http://www.solidoodle.com/how-to-2/troubleshooting/), but better documentation of DOs, DON'Ts, and out-of-the box print examples (perhaps with corresponding Slic3r settings) could go a long way.

I bet they'd include glass beds standard if they could figure out a way to ship them and have them arrive whole.  I mean, if I can get glass cut for less than a dollar a piece, surely in bulk they could do just as well, and $2 for glass beds probably costs less than the kapton with better results.