26 Reply by lowell.e

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Re: Not ready for prime time

I agree with much of what Heartlander says. There is a big difference between "prints right out of the box" and "plug and play". Likewise a big difference between experimenters/hobbyist and a company selling them tools.

I agree a Steve Jobs is needed for the industry, but he did not have a worldwide group of testers, experimenters and critics. He keep his cards close to his vest. He shared nothing, but the final great products. He found the right people to be steered to develop the Apple we know today. Each product is a complete tool for the consumer. He managed talent to build and integrate their ideas to meet/achieve his apparent vision or develop their's.

I would guess an open source group is unlikely to build a total system. I too have seen a lot of the computer world change, from IBM and Cyber mainframes to the CDC mini VAX to PCs. As an engineering user and as a home  player. My first home computer was a Commodore  Pet. It was an integrated system, no printer, cascade tape to save programs, no mouse, no wireless anything and all in 8k. Oh yes built in Basic. A 6502 micro like Apple (no I that was when II came out )

The point of all this is the world of the personal 3D printer is where the PC computer was 30 to 40 years ago. Yes a Steve Jobs is needed to do for personal 3D. Remember personal computing was a smoldering ember till IBM entered and needed an operating system which impregnated Microsoft.

27 Reply by Kuon

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Re: Not ready for prime time

i also had a lot of problems when i got my solidoodle (2) 10 months ago
most of them where from the hot-end (im using my fourth now) and also had a fried stepper chip and some skipping problems

the worst part was that i live in the netherlands and shipping takes almost 1.5 months so when something failed it took a long time to replace it
but the support team of solidoodle always helped me out and responded to me faster then any company i know
and now my printer works as it is supposed to work

also on the software side it took a while to find the software best for me
its all trail and error and if something doesnt work for you just look a bit furter, there is so much to try

but now i have my perfect combination of only 3 software packages (blender, kisslicer, repetier-host) to design, slice and print all the prints i want
you may or may not like these but everyone has a set they prefer
and now i have a very good working printer that now prints up to 0.1mm layer height without any problems
almost any problems i find in my prints are design flaws wink

yes the solidoodle is not perfect but with a lot of patience it will eventually be really worth it

28 Reply by Hazer

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Re: Not ready for prime time

From my perspective, everyone is comparing apples to carburetors. The 'industry' does not need to mature. There are 3d printers already that have 'maturity'. And 3d printers that go way beyond the process we are tinkering with. What everyone is actually implying is that they wished the 'hobbiest' scene would become 'plug and play'. I can give some examples of why this whole entire path of thinking is not realistic:

CNC machines: People have been building these at home for over 15 years. All of them (no matter how expensive or well designed) still cannot compete with their bigger-brother commercial counter-parts. Even the commercial ones are not plug and play. They require a lot of training, constant maintenance, and an expertise that most people do not realize during the design phase of what is to be run for a job on these machines.

Another example is PCB manufacturing: You can chemically etch copper boards at home. You can even build a small CNC to mechanically etch traces. You can even build an oven to re-flow solder paste for SMD devices. But all of these techniques are far away from the commercial solutions of laser/UV etching, screen etching, robotic PNP, and wave soldering. But regardless, the commercial solutions are also not 'plug and play'.

Point is: This process using these 'hotends' that not a single process engineer has actually put any mathematical calculations for is simply hobbiest and will never 'mature' and there will never be a 'plug and play' machine. Especially when the entire process is completely subjected to the quality of the filament, which is nowhere near a stable product.

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29 Reply by danny

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Re: Not ready for prime time

Heartlander wrote:

Rant alert.

I have invested several hundred dollars and probably two or three hundred hours in this 3D printing endeavor. Nothing works as it should. SketchUp crashes if you look at it wrong or, dare I say, Move a part. Solidoodle 3 is a half-baked product which I have had to immediately begin replacing parts for either printing them or buying them. Yeah, buying replacement parts for a brand new printer. That sucks.

Honestly, I'd recommend ditching sketchup, I used it for a long time as it was the only free 3d software that I could find, but it's difficult to use, horrible to actually create something with, the interface isn't intuitive, it's trying to make something really complex really simple and personally I think it fails.

I recommend creo elements, it is complicated, but if you follw the tutorials then you should get to grips with it pretty soon.
I would say that it helps to use a mouse with a scroll wheel as you can use that to zoom in and out, and click (and hold) it to rotate the model with the mouse, -it's possible to use it without, but I find it painful to use without a mouse in my laptop just two buttons and a track pad.

if sketchup is crashing a lot are you use that there isn't a general problem with your computer?

The whole thing is way more complicated than it should be, no wonder everyone here is a software, hardware or general IT geek, the average person doesn't have a chance in hell of mastering all the little crap you have to do to hopefully get one print in four semi-decent.

There are too any odd mysteries occurring between drawing, exporting and printing, too many add-ons and plug-ins required just to achieve a basic level of operability. And even then ts a crap shoot.

There are only really a couple of things where it should go wrong.
I understand that it's frustrating. but in the early days of computers it was just as frustrating.
Compose document,
convert document to post script file
send post script file to printer.

it's the same now.
create model
convert the model to a tool path
send the file to the printer.

However, there should really be limited things to go wrong. if you;re finding issues each and every-time you print then something surely must be wrong.

You need to go through your setup, have a look at all spaces clearances, what is and isn't greased etc, make sure that parts are secure and read correctly, make sure that there are no clogs.

I guess the thing to remember is that this is a tool, not a printer, it doesn't just squirt ink onto paper in a single dimension, it's a fairly complex computer aided manufacturing CNC tool.
you wouldn't expect to just buy a CNC mill or Lathe off the shelf and master 3d design software machine setup etc overnight?

All of this stuff sucks about worse than anything that has ever sucked before. Unfortunately for me, I have wrapped a whole new business model around the precept of 3D printer as prototyper. I am going nowhere fast and getting real pissed.

I have to say I kind of lost sympathy for you, heading into a new business with clearly no idea about the product that you'd be using.

really if you want to build a business rapid prototyping with these machines that are adding layers to build a model then you have basically three choices...

Keep plugging away with the solidoodle -it will become easier in the end, you'll get some fairly good models out of it other people have done that here so it's not impossible, -but will require patience and learning until you basically become the software/hardware geek.

option 2, buy a different printer -you might find it's just the solidoodle that doesn't work for you, but there are plenty more printers out there, the only trouble is that most work the same, so you're likely to have the same kind of issues.

option 3, buy an industrial printer, somewhere in the region of 6 - 12 thousand dollars will get you one of HP's entry level 3d printers, these are basically zero maintenance,
they don't use the melt and squirt plastic method then use a resin binded powder that's put down in layers, they also can include print heads that can put colour into the resin as it prints for true multi colour parts (where the colour isn't the crappy tie die looking stuff that filament 3d printers do, but actual printed with the same resolution as your home ink jet.

I don't know how big your business is...
12 grand is a lot to spend on a toy for a home user, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to 2 hours downtime every day for 1 year chasing down issues that affect ever plastic filament based 3d printer. if you've started a serious business you'll soon find that you'll wish that you'd spend the 12k when you wasted more than than on unproductive hours and wages.

I feel like I've dropped into the PC industry right after the Heath Kit or maybe about the Trash 80 or Apple I. No LANS, few printers, no color monitors, no software save what you make. Lots of blood on the edge and a lot of its mine.

that's exactly what you've done. though you actually dropped in right at the heathkit stage, -they are selling 3d printer kits in Maplin in the UK now, (maplin is the uk version of Tandy/Radioshack)... the 3d printer industry is pretty much right at that heathkit build your own boards and get a computer stage right now.

30 Reply by danny

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Re: Not ready for prime time

Heartlander wrote:

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.

when you can't get sketchup to work do you complain to microsoft, or do you complain to google?

that's what it's like, with the slicing you have an issue with slicer, it's a 3rd party piece of software,

when you have an issue with sketchup you should be seeking support from google (because they make sketchup, not complaining about windows or complaining about Dell because they made the machine that won't run the software)

Why am I fighting with hardware problems? Why did my jigsaw shatter?

because the part is weak, this has been the case since people got their Solidoodle 2 machines, most people have replaced the parts. there has been advice about this available in both this forum and the google groups support place for around a year now! (since before the solidoodle 3 was made)

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?

what heater did you get, Nichrome wound resistor (the one that looks like a blob) or resistor in a a block heater (the one that is square)? both have weaknesses that are well discussed. I agree it bites that people are telling you to upgrade etc, but the aftermarket heaters are (in a lot of cases) a lot better than the stock ones.

perhaps if you consider the parts "after market part" that will improve performance rather than "replacements for pretty weak parts" then you'd be happier about changing your machine?

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!

you spent small money on a precision CNC CAM setup.

how well would you expect an $800 car to drive? that's the sort of thing we're talking about. you can't spend banger money and expect a Ferrari.
($800 is a lot of money to me, but you have to be realistic)

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?

well the machine only prints what it's told to print. this MUST be an issue with either your design or your design software or your slicing software.

if it's being made in the air then it suggests that rather than starting your model at z=0 you've started it at z=10 basically, in sketchup there is a ground (the space between the blue and red axis if I remember correctly) you've been making your models in the air.
therefore they've been printing in the air.

as for the plugins, Solidoodle make printers, why should they be aware of all the plugins for Sketchup?, These plugins are completely unrelated to the solidoodle machine usually made by third party companies for a 3rd party product.

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?

netfab won't move your floating object to the ground.

as for the question, why does Netfab break my design.

Seriously? ask netfabb!

(again when you can't a program to work do you complain to dell because they made the computer?)

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.

you buy a printer that you know nothing about to hopefully start a business in an industry that you know nothing about.
seemingly you did no research and were just tempted by the cheaper than chips price tag.

you then complain to the manufacturer of a machine because you can't work software made by google, and you can't work the slicing software made by a community effort to give away free software -but again you ask a 3rd party hardware manufacturer rather than seeking support from the manufacturer of the software that you cant' work.

then you can't work netfab, a free tool that you've clearly obtained from netfabb.com that's made by the company netfabb... and when you can't work it you complain once again to, some completely unrelated 3rd party hardware manufacturer.

then you come to a community support website, where people offer their advice for free, and refer to anyone who has any more ideas that you as geeks and grey beards. I thought you were a professional, isn't this your business? -using 3d printing for rapid prototyping. shouldn't you be a bit more clued up than you are?!

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.

really? you think Steve jobs needs to come and save the day?
you do understand that Steve jobs stole most of apples "innovations"
as for the Chinese doing better, really? show me, I don't know of any Chinese 3d printing machines.



one last thing, creo elements is the free version of creo.

as far as I can tell the only real difference is that export options are a bit more limited.

31 Reply by Hazer

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Re: Not ready for prime time

I will re-iterate:

Filament-stepper-motor-extruders are not the pioneering of 3d printing. They are the garage hacker versions of it, that will not get any better than it is.

These: http://gigaom.com/2013/07/24/four-3d-pr … -makerbot/ are mature technologies. They use real engineering to control process variables to achieve desired results.

If you want the FFF version to mature, the hardware needs to be on a much higher level (laser cut or stamped stainless steel, real linear bearing, acme/ball screws) and the physical control of the filament must be done much better. You MUST measure the variables to get consistent results. For starters, using a true servo and using its torque feedback along with a laser sensor to constantly measure the diameter of the filament is just the beginning.

And we have yet to talk about the firmware, which is a 'for dummies' developing IDE being processed to the manufacturers 'C' down to the assembly which is then being run on an 8 bit processor.

A mature FFF would drive the cost way beyond what you would imagine.

Chuck Bittner is a quadriplegic gamer who is petitioning the major console developers to include internal button remapping in all console games. You can help.
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32 Reply by foofoodog

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Re: Not ready for prime time

A little late to the party with this post, but for the most part my SD3 has been plug and play. After adding stickum to the bed of course. I may be a little ahead of the curve though since I have been playing with SketchUp for several years and build my own PC's from parts.

Apparently I am not intimidated by exposed circuit boards, loose wiring running everywhere, gears, belts and pulleys without guards, sharp angle iron, ABS fumes, acetone, razor blades, smoking hot stepper motors/bed/extruder.

I had a pretty serious host PC hooked up to it to start with, now I just have an old XP laptop there that I remote into.

33 Reply by Heartlander

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Re: Not ready for prime time

I guess it just goes to show... something. I tweaked my settings, mostly in Slicer and now I'm getting some pretty sweet prints, better than ever in fact. I'll be reluctant to tear it down to install the E3D, its running so good.

Robox printer, HICTOP (Prusa i3 variant) Model 3DP17 printer, ELEK 2.5W laser engraver, AutoDesk 123D Design, Windows 10

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34 Reply by dkeeling728 (edited by dkeeling728 2013-09-08 21:46:07)

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Re: Not ready for prime time

Heartlander wrote:

I guess it just goes to show... something. I tweaked my settings, mostly in Slicer and now I'm getting some pretty sweet prints, better than ever in fact. I'll be reluctant to tear it down to install the E3D, its running so good.

yup, most of these machines, if its not a mechanical or electrical issue (which are easy to see), its all in the software. no need to get upset with the machine when its a software setting you have done wrong tongue.

they need to put a disclaimer on the website to warn people that SISO (stupid in stupid out) applies to all 3d printers as it does to all computers. hahaha

EDIT: also, WE DO NOT NEED A STEVE JOBS OF 3D PRINTING! you realize how zealously closed source all of apple products are? if 3d printing goes the way of apple we'll be having $150 .5 KG rolls of filament with microchips that only let the printer work with that filament, and dont allow reloads. and you will see a proprietary 3d file format you can only get from the iPrint online store, so you can only print what they say you can print. if we get a steve jobs of 3d printing, i will be assassinating him with my 3d printed ar-15! (joke, all you P-C retards)