A place to report in..

Figured it would be good to have a new spot for people to report if they have gotten their printer, and to open up a discussion on how we as a group can solve the heated bed issue. Am hoping Mooselake might be able to provide some photos or info from his as his is successful. Thoughts?

I think the issue is around the bed being too precise Matt's theory on my unit is that the heat expansion caused the plate to warp under the forces of the screw mounts.

If heat warping is the issue then slots are the answer. They give the bed room to expand, just like they do for woodworking and other temperature varying metal parts, and would be pretty easy to DIY with a dremel. Since that's too simple an answer there must be other issues.

Sorry I've been AWOL, some other stuff going on. I'll be in MN next week, over 300 miles from Bemidji or I'd see about meeting up. I've got lots of unboxing pics, but not really any of it operating. What would you like to see after I get back?

One minor issue, the spool holder broke at the TBD end and dropped the spool on the table. Patched with CA glue, but it's going to need a replacement. Best not to use it as a storage area even if it's winter and low humidity. Probably will reprint it in t-glase, about time to test that anyway.

Kirk

Any reports of delivered machines? I'd love to see some shots of how your hotbed sits in ect Mooselake, when you've got the time.

I am seriously wondering if anyone has gotten a printer since the "hotbed issue" email, as it seems no one is reporting as such. Stall tactic? I am surprised these forums are still up even.

This forum is hosted for free, and Matt hasn't even logged in since 11/23/16.  After thinking he was a promising new printer designer with a good future he's turned out to be a disappointment.  Problems happen, but disappearing and rare misleading messages aren't a good sign.

After several months of sitting idle I've fired up both 3D printers in the last few days.  I've got a beta "high flow" hot end coming from Printrbot to run through my hot end evaluation "suite" (no NDA, it was offered in a public forum) which prompted me to try melting some plastic.  Started off with reprinting the broken spool holder on the PB, no issues there, then a plastic gear on both printers (printed OK, broke a tooth while cleaning off the TBD stringing.  Needed a bigger coaster for the English chicken coffee cups (hand delivered from Stoke-on-Trent, although it was my daughter) and scaled up my favorite celtic coaster test print and started having trouble.

I'm having some tuning problems (maybe, or maybe it's the new filament spool) with the TBD, made worse by a lack of experience with both deltas and bowden extruders.  The first layer doesn't want to stick, and it'll take some digging to figure out how to tweak the head to bed clearance.  It was still stringing with 5mm of retraction, boosted that to 8 but the stick issues aren't helping.  Violating the change one thing at a time rule I'm using the latest Prusa slic3r and finding out that volumetric autospeed isn't working very well based on Repetier-Host's speed coloring (not to mention insanely long print times).  Ran out of time and energy before sorting it out.

Matt's printed extruder doesn't do a very good job of lining up the filament, and has a fair gap between the drive gear and the plastic.  It takes some tweaking with a small screwdriver to get the first bit past the gear and back into the extruder, even after readjusting the drive gear.  Once started it's not an issue (well, you're wanting to try Ninjaflex), but after the spool holder broke from sitting with a spool on it can't be left that way so every print session will start rethreading the filament.  Perhaps it's time to look through the brass tubing collection and try the drinking straw mod.

Nothing too serious that can't be sorted out with a bit of time but a pain for a quick print session.  No problems whatsoever with the heated bed making it up to 70, other than it takes at least twice as long as the highly tuned Printrbot with it's 30A power supply.  That's 3 or 4 minutes instead of less than two

Kirk

I've finally broken mine out again, I flipped the bed and heated it up which seems to have corrected the warping I had mentioned earlier. I have to print a new spool holder as well since mine broke. Any recommendations as I didn't see that STL in the objects?

I did get a fairly decent benchy to print after much fussing with settings and half a dozen fails. Ultimately I bought simplify3D and that has been life changing as compared to the old version of cura from the instructions.

I do 10mm of retraction at 80mm/s which seems to limit stringing to those tiny hairs that get taken by a heat gun. The other thing I did was add a silicone sock to the hot end which helped my temps stay more consistent.

As for loading the filament I found bending it slightly before putting it through the guide slot helps get it to the feeder. As I broke my filament twice due to the holder.

Thanks for the retraction tip!  I've been gradually inching it up.  My other all metal hotend is on a direct extruder and needs 0.5mm; any more and it'll jam.

The spool holder is on Thingiverse.  I printed it in PLA but PETG would be better.  Beefed up with some more reinforcement at the break point would be better yet.

I didn't think to check the heated bed for warping this time, although it didn't have any when I checked it (6 months ago!) during the initial testing.  I usually turn the bed heater on as soon as I connect R-H and leave it on, which might be evening out the heating.  Wonder it if's a bit too thin, the other aluminum beds I've seen are more like a quarter inch and this looks like about half that.  The nyloc nuts on mine are on screws that are too short so the nylon section's not actually engaged.  Perhaps they're too tight if you're having warping problems?  Maybe try the classic cardboard over the bed while heating to even out the temperature?

Kirk

That's two TBDs in the wild.  Any more?

Kirk

Can you link to that holder I feel dumb but didn't see it.

Thingiverse is a link in the post above (here too!).  If you go to the thing files tab it's about 11 down in the list.

It might require that you're logged in for the links to work.

Kirk

Edit:  I see the forum software doesn't display links in a different color.  For grins I colorized it above.  Orange seemed appropriate Extra points if you find the other link

It's like a hidden object game! Found it thanks!

I just replied to Matt's April (not March) 8th update, maybe he'll get back to me/us with another update. It's pretty close to his old normal once/month update.

Kirk

It's the same TBD's that have been out since the beginning, and seemingly only those. I'm still pissed I was directly lied to (to repeat the record I was given actual shipment dates twice) and I'm still pondering if the $700 is worth the trouble of doing something about it. I gave him the benefit of the doubt when he came back and said there were issues but he was shipping them out, but from what I can gather that seemed to be a stall tactic. He has completely violated the terms of use, and even moreso, has gone from a creator I too thought was one of the "good guys" of the 3d printing community to another scam. Not even the honesty or integrity to step up and admit failure, but the complete opposite. I have stopped doing any electronics backing ok Kickstarter after this, I refuse to be duped to this level again. And there have been some pretty cool machines (phrozen make) that have been sitting out there. The $400 bucks for my Cr-10 from Gearbest has been a massively better investment, and I wish I had this money back to get a second one. At this point, it's not even so much about the printer as much as it's about dishonesty, disrespect, and lack of accountabiilty. Even if he is only 21, those are things that can and should be expected from people, and he has failed completely in that regard. I doubt he gets these, and since he doesn't log in, he will probably will never read it, but if he does, I hope he has some shame in how terribly he has treated the people that believed in what he was creating.

If anybody else is still checking here, @Jessshield is working on a lawyer based resolution over in the KS comments.

Matt got off to such a good start, and I had great expectations for him. I only supported the TBD because I knew him from elsewhere for several years, and didn't really need another 3D printer. The project's failing isn't the biggest disappointment, his failure to be responsible and let us know what happened rather than just disappearing is.

Kirk