Besides the expensive price tag of the Cube printers (I own a CubePro Duo) and was curious if anyone else out there has also had new cartridges with unreadable/ unrecognizable chips in them? I’ve only had this happen with 2 of the 3 black PLA cartridges I’ve bought. No matter how sure I am that the new cartridge is positively seated to the reader, I continue seeing the “Not installed” status for the bay these cartridges are in. I’ve tried loading them in the secondary bay with the same results. All of my other new and used cartridges all are recognized and read properly, except for these brand new black PLA cartridges.
I’ve got RMA numbers for returning them, however I was wondering if anyone else here has had this experience, and possibly even found a way to remedy it….
I own a trio and so far I haven’t had any problems with the cartridges except that they are overpriced. I have talked to many people that are trying to hack their printers either because they want to use bulk filament (like myself) or because their chips are not readable and don’t want to wait another several weeks to get new ones. From what I know, they end up returning them…
I own a CubePro Duo and:
- I did experience unreadable cartridges (forgot if it was ABS or PLA). It got replaced, no question asked.
- I had HW failure after a firmware update. Here too it got replaced, no question asked.
I will echo a lot of pros and cons already stated on this forum:
Cons:
- Proprietary and expensive Cartridges, close to a scam ($99/cartridges - between 3 and 4 times more expensive than it should be)
- Still experiencing warp on ABS in spite of heated enclosure (one of the reason I bought it in the first place)
- Poor slicer functionality (can’t manage supports yourself: either all in or none)
- Nylon still not available, although part of the sales pitch for buying the machine
Pros:
- Elegant design
- Heavy and solid machine with quality components
- No extruder issues after 6 months of use, can’t say the same for few friends owning Replicators 
- Relatively non-noisy (subjective comment)
- As per above, excellent customer service which dealt promptly with my issues and kept me in the loop
Agree with earlier comments - the scanner (sense) is beta version level. Almost impossible to complete an acceptable scan so far.
We are Cubify resellers, and to keep in with our philosophy of knowing what we sell, I have been using a Cube Pro Duo for a while and have just got a Cube 3.
Having scanned the previous responders, I agree that the Cube products are exceptional quality, but the consumables are hideously priced.
The Cube 3 is a lovely machine, and loading the filament is indeed pretty simple. The extruder tip is part of the filament spool and locates easily into the head where a light shines to show you which hole to put it in. I did notice that one extruder sat about 1mm above the other. When I removed the filament, I found you could simply extend the tip a bit and pop it back in. User interventions were presumably intended to be a thing of the past, but as ever, this is not the case.
On firing it up, the test print failed to stick to the bed. The cube glue does not seem to work well in a cool environment, so I used the glue stick from a DeeGreen and it worked fine.
The user interface is typically 3D Systems in that it is very restrictive. I now have 3 versions of 3D systems slicers, one for the Cube 3 (pretty pants), one for the Pro (moderately pants) and one for the ProJet 4500 (rather good).
I visited Leapfrog in The Netherlands last week. They think that cartridge filament systems are set to become the norm. What a shame if that is the case.
I am surprised that using a Sense didn’t put you off Cubify products immediately!
Speed of the Cube 3 is still an issue especially when printing in two colours. It seems to only heat one extruder at a time so swapping between colours takes some considerable time, similar to Cube Pro. The stock print of a two colour number which is about 80mm in Z height has been running over night as it is a 9 hour print. I will attempt to tag the result onto a post later.
The test print is pretty nice. It took about 9 hours to print with a 40mm Z height but the quality of the print is really good. The layers are virtually invisible and there were no visible flaws in the print. I am rather impressed.
I have a cube 3 printer. It pumps out high quality prints at an expensive material cost. It is an extremely easy machine to use and needs very little maintenance.
I have a Cubex The Printer Quality It’s good, But Filament Cartidges are very expensive, hope Cubify take lower price for Catridges soon…
from the left: #CubePro (PLA with INF), #CubePro (PLA), Makerbot (PLA)
I’ve got a cube trio and because of the high cartridge price I’m rebuilding the machine using the mechanics as a Base with new electronics. I hope this wil work …
If you do, will you post instructions for others on how to do the same thing? We are running into the same problem - great “bones” but less than idea control system.
I’ll post how to do this rebuild in time
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Hi LeMonde,Thanks for sharing. May I know about the post processing of these models? If any…
No post processing. The purpose of this photo was to show bad results with CubePro printer
There is a thread on simplify3d where someone gives detail on the arduino he made to control his cubepro and avoid using original cartridges https://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2067&sid=a4c847876f1e8f3b04c3dc26b70f0b07&start=50
Unfortunately, I don’t know much about arduino or mechanics but I guess I’ll have to learn if I want to give some use to my useless cube not-so-pro trio
What about the support material? Usage and removal. Can you elaborate on the post processing for that?
This is exactly what I’m gonna try…instead the ramps 1.4 I’m going to use an ultimaker 1.5.7 shield or a megatronics v3.0.
Cubepro is a very solid and beautiful machine but it is handicapped by a definitely non pro software. Slicing is truly a problem and support generation is just plain awful, they are impossible to remove. The best trick I have found is printing ABS with PLA supports. I use a rice cooker to dip the model in hot water so pla will melt before abs; an unnecessary process with a decent slicer. If you haven’t purchased one already, I strongly suggest you to look for other printer options.
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Now offered is a water dissolvable support material for the CubePro called INF or Infinity. Used with PLA
