For clearing clogs I use a piece of fine music wire (a 0.010 inch guitar string ) Cut it 6 inches long and put some slight kinks spaced a few mms apart in one end of it. Using manual control raise the printhead up 3 inches or so to give yourself some room. Turn on the extruder heater. Open the clamp and when the temp gets to about 150 pull the filament out. This will remove most of the plastic from the extruder. Trim off the end of the filament back beyond the grooves left from the hobbed bolt and throw it away. Now when the extruder gets to temp 200+ use some needle nose pliers to feed the wire into the nozzle. It may take a bit to get the wire to go in that little hole. Once in use the pliers to push it up until you can grab the wire where it comes out by the hobbed bolt. Now use the pliers to pull the wire through the nozzle. The wire will push any clogs up out of the nozzle and the kinks will kind of sweep any bits of plastic left in the heater block and cold end out. Wait till the wire cools and clean off any plastic bits clinging to it set it aside to use next time. Reinsert the filament and attach the roller clamp with the screws and springs.
I did read the thread and re read the thread and what I see is that Eric has not been able to print a good part on his Robo3d machine. He asked Robo for help and got an unsatisfying answer. He has prints that do not stick or have thin weak walls. He has a clogged extruder for which I sent my $0.02 worth of solution which is different than anyone else’s. He also has broken printer parts that he asked for STL files and was provided a link by Vacrin . He got suggestions on better materials sources and contacts and ways to contact Robo tec’s. Robo finally agreed to repair, replace or refurbish the unit and he is shipping it back. As far as I can tell the printed parts quality issue has not been solved. Getting a new machine might do the trick however If it does not then part of the problem may be in the slicer settings. There are many settings in the slicer programs that can affect how well parts stick and how thick and strong the walls of the part turn out. I have had similar issues that Eric is having and found some of them to be slicer settings related. Where in this thread has he answered the above questions about his slicer settings? If there is a different thread related to this one I missed it.
One of his posts says he used the Medium detail settings in Matter Control, the other says he had slightly better results with RepetierHost but it still ultimately failed.
Slicer settings are largely irrelevant though if he’s still dealing with things like broken Y-belt clips and other parts that were damaged but not obviously broken until closer investigation.
For bed adhesion with pla I simply use malt vinegar or cider vinegar to clean the glass, no mess it sticks every time and it smells like fish n chips!
i heat the glass to 60 c and wipe it down with a small amount of vinegar on a lint free face pad, allow about a minute to dry before hitting print.
Aside from parts breaking ( gutted for Ya there) your other issues sound like a partially plugged nozzle… Causing rough weak walls and perimeters, I have found with the cheaper heads from China that the Teflon tape often extends to far into the chamber and little pieces heat up and break off causing minor clogs, I disassemble all new hot ends and generally re do the terrible job they did in the factory.
About surface adherence, well my best results have been with blue tape (3m paint stuff) and some hair spray (aquanet). But, to have the best adherence on it you have to do the calibration of the X, Y, Z and the filament extruder and modify your firmware so the steps are the correct ones (http://www.instructables.com/id/Calibrating-your-3D-printer-using-minimal-filament/?ALLSTEPS). Z axis must have an offset value, in simplify3d im using 0.85~0.98 depending on filament and quality (low-high) and you will see better results with time.
When you say about plastic parts breaking I don’t understand what you are talking about, but if those plastics parts aren’t the CASE or Bottom of the case, you can print all the other parts with help of one the many printers in this hub (on ABS material is more strong than PLA). I strongly suggest that you research a lot on youtube about how to replace parts. On electronics I haven’t had any single issue so far, but I believe I haven’t use my printer for more than 500 hours (Does anyone knows how to know the number of hours used?).
I honestly hope Braydon from Robo reads all these comments and is ashamed of what he has created! I understand products can have bugs from time to time but theres thousands of people that have complaints and nothing is ever done about it!I work quality control for manufacturing facilities and if we had this many issues with our products we would be out of work!! Its sad to have bought something I was so hopeful about since it was made in the USA and stated 24/7 customer support only to find out its a super lemon for almost everyone!!
