Our HyVision/Cubicon Horror Story

[cjp0008]

My university purchased 9 of Cubicon’s 110F printers–on paper they look quite good (except for their single extruder and high price point). While Cubicon does have a new model out, I thought I’d warn you about their HORRIBLE customer support as that will not likely change.

First 7 out of those 9 stopped working within 8 weeks of purchase. Now, this may not be 100% Cubicon’s fault as a couple of the failures seem to be due to idiocy and mistreating heads to tear the internal teflon tubes (however, these are easy to replace in many printers–not so for the Cubicon!). Also, their automatic tilting beds failed early on in a couple more printers, though no one abused them (in fact, one of the few good things about this printer is the print bed surface–filament sticks well during printing, but once the finished print cools, it pops right off–no forcing or razors required!).

So, we ordered new extruders (yes, the extruders were implicated in the failure of the automatically-tilting beds–the nozzles move up and down to detect tilt alignment)…and it took OVER 4 MONTHS for them to arrive (we’re in the USA and they were shipped from London allegedly). THEN, when they did arrive, we discovered they had forgotten to include some of the major parts we ordered!!! Can you imagine???

Also, one of the 2 funcitoning printers has VERY substandard print quality. x y positioning may be fine within each layer, but observing a print from the side shows incredible waviness. My $800 FlashForge literally has 1/10th the waviness in z as these Cubicons do. Which is quite surprising as the Cubicon has a reinforced frame, etc. and the other is fine. Maybe some belts are loose.

There is very little to recommend these printers at their price point: they cost a fortune ($3k for something that’s not half as good as a measly FlashForge?!). The included slicer has decent quality but little control and a sh!tty interface (in incomprehensible Korean-Engrish) so I just use Simplify3D

Now, maybe the Single or other models are more reliable than the 110F–but God help you if you ever need a spare part.

[KorneelB]

if you don’t mind, may i ask why you went for the Cubicon and not an established brand like the Ultimaker?

[cjp0008]

You raise a very good question (I wasn’t responsible for choosing the printer model). For the price, we could have almost bought the excellent Ultimaker 3s with dual heads, etc. (Only thing about the U3 is that it needs an enclosure for ABS but there are aftermarket enclosures available) And gotten any replacement parts needed in days instead of FOUR FREAKING MONTHS