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Jan 2017
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Jan 2017
Jan 2017
Mark_Cadman
Jan '17

After looking at no end of forums, internet sites and emailing technical support I still have a very expensive paperweight that seems incapable of printing anything.

Looking at some of the threads on this forum it looks like I am luckier than most. The software constantly crashes on my Mac, but fortunately I have a Windows 10 virtual machine using Parallels so I am able to use the Windows version. The software recognised the machine and the print bed and head seem to warm up to temperature okay (although I had to remove the cooling fan from issue 91 as that was lower than the extruder head, interfered with the print and seemed to serve no real benefit).

My main problems are that the bed is offset, so the extruder head actually goes off the print bed at the various extremes which means I have to be careful of how much of the print area I use. Also, when it does print, it seems to print the skirt okay, but then when it starts printing the actual object it just all clogs up around the extruder head and does not stick to the bed (which is strange when the skirt sticks to the bed).

I have my temperatures set to 55C for the bed and 185C for the extruder, but I have also tried changing the temperatures by -5C to see if that makes any difference (it does not).

So tech support are no longer responding and it seems there is no way to return the printer and get a refund, or get any support to actually get the thing working. No wonder there are so many frustrated customers out there.

If anyone can offer any advice (preferably before the wife divorces me for wasting money on a paperweight) it would be greatly appreciated.

Mark_Cadman
Jan '17

Thanks Chris. From what I can see from other posts, the issue with the print nozzle being outside of the actual bed is possibly a firmware issue?

As mentioned, the main problem I have is with getting the actual first layer of the print to stick. For some reason the skirt does tend to go down with relatively few problems, there is sometimes a bit of dragging initially due to some filament being extruded prior to the print starting, but I found when I reduced the extruder temp down to 180 from 185 this no longer happened.

If I could at least get one solid print from the printer it would be a start. I’ve also tried putting masking tape on the bed, but to be honest I found that this was worse than just printing directly on the bed itself.

With regards to models, I’ve tried a whistle, dice (die?) and London landscape, all with the same results, so I don’t think it’s related to the actual item being printed.

10 days later