Some first prints

[Glasswalker @glasswalker My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version Canada]

Here we go, a handful of my first prints over first 24h with new Robox!

(A few more incoming)

Also here is a link to my 3dHub: https://www.3dhubs.com/ottawa/hubs/glasswalker

It’s not actually “online” yet as I’m setting up a new paypal for it. But will be accepting print jobs soon. Still dialing things in as well.

Comments/feedback/suggestions welcome!

Edit:
More details, these are printed in standard CEL PLA from SmartReel (that came with printer). At 200 micron layer thickness.

Edit2:
Moved to proper forum… Doh lol…

• This topic was modified 6 months ago by  Glasswalker.
• This topic was modified 6 months ago by  Glasswalker.

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[hagster @hagster My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version UK]

@glasswalker looks like your off to a great start. Those prints look about perfect. Examples like that should get your hub off to a good start.

You will have to give us your first impressions of the Robox when you feel that your ready.

[Glasswalker @glasswalker My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version Canada]

@hagster Thanks!

Yeah, I have to say I was very impressed by the out of the box output… Blew away what my ultimaker was capable of at the same layer height… (200 micron).

The 100 micron print I did (not shown here) was a small marvin (for hubs sample) and surface was damn-near perfectly smooth.

That said a few quirks I want to try and hammer out before I consider it running “smooth”:

• Want to get profiles for 50, 100, 200, 300, 500 micron in place.
• Would like to get 200,300 profiles using the 0.8mm nozzle on infill if possible, and use 500 micron profile exclusively on 0.8mm nozzle. Figure this should give me a good array of speed/capabilities. But not sure if there are artifacts/drawbacks to this. (must be a reason that feature is removed right now). Unfortunately I’ve been unable to manually create a profile to test this so far, still trying to figure that out.
• Want to speed up feed rate a bit. Using defaults for now, want to experiment to find optimal rates without impact to quality. Suspect I can get at least a slight increase.
• Small spires are the main drawback right now. My ultimaker printed small spires far better (also in PLA) than I’m getting now (owl’s ears, marvin’s top ring, and so on). I suspect speed is part of this (I run the ultimaker faster than the Robox), but think it’s more than that. Need to fiddle with profiles to try and optimize it some. Right now they come out very melty and malformed.
• A bit of elephant foot going on right now on the prints… I’ll re-run the nozzle height calibration to ensure I’m not too close, and make sure bed adhesion is still good. But it still seems fairly pronounced compared to the ultimaker. (I know with PLA it’s impossible to fully eliminate it without affecting adhesion, but I’d like to minimize it a bit more if possible)
• Has a hard time with overhangs/bridges. On the UM I could get easily to 60 degree overhangs without any artifacts/dangly extrusions. On the Robox I’m seeing dangly extrusions and artifacts at even 30-40 degree overhangs.
• I suspect some of these issues are all related to heat/speed to some degree… I’ll experiment more and see what I can come up with.

Any tips on the above would certainly be welcome!

Don’t want the above to sound like I’m criticising though, my UM took me MONTHS to dial in as far as I had it. This is printing OUT OF THE BOX which is absolutely blowing my mind. I have to say my first impressions of this printer have been game changing, and I will be highly recommending this printer to anyone else who asks. But as expected, some minor tuning is still required to get what I would consider “perfect” prints 😉

And yes I’ll certainly post a more thorough review/details once I’ve had more time to play with it (likely a couple weeks of playing in-depth).

[BHudson @bhudson I have several Robox units Kickstarter and Commercial Arizona, USA]

@glasswalker

Custom profiles are available once you enable advanced mode and accept that your print head and extruder become expendable.

You can create all those profiles and when you do, if you want to share them, they will be welcome!

I found the best way to print PLA without those issues is to use a GeckoTek build plate and set up a custom profile with a 0C build plate temperature. This turns off the heater and you get very, very good results. I posted a comparison some time ago here on the forums between heated build plate and cold build plate.

You will always get an elephant foot with any materials as the first layer is designed to squish together. My solution is to add a small chamfer to the bottom edge of parts that are shape critical that reduces the first two layers slightly to accommodate the spreading.

Advanced Mode also enables manual control of the nozzle height, but if you change the wrong values you are in trouble and have to start over, so when you are ready ask for manual height control instructions.

 

I operate two Betas and one Production Robox.
See my 3D Hub site at https://www.3dhubs.com/phoenix/hubs/ben

[Glasswalker @glasswalker My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version Canada]

@bhudson actually, I do have advanced mode checked off. The fields for “infill” and so on are simply not there (sorry I said greyed out, but in fact the numeric field is missing in the UI) so I can’t customize those values.

Also I tried a custom profile today, and it simply fails… No matter what I do, even if it’s a 100% copy of a default profile (no changes). If I try to slice using the custom profile it goes immediately to “failed”.

This is with AutoMaker 2.x

Maybe I should be talking in the bugs section about this one? 🙂

As for the heated build plate, yeah I suspect that’s the issue. My Ultimaker has heated bed as well, and I always printed with it on, but temperature was likely only 50C and I think the Robox is 70C so that might be contributing to my overhang issues and such… I might do some experimenting there.

Do GeckoTek make build plates that fit the Robox directly? Or is it a custom mod? I’ll have to look into that. I know the heated plate is nice for stable builds, I found before heated plate with my ultimaker I still had the odd bit of warp and other things on large flat parts, and the heated plate just seemed to help things be much more dimensionally stable, but it took time to get the right balance of heat/adhesion/stability in prints… I’ll likely need to go through the same exercise with the Robox.

Thanks!

[click @click My Robox is a Green Kickstarter Limited Edition]

@glasswalker They do cut them to Robox (all with little tabs on the sides). So far I’ve noticed two important differences between GeckoTek and PEI:

1. It is really hard prying object of the GeckoTek (ColorFabb’s PLA) even when completely cooled down. PEI is much, much easier - it shrinks when cooled down and mostly objects slide or with slight bending you can easily remove them from PEI.
2. It is quite rigid (and it doesn’t help prying object from it by bending) and straight unlike PEI that tend to bend and you need bed clips pushing them down tightly to straighten it. Also, PEI has tendency to bulge if it can’t move under the clips when expanding (clips too tight and/or little tabs way to square rather than slightly round at ends so they can slide easily under the clips)

So, so far I wasn’t persuaded to use it on day to day bases and materials I am using currently (and quality of print I am expecting) is not warrant problems taking the prints off GeckoTek for me.

So definitively lightly sanded PEI is solution that fits most of the use cases…

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