What were you thinking?

[Zac Cain @majortaco My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version]

I’ve been using the robox for about two weeks now, and although this is my first 3d printer, there are a few design choices that I just can’t understand.

The one that causes me the most grief is the tip wipe blade, which hardly ever works. I’ve ruined countless prints because at the onset of the job, when the nozzles push out a little bit of filament and then rubs itself on the wipe blade, the filament stays attached to the nozzle, getting caught up in the rest of the print, which ruins it. This doesn’t always happen, maybe about once every five prints.

 

Then when the wipe blade actually does work, it’s positioned in such a way that the excess material falls, getting trapped in the housing of the printer, where there are a bunch of moving parts that don’t need little chunks of plastic floating around.

 

Please consider these notes on future design updates, these are the biggest faults with this device, and the reasons I won’t recommend this product.

[Jack @jack-strong My Robox is a Green Kickstarter Limited Edition]

Please consider reading content on the website first :p Just use a piece of paper to catch the falling pieces. Have a search on the forum

[Zac Cain @majortaco My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version]

Although thats a good tip, I would have thought for $1500 this device wouldn’t have such glaring design faults.

[Steve N @discosteve My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version]

hardly glaring!!! especially when it takes all of…. 15 seconds to fix - pull the wiper blade out, insert the edge of a half inch by one and a half inch piece of paper in the slot, replace wiper blade high enough to actually wipe the nozzle and bend the paper with a slight cup shape to catch the filament

Steve N | Creator of things both virtual and physical

[Omega64 @omega64 My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version]

A picture is worth a thousand words:
http://www.cel-robox.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/paperfilamenttrap.jpg

However, I don’t understand why you guys are blaming Zac Cain, unless the “paper trick” was mentioned in the printed, paper manual, that came with the 3D printer. And it’s not.

Customers aren’t supposed to understand by themselves that a supposedly already working design needs the “Find the little paper thread” on a forum in order to work as intended. There’s a solution for that (albeit not really elegant..) and in the end we’re all happy, but I think it’s really excessive to blame the guy for not having thought about it or found by himself or expecting it to be somewhere.

I’m getting sick of those that blame others’ supposedly negative attitude, when facts are really serious, unless you think you bought a nice toy still in beta development, instead of a commercial product. This is not a DIY printer, this is a commercial product that was (and still is) advertised to be “A truly plug ‘n’ play 3D printer”.. And this “Plug ‘n’ play flawlessly working out of the box”, intuitivity, ease of use and absolute reliability was made as the FIRST POINT in their original advertisement campaign on Kickstarter! A lot of us bought it because of this and other claims which don’t appear now to be real. Maybe later, but where’s written that faith and patience must be infinite?

@majortaco There’s also another solution, but it seems that especially with the new firmware, the paper trick is the best. Anyhow, here it is, maybe it could be modified/updated to work also with the new firmware. It sure looks more “professional”. Don’t ask me if it works, as my brand new out of the box Robox, which I purchased in November, is still non working. Here’s the thing:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:598309/#collections

[Grimtech @grimtech My Robox is a Green Kickstarter Beta]

@majortaco

Print one of these, has solved the “flick” of print material 100% for me.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:598309

My house if full of bits of plastic! Bristol, UK

[Steve N @discosteve My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version]

@omega64 - my response was to his ‘glaring design error’ statement - which this clearly it isn’t - on the flip side I viewed the Automaker 1.0.X and its issues could have been classified as ‘glaring design errors’ but they are now resolved.

My view is this. Despite CEL’s claims and objectives for the Robox to be consumer ready and easy to use, 3D Printing is nowhere near the consumer friendly point that 2D printing is at - these are simply NOT commodity items right now, and they take some looking after and intelligence to run.

I don’t know about other people but it was an OBVIOUS thing to do to go find a Support Forum or Community for the Robox - as it would have been for any 3D printer I could have bought (and the Robox was not even on my list until the 3DPrintMe guys put me on to it)

Steve N | Creator of things both virtual and physical

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

@discosteve “… its issues could have been classified as ‘glaring design errors’ but they are now resolved.”

I am pretty sure we need to agree that they are resolved to the extent. It is still half where it should be and much further were it could be, but at least that was big step in right direction.

On the other hand, I do sympathise with @majortaco as Robox is not really marketed to DIY section of 3D printer population but as final product. Also, correct me if I am wrong, but main sentiment here is that, at last at this moment, deviating from bog standard Robox hardware and it software is not seen as welcomed. As I understand it is mostly because CEL spend lots of time fixing issues of people just bluntly said abused Robox and catering for it took too much of spare time.

From that perspective issue Zac Cain brought up falls in grey area between:

“Robox as complete consumer device”

and

“But other printers have same/similar issues”

Anything else would move us to Robox being incomplete or inadequate/inferior to other printers which many here (including myself) would try to disagree with.

Only way to alleviate situation is to accept that some niggles can be fixed with bodges or less conventional ways. Some other can be fixed with ‘proper’ fixes (for instance http://www.cel-robox.com/forums/topic/better-cable-management/ but @bhudson doesn’t want to share design and CEL doesn’t have time to release it. Yet?).

As I understand there are other fixes doing worked on (extruder, filament switches and something else I cannot remember what as it) but there is still nothing published aside of bowden tube fix which needs to be requested but only after printer develops the problem.

So, confrontation here in any way won’t help us. Solution to the problem is simple and we can move on - but it is worth understanding both sides from time to time. And here, there’s more than just two sides - we need to include CEL’s side as well

[gid @gid My Robox is a Green Kickstarter Beta]

I’m not going to get into this argument again as we’ve been over it again and again. Suffice to say, whether or not anger is warranted it’s not particularly productive, in my opinion.

With regards to @majortaco‘s point about the material dropping down, it was intended exactly to do that, which is why the bottom-front cover is removable to allow emptying. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite as well as intended, so they’re looking at producing a silicone wiper/cup blade: http://www.cel-robox.com/forums/topic/crap-catcher/

The question of how reliable the wiper is is another matter… I have wondered if a different style of motion might use the blade more effectively. The quick movement might be counterproductive. Fortunately, that’s one thing that can be solved in software.

Tom Gidden -- Bristol, UK -- New Roboxer? Check out the wiki, and add yourself to the map! http://roboxing.com/user_locations

[David @dmullerdesign]

I’m glad mine’s not the only one to drag the extruded filament over the print though, although in my case it happens about 80% of the time.

I’ve taken to babysitting the printer with tweezers in hand ready to pull the curly lumps off the nozzles before it starts printing, many comedy moments ensue as I frantically chase the head as it goes through it’s pre print calibration routine!

[Steve N @discosteve My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version]

ha ha I used to do the tweezer thing too - since I calibrated the nozzles with AM 1.01 I’m not having to do this…

Steve N | Creator of things both virtual and physical

[Zac Cain @majortaco My Robox is a Blue Commercial Version]

How do you start your robox without closing the door? Although that sounds like a pain, I’d rather have a higher rate of success.

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