3dstuffmaker.com - opinions?

Sounds like a nice setup you have. I looked at the budaschnozzle but it was $99 from the place i looked at. I would rather not buy this from China on Ebay but $99 is a bit steep. I will keep looking and try to find a good deal.
Thanks for the info.
Mike

I got a ebay clone, its working very well, comes with ID for 3 / 1.75mm
one i got was from aus, think it was 70 or something.

Hi Nechaus,
I was looking at the Budaschnozzle and it's max temp is 240C because of the Aluminium used (see the link), you might destroy it if you go to 300C.
Mike
[reprap.org]

No, I believe it's because of the PEEK insulator it cannot go over 240 degrees. Lulzbot used to sell the Polyschnozzle kit for people who want to print higher-temp materials, but the Poly kit is not available for the Buda v2.

Even with the standard budanozzle, the kit i got came with a fan, I have it directed over the heat sink, i used a bit of sheet metal to make the right mount for it.

@ 260- i am able to put my finger on the heatsink and just warmth, but not to hot to touch and hold finger on

Just an update - support has been responsive.

Have pulled the motor and sensor connectors off and checked for obvious pin or cable damage.
Now need to pull the fan off and have a good look at the board itself.

I have the configuration & config.adv files, (appear to be very standard marlin config files - nothing that looks at all unique to this printer) & have provided the original hex file to reflash.

Reflashed with original hex. More confident that it is a problem with the pins on the board or something loose on the board itself.

The printer will run without problems if the board has the "usb/power end" sitting on a roll of tape.

The random disconnects are less often but currently have blocked end due to a disconnection while I was having a coffee and beer at 1am.

After I have sorted the board I will again start looking at calibration.

ooooh yeah these kinda issues,

things i can think of that might help,

- shorten the usb cable, or buy a high quality one, If not keep it away from other cables
" I had hi current charges around causing weird issues " ( wish it had an sd card)

" a while ago, I had an issue with the z axis moving up and down and not wanting to home, This was caused by poor connections, unplugin them and pluging them back in again fixed it" ended up moving the gen 6 board as far away from the printer as i could, i also changed the fan to make it more quiet"


In terms of calibration, the most you should need to do is make sure the print bed is level, Also the stock print bed will warp, adding a piece of glass and adjust the Z height with the opto sensor was my solution, i just trimmed the piece of metal, other than that, just really need to measure the filament and have the best settings for what you want..


I am trying to think why it's disconnecting on you,


On another note, im curious about your extrusion, Can you extrude 100mm of filament with a consistent flow, no slipping on the filament, it should keep on sucking the pla into the extruder with out pauses... This was my biggest issue with the stock nozzle.

You should post some pics of prints to, ill post some of mine to compare if you want to print a common .stl file ? maybe a calibration cube ?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2013 05:29AM by nechaus.

Well, they (3dstuffmaker) have finally shipped a replacement hot end today and I also bought a Budaschnozzle. Hopefully soon i will be back in business. Next i need to buy a bootloader or whatever it is so I can update the firmware and set the e steps for my Wade extruder.
Then I will be a happy camper.
Regards
Mike

I also got new firmware that allows for ultra hi temp printing, so i can start printing PC

Hi Nechaus,
The Budaschnozzle arrived and i have built a nice wade extruder that fits nicely to it. Could you please let me know which carriage you printed to join the two together and I will build the same one? Also, did you have any power issues with the huge 40watt resistor in the Buda head?
Thanks
Mike

Hey man, Nah i had no issues at all, worked fine.

Im using a small 8amp 12 volt psu, i found it did heat up faster with the 30amp one psu, but not much difference..


I tried this carriage [www.thingiverse.com] It was ok, its pretty huge, but does fit , I used a small piece of tin bend with pliers for the opto sensor
[www.thingiverse.com]

Most of them will fit your printer, just choose any carriage you like the look of, print it and swap it over,

The most tricky part i found was getting the bowden tube to stay firmly on the top of the hotend, you will need a good easy to use bowden clamp to be printed of as well
[www.thingiverse.com]
[www.thingiverse.com]
[www.thingiverse.com]


for better temp readings, you will need to change the firmware for the new thermistor or get some from 3dsm, Personally myself, the supplied one that i got is quite accurate " must be close to the original" iv got a bunch of thermistors from 3dsm and have not bothered to change it
I find i can print good quality pla easily at 180 easily, and more cheaper stuff from 190-210 ,

once you get it all fitted, i cranked up the speed, had to adjust the little pots on the gen 6 board for the right amount of current to prevent it from skipping...

Before you change it over, you should feel how hard it is to push pla through the original compared to the buda nozzle

I have taken another few days away from the printer. After some more piddling about with it.

Disconnected belts and the two z threaded rods, then disconnected and reconnected motors and optical sensors to other axis for testing.
Completed swapping around and test for all motors and optical sensors. The optical sensors and motors appear to be fine.

Now the disconnections and jittering occur when hotend is heating up, stops when the temperature is set to zero/turned off (next to setting temperature).
A couple of days ago, the printer just stopped, led on the board was lit, motors would not move, usb disconnected.
After reconnecting, the hotend would not heat at all, the software remained at 34-37’c in software (approx room temp).

I turned it off and left it overnight and returned following day. It took approximately 30-40 minutes to heat up.

The jittering occurs in time with buzzing while heating. The buzzing sounds like a sizzling sound. The sound, normal?.

(Stilll) supporting the end of the board, stops the jittering and disconnects.

Would anyone happen to:
Know the ohm/restance of the resistor and thermistors of the hotend? I do not want to pull hotend out and to bits yet.
Recommendation on what the should approximately be while heating up?

I have ordered a complete hotend from another retailer.

Hey, man, Are you still having the issues?

Hi Nechaus,
I have bought the nice replacement buda nozzle to replace the useless 3dstuffmaker crap and now i am trying to print a working carriage so i can replace that too. If the heap of junk will ever work well enough i will be able to start to print things again. I am just getting so angry with this machine you have no idea.
Basically it's a regular reprap with a few mods by 3dstuffmaker and every modification that they have made to the original design has resulted in a worse machine that maybe cheaper but it doesn't actually work. Their attempt at a Jhead nozzle needs replacing, their useless bowden perspex extruder needs replacing and their perspex build plate needs replacing. What your left with is a pile of threaded rod, a gen 6 board and some steppers. Thank god they didn't or couldn't modify those parts. I will basically have to trash all of the parts they tried to "upgrade" before i can happily use the machine. If I wasn't persistent and really interested in 3d printing this machine would have been the end of my interest in the area and i would have found another hobby. I know your machine is working for you but realistically you have also had to heavily mod the machine before it would work in a decent way. As a stand alone product, the 3dstuffmaker is really a poor, poor, poor product and should never be purchased by anyone.
Enough said.
On another point, their customer service is great and i do give them points for that. It would just be nice if the product didn't need customer service as much.
Mike

Hey,

Yeah i know what you mean, I do agree with you,
After looking back at my issues, I should of got a refund the moment the printer arrived, Mine actually came with a cracked frame, and gen 6 board needed to be flashed
They also have no brown out protection on mine, so i can move the motors with my hand, and it will screw up the firmware needing to be ref lashed. Many other printers can do this with no problem


Out of the excitement of having a new toy, I kept it, fixed all the crap myself. It took me over 12 months of tinkering, learning, modding, to make the thing to work,
It took me so long because i originally had no idea what i was doing, For e.g., When i first got it, I thought the extruder was meant to slip.
Wasted kilos of plastic.


I had dreams of throwing out the printer and watching it smash into small pieces, haha, But i am glad i did not rage that bad. Im glad i finally got it working to a reasonable standard.


Mike a few things you could do to attach the new nozzle, use the existing carriage, waste of space, but i did it until i printed a new carriage cause i did not want to print a working part with their nozzles,

If your within Australia, id be happy to print you off a couple of x carriages and various parts...

hi guys
are you enjoying fixing all these problems , tinkering etc of do you just want to be able to print stuff?
I buggered around with stuffmaker for 12 mths with all the probs above.
I got a Mini Up - say twice as much but about 50 times better - it just works - no nozzle hassles, no cold end probs, no warped boards, etc, etc.
anyway thats just my experience.
roger.

---

Prusa 'Explorer' (3dStuffMaker), GEN6, J-head Mk III-B, Bowden Extruder, Marlin 1.0.0 RC2, Repitier-Host V0.84 and Slic3r 0.9.8, PLA. Live at Victoria, Australia.

Hey rogerw,

Yeah i almost got one around tax time lol, But, Ended up just getting a few hotends and print beds, cause i really like the print size of my 3dsm

How would you rate the loudness/volume of the up mini compared to the 3dsm ?
Also whats the print speed on the UP?

my 3dsm is going like 100mm's its been put up to 200mm's but i had some steps skipping, prob needed more current

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2013 07:43PM by nechaus.

hi,
the main diff is the smell ie. using ABS - had to move it into another room. but ABS is great stuff. (am going to use ABS for my real production runs too).
loudness - haven't thought about it much as is not an issue for me but I think it is probably a bit louder but is in a cabinet so you can close the doors - cabinet is great ie. keeps nice and warm.
speed - again don't even think about it - it just has slow, regular or fast - i have never even played with the speed - again not an issue for me - I just print overnight - these are my print times roughly
for parts ie. gms and hours (to nearest 15min or so) - parts are fairly complicated so lots of support material but that is in the mass too.
ITEM LATEST MASS gm COST $ TIME hrs
2xStageA 15E 133 -13 $5.32 11
2xStageB 15E 136 -12 $5.44 11.25
1xStageC 15E 74 5 $2.96 6.5
1xStageC 15E 74 5 $2.96 6.5
2xStageD 15E 48 3 $1.92 4.25
2xStageE 15E 74 12 $2.96 6.5
Front Plate 15E 69 $2.76 5.75
is very easy to use - literally just push the PRINT button - no speeds, no bed temps, etc, etc
I live in East Gippsland dont know if that is near you but you are welcome to have a look if you like
again boils down to if you like fiddling with the electronics and stuff and experimenting or if you really need to just push out plastic parts quickly
regards,
roger.

---

Prusa 'Explorer' (3dStuffMaker), GEN6, J-head Mk III-B, Bowden Extruder, Marlin 1.0.0 RC2, Repitier-Host V0.84 and Slic3r 0.9.8, PLA. Live at Victoria, Australia.

Yeah the smell of ABS is not the nicest, Maybe you can print your self a fume extractor

Wil the up mini take nylon? Currently i use, PLA, ABS, TAULMAN NYLON, TRIMMER LINE with 3dsm...
I also have a heated bed using pelters reaches upto about 110c within 5 mins , using a pwm controller, but needless to say, i still use PLA the most, i love how rigid it is,
i like abs more than nylon at the moment..

Hi Nechaus,
I am in the Netherlands so it's a long way to send a printed part. I will keep cracking at it and eventually i will get something that works. Maybe i will just drill a hole in the existing carriage and attach the buda nozzle somehow.
I really wish the company was local to me, if it was i would send it back today.
I ordered a phoenix from EZ3D, hopefully it will arrive soon and i can use that to make a mendelmax or something from the 3dstuffmaker.
Regards
Mike

mikefiatx19 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Nechaus,
> I am in the Netherlands so it's a long way to send
> a printed part. I will keep cracking at it and
> eventually i will get something that works. Maybe
> i will just drill a hole in the existing carriage
> and attach the buda nozzle somehow.
> I really wish the company was local to me, if it
> was i would send it back today.
> I ordered a phoenix from EZ3D, hopefully it will
> arrive soon and i can use that to make a mendelmax
> or something from the 3dstuffmaker.
> Regards
> Mike


awesome mike! so if you have another printer, you can pretty much rebuild the 3dsm one, You have prob saved yourself many hours, i certainly hope the phoenix is good and works out..prob the best route to take lol
Yeah i attached the buda to the existing carriage at first.

He!

What a lot of rubbish?? pls adjust your extruder driver to get great prints-

Pls follow link to ....
1- extruder setting/ adjustment of older models... [download.3dstuffmaker.com]
2- link to 10/10 print settings for a... [download.3dstuffmaker.com]




Also- pls pester our support staff to give u a demo on how to use it properly....

We get hair thickness print layers for hours on end - using the right method- get with the plan and peter our support to show u how to use it well !

support.3dstuffmaker on skype-

Best regards
Rob
3dstuffmaker

What's rubbish here?
We have followed all instructions, personally i have gotten my printer to work after re-engineering the thing and spending 100's if not 1000's of hours
I think its rubbish that you think your customers do not read the manual correctly, and want to blame it on that rather then your printer design.

If only i could get back the wasted hours of my life back from what i spent on your printer.

I guess sometimes one should consider that in forums mostly something is posted if it went wrong The 3dstuffmaker printers are maybe not so really out-of-th-box ones. But I got mine printing quiet fast and it's working with stock settings since last january w/o bigger issues. Just a thermistor resistor broke. Printed at least 6Kg of PLA since then. I beleive that there are a lost of happy customers despite the problems others may faced. It's like my Mercedes: If I tell what happened to my car I would say any chinese cheap crappy car is better. Will never buy another one. But it's subjective.

Rob,
I appreciate you sending me that picture pointing out which screw to turn and which way the lever should be. Do you honestly think that was not the first thing i tried?
Secondly, the gcode file in the zip you attached is a bit pointless when you have no idea what the filament specs are. I am sure you are aware that not all filaments are created equal. I will try to run the file though if i ever get a solid run for a few hours from the machine.
The perspex gears are producing loads of white dust, that' s probably what caused the first blockage. And before you ask, replacing them with another identical set will not help so I really have nothing more to say on that issue.
I am being honest when i say the build quality is lower than what i would consider bad. You state that you update the design based on feedback but to me it seems you wait for people to build their own replacment parts and wait for them to stop complaining then. In the history of this thread I have seen that you state the airport X-ray rendered a printer useless, you stated that turning a motor rendered a printer useless, you have stated that rust was most likely grease. In 1950, when xray was new and inventive, several machines may have been fried by overzealous customs officials but since then it hasn't happened for a while. As for turning steppers, it's a method of adjusting the print level when your "PERSPEX" build plate is at the wrong height or not level. And if you cant tell the difference between rust and grease you will not be able to build a 3D printer.

@elgatosuizo, i am glad you are spared the trauma that i have endured. May you print well forever.
Mike

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2013 04:21AM by mikefiatx19.

Hello guys, long time reader, first time poster.

I bought my 3DSM eVOLUTION just before Christmas 2012. I'm an electronics engineer and I have a lot of personal projects on the go usually to do with computers and cars (road and track). I wanted a tool/toy to help with my projects, not another project to burn my time.

I bought the eVOLUTION for the following reasons:
- supposedly "ready to print" out of the box
- 200x200x200mm build volume
- attractive price for a beginner to have a go
- cost equal to getting 2 prints done by 3D Systems
- support team
- Australian supplier

So it's not Australian, it's Indian, and far, far from ready to print out of the box. I have spent 100's of hours and I haven't even gotten through half of the first 1kg of PLA I bought with the printer. (I store it in a sealed container with desiccant now days)
The drive gear on the extruder broke first go from being assembled too close to the driven gear. Within 2 weeks the z-axis end stop broke because the little arm off the x-axis assembly was not aligned correctly and required filing the screw hole to allow it to move to where it should have been. Luckily this was not discovered by a head crash, but by the z-axis refusing to move down because it always thought it was at zero. The z bars and threads were not parallel, so as the x-axis comes down low it grinds and makes ugly sounds because the threaded rod and z bar are being split apart by the carriage. That was fixed by adjustment and re-squaring (the z axis was on an angle it turned out, had to make a jig to exactly 90deg that I could fit into the printer to adjust the axis to). It's never printed anything easily.

On the plus side, I have not warped the acrylic print bed, but I haven't used it enough for that. My prints stick quite well to the kapton tape surface. I have spent countless hours adjusting the height of the print bed though.
I have got a successful print or two out of it but this required disassembling the extruder before every print to clean it out, else it ran out of traction from grinding and filling up the "teeth" of the bolt with dust. I had to print at 15mm/s to get the quality to be any good, but at that speed, it could take 10 hours to do a decent sized print.

The main problems I've had come from the extruder, it doesn't have enough grip, and when it's tightened right up it grinds. There is no happy medium. I applied all the updates to the shape of the extruder clamp, and more of my own improvements, no good. When I skyped support, it became apparent that it was standard procedure to have the spool on its side and loosely coiling the PLA up to the extruder. I had a holder to allow the PLA to roll off the spool as required. Any other configuration than spool on its side coiling up fails, highlighting the problem that there is not enough residual traction to pull or lift the PLA into the extruder. It's therefore expected that one has to watch the plastic coil, and continue to unravel it so it doesn't coil too tightly on itself and start stalling and grinding. So if I have to print at 15mm/s to get decent quality, I have to sit there at hand feed it for 10 hours? Not my idea of a useful tool.

During the skype call I was informed that they acknowledged and accepted that it is a design flaw, and that it would be corrected in the next revision. The next revision doesn't help me, because I already bought the current revision (current at the time at least). They refused to provide upgrade parts for mine to fix the problem. That said I haven't actually seen a new revision and a lot of people I read here are having the same problem.

I feel pretty unsupported and ripped off when I'm effectively told I've bought a dud and have to live with it. Requests for a replacement opto-sensor and acrylic gears under warranty were refused or ignored. Don't buy 3DSM for a warranty, there is none, and you will probably need it.

Being the determined, creative, hands on type I am, I've persevered. I've designed a new extruder made from CNC machined alloy. It's tough as nails with plenty of grip. I've only just got it working after 9 months development and machining in my spare time to find that with all the huge amount of traction I have now, it now stalls my extruder motor instead of grinding. This appears to be because the force required to push the PLA into the extruder is huge. Even with nozzle at 230deg I would estimate I'm putting about 10~15kg of weight onto the PLA into the nozzle by hand to get it to go through. With that much force it flows nicely, it’s just too much force for the system. The x-carriage bars are flexing, it's not good. Reading this thread today, I will have to look into using a Budaschnozzle (yet to work out what it is and if it's electrically compatible).

I want to like the 3DSM products. I like to see people developing things and getting to market. (It's in the spirit of 3D printing!). However as it stands, 3DSM is a half-baked solution, suitable for the DIY nutcase who is too stubborn to give up. I think the 3DSM and Rob deserve a good pat on the back for the mammoth effort is has taken to do what they have done despite the flack they have taken from disgruntled customers like me. You only ever hear about the bad news stories, I’m sure there are some good ones out there. I would say 3DSM is not one that's fit for sale to the masses as a ready to print printer. I could have saved a lot of time and money if I’d have bought the Makerbot, could have been printing a year ago.

Hopefully I’ll follow in the footsteps of Nechaus and end up with a half decent printer if I persevere long enough!

Sorry to hear all that time was wasted, It's like i was reading a diary of my days with the printer. ( i believe we have the same model printer as well)
I was so angry with them for such a long time, the whole xray scanners, felt like they wanted to stall so they could avoid any chance of paypal claims from customers,
That was very weird, ordering many electronics from overseas, none have needed to be re-flashed,
The speed thing is what annoyed me the most with the stock nozzles and i tried many of them to all behave in the same fashion, im pretty sure i saw a youtube video of the 3dsm factory and they had junk prints as well...

I wanted a printer that was going to be reliable, and when i say that, work atleast 90% of the time,

I am that Diy nutcase, I spent way way way to many hours to get it to a good standard, looking back, i would of been better dropping it, and making a new one from scratch or saving the money and getting a out of box solution would of saved me so much time in the end.


In the end, i have learnt more than i would of originally thought, which is not a bad thing, Might have a few more age lines on my face haha.


I will post some pictures of my prints so you know what to expect and if its worth your while.

Here are some pictures of what id call my better prints, Sorry had to use the crappy camera until the missus gets home with the better camera.

The Pink vase thing was printed using Trimmer line, and the white kinda vase was printed using Taulman nylon 618 , layer height of like .35, i think it would of been ,much better if it was about .1

The little red pieces are from a prototype garden windmill, just ran them off today.

All these prints were set at 100mm's infill and 50 mm's for the shell...

These are some pics pre modding my printer, This is when it would actually print, AND, these were all using 10-15mm's print speed because it was impossible to extrude any faster with their hotends, It was hard as hell to hand feed.
What i hated was that everything was like wafers, so weak, and it looked terrible, like it was hand made or something, Now my prints are much stronger, Like i could actually trust using a 3d printed camera mount now or what ever.


Ill take some better pics of the better prints with the missus gets home.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2013 02:48AM by nechaus.

Hi Nechaus,
your good prints look very good. And you did them at 50mm/s? Impressive!

Is that on your eVOLUTION? If I can get to that point I'll be happy enough.

The Budaschnozzle, where do you get it from? Did it run off the stock Gen6 board?