my first printer, any anyc, was a midrange , with total expectation of being a starter printer;
it broke down after about 50 prints , and the resulting heart suregery on the printer head;
at about that time i was assembling that printer head, i got the flagship flsu;
that lasted a couple hundred prints and then open heart surgery on the printer head and a replacement;
that replacement lasted a couple hundred prints more and then another surgery and replacement part, that lasted maybe 50 more prints;
then creal flagship , that has done about 70 prints, then open heart surgery replacing the now-known heat-end problems; replaced it with the replacement they sent with the purchase; that lasted maybe 50 prints and threw the same fatal hot-end ( thermistor) problems;
will replace again tomorrow , JUSt BECAUSe i have another, separately ordered , replacement part;
i will be moving on to likely the eleg nept 4 max;
so my point is that over maybe 700 or so prints i have had to do open heart surgery 6 times;
i do not consider that remotely reliable ;
so my question: is it time to consider these printers as commodities and build up an ever-increasing pile of throwaways ( which i already have , and will be adding to quite soon ) ??
(( note: none of the issues i reference are simple nozzle issues, clogs , jams and such))
i didn’t buy these flagship printers to keep on repairing them, getting tired of that and throwing them away after 3 or so re-starts
Wow. I have been running a Creality Ender 3 S1 PLUS for almost a year now and have had zero problems. Other than replacing the nozzle a few times and replacing the OEM bed with a PEI plate (That eliminated all sticking issues). Not sure total on prints but it would be up in the 1000 range,
I run exclusively PLA. What materials are you using?
My Ender 3v2 has been going for a couple of years now with little trouble, I haven’t even levelled the bed in almost a year. Just because it is a cheap printer doesn’t mean it is bad and just because it is a more expensive printer doesn’t make it good either. Someone will always get a lemon and it seems that might be you. If the problem is the same every time then something must be causing it, maybe a postmortem would help find it.
i have been using PLA, mostly the silk versions, printing at 230 nozzle, bed 45; here in thailand we have far more limited supply options that does the rest of the world (we can use Amazon but the costs are doubled from what is specified there nominally)
hmmm i hear you, my issue seems to be that i buy top-end and going back to a tried-and-true solution that has lesser features is likely no-go for me;
my minimum requirements now include , bed 300 cubed or 300x300x400, wifi, print speed rated at least 400, so likely 200 mm/s, pei, ease of hot-end replacement;
so those older smaller, slower printers really dont cut it for me;
obviously the price i pay, other than early adopter tax, is that these new printers have failure points that are not addressed by professional reviewers and thus we become the quality testers
Any printer, no matter how good it is suppose to be, will have failures at some time. The more complex they are the more failures and the harder they are to fix assuming you can even get the parts to fix them. Those built into a cabinet could be a real nightmare to get apart. That is the advantage of the cheap printers because they are absolutely reparable, you don’t even need original parts since they can be upgraded with new aftermarket “off the shelf” parts that are not what they where originally designed for. This doesn’t seem to be the type of printer you want.
here’s a good one: i want my 4th different 3d printer, elegoo neptune 4 max, i want the large build size;
despite eschewing the chinese 3d printer manufacturer model of little QA testing, the rest of the world doesnt seem to offer much option ( i discount prusa approach on their XL which amounts to having us test it for them) ;
so for some reason elegoo ( szenchen china) doesnt ship directly to thailand , even tho i am resaonably sure their warehouse , not all that far from me , has some in stock; they instead redirect me to an affilaite here in thailand , trouble is that company website is only in thai , which no-one can read; dead end;
amazon has the model but they kill us on the exchange rate and doubtless ship from a usa warehouse, that 2x or 3x the shipping cost and 2x or 3x the delivery time;
ugly
well, based on your excellent observation, i am accepting that this industry is still in it’s infancy and i will have to live with my printers breaking down and me fixing them and/or ordering new/replacement parts;
our issues therein are compounded by the fact that contecting OEMs directly sometimes results in “Cannot ship to Thailand…”
here in thailand we get a host of purchases directly from china, often there are no instructions at all, often the instructions that Are there amount to “open the box”; appears to be the chinese way