Not another 3D printer company?!?!

Kind of suprised this many people are backing the project without any demonstration of the product working.

Qu-bd say they have done extensive testing, so one would expect to see at least some videos of a working prototype.

Quote

Kind of suprised this many people are backing the project without any demonstration of the product working.

This was the same for the PrintrBot. People trust a lot in what these vendors claim.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Did anyone see it running at Maker Faire?

It wasn't running at Maker Faire, but I understand why. You have to get permission from the Maker Faire people to run things, and milling is probably too dangerous to do without a blast shield. Little kids run around unsupervised there, and keeping things safe is hard. Their booth had a lot of chances to meet/talk with them, and running the robot would make it hard to reach out and spend time talking to people.

I believe the robot will work. The design is straightforward, and the parts all look nice. The samples they had with them look good. I backed a dual extruder on KS.

Also -- the Prntrbot people are delivering kits. A friend just got his and assembled it. Prntrbot does all it claims to do, and it's a good robot. Sure, it took a little longer to deliver than people wanted -- but that's common to all projects. Remember, KS is about projects, not products. You use KS to encourage those projects to complete. And what a project! They designed new electronics as well as a new robot. That's pretty awesome. So it took a little longer than they thought. That's expected and normal in projects. The backers got an amazing robot at an amazing price, brought down the price of these robots for everyone, and helped some people realize their dreams.

That said I still want to see a video of this bot working. I haven't even seen a shot of the real thing, just that CG rendering! Come on guys I know you have them!

I was also surprised when I saw their website, and there was only a CG rendering of the printer. It would be nice to see the real thing

Jacqueline
www.singularitymachine.com/blog

We have been busily ordering materials to make the extruders and getting an area set up to assemble them efficiently.

I can take a picture and post it of the machine however the mechanics of it have changed quite a bit from the Maker Faire so you will have to use your imagination a bit until the first production machine rolls down the line. I'll take one tomorrow.

Hopefully I should have a new video up by the end of the week on the extruder!

Thanks again for all your support!

-Chelsea

There are alot of things I find a little weird about this entire thing.

One, the general lack of actual knowledge of CNC machines and what they are. As stated before, CNC milling machines are very much different than a 3d printer in ideology....Mainly the former being subtractive and the latter being additive.

I find it odd that you're using machines that go for 50, 000$ or more each second hand to machine brass parts, and ballscrews that you've decided to not even going to bother with.

I find it odd that you've been saying your machine will be competitive but costs over 4 times the price of other actual competitive machines (unless when you mean 3d printer market, you mean exclusively makerbot, and ulti)

I find it odd you're using 304 stainless steel, instead of cheaper, cast or hardend steel like every other manufacturer out there.

Even if this is going for the desktop cnc route, cast steel or hardend steel is considerably cheaper than 304 stainless.

On top of that, a person can buy a capable desktop mill for under 300 euros NEW, and mod to a small CNC mill for under another 300 euros. So your machine is more than double the price. Made with rather exotic materials, that arn't as rigid as a 300 euro machine.

I find it odd that although you've been working on this thing for months there isn't one bit of proof that any one single prototype has ever been built. The only existing thing this far is a 3d model...that you dropped?

I find it odd that the only thing that has ever been photographed, is a single modded mk7 dual extruder, that wasn't even used at it's own presentation, though that may be makerfairs problem rather than yours.

I find that the only thing you've made as a whole is something someone else made. (though, it's open source, I find it not very compelling to any of your arguments you're doing something new.)

I find it odd that every time you bring up anything about anything with this machine, the design ends up changing a month later. (And the things being changed are more expensive than the previous parts) And there are still no pictures of prototypes or current gen tech.

I find it odd that this will apparently be open source, yet not one thing has been released to the public to even look at. What's worse about that, the one thing you did (sorta) create on your own, is open source, and you haven't released the mods you did to that!

I find it odd that your website is still using the "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" basic filler text of it's theme. (although, I suppose you could be just lazy...)





You know what I think this is?

A very elaborate scam. I think you're using a fresh market of generally ignorant (note, not stupid) people to steal money.

I think you're doing this very clever by spending a small investment into making everything look real. You have a nice front, but as far as anyone can tell, nothing is going on behind the scenes, and what's worse, you give literally no photo evidence except for some random pictures of expensive cnc machines that could be used for actual machining, instead of a pet project. I can't find your company registered anywhere in Arkansas and there is a huge possibility your machine shop and base location just belongs to some guy.

For a team of 4 people, we've only seen one face.


Nothing about this thing smells right.

Incase That this a real investment by your team to bring yet another expensive cnc into the market. Lets see some pictures or videos of something. Even shitty iphone videos of something of your prototypes are fine. Nobody here is going to sqirm because you're showing us shitty quality pictures and/or videos.

If you do. I'll take back everything I said.

Until then, this is nothing more than the long con at it's finest.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2012 06:04AM by Schweppes.

Schweppes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Until then, this is nothing more than the long con
> at it's finest.

I've been biting my tongue on this, but do you know what I think? People like you who are calling "scam" are ignorant dickheads.

Sorry to the people at QU-BD who are subject to crap like this, but just ignore the dickheads.

Interesting thread title. Maybe it is "Not another 3D printer company".

Seriously? No pics or video. Come on QU-BD. Give us something...

I backed it. So far I have received timely updates, great communications, and in one of the emails, Chelsea even provided a list of 'extra' items that will be included, like Kapton tape & insulation. I get emails about once a week, since I backed it.

2 hot-ends, 2 extruders, 2 steppers, with shipping, for $98. Paid about the same for a single J-head, hobbed bolt, stepper, and Greg's printed parts. IMHO this is a no-brainer, thank you Chelsea!

To the doubters, they had a goal of $5000, but orders of $73,000..... I'm sure they are working 24/7 to assemble, package, order materials, etc.

---

Thingiverse ID Alan1279

Dad911 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I backed it. So far I have received timely
> updates, great communications, and in one of the
> emails, Chelsea even provided a list of 'extra'
> items that will be included, like Kapton tape &
> insulation. I get emails about once a week, since
> I backed it.
>
> 2 hot-ends, 2 extruders, 2 steppers, with
> shipping, for $98. Paid about the same for a
> single J-head, hobbed bolt, stepper, and Greg's
> printed parts. IMHO this is a no-brainer, thank
> you Chelsea!
>
> To the doubters, they had a goal of $5000, but
> orders of $73,000..... I'm sure they are working
> 24/7 to assemble, package, order materials, etc.

That's awesome. So you already got those items for that price? How is the quality?

A CNC Mill is not fundamentally different than a 3D printer. Sure they generally have different design constraints, but lets face it, a commercial mill with a 3D print head attached to it has no compromises except for cost.

We are using the machines to make the extruder parts for our campaign and beyond. We are still using ballscrews for our Rapid Prototyping Mill, they are just different than what we were originally planning on.

At $1699.00 we are price competitive with other assembled 3D printers, especially when you consider the much larger build volume and milling capability.

We didn't want the structure to be made from anything that corrodes in open air. The 12L14 rods are coated in lubricant so they do not readily corrode. The per part cost for stainless vs. carbon steel is not huge; the machining of the material is the big cost. Once you factor in that the carbon steel piece has to be painted or powdercoated, the difference is negligable, plus we don't have to worry about the paint or powdercoat chipping etc.

Our prototype was at the Makerfaire in San Mateo, there are pictures available of it from third parties on the web. Additionally the dual extruders in assembled and broken down form were at the Makerfaire as well. People picked them up, handled them etc. Here is a link to an independent blog that has some pictures of the machine QU-BD at the Maker Faire

We were not necessarily trying to create a revolutionary extruder. We improved an existing open source design; our goal was to reduce the cost by a huge amount.

As we have mentioned before, design changes that may individually cost more may reduce the assembly time or reduce the part count, in turn reducing the cost.

Every part for the extruder including the changes that we made are on our website and were posted in our Kickstarter campaign.

I saw in the 'gallery' pages that the default text was there, whoops we missed that. We are not web developers and have been learning how to do all this stuff on our own. We don't have a team of people to edit and correct our site, we have been working on other things. Thanks for pointing that out I will try and get it corrected today.

I was the one in the videos, Nathan and Courtney were at the Makerfaire show. David is the machinist and has been working at the shop. Here we are on the Arkansas Secretary of State website Arkansas Secretary of State. Our machine shop is under Optimal Manufacturing, Inc., for non-3D printer /mill related projects and has been in business since 2001.

We are not aware of any other CNC machine currently available that can move at 300+mm/s, has equal to or more rigidity than ours, a 12+"x12+"x12+" build area, can use a real spindle (not a Dremel motor) and is currently selling anywhere near our price. Please send over a link.

I can vouch for these guys. Talked to Nathan and Courtney at SF Makerfaire and they explained in detail how their mill combo works. Also saw and held the extruder. Very good quality indeed.

Cut these guys some slack, its not easy to get everything going at the same time specially if your product became uber popular. Its good to know that their priority is getting products to peoples doors as fast as humanly possible.

a_shorething Wrote:
> That's awesome. So you already got those items
> for that price? How is the quality?

Estimated delivery on kickstarter is August, it's still July......

I signed up in the last few days, and they were pledged 1400% ( 14 times their goal) so I know I'm at the back of the line. These guys must be working 24/7, with 1300 extruders to ship, I'll be patient.

---

Thingiverse ID Alan1279

How are these extruders coming out?
Any reports on their performance? Back in June - July there were some requests for a video showing one printing. Has anyone received the extruder and printed with it successfully?

---

--------------------------------------------------------
3D extruder performance tests
dzach's ORDbot Hadron build

still tuning it...

got mine today

just spent an hour or so assembling the extruders. had to give up as i think its near impossible to get the mounted nice without the use of 2 spanners. which ill have to get another set tommrow.

wish there was a way to tightly put the feed bolt into the heater block seems to keep coming lose when tightening other bolts etc

Received my dual extruder today.

---

Thingiverse ID Alan1279

Trademarks are different things than copyright, just because something is open source does not mean you can use the trademarks freely. (And that makes sense) I am sure if you use their open source stuff, you can state what designs you use.

Still surprised there are no videos. You guys have a prototype, right? Can we get at least one video of it moving, doing something? How much effort does it take to just fire it up and shoot a short video of the thing printing? It doesn't have to be fancy...

Surely you guys have some sample prints from testing. You did test the device right? Why not put up some pictures of those?

Truly this lack of info boggles the mind.

destroyer2012 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Still surprised there are no videos. You guys have
> a prototype, right? Can we get at least one video
> of it moving, doing something? How much effort
> does it take to just fire it up and shoot a short
> video of the thing printing? It doesn't have to be
> fancy...
>
> Surely you guys have some sample prints from
> testing. You did test the device right? Why not
> put up some pictures of those?
>
> Truly this lack of info boggles the mind.

There is no lack of info. Did you try google? Or look at the qu-bd website, blog, kickstarter blog, etc? Many links of videos and pics. Here's a vid:[www.youtube.com], and a sample print is as far away as 5 posts before this one.....

Why the scepticism? There is no lack of info, in fact they put together extensive documentation with an assembly guide here: [www.qu-bd.com] and support the product with a blog and forum.

---

Thingiverse ID Alan1279