QU-BD Revolution XL Speed Test 9000mm/s Accel @ 1000mm/s

I like it. Looks nice and sturdy and is very fast. If a plywood made printer can print in fine quality at great speed then I guess this machine will be capable of highly detailed prints as well. This doesn't mean it won't need a great deal of calibration just as with any other printer out there. Seeing all this metal and solid construction makes me think that once properly calibrated it might be able to push a bit further on speed/acceleration. I am quite sure it won't be long before the only limit in fast printing is going to be the material itself.
I still haven't used my MBE extruder but do you have any further info on your new extruder design ?
I guess it will be something like a rc servo thing but with a micro stepping motor instead of a tiny dc/brushless one. If not then why not consider it ?

My apologies for the long post.

I am not selling extruders, printers, electronics or anything, so there is no money involved in what I say. But I really expect from people that make a profit out of their claims to be able to support them, as do many of those who design open source hardware or software and announce it or sell it in here. They abide by the open source rules and ethics: there is a community to give an account to, if one feels being a member of, it's not just a target group for sales marketing.

For instance, if you visit this thread you will see an effort to somehow measure extruder performance, showing failures, problems, thoughts and ways to achieve a better result. You will probably find hundreds of better suited threads or posts, written by far more knowledgeable people in these forums. There is also a YouTube video in that thread that gives evidence of the speed achieved with the given setup, if that means anything. What is important here is that people asked for sound to be provided together with that video, so that the frequency of the motors can be analyzed to verify the claim. No money was involved, but proof was demanded for the claims made.

Now, here we have a company that has actually sold loads of extruders in a kickstarter campain, after claiming exceptional performance for the cost, but provided very little evidence about actual results ahead of time. If you search around, you will find many people complaining about problems with the QU-DB extruder, many of them actually re-building their extruder to make it work.

This time, the same company comes with a 3D printer design, claiming exceptional speeds, but again without a single piece of evidence that their printer and extruder (or any other, as a matter of fact) can actually print at the claimed speeds. Reminder: they are selling a 3D printer not a mechatronics system.

Same marketing method, no hard evidence, no drive test. Are the people showing disbelief in error? Are QU-DB products open source? no mention in their products page. Are they giving back something to this community? hard to answer, evidence is needed. Why would someone buy a product from them and not from a proven member of this community who's spending thousands of hours answering everybody's questions and providing support to unknown and unrelated to him people?

Chelsea is a soft speaking person, and that's an asset in marketing, well done Chelsea. But the product being advertised is questionable, and unless you can provide evidence that answers these questions, they will always come after you.

Can you provide hard, verifiable data for your claims? what object have you printed (stl file please) at what speed (video with audio please), with what slicer/firmware and settings and what extruder ? Are the products you produce open source? Cause you use other people's open source creations.

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3D extruder performance tests
dzach's ORDbot Hadron build

Thank you for taking the time to make that post, you bring up a lot of good questions that I would be happy to answer.

There have been people that have had problems with our extruders but it all has to be taken in context. As we know 3D printing in general can be 'fiddly' and ALL extruders require proper calibration to behave properly, there will always a failure rate above 0. The most important statistic that we have to look at is the amount of problems relative to a given population of product. We all know that the J-Heads are great hot ends, yet occasionally people have problems with them and post about it; that does not mean that it isn't a good product (in fact in our opinion they are great). I don't know how many J-Heads are out in the market as of right now and how many problems have been posted about them, I do know that we have run past our 4,000th extruder sold since July and as a percentage of the total population, there are very few problems. I would be willing to bet that we have sold more extruders than most everyone else, except perhaps Makerbot or Ultimaker. The greatest thing about being open-source is that people may not like the way we did something and they have not only the power to change it but also to make a profit from it; for example, mods to our extruders are being sold as we speak.

I think perhaps the difference between us and many of the other companies is that weare selling a mechatronics system with the RPM and the Revolutions. Yes they come with 3D printer extruders but they can be used for so much more than that. We anticipate people (and us too!) tweaking our designs, mounting their own extruders, spindles, lasers and what have you to our solid and robust frame and mechanics. That's why we are developing all the bolt on upgrades for them.

The reason that I didn't make any claims to printing speeds is that we are still tweaking settings. Until we are 100% satisfied that everyone will be able to achieve our claimed speed in a 'worst case scenario' kind of situation then we won't post them. I know that some people like 'in progress' information but I think that can be a little misleading at times. The reason I posted the printer moving is because that says something about the rigidity and the quality of components for linear motion. The lack of any 'drama' and how smooth and quiet it is shows that the our 'modular platform' is stout. That is a verifiable travel speed for the Revolution mechatronics and is well below the limit of what can be achieved. When we did the original Kickstarter we got some flak for only having STL files of the extruder available. The new printers were all drawn in Solidworks so we can release the editable files as well as STLs. We will be selling the individual components of the whole frame individually so that people can build their own custom printers or other machines using our CNC machined aluminum parts in a cost effective way. We want people to hack.modify and change our design, which is why were are going to be selling the parts individually. Our goal was to create an open-source modular platform for people to build off of, in metal that was cost effective. With the Revolutions and RPM we wanted to create the best value no matter what the intended purpose.

Extruders seem to be a very personal thing with a lot of different opinions on what is best. If someone bought one of our machines and threw away the extruder and mounted their choice extruder to it, is the machine still a good value? I can't say that I know of any other all metal mechatronics package that can move at those speeds/accels so confidently and precisely and come fully assembled for <$1000. What we bring to the community is more choices, which is never a bad thing.

I hope that clears some things up!

...while I'm here...We are also working on releasing some laser cutters and will be stocking lots of 1.75mm and 3mm filament soon!

Chelsea - QU-BD

Thank you for your reply Chelsea, I really like your 'no offense' attitude to my somewhat harsh criticism.

I see the "We Will Be Releasing The Source Files When They Ship!" in the details of the new printer pages, maybe it was there and I missed it. It's a good thing to give something back to the community that trusts you, even if you do not mention open source or how you intend to license these files.

I like the mechanical parts of your products, but I believe your extruder leaves a lot to be desired.

Chelsea - QU-BD Wrote:
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> The reason that I didn't make any claims to
> printing speeds is that we are still tweaking
> settings. Until we are 100% satisfied that
> everyone will be able to achieve our claimed speed
> in a 'worst case scenario' kind of situation then
> we won't post them.

But you are selling 3D printers and extruders and you are still not posting examples of how they perform in printing. Understandable if you are not very proud of them, but not so from a buyer's point of view. Not even a single image of a sample print posted by you on you site exists (if I missed it, can you please point me to one?), even after having sold more than 4000 extruders.

Your are a group of hard working people and that's very respectable. However, half a truth may be a good marketing gimmick, but is no truth any more. And, because you criticizing your own work could feel like shooting yourself on the foot, it's left to others to try balance the facts, and by doing so also show recognition and respect to those open source designers who do discuss the details of their designs openly and provide examples and proof for anyone caring to know. That, makes the difference.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2013 11:20AM by dzach.

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3D extruder performance tests
dzach's ORDbot Hadron build

Perhaps what I said wasn't totally clear, in no way am I criticizing our MBE extruder, I have been pleasently suprised how few problems exist relative to the user base. Also take note that the Revolution, Revolution XL and RPM all use a brand new cold end that is not based on any other designs (the X-Truder!). We will be releasing our new design in a very open way.

Our business motivations are not necessarily the same as many other indie 3D printing companies. We are trying to grow at a steady. manageable pace, we don't want to get flooded with orders. Most of what you are speaking of in regards to your critiques are to improve our sales by providing more information from our (at least when viewed by the public) biased position. We would much rather have independent third parties post information, that way if the quality is really good we aren't questioned about its validity. Our sales are mostly by word of mouth and to other OEMs. Our sales volume speaks of the value of our product. I think you would be surprised at all the OEMs (including quite a few that post here regularly) that are using our off the shelf, modified or fully custom components that we produce.

One of the OEMs that has publicized that they are using our hot end is DeltaMaker which is a delta style printer currently on Kickstarter, [www.kickstarter.com]. Click the link to see the print quality. Awesome Prints! (page to the right to see the Yoda closeups) . That is a good indication of quality that you can expect from a well tuned 3D printer with our hot end.

Another thing that we do to contribute is providing 'universal' components that are of better quality at a lower price point than what is available. Although they haven't been added to the store yet, our new LM8UU and LM8LUU linear bearings and chromed, ground and hardened shafting are of significantly better tolerance and finish than what is readily available and we can offer than less expensively than anyone currently selling them. We can do that through our established supply channels, in-house CNC machining and enough volume of sales so we can offer inexpensive, fast shipping. We are adding a ton of new things to the store in the next month and a half. That lowers the price is entry for 3D printing in general which I think is a big plus for everyone.

Chelsea - QU-BD

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2013 12:30PM by Chelsea - QU-BD.

I have one of these on order. Here are some models of the machine:

[www.thingiverse.com]

Here are some images of the machine parts and output:

Here are prints from it (not the helmet). The red monster model has no infill at all - it is just a shell:











And a video of it working:

[www.katv.com]

Here are some photos from QU-BD showing components that they are about to assemble:







Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2013 02:33PM by rsilvers.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

Chelsea - QU-BD Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There have been people that have had problems with
> our extruders but it all has to be taken in
> context. As we know 3D printing in general can be
> 'fiddly' and ALL extruders require proper
> calibration to behave properly, there will always
> a failure rate above 0. The most important
> statistic that we have to look at is the amount of
> problems relative to a given population of
> product.

Sorry Chelsea for being so harsh but i can´t hear it anymore.
I got a QU-BD Dualextruder and this thing - no matter how hard i calibrated -
just doesn´t work. Not a single part of it works, the cooling bridge is not able
to cool properly the drive block is just a joke, the barrel gets one jam after another
and the drive gear is a gear with a groove (????)

Since then i had a couple of hotends, and every single one was better than the QU BD.
(-Head, V3, chess)

you guys claimed in kickstarter with "open source extruder" but when my package arrived
nothing was "open". I had to mesure it myself to produce my own mount (because the universal mount shipped is just not usable).
A few month later a COSTUMER of you published a 3D Plan on thingiverse.

And if this all is not enough the support is strictly speaking not available!
All what you guys say to that, is "the extruder works fine".



> We all know that the J-Heads are great
> hot ends, yet occasionally people have problems
> with them and post about it; that does not mean
> that it isn't a good product (in fact in our
> opinion they are great). I don't know how many
> J-Heads are out in the market as of right now and
> how many problems have been posted about them, I
> do know that we have run past our 4,000th extruder
> sold since July and as a percentage of the total
> population, there are very few problems.

I had the j-head, there are Problems, but way less than the QU-BD got.


> I would
> be willing to bet that we have sold more extruders
> than most everyone else, except perhaps Makerbot
> or Ultimaker.

thats sad for the costumors.

> The greatest thing about being
> open-source is that people may not like the way we
> did something and they have not only the power to
> change it but also to make a profit from it; for
> example, mods to our extruders are being sold as
> we speak.

please tell me where your sources are, because i can´t find them.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2013 10:42AM by mrc.

@rsilvers, that all looks good, but to be honest i was dissapointed about the helmet

I think you can make the helmet in the RPM model, as it will fit, and then post-process it with acetone to make it smooth and glossy, and then paint.

You can do a lot with paint. This was printed on an Up! I think and then painted:

Some photos of the machine here:

[www.matter-replicator.com]

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

Extruder issues aside. I fully understand why qu-bd posted the video in question. It's neat to see that printer move so fast and quite an accomplishment. It looks like a well built machine and it's a whole lot sturdier than other machines on the market.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

looks great guys, is that gt2 3mm belt?

mrc Wrote:
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> And if this all is not enough the support is
> strictly speaking not available!
> All what you guys say to that, is "the extruder
> works fine".

I bought in the Kickstarter. I received the assembled dual extruders, and they were loose in a USPS box. Both nozzles were smashed. So I wait another few weeks to get the new ones, and tried printed with PLA. Jams/strips filament/generally doesn't work. After struggling with the damn things for over a 3 months, getting a "new" barrel design from QUBD, I tried bdrings new printed tensioner, I tried a Hyena gear from Arcol, NOTHING WORKED. I don't really care how many have sold, if a business can't provide a working extruder to every customer, I would seriously doubt their ability to support a complete machine.

I gave up and trashed my MBEs. I went back to a Wades Reloaded I bought from a great eBay seller in the UK, and a Jhead. The only thing I managed to salvage was the heater cartridges. I'll probably find a use for the motors, fans, and nuts and bolts, but the rest is pretty much garbage.

By the way, why in the hell does the gear on the MBE use such a garbage set screw? It didn't fit any of my good quality metric or imperial allen keys. If you sell a product that uses metric hardware, I would hope the set screw would be too.

How do you smash a nozzle? Are they made of foil?

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

I bought one of their extruders before I heard much about them. After hearing all the complaints here I took a close look at all the parts and the assembly. The parts look very nice. However all the comments here about problems are obviously true because the engineering is really poor. No amount of nice machining and finishing is going to make up for a poorly designed machine. I can see I'm going to need to makea lot of changes before I even put it together.

I have to say the Reprap industry is really like the wild west. I bought a heater controller, no wiring diagram, no instructions, nothing but the boards. They were poorly designed, mounting holes in the wrong places, holes between stacked boards that don't line up.

I bought a stepper pulse generator for testing stepper motors and drivers expecting to save a lot of time. No drawings, no instructions, most of the printing in Chinese. The terminals were marked pulse and direction, but the output was actually clockwise, counterclockwise style!

Don't even get me started on how poor the mechanical design is of most of the printers out there!

Gary H. Lucas

rsilvers Wrote:
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> How do you smash a nozzle? Are they made of foil?

You ship them across North America, loose inside a USPS box, with no padding.

[www.youtube.com]

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

looks good guys, have you tried pointing a fan at the print from the nozzle, that seems to make the details much sharper.

Pics from Maker Faire CA, by Drandolph.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

[www.youtube.com]

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

Quote

[www.youtube.com]

There's no way that is printing at 450mm/s in the video. 200mm/s max, just based on eyeballing it.

My theory: The software is set to 450mm/sec but within a confined space, due to acceleration, it may never reach that.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

I was at the Maker Faire yesterday as well and was pretty impressed with the print quality of the sample prints on display at the QU-BD booth. The printers looked incredibly solid and the new extruder design looked pretty interesting. But the print quality of the form1 blew all the FDM printers out of the water. The detail on the fingers of the zeus figurine was completely amazing. The only downside was that the form1 only prints in clear or clearish gray (well, that and the machine cost over $3,000 and the resin is something like $150 a liter).

can you actually measure what its going at? ive done several tests on my new printer, and if you lower the maximum speed untill it slows down you can find the speed it prints at. for example moving only 200mm my new printer can run at 10000mm/s/s acceleration with 550mm/s speed, the dimensions of the print envelope are over 400mm in all three axis, but it accelerates all the way up to 550 in 50mm so you must be running the acceleration lower than what you state.

What this industry needs is a standard benchmark - say print a certain object at a certain scale and with certain infill. Everything spelled out. Then look at the run time.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

rsilvers Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What this industry needs is a standard benchmark -
> say print a certain object at a certain scale and
> with certain infill. Everything spelled out. Then
> look at the run time.


Then you get people building machines specificially to build that one part, or optimised to build that one part quick.

SheldonE Wrote:
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> rsilvers Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > What this industry needs is a standard benchmark
> -
> > say print a certain object at a certain scale
> and
> > with certain infill. Everything spelled out.
> Then
> > look at the run time.
>
>
> Then you get people building machines
> specificially to build that one part, or optimised
> to build that one part quick.

Sounds good to me. It is like the auto industry building cars to score well on the DOT crash tests or the EPA's fuel economy test.

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[www.matter-replicator.com]

yes its a really fast machine, but it better should be.
At least it got a Single Extruder transported by 2 Motors on X Axis and 2 Motors on Y Axis.
But how do you sync the Stepper? Every Stepper has tolerances,
how did you guys eliminated them?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2013 07:24PM by mrc.

Frankly, I think the video is cool and I'm looking forward to more.