In defence of Ormerod

There is a lot of very useful information on this forum but I feel for anyone either thinking about which printer to get and those struggling to put the printer together. Reading through this site you could be forgiven for thinking that there are a lot of problems with the Ormerod when in fact you can get printed without much bother, as RepRap intended and with the printer as designed.

If you want to print with PLA (can't comment on ABS), just put your printer together and print. You don't need a fan duct, you don't need a belt tensioner, Kapton work very well, you don't need Ethernet, finish homing manually if Z-probe not quite close enough, manually compensate X, Y & Z with spirit level and you don't need to setbed, etc. All these things are nice to have and will improve but none are must have so just get printing so you can see how amazing it is to turn a filament into life.

I am sure there are plenty out there printing without a glitch. I bought from RS early December, got #282 and after breaking the USB socket and getting a free board issued by Ian, I have been printing as is 7 days a week, most nights as well, through now 4kg of filament.

I cannot share much because of IP but attached is an example, printing with 0.24mm layers, 0.3 fill ratio, no bed compensation, in particular check the fit of the male and female splines. The spline if over 100mm tall, slide like a dream and there is no backlash. For those mechanical engineers out there, it means that all 3 axis are spot on with manual adjustment (and I last adjusted it before X-mas and have been moving printer around between living room and utility room to print through the night without disturbing who you know).

So don't get to depressed by all the apparent problems, look at the bright side too. And on that subject check what markbee has achieved with layer height!!!







Sorry about the quality of pics, it is intentional and does not do justice to the finish, even at 240microns

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2014 09:01AM by arnaud31.

All good points Arnaud31 - it would be very easy to get the wrong impression of what is basically a good machine made by a proactive company from looking at the forum, though the forum discussion has contributed a lot to the very rapid improvements, particularly in firmware, that make the machine what it is now.

Those parts look impressive - no wonder you've got through so much filament! You must have clocked up quite a few hours just printing the samples you've shown

Cheers

Ray

I thought exactly the same, I was completely put off from buying the Ormerod. but I decided to get one as I felt this design would be built upon more than others. So I bit the bullet and ordered one.
I had it printing in one weekend.

I am still fine tuning to get the best out of it but the kit is good, everything fitted together well

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rayhicks
All good points Arnaud31 - it would be very easy to get the wrong impression of what is basically a good machine made by a proactive company from looking at the forum, though the forum discussion has contributed a lot to the very rapid improvements, particularly in firmware, that make the machine what it is now.

Those parts look impressive - no wonder you've got through so much filament! You must have clocked up quite a few hours just printing the samples you've shown

Cheers

Ray

Respectivelly, 6.5hrs, 5hrs, 3.5hrs and 3.5hrs... for what you see, it weighs about 400grs all in, so 1/10 of the filament I have used to date. There is also everything else I am not allowed to show.

A point well made - the Ormerod is already a very useful tool.
Just one question - Did you have any problems with warping on such designs?
I made what can best be descibed as a 160mm diameter x 10mm thick cog and it warped about 2-3mm around about 1/4 of the edge. That was with a rudimentary fan duct (which appeared to make negligible difference), but in a fairly cool room (15-17C - not drafty). I'm thinking either sli3er settings (maybe more base layers) or an upturned (empty) fish tank to increase the ambient temperature might help... Just wondering if you had similar problems?
Thanks,
Squags

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Squags
A point well made - the Ormerod is already a very useful tool.
Just one question - Did you have any problems with warping on such designs?
I made what can best be descibed as a 160mm diameter x 10mm thick cog and it warped about 2-3mm around about 1/4 of the edge. That was with a rudimentary fan duct (which appeared to make negligible difference), but in a fairly cool room (15-17C - not drafty). I'm thinking either sli3er settings (maybe more base layers) or an upturned (empty) fish tank to increase the ambient temperature might help... Just wondering if you had similar problems?
Thanks,
Squags

Hi Squags,

Only had warping twice, not with this design. The warping I've had has always been with the same filament, black natural 2.3kg reel from RepRapKit. The green parts you see have been printed with green natural 2.3kg reel also from RepRapKit and has never warped. Similarly I have also never had anything warp with the RS filament or the filaments I bought of ebay (can't remember supplier but came vacuum sealed).

I have noticed (but it may be a coincidence) that when the black natural filament warped there was a big gradient between bed temperature (55degC) and extrusion temperature (e.g 200degC). When I reduce extrusion temperature (e.g. 180deg) it didn't seem to warp. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who get warping are printing too hot.

I print in a cold damp utility room, that barely get to 18-19deg and then cools down to around 13deg during the night (and during prints because I often print at night).

Generally I find that parts with such large foot print are very difficult to remove from the bed after a print.

Make sure you give the bed a good acetone clean as well to get this out of the equation.

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arnaud31
Generally I find that parts with such large foot print are very difficult to remove from the bed after a print.

That's one of the advantages of printing PLA direct on glass. The print adheres well while printing - provided you have the bed level and the nozzle height just right to get a good first layer - but when you cool the bed to room temperature, the print almost falls off.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2014 06:39AM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Great post arnaud31, thanks for sharing those pictures, mots impressive.
My Ormerod is an early product #007 and I also did not have any issues during the build and it almost worked first time (without any setting up) via the USB and Pronterface.
A clean and level bed was the solution so even from my early kit, the build was straight forward and functional. Anyone purchasing the product now get the advantage of a few improved parts, a much later firmware revision, great instructions and the shared knowledge and experience (thanks to several key contributors and every hour of Ian's time!), so a highly recommended piece of kit producing quality parts.

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Ormerod #007 (shaken but not stirred!)

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dc42

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arnaud31
Generally I find that parts with such large foot print are very difficult to remove from the bed after a print.

That's one of the advantages of printing PLA direct on glass. The print adheres well while printing - provided you have the bed level and the nozzle height just right to get a good first layer - but when you cool the bed to room temperature, the print almost falls off.

Sorry we have been around this before. I see no advantage to printing on glass, I simply do not have time to faf around with airspray, vinegar, high bed temperature and else. Also mentioned that a bed temperature any higher than 50-55deg and it minutely cup the part on first few layers and makes it difficult with very tight fit assemblies. Printing on glass is not for me but I am sure it works great for others. It is actually a good thing that parts are difficult to remove from bed. Some of the parts I print are around 200mm tall with a fairly small foot print, taking all night to print. I can't have them falling over...

I think there's two things RepRapPro could easily do to improve the end-user experience.

1) Source better components, simple things like fans. My orginal RepRap Mono Hot End fan would stop turning mid print (resulting in jamming) and the replacement fan wouldn't run at all.
2) Ship a printer capable of printing ABS without modification. The kit PLA parts that get hot and warp when printing at ABS temps leading to poor prints and frustration.

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pocketmoon
I think there's two things RepRapPro could easily do to improve the end-user experience.

1) Source better components, simple things like fans. My orginal RepRap Mono Hot End fan would stop turning mid print (resulting in jamming) and the replacement fan wouldn't run at all.
2) Ship a printer capable of printing ABS without modification. The kit PLA parts that get hot and warp when printing at ABS temps leading to poor prints and frustration.

Although I only print PLA for "health&safety" reason I think you are right, some ABS parts would have made sense. Perhaps RepRap could have this as an option, for another £10-£20 i am sure there would be a lot of takers. I guess the problem for RepRap is that they print their parts, rather than say injection mould it (which would be prohibitive), and ABS is too much hassle for production printing;

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arnaud31
Although I only print PLA for "health&safety" reason I think you are right, some ABS parts would have made sense. Perhaps RepRap could have this as an option, for another £10-£20 i am sure there would be a lot of takers. I guess the problem for RepRap is that they print their parts, rather than say injection mould it (which would be prohibitive), and ABS is too much hassle for production printing;

I doubt that injection moulded part cost would be at all prohibitive - I suspect the break-even point is between 100 and 200 Omerods when you consider the labour, electricity and maintainance costs of printing - and of course it would greatly improve the supply bottleneck. The parts would however need to be redesigned - injected parts have several design constraints that printed parts do not. There is a company I use (no other connection) called "Protomold" (http://www.protolabs.co.uk/) for low to medium volumes. Very fast turnaround with online design verification (at no charge) that pretty much ensures success first time. You simply upload your CAD file to the web site and get the detailed verification results online within 24 hours (often same day). Each mould would probably cost between £1000 to £3000 - you could put several different parts into one mould so probably 3 or 4 moulds will be enough for all the parts. Their web site also has good instructional pages on how to design parts for injection moulding. As their moulds are all made by CNC machines there are also some additional design constraints imposed by machining limitations, but nothing that should affect the Omerod parts. The extruder body is the only part I can see major issues with - the internal curved filament guide cannot be injection moulded, so it would probably need to be made as two halves that bolt together.

Yes, 3D printing is really great and all, but it is definitely not (yet) suitable for any sort of mass production. Apart from the time, there is zero economy of scale and quality control is more problematic. As demand increases, I feel that RepRapPro will have to abandon the idea of printing, even though it might go somewhat against their ideals - you eventually find it a lot better if you use the correct tool for the job!

Dave
(#106)

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dmould
Yes, 3D printing is really great and all, but it is definitely not (yet) suitable for any sort of mass production. Apart from the time, there is zero economy of scale and quality control is more problematic. As demand increases, I feel that RepRapPro will have to abandon the idea of printing, even though it might go somewhat against their ideals - you eventually find it a lot better if you use the correct tool for the job!
(#106)

You've got me thinking Dave, so I just started a new topic called Idle musings on mass production

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RS Components Reprap Ormerod No. 481

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dmould
"Protomold" (http://www.protolabs.co.uk/) for low to medium volumes.
Dave
(#106)

Very interesting link for another project I am working on. Would be interesting to find the life of the moulds as when I last looked into this, injection moulding moulds where anywhere from £50k to £150k a piece.
Thanks Dave.

I'm with you on this Dave.

Although Protomolds moulds seem cheaper its because they are aluminium but don't last that long obviously- the part prices are very expensive. Mclaren plastics have a small flexible standardised cavity insert system which is ideal for small parts it uses a common fixed and moving half so you only pay for the cavity, which can be P20 steel, and the part price is inexpensive also because changing just a cavity takes less setup time than a complete mould, also parts are inexpensive, charged on standard cycle times - approx. £22 per hour/parts that can be made in an hour, and since the average small part cycles at less than 30 seconds……. so less that 18p per part plus material -ABS at £2.50 per kg (I estimate a kit to weigh approx 200 - 250 grams), so 60p per set.

I would estimate (using a cavity system as described above) that the tooling for an ormerod would run to approx £500 to £1000 per cavity, there are approx 30 parts in an ormerod so I recon P20 moulds could be made for around the £30k mark, plus cost to make a kit is 18p x 30 + 60p=£6-nice.

Regarding the cost of 3d printing, this is a calculation which to be compatible to injection moulding requires an hourly cost to operate it i.e. pay its capital cost, power it, maintain it and operate it. Capital cost approx £1000 based on a mendel parts and experienced labour to build it, paid over 3 years @ 5.75 APR (similar loan terms on buying an injection moulding machine), so about £0.176/hr (based on it running a 40 hour week for 3 years), power 3d printers draw approx. 0.018 kWh @ £0.15 per KWH= £3000, plus 5% for maintenance is £52, labour @£54000 (paying an operator £9 per hour). So £58104 or £9.68/hr. Cycle time is approx 2/hours on average, so it costs approx £19.38 per part, obviously an operator (biggest cost) could run a number of machines so assuming 10 machines could be run by one person, not unreasonable? So taking into account the cost (not labour) of 10 machines then (£95040) £15.84/hr at a cycle time of 2/hr per machine so cost per part(using 10 machines) would be £3.17 each, plus material @ £20/kg or £5per set. Total price for set of printed parts is £3.17x30+5=£100-ouch.

So break even point for bringing in tooling is about 320 ormerods.
Or put another way RRP loose £94 on every kit they make over this figure ouch, or £9400 every 100 kits sold ouch!!!!

I can understand why RRP would prefer to print parts, they are in their comfort zone here and have already made investment in the kit, which has probably already paid for itself, also design changes can be made quickly and cheaply, and also fits well with their free access model. I suspect however they will be struggling with the expectations of many of the RS customers who expected a highly finished and bug free kit and I am sure RRP will be learning a lot from this experience which may indeed make them look at better tools for the job.

RM

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arnaud31

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dmould
"Protomold" (http://www.protolabs.co.uk/) for low to medium volumes.
Dave
(#106)

Very interesting link for another project I am working on. Would be interesting to find the life of the moulds as when I last looked into this, injection moulding moulds where anywhere from £50k to £150k a piece.
Thanks Dave.

RM has mentioned another company & methodology that may well be better - I only have experience with Protomold and can confirm that it was painless, with the first parts arriving less than 2 weeks after finalising the CAD design. Yes, they use aluminium moulds that cost in the region of 5% of the figure you mention, though they make steel inserts for any thin narrow holes. While aluminium has a limited life, Protomold simply mill a new mould without charge if you order so many parts that the first one wears out, so you can regard it as having an unlimited life. As RM says, their per item cost is expensive compared with other companies (they retain ownership of the mould), so you have to do a costing based on expected total production. I gather that their moulds are cheap in comparison with many other companies because they have invested heavily in clever computer design verification and CNC automation, meaning that your design is verified and fed to the CNC mill with very few man-hours of intervention needed, though they also have good telephone & email support so you can discuss your design with an engineer when needed. Order their free sample cube and torus if you are starting IM design for the first time - they illustrate various techniques, finishes and pitfalls quite well.

Dave
(#106)

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rm2014
...power 3d printers draw approx. 0.018 kWh
RM

A good analysis, RM, though I think you are a decimal point out with that power consumption. While printing ABS, my Ormerod consumes over 200W (0.2kW), so 1kWh every 5 hours, or 0.1kWh per part, assuming an average 30 minute build time. Maybe less with PLA as the bed heater has a lower duty cycle.

Dave
(#106)

Dave

You are right I am way off on the power cost (I thought it was a bit high when I wrote it) I am an order of about 6 out I should think. Energy costs are more like just short of £500. Which means an hourly cost of £10.84 cycling at 1 part every 2 hours., so approx. £2.17 per part x 30 + 5= £70 per set. That would put a break even tooling point at approx. 460 ormerods. Also cycle time may be a bit iffy, I might look further at this, and also material weight was a guess it may be more?

RM

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# 500

Dave
Yes I like Protomold, in the same way I like RS for speed of delivery, and both companies have got me out the poo in the past. I like the idea of just uploading an stl file and then 2 or three weeks later the parts turn up in the post. They also do a CNC service. Getting past Protomolds automated system can be tough, last part I ordered with them they just would not budge on the wall thickness I wanted because their "computer said no" the material I wanted was low molecular weight PP which would have run fine, I have over 20 years experience in moulding and I ran it through moldflow just to check, but they would not budge, in the end I had to change the wall thickness just to get the product into production, later I went to a production tool with the wall I wanted and it ran just fine, but for a while they had me doubting myself.

I,m wondering if they have moldflow, I must check with them.

The reason ally tools seem cheaper than steel tools is not really down to clever machining software, all tool makers have this, and in fact it takes the same time to machine and spark both materials, they use the exact same tool paths. The reason ally tools are cheaper is they take less labour to finish (polish) obviously tool steel is very hard and polishing is a hand process, ally being very soft works easier, on the other hand the same levels of polish cannot be achieved in them. Also they start to dull for the same reason, some parts and materials are just not suitable for this type of tooling beyond prototype or short runs.

If a high polished finish is not required then steel tools are the same price as ally, if I have the time I always go straight to a steel tool, even if it costs a bit more for polishing, I have tools that are 20 years old and parts still look as good as the first days production shots, and I'm paying pennies for the parts.

On a commercial point any business would be mad not to have control of its production tooling, if there is a problem (and eventually there always is) the damage caused will be severe, you just cannot make stuff to sell until the tools are replaced, which will kill your cash-flow. All our principal tooling is duplicated and held at two different moulders, one of which went bust last year, (thankfully now recovered).

RM

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# 500

Fascinating stuff on injection moulding. I would have guessed breakeven point would be somewhere around 1000-2000 units, I wasn't aware of these low cost methods.

Although unit costs are obviously much lower with injection moulding (and quality better), you have to commit a chunk of costs up front, and cash flow tends to be a problem for small companies. I think if you have solid sales projections and experience with moulding technology it is easier to justify , with such new products as 3D printers it is hard to gauge demand.

I think for low volume, initial production runs RP can make sense. However, I would have a plan in place to get tooling made if demand is there. It appears that RepRapPro sold out the initial run of 500 units, so they must be getting near to the point were injection moulding would offer a better product at a lower cost.

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What is Open Source?
What is Open Source Hardware?
Open Source in a nutshell: the Four Freedoms
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rm2014
On a commercial point any business would be mad not to have control of its production tooling, if there is a problem (and eventually there always is) the damage caused will be severe, you just cannot make stuff to sell until the tools are replaced, which will kill your cash-flow. All our principal tooling is duplicated and held at two different moulders, one of which went bust last year, (thankfully now recovered).

RM

That's not necessarily true - it depends what stock reserve you keep. If you have sufficient plastic parts in stock to keep your production going for the time it takes to make another mould, there is no problem, and the plastic parts are cheap enough that you can often keep many months worth of production without it tying up any significant amount of money in stock, so you don't need to adopt a JIT approach for those particular parts. We own & keep steel moulds for our long-running and high-volume product lines, and parts that are common to many products, but the cheap & cheerful moulds are great for products that have low production runs or a short market life expectancy - in the electronics industry many products have a market life of under 2 years because of the rate of change of technology (and fashion), and whilst we can sometimes fit a new design into an old case, usually they need a case redesign as well. Also, some of our products are for niche markets where total production is not expected to top 1000 units (if that) - too high to mill each part individually, but too low to justify high tooling costs.

Dave
(#106)

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dmould

it depends what stock reserve you keep. If you have sufficient plastic parts in stock to keep your production going for the time it takes to make another mould, there is no problem, and the plastic parts are cheap enough that you can often keep many months worth of production without it tying up any significant amount of money in stock,

Dave
(#106)

Dave
That's not necessarily true-
If your moulder goes bust you will lose all your tools not just one, replacements could cost 100's of 1000's.
Replacement tools normally have to be paid for 1/3 up front, with the banks in a fix at present it could take weeks to arrange borrowing, unless you dip into cash flow reserves, but then how are you going to pay the wages?
Using stock surplus to mitigate against loss of tooling is folly. First you dont know what tools you might lose, so you dont know how much stock to hold. Secondly it would cost too much to hold stock for every tool you might lose. Thirdly there are better ways of mitigating the risk ie asset insurance (like key man insurance but for assets), Fourth excessive stock reflects badly on your balance sheet, it has tax implications in that it cannot be set against corporation tax, having your money tied up in stock reduces your cash reserves and therefore your credit worthyness, and about a dozen other reasons, you yourself made one "in the electronics industry many products have a market life of under 2 years because of the rate of change of technology" so you dont want to be left with stock you cannot sell!

Anyway how did we get onto this, is this not a 3d printing forum

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# 500

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rm2014
That's not necessarily true-
If your moulder goes bust you will lose all your tools not just one, replacements could cost 100's of 1000's.

Oh, I agree regarding tools that cost 100's of 1000's. However this began regarding using Protomold - and in that case we are talking only a few 1000 per tool. As said, we use steel tools (that we own) for long-running products, so Protomold don't hold a great many tools that are current - replacement of everything needed would be well under 100K. It's also something that can be insured against.

Dave
(#106)

I am going to throw my support for the product in too.
Yes, I probably annoyed Ian etc with my (what I hope were constructive) comments on how the instructions could be improved, but I found the documentation to be well written and methodical.
Having started printing on the weekend I found the calibration piece was spot on, the print quality excellent and the interface easy to use.
I have to be annoying again though and say as having purchased a post Jan 10 2014 machine I did expect to see a new microSD card in there, not one of the crappy ones. My assumption that the card would not be of the known faulty type wasted a good hour of trying to get past basic communication to the machine. So damn my assumption, and damn you RS for being lazy to correct a known fault.
A few pieces needed a bit of filing, and the feed system although compact makes little sense to me but these are things are nothing. (EDIT: by feed system I mean the spool positioning relation to the x axis - but hey, downloaded a nice design for a stand and 3 hours later, plus a bit maybe, problem solved.)
I can take a series of zeros and ones I created or someone else did and kindly decided to share with me and produce from them a shape desired by myself, whilst in my home, out of ABS or PLA very ACCURATELY.
How can I complain about that? My life, as far as plastic reproduction goes is sorted.
Serious big thank you to RepRapPro, Ian, DC42, and the rest of the contributors here (and those who were involved in previous models development) for making my world of plastic far better.
Nicely, nicely.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2014 06:41AM by badman.teddy.edward.

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badman.teddy.edward
I can take a series of zeros and ones I created or someone else did and kindly decided to share with me and produce from them a shape desired by myself, whilst in my home, out of ABS or PLA very ACCURATELY.
How can I complain about that? My life, as far as plastic reproduction goes is sorted.
Serious big thank you to RepRapPro, Ian, DC42, and the rest of the contributors here (and those who were involved in previous models development) for making my world of plastic far better.
Nicely, nicely.

I think that by far the biggest plus (for myself, anyway), is how just having the means to print 3D objects had broadened the way I think about designs. Just knowing that I can have an object in my hand the same day I design it, no matter how complex the shape, with no construction effort, preparation, manual ability, material sourcing, tools or post-work clean-up needed has altered the way I think about designs and my motivation to start a personal project. When I look at construction projects in magazines or online, I immediately look to see how the construction could be simplified or enhanced by the use of printed parts. It's similar to the way that FPGA's affected me regarding digital electronic designs.

Dave
(#106)

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dmould
I think that by far the biggest plus (for myself, anyway), is how just having the means to print 3D objects had broadened the way I think about designs. Just knowing that I can have an object in my hand the same day I design it, no matter how complex the shape, with no construction effort, preparation, manual ability, material sourcing, tools or post-work clean-up needed has altered the way I think about designs and my motivation to start a personal project. When I look at construction projects in magazines or online, I immediately look to see how the construction could be simplified or enhanced by the use of printed parts. It's similar to the way that FPGA's affected me regarding digital electronic designs.

Dave
(#106)

Yes Dave, exactly this for me as well. Always thinking up little ideas for projects or to fix something but my skills and access to the tools needed to make them in wood,metal or plastic were never there. Once I get my quality up to or near that pictured around here I have a back log of things to do. Very satisfying.

Dan.

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FalseIdle

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dmould
I think that by far the biggest plus (for myself, anyway), is how just having the means to print 3D objects had broadened the way I think about designs. Just knowing that I can have an object in my hand the same day I design it, no matter how complex the shape, with no construction effort, preparation, manual ability, material sourcing, tools or post-work clean-up needed has altered the way I think about designs and my motivation to start a personal project. When I look at construction projects in magazines or online, I immediately look to see how the construction could be simplified or enhanced by the use of printed parts. It's similar to the way that FPGA's affected me regarding digital electronic designs.

Dave
(#106)

Yes Dave, exactly this for me as well. Always thinking up little ideas for projects or to fix something but my skills and access to the tools needed to make them in wood,metal or plastic were never there. Once I get my quality up to or near that pictured around here I have a back log of things to do. Very satisfying.

Dan.

Damn straight. I work in an industry where development of new ideas is really slow and this has enabled me to start trying those ideas far quicker. (Really though it is custom parts for RC things that makes me happiest)..

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badman.teddy.edward
Damn straight. I work in an industry where development of new ideas is really slow and this has enabled me to start trying those ideas far quicker. (Really though it is custom parts for RC things that makes me happiest)..

Yup - I am happiest (and most creative) when I can design empirically. Spending days or even weeks on design verification, and then months waiting for tooling before I get to see even part of a project bores me to heck. I much prefer to throw a design onto the screen that I know darn well is not optimal, then work out the changes when I have a half-working or incomplete prototype in my hand, getting to the final product by way of several iterations. Also cuts out the stress of knowing that one mistake could waste many £100K or more of tooling costs plus months of time. I love computer simulations for the same reason, but having a physical product is even better. I suppose it's lazy designing - but in my opinion it also tends to be more productive, and you end up with a product that's just as good provided you do the important verification steps of the things you cannot see along the way (e.g. stress & fatigue analysis etc.).

Dave
(#106)

Well….. I am sure there are lots of happy campers, but on behalf of those who have had badly printed parts, bad instructions over the last 2 months, bad mother boards, which have had to be replaced, z probe problems, and a host of other niggles which have soured this product I would have to say that for the money in this day and age one should expect a product fit for purpose without having to spend days or weeks on forums or emailing support, which has been my experience, and since 13th December my printer is still not operational, I am not sure whether to consign it to the trash or keep on trying to make it work. I wouldn't mind if RRP and RS had the integrity to market it as an early prototype, or experimental printer like makerbot 2x, but they do not, and believe me the two machines are miles apart. I fear that with this latest offering from RRP the UK is going to be left behind, as the rest of the world powers ahead, already many organisations I have spoken to up and down the country are writing reprap machines off as just too unreliable, and from what I have seen, and now experienced I have to agree, I regret buying this one. RRP you must do better!

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# 500

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rm2014
[...] I am not sure whether to consign it to the trash or keep on trying to make it work. [...]

Sorry to hear that. I might be be happy to take it off your hands and dispose of it for you if you are in UK ?

regards
Andy

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Ormerod #318
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