Im doubt about buying

Hi guys, i just sold my Prsua i2 and it's benn some time tha i set my eyes on the smartrapcore alu (in the beginning i wanted the xl300).
The fact is, after reading some posts, and discovering the Wanhao Duplicator i3 (i want the plus), i'm torn between the two.
Sure, this is a corexy machine, lots of upgrades on thingiverse, solid aluminum frame (so you could eventually upgrade it to something that resembles an ultimaker), which leaves you with a solid and very upgradable platform, but i read some issues with the motors and electronics, smartfriendz don't respond to my questions by e-mails and i want to print with every filament i want.
The Wanhao on the other hand is ready out of the box, comes with warranty and can print everything but has no auto-bed leveling, and it's not upgradable as the smartrapcore.

Can you help me decide between the two ? Are the issues a deal-breaker for you ? With your experience what would you buy between the two ?
Thank you for your time.

If you want a very solid platform to build and improve upon its a very good printer.

As you may have read from some people on this forum there are a lot of things you will want to change but the machine works as it is supplied. But it is excellent with a bit of upgrading.

My opinion is that the motors are not ideal but motors are cheap and you can sell on the supplied motors. The printed parts are okay but they are pla which IMO isn't the best choice for printer parts so I've reprinted mine in abs.

The supplied ABL sensor works well. The electronics are up to the job. The supplied extruder works, but I changed to a flex3drive as I don't rate bowden as a system and actively avoid it if I can. I would consider an e3d titan with a 20mm nema 17 motor as shown on Tom Sanladerer's youtube channel at 200g it wouldn't be too heavy to put on the print head.

Corexy is superior I'm my opinion to cartesian axis printers like the i3 derivatives. I've got an i3 too and its basically redundant.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Thank you for your response,
so, if i buy the alu version i get a printer that's working and can eventually become an excellent printer.
For your experience does smartfriendz provide customer support ?

Reasonable support. They seem quite busy and don't check their messages often. I had one issue - the ramps board supplied had the problem where the microstepping jumpers are redundant and it was set on 1/16th stepping and I needed to change to 1/4 or 1/8 for flex3drive. Also the regulator went on the arduino. I got a replacement for both but it took a while. I had some in stock so it wasn't a problem.

But I'd rate it over a Chinese kit any day of the week.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2016 07:16AM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Damn, now i'm reaaalllyy torn between them.
Do you think it will take major upgrades to print filaflex or ninjaflex ?

I have no experience with flexibles but from what I understand they do not like bowden setups. So you have a choice of direct, so you'll need to think about keeping the extruder light as mentioned above maybe the titan is the way forward. Or using a flex3drive. Otherwise your print head will be as heavy (as massive would be a technically more accurate term) as it would be on a cartesian axis machine, so you sacrifice the higher speed accuracy that corexy offers.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

This is my concern with the 300xl it's using a direct extruder on the print head. I was a little annoyed that it came out just after I bought the scalu. So my plan is to enlarge my Scalu to 20x30 bed so I can print longer objects. I doubt I'd ever need to print a 30 x30 object.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

well, in the end i think i'm gonna buy the wanhao... i find the two to be in the end very close competitors with all the pros and cons, and as a beginner i don't have a reason to choose one or the other, so i'm gonna go with the one that gor warranty and support close to my city.
Thank you for the chat

Let us know how you're getting on with it. An all-metal i3 derivative was on my list too before going for the smartrap. In the end I wanted to try all three major printer designs to compare and experiment with them so decided on a corexy and the smartrap is one of the only kits out there of this type. I am not yet at the point of designing and building my own printer, but this is the next logical step.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Will do, as i'm getting a wanhao duplicator i3 plus, which comes out in a month, so i'll do a little review on the wanhao group on google groups, as nobody has it yet

Actually i may have changed my mind to the smartrapcore ....
My god, this might be too difficult for me !

Get both, sell the one you don't like, built and configured make a profit.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Ahaha no, i decided for the smartrapcore, with all the pros and cons that comes with it .... i will order it as soon as paypal decide it's time to give me my money .... in the meantime, how is flex3drive ?

Its very good, I've made a mount for flex3drive for smartrapcore its on Thingiverse. The retraction settings take a bit of fiddling with but I've been discussing it with Jason (Mutley3d) who makes it and have come up with some settings that work well. I am going to try the titan e3d extruder with a lightweight motor and see how it compares.

Good choice on the smartrapcore alu, I think youll do more with it in the long run.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Well, that's for sure, an open platform like this is sure to be uprgadable, personally (and if i want) i'll evolve it slowly in a vulcanus, maybe even with a massive build volume ... or just 30x20 or something, i don't know ... then close it up, making it look nice and shiny, lots of things...
Oh, by the way, would you recommend the smartrapcore alu or the basic kit ? Or maybe even the xl300 or the xl300 basic kit ? Personally i think that the xl300 in the beginning is overkill, but the kit is at the same price as the alu ... as for the basic kit it seems that it only lacks the fact that some parts are pre mounted, if taht's all there is to it i think i'm gonna buy the basic kit and save me a 100€

When I bought mine it was a kit only. But I'd go for the smartrapcore alu kit. You then understand the machine so much better than if it is built. With a ready built machine I find there is always a slight reluctance to take it apart, with a kit you have no such hesitation. Also don't presume the pre-made modules are perfect, or perfectly assembled, this is the only drawback to many components coming ready assembled, there's a tendency to assume they are made right - most are but not all, they're built by humans after all.

If you need to print bigger than 20x20 then buy the 300xl kit.

My plan is enlarge the alu to 30x20 which doesn't take much doing, then enclose the build volume in acrylic and have a heated chamber. Whilst enclosing the gantry is a bit of a pain, the corexy works much better as a heated chamber the heat is at the top of the enclosure where the model is, on my heated i3 I have to recirculate the hot air down to the bottom of the enclosure.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Hey, that's exactly my plan too !
I want also to have a floor under the heatbed carriage which separates the electronics from the rest, switches and panel on the front of the printer, and maybe i'll even convert everything to v-slot rails ... it offers many opportunities

Im not sure where you live, but don't believe the 7 working days to ship. I've ordered the SMARTRAPCORE ALU BASIC KIT on April 15th, it came with a status of backordered (which is fine), on April 17th the status was changed to in process. And there it now sits with the same status and no response from info@smartfriendz.com after what is now 10 working days. If May 15th rolls around with no response, I'll be going to paypal for a refund with a scam report.

Before I ordered it, I did email them and ask about shipping to the US and got a response pretty quickly that said they could do it. But this has been my experience as of today. If kanything changes I'll post something else.

They are not scammers they will deliver good quality printers but let's just say their customer service is by US standards 5/10. The printers are 8-9/10 all day long. I waited around 3-4 weeks for mine.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2016 03:33AM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

That's probably because they are in France, i'm in Italy, so no problem there, it's gonna arrive in a week.

First time buyer from europe here.
DjDemonD is right. They are legit.
The smartfriendz team just rolled out their XL with a preorder campaign so they probably have quit a lot of work.
My printer came some weeks late because of a production delay by one of their aluminium bed manufacturers and how french customs work.
But they have answered to all of my mails and have been really friendly & honest.
Just have little patience and you'll get a really nice printer

Update, I recieved an email from DHL on May 11th about shipping to be delivered on May 20th, however, the item was never picked up until May 19th, so now DHL are quoting delivery for May 25th. Ordered April 15th, and appears that it shipped on May 19th, so much for 7 working days. Will have to see what it is like once I put it together. At least this is my experience with it ordering from Smartfriendz and shipping to the US for anyone interested in ordering the kit, I'd almost say your in for a month long wait or source the parts and build it yourself.

Very sorry fot that PDBeal,

It should have never been one month. It is true we where late with production ( around 10 days to be honest because of the XL300 production ) , but we have had serious problems with DHL in our place. We are in country side and we discovered a little late that DHL use a "partner" because there's not enough people here to interest them.
So , all in all it took very very long !
I guess we will use more othe providers like fedex from now . We never had those problems with them.
I'm sure we will find an arrangement about that by the way. I will contact you separately.

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I'm assuming because of the XL300 production things are really getting mixed up now. My kit arrived on Monday, and easily put it together. It was missing a few of the M8 bolts, but I had some laying around so no big deal. Some of the M4 screws for the t-nuts weren't long enough for the part thickness, no big deal I had a box of M4 screws of varing sizes. The kicker in this, the kit came with the parts for the bowden extruder motor mounts, (as it should as thats what the kit is supposed to use), but the hotend that was supplied was a direct drive hotend with no possible way to attach the bowden tube. On top of that, the bowden tube that was supplied is no where long enough to reach the full travel of the X and Y carriage if the motor is mounted in the locations in the sketchfab, Onshape documents or the Youtube videos. The tube not long enough isn't that big of a deal as I had a spare tube from a chinese hotend, but right now I have no way to actually extrude with a direct drive hotend and a bowden extruder motor setup. I've contacted smartfriendz with this information, so we'll see what they think might be best.

This may not be typical, but this is my experience so far.

Apart from the issues with delivery and the hotend, so far I am pleased with the kit and the quality of the design and the basis behind the Core-XY printers. The nicest part was the Z Axis probe, plugged it into the board an it was working without the need for the voltage divider stepdown circuit, although there are no visible part numbers on this inductive sensor so at this point I have no idea what it is exactly.

I think this sums it up they've got good designs and its all basically sound, and fairly reasonable from a European supplier, but some parts are overlooked and forgotten and delivery aims are optimistic. But its the basis for success if they can sort out the organisation issues.

Better to be a little disorganised with a great product than super efficient with a useless product.... Or is it?

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions