Author Topic: Welcome, my name's Dan. I'm a frustrated Cube user.  (Read 1160 times)

Dan

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Welcome, my name's Dan. I'm a frustrated Cube user.
« on: March 30, 2014, 06:33:13 am »
Hi all.  Welcome to the new cube 3d printer forum. 

I've been a cube user for around 12 months.  The 2 most obvious things I noticed when I first purchased my cube 2 was a) only 3 month warranty and b) there's no online community supporting these devices except for some blogs created by Tom Meeks of which I've inspected thoroughly.   Im an Australian which means retailer support for these devices is a comprehensive as the lack of online support which is why after 12 months I've decided to create this forum.   

The first time I plugged in my cube 2, it didn't work.  For a "consumer" product, I must say, I was amazed by the complete crapness of my brand new $1200 printer.  Nothing would print, I couldn't even load a cartridge.  I spent hours trying to insert the filament into the printer.  Without knowing what to expect, the clicking noise my printer made as I was trying to load the filament didn't raise any alarm bells.  My girlfriend at the time (very soon to be wife) was sighing at me constantly, arguing with me as to why I shouldn't send the unit back.  After a few hours and with little to no support, I took a sneaky deep breath and decided to pull the unit apart to see if I could figure out why the unit wasn't printing.  I removed the extruded cover, pulled out a few hex screws and eventually found the reason I couldn't even load a filament cartridge was because there was the remanence of some filament already jammed I the printer.  My first thought was that the unit had already been used.  However after manually removing the jammed filament and finally loading the cartridge, the amazement of printing my first 3D object made me and the missus forget the hours of screwing around I had just endured.   

That was the first problem I would have loved to have some community support with and wasn't the last.  This forum a means of sharing my experiences with this printer to the online community with the hope to create a better system for all to use.  I sincerely hope 3D Systems (the manufacturer of the Cube 3D printers) keep as close an eye on this forum as I know many users eventually will and take heed of the feedback, successes and at times rage this printer gives us. 

Happy...er Cube 3D printing.

Dan

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Harold Sobel

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Hi Dan

I am a not yet user of the new Cube 3 which is slated to be delivered at the beginning of August. I have high hopes for this machine as I hope all of the nightmare problems people have had with the Cube3D have been addressed in this unit. I selected the Cube3, after a great deal if research, mainly because I wanted so etching that I didn't have to tinker with. I am a full time tinkerer and didn't want to cross this over to my 3D printing. As this unit has no users and very little info available I thought this would be the place to start. I would like to use this forum to report on my experiences as they go forward. Thanks for having me.
H.

Dan

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Nice to meet you Harold.  The only problem I can see with anything related to cube is 3D Systems themselves.  Is such a pain trying to get any community information on anything they do.  Fingers crossed this forum with flourish in time and give the printer the community discussion it clearly needs. 

I cant say im unhappy with the cube.  Im very glad I managed to find work arounds for the most frustrating issues ive found with this printer as mentioned in other posts.  None the less, Im using my cube to try my hand at building my own 3D printer the Rostock - Gulp :http://reprap.org/wiki/Rostock

Good luck with your Cube and welcome to the forum.

Regards
Dan

Vadder

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Re: Welcome, my name's Dan. I'm a frustrated Cube user.
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2015, 01:08:45 pm »
Hi Dan,

Thank you for creating this small but nice forum  :)

My name is Martin an I'm from Hamburg/Germany.
Since a lot of years I observe the market for 3D-printers.
But the most models were too expensive or only for real freaks  ;)

Two weeks ago I found the Cube 2 in an onlineshop very cheap: only 485,- Euro.
That was the right price for this experience an I bought one.  ::)

The 3 days for delivery I searched for a community about the Cube.
Only this little forum seems to be the right one.
Here are many nice tipps, so I read nearly every post.

Best wishes and good printing
Martin

sorry for my bad english



 
« Last Edit: January 28, 2015, 01:10:30 pm by Vadder »

gais

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Hello Dan, my name is gais I'm a frustrated cube user.

Bought a Cube 3d at our office almost 3 years ago. Out of the box this thing was a worthless piece of sh#t. The slicing software is terrible, it either works to create a printable object or it doesn't. When it does not work there are no options available to make it work. The interface looks like it has been designed by a 1st year student to be used by his 8 year old brother. The hardware is slow and noisy, there is no way to manually set the wireless configuration, there is no error logging to debug any problems. Our printer never had a working network connection as the wireless adapter was DOA.

The cartridges are the worst of all, expensive and fitted with a proprietary print counter. The first one gave up after only 10 small prints. Forced open the casing and it had more than 75% filament left. This problem seemed a structural problem to our printer as every cartridge that it renders empty has at least >50% filament left. Contacted Cubify, got some replacement supplies, but no solution to the underlying problem. When my sensor contact points broke after replacing the next cartridge I've had it with this thing...

So here I am, just opened up my Cube this weekend, soldered the connection points back on, flashed the old firmware back in place and happily printing the remnants of my broken cartridges using the bulk filament hack. And I must confess, reading the post about ripping out the entrails of this purposely restricted machine and replacing them with an Arduino seems VERY tempting...

To be continued.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2015, 03:16:55 am by gais »

Dan

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Gais,

A belated welcome, sorry I havent been around much.  Too busy working on my "Elevator" (own designed delta).  You're comments reflect my own experience.  Mine didnt work out of the box, I ripped it apart, put it together again and got it working, but yeah the cube software is totally crap.  It really doesnt take more than a night to turn your cube into a really good printer.  If you havent already, get the parts and do it.  I'd recommend this to anyone with a cube. 

Regards
Dan

Chuluney

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Re: Welcome, my name's Dan. I'm a frustrated Cube user.
« Reply #6 on: August 04, 2016, 11:35:32 pm »
I have had a very similar experience as Dan. I was very excited when I received my Cube. Got it out of the box, set it up, pushed the power button and... NOTHING. POS wouldn't power up. Support at at 3Dsytems wouldn't help me because I didn't buy it directly from them. The seller fortunately for took the item back. I bought second unit from another source. My hopes were very high when this one actually powered on. The excitement was short lived however when I finally started printing pieces. This printer always creates a flare on the bottom of the print. It always makes a small circle on every piece printed. One of the brand new spools of filament broke and punched a hole through the feed tube. This of makes the entire spool unusable and just another piece of a large useless paper weight. When printing parts it will not print the top or bottom of the model. I have tried several models both that I made and some that I downloaded from the internet. the pictures are not as good as I hoped they might be but you can see what I am talking about from them. Besides the small blob that it makes down the entire height of the piece it also does not fill the space between the inner and outer diameter of the piece. The blob is the only thing holding the piece together. The software is a joke. Being a software engineer I may be a little critical on this aspect but I would be humiliated to release a piece of garbage like this. There is absolutely no control over the print. If you by chance forgot to set supports and need them you must completely delete the file and reload it to set them. The view does not rotate or change in any fashion even though the buttons are there. And yes I have the latest versions of software and firmware. I am truly impressed that a company that produces such hot steaming piles is still in business.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2016, 03:34:39 pm by Chuluney »

Chuluney

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Re: Welcome, my name's Dan. I'm a frustrated Cube user.
« Reply #7 on: August 12, 2016, 08:43:09 pm »
Wow three days later the power supply burned out., surprise surprise. They're only $100, new spool of filament $80, the machine brand new cost me $200. Should have went with the Chinese kit.

Randy

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Re: Welcome, my name's Dan. I'm a frustrated Cube user.
« Reply #8 on: August 23, 2016, 03:55:27 pm »
Howdy and sorry you are having such problems. I just acquired a Cubepro Trio and a Cube (3rd gen). To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from the Cube, and ran into feeding issues immediately. However after sorting that out, my first prints were excellent - exceeding my expectations. I agree that the cube software is amateurish, but since I also have a Cubepro, I'm happy with the simplicity and ease of use.
Moving on to the Cubepro; it is not meeting my expectations;(
The print quality at the 200 setting produces rough looking prints. So fat I've only used ABS and Nylon - neither producing the quality of the PLA on the humble Cube3.
Since I've only been at this a couple weeks now, I expect my learning curve will improve the final prints. I'm hoping to get some good tips/shortcuts from this forum.

Best to all,

Randy