Ok that's it. The Da Vinci crapped out again today mid print.

3D Printing
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1

Ok that’s it. The Da Vinci crapped out again today mid print. This time another filament jam and now the second extruder won’t load. And taking the thing apart is a giant PITA (I have to cut zip ties, pull off plugs, blah blah blah). I suppose I have jammed filament in the nozzle. And now the X-belt is loose again, which means my 3D Printed belt tensioner needs to be replaced again (XYZ sent me a replacement, so I guess I need to replace that too). Oh and yeah, proprietary filament cartridges. I am debating selling it, but I won’t box it up and ship it, so if you want it, come get it. I have tons of other printers (like 6 Deltas and 4 i3s) that can take its place and I’m sick of messing with it. It’s easier to work with the open source stuff anyway.

2

Stories like these are why I’ve warned many away from the Da Vinci machines.

As you said, if you want to be able to work on and upgrade your printer, you really need to get something open source.

3

Well yeah, but for a while, it actually got a lot done. And here’s my rant:

  1. Their proprietary filament isn’t cheap and yet, after releasing a printer that uses any filament, you’d think they’d adjust their firmware to stop caring and let stick any filament in their cartridges. Nope, not to be. Worse, when it insists there’s no more filament, well, you open the cartridge and you have a ton of filament left.
  2. Why oh why is the extruder installed so that all its working parts are pointing to the back? I have to go over the top to actually get to fix anything there. And if it gets jammed, I am hosed.
  3. It once took me several hours to level the bed, because it has this sensor scheme that returns numbers, which you have to interpolate/extrapolate between sets of them to get the bed to an acceptable state. What’s the point of a sensor on the extruder if you don’t level with it?
  4. The thing is a beast. It’s yuuuuuuuuge, and yet the bed is not.

Ech…I’m going to go build something else.

4

I thought about a davinci, and while the cheap brand o bought was lousy and I had to take time to redesign it, at least it used standard parts that could be reworked in a layout I could redo.

I think davinci 3d printers fail to live up to their namesake.

5

Well…maybe not the pyramid shaped parachute…lol