Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

At first I left a 5 Star review. But.. The printer does print well... For the money, the best printer with this large print area. My real rating is three or four stars but there are so many issues, and I felt people needed to know these issues before purchasing. First, Pros 1I’ve never had a failed print, once I fixed the first CON. (I’ve owned and use over a dozen 3d printers. I use them until they wear out, and this one is a work horse for many tasks.) 2)The printer holds it’s level very well. 3)The software that comes with is OK. 4)They give great customer support. I used it and it was great. 5)Love the removable build plates. Best in the industry, in my opinion. 5)Large Size is great, but costs less than the other printers of the same size. (But it doesn’t cost less, if you use it for production. See number 4 below.) Cons I don’t like to ever like to write reviews with bad cons. I’m doing this so you can be informed. 1)The plastic spool can have the filament plastic slip off when printing larger objects, ruining your prints. The reason this happens is that much of the printer filament is pulled off the spool when the printer head is towards the front of the printer, and then the printer head moves quickly to the back and this pushes the filament back into the draw tube and off of the filament reel. I solved this issue by purchasing for about $6 this (PTFE Teflon Bowden Tube for 1.75 Filament (2.0mm ID/4.0mm OD) – White Connector Tubing for 3D Printer - 1.5 Meters). About 18 inches is enough. Now even when the distance from the place where the filament is drawn from changes, the filament can never be pushed back into the printer. (My other printers came with this as a standard feature, but is easy to buy and add...) 2)The flexible cable running to the print head catches on the guild rods, really tearing the flexible cable, if printing larger objects. This is a real issue. I put tape on my cable to hold it in a better spot, but is still an issue. (From experience, this is a major wear issue with many heavily used 3d printers. It’s easy to replace, but this is a design flaw as it will cause early failure.) 3)This included slicer did not work as well as it should so I upgraded to Simplify3d. This did work well after I learned Simplify3d. Was a learning curve. 4)The printer’s fastest print speed is 50mm a second. I tested this with Simplfy3d where I tried progressively faster and faster print speeds. This one tops out at about 50mm a second. (I also tried slowing down the printer and it didn't correct the banding issue, but the quality went up slightly, as expected.) Most printers can print at 100mm a second or faster, but not this one! This means I need two printers to do the job of one printer. (Some printers can print at 250mm a second and they are bigger, and they don’t cost five times as much.) 5)Final surface quality can be sup par. At first I did only prototype parts, where I would print, change the design and print again. But when I needed a final part, here the printer failed. Three out of four surfaces were perfect, but one surface would have weird banding. I tried printing much slower. No help as it still had the banding. I tried printing 50micron layer height, but still banding. (My other printers have no such issue.) It appears that the firmware inside the printer calculates the wrong placement of the print head at times! Not by much, but enough to cause visible banding, sometimes severe, where other printers do not have this issue. 6)There are many features that are included in other printers, but not this one, such as a)no filament run-out sensor, (I did purchase a 3rd party one and installed it. It beeps loudly and provides time to change the reel.) and b)if one needs to use Simplfy3d, the display doesn’t work as it should on the printer (works but does not display the model.) c)You cannot monitor a print with a computer d)The only way to print is to load a file onto a thumb drive or SD Card and requires that you walk to the printer instead of doing it over a network (like Afinia 800+). My take away. Its a great reliable printer for prototypes. It will work better than most printers. If you are going to sand and paint for finish it will work well. (If you want print and be done with great quality, I've found other printers can be better. Not the homemade ones mind you, but Afinia has no such banding.) If you want great surface quality, or are in a production environment, you can do better. In my companies I could not recommend this printer. Even so, I do use this one I purchased and it is super reliable for most jobs! (I may try to work with QiDi and see if they can correct the banding issue. Takes time from my end to explain, but for now I'm just printing on other printers.) I am still using this printer for prototypes. For size it is the best value printer! All in all, I can't find a better printer that costs less, prints items this big, and is this reliable at printing. Sorry for the mixed review.