agilliam

As Anon4321 stated, these homing issues, bed adhesions, retractions, even print quality is all part.of a hobby thing. I don't care if you have a 5k machine, you still will have problems. Adhesions can be dealt with and you can find ways to make it work. I have. It takes time, patience, and experience.. and it doesn't come overnight. I'm still learning! But love manufacturing..

Just my 2 cents here. Makerbot makes great idea products, but their support is junk, quality lacks and their customer service is junk. Now, to further explain and clarify.. makerbot essentially stole the communities HARD WORK. Everyone putting in their research and development to make reprap and mightyboard and so on. Makerbot took the mightyboard that was 100% functional and working awesome. They took that added a few things like laser output and some other stuff and close sourced it. Meaning no pinouts, traces and you can't diy anything on their products. They closed sourced their boards and printers YET up untill a year ago they were still silk screening the board with Open Hardware and Open Software logo. Total conflict, and illegal in the lines of OHOS / OSOH.. I had emailed makerbot and had a conversation and of course they tried pressuring me to buy their product. I took a few weeks to gather my facts and information and responded. When I replied my 2 complaints about and reasons for not buying is you can't tinker with their printers, and the fact they are closed sourced. I then added how I don't agree with the way they took the communities work. Essentially stole it then close sourced it. I went on and explained in depth. His response was "well, if you have moral reasons against using a makerbot, then I don't know what to tell you!". He acknowledged they took the hard work of others and now put their name on their OHOS which all they did was change the layout of the board and add a few things. Ultimaker is a great setup. Pricey but worth it. If you want great support go to ultimaker. Their quality is sky high, and reliability is awesome. Plus it's upgradeable, hackable and you can add stuff to it. I don't own an ultimaker yet, but i have used my friends who has 3. I have 2 replicator clones (FlashForge Creator Pros) which have been great. Had a few issues with cheap Chinese parts and junk wiring and bad baord. Of course their support is junk too, and they give vague replies and mostly won't answer any technical isues. Plus if a part breaks it's a hassle to get replacements. I also have a Geeetech Prusa i3. It was a pike of junk. PSU caught fire, main control board caught fire, Too many broken parts. They sent a PSU to me labeled 350 watt. When it burned up and smoked I pulled it apart. It was only a 200 watt that they put a sticker on. I have totally rebuilt the entire prusa i3 and redesigned the extruder setup, electronics and it's working great. To touch again, ultimaker makes great products and has excellent support. As does lulzbot, but if it were me choosing between makerbot and ultimaker, hands down I would say ultimaker. If you asked me between lulzbot and ultimaker I couldn't say as I feel they are both great but I have not used a lulzbot. But they too are open source and hackable. If your good mechanically and with electronics. You know what you want, you know how to look at other printers goods and bads and combine the best parts, you could build your own printer that would be solid. But you'll be paying for it too. I'd still lean towards ultimaker. If I had it to do.over again, I would have never gotten a flashforge or even the second one, I would have got the ultimaker. Their extruder setup and x and y axis are just awesome. Quality is beautiful too I know this is probably a way old post. But my 2 cents.. maybe 3.

I know and see that this is an old topic, however I want to put this out there. If anyone is still coming up with these questions here is your solution. Octoprint. The maker of octoprint did such a wonderful job and then mark did a fantastic job with the GPS module. What this does allows you to take a g-code file and you can either upload it to the printer and printed G code. Or what you can do is upload STL file use cura to slice it right there just copy your Cura Configuration file to the octoprint server which will be running on a Raspberry Pi. What does does will convert an STL and the G code than the G code will go right out to the GPS module and print right there. What this allows you to do is to run your flashforge Creator Pro or MakerBot style printer wirelessly with the use of a Raspberry Pi. You also have the option of adding on a camera so you can watch your bills or even record your builds while they're being printed. They did a fantastic job with the octoprint application. I have been using it now from 4-5 months and have never had any issues.