I received my TAZ 6 yesterday and assembled it at the space last night. I had several people ask for information about the printer, so here are my initial impressions.
I was a little surprised that the machine came in a large box, but not large enough to not require some assembly. As some of you may know, I purchased a Printrbot Metal Simple when they first came out because they were billed as “the first 3D printer ready for consumers to use like laser printers”. That clearly was not the case. So I was a little hesitant when I realized I was going to have to ‘assemble’ this printer.
The difference in experience with the earlier one with the Printrbot was as stark as they could be. The TAZ came with three nicely printed and bound manuals. The first of which was a guide to the unboxing and assembly of the printer. In unpacking, I noticed a feature of the packing that would provide ample indication of the attention to detail. This shipping box, due to its size, had two hand hole openings to lift the box. On the inside they had installed ‘condoms’ (@Photomancer coined the term for them) that served to protect the contents from dust, dirt, and rain during shipping.
Most of the instructions covered the removal of protective material from the printer and the actual assembly consisted of using four provided thumb screws to attach the y-axis to the printer, using one socket head cap screw to attach the print head to the printer, then connect the matching cables. That is an interesting key. At no point were any of the cable connections in question since only one match was possible.
After that I downloaded and installed the custom version of Cura they suggest using (it will work with any software), plugging the printer in, connect it to the computer. Opening Cura automatically oopened the Octopus looking thing the second manual uses as the test print piece. A few keystrokes later and the print was started. About 45 minutes later it was done.
In short this printer was unboxed, assembled, and created its first print with out any need for ‘tweeking’, adjustment, etc…
I was there when Walter was unboxing the printer. As he said the box was completely sealed against moisture/humidity to protect the contents. The hand cut-outs had glued-in “baggies” so you could get hand inside but it sealed the box - this was the first consumer grade type sealing I’d seen on a box itself. I laughed referring to them as “hand condoms”. But the instruction manuals, the boxing and everything else visible from just opening the box indicated this company was paying attention detail. I would expect they have done this level of quality during the manufacturing process.
Walter seemed to have no trouble in the assembly*, everything fit together fast without problems and I’d guess it was up and printing in less than hour.
The only thing that was kinda weird was watching a guy actually read the assembly instructions, I mean, it was kinda socially shocking for someone of my generation and gender - at least doing such a thing openly in a public place!
This is not to imply that I ever doubted this was beyond Walter’s capabilities, which made following the instruction manual all the more surprising…
Its not like I needed the instructions, but I used them to er… test their value…
The reality is that no, the instructions were not really nescessary, but they were appreciated. I have had way too many bad experiences with 3D printers…
What fun would buying a laser cutter from China be without the Chinglish instructions? That’s half the reason to buy one from China. Also their sales team was hilarious, they were like, we’ll sell you the 150 watt tube but we don’t want you to hate us (because it apparently sucks compared to the 130 watt tube).
I haven’t performed the test measurements yet, but visually the test looks very good. I have made a few other test prints in ABS and have not had any warping issues, even without an enclosure.
I just started the same Make test print using the nGen filament.
