You wanna see a catastrophic printing failure?
This is how our Pro2 Plus greeted me when I arrived at work this morning. The Left hot end had spun off the throat and was embedded in the print; but the extruder kept on trucking, and had vomited about 10 meters of filament inside the printer during the night. The (unused) Right hot end heater block had sheared off at the throat and been dragged around the printing area.
Un-frikin-believeable. . . Our N2Plus prints for days; it chokes every other month, but this "improved" printer has about a 50% success rate on most jobs. The second you turn your back on it, something goes wrong. This pig is cursed, and spends more time idle then working. Amazingly, none of the couplers had sheared. We have a nice compliment of spares, so I was able to replace the Left hot end, and installed a new throat on the Right hot end.
As usual, the Raise3D procedures are sub-standard and required extensive editing to add to our (growing) library of revised procedures that live in a binder adjacent to the printer.
A workmanship suggestion Raise3D:
Do NOT tin the wires on the termination side of the heaters! These wires are secured in terminal blocks on the Extruder PCB. If you're using IPC workmanship standards, (I'm a certified instructor as well as an engineer) conductors that are meant to be crushed using crimps, lugs, or terminal blocks should never be tinned - that's a Defect for all three workmanship classes. If you aren't building and certifying your factory technicians to IPC electronic workmanship standards, you should be. This was a huge red flag workmanship-wise and prompted me to inspect the rest of the electronics. What I found would have our QC department looking for new career paths.
The electronics workmanship in the Pro2 (I haven't had to disassemble the other printer yet) is not ready for prime time at this price point. Strain relief on most of the connectors (especially on the Motor Driver PCB) is non-existent. The 24vdc power were bent at a 90 angle and supporting the weight of the adjacent harness it was bundled to. A properly-designed cable bracket should be installed into the lower section of the chassis. Cables when bundled and run vertically like this should never be supported by connectors - this is what brackets are designed for!!!
As a large company, we can shell out $6k for defective hardware and it isn't a big deal. We can even modify it ourselves and make it more reliable. But as someone who is considering buying a high-end prosumer printer (like an E2) for a home business,, I would be hard-pressed to consider spending my own money on a Raise3D product. Unless the E2 is a generational leap over the Pro2, I'll look elsewhere after monitoring it's satisfaction on the this forum. (Yes, I know owners with printers that never break rarely post).
I loaded new Raise3D PLA filament yesterday and printed two test items without a problem before loading a 29-hour print prior to leaving work. Both hot ends had their Z-height offset calibrated, were securely fastened, and operated all afternoon prior to this. Even the build plate was lifted!
Epic fail!
