Cube and Cubify to go away

[wgardner]

http://www.3dsystems.com/press-relea...mer-3d-printer

Does anybody know what impact this will have on all of the Ekocycle printers that were given away to FIRST teams last year? The Ekocycle printers are based off the Cube and utilize the Cubify software. Will Ekocycle filament cartridges still be available for sale? Will there be any support? etc.

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by wgardner

http://www.3dsystems.com/press-relea...mer-3d-printer

Does anybody know what impact this will have on all of the Ekocycle printers that were given away to FIRST teams last year? The Ekocycle printers are based off the Cube and utilize the Cubify software. Will Ekocycle filament cartridges still be available for sale? Will there be any support? etc.

To quote the link you provided:

...The company will continue to sell the existing inventory of Cube printers. Ongoing support and sale of materials for Cube customers will be provided through a new e-commerce platform on the company's primary corporate domain, 3dsystems.com...

IMO, the Cube printers are one of the worst, most overpriced printers on the market, and I for one, will not miss them.

I'm tempted to go out and buy an Arduino and a G-shield for our Cube and just bypass the stock control system and use the existing motors. The existing Cube software is terrible, and the filament spools are expensive and too small.

[techhelpbb]

http://www.makergeeks.com/cu3dprfiad.html

Hmm I wonder if they would complain...

[wgardner]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

http://www.makergeeks.com/cu3dprfiad.html

Hmm I wonder if they would complain...

Would love to know if anyone got that hack working using the PET filament that the Ekocycle printer uses, and where the PET filament was purchased from as there seem to be lots of PET variants (PETG, PET+, etc).

[marshall]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

To quote the link you provided:


IMO, the Cube printers are one of the worst, most overpriced printers on the market, and I for one, will not miss them.

I'm tempted to go out and buy an Arduino and a G-shield for our Cube and just bypass the stock control system and use the existing motors. The existing Cube software is terrible, and the filament spools are expensive and too small.

I agree completely BUT for what it's worth, it took very little setup to get the ekocycle printing. We had it out of the box and printing in about 30 minutes. It was a mediocre printer though and we never could get the sizing quite right but we did use parts that it printed on our robot.

[frcguy]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

To quote the link you provided:


IMO, the Cube printers are one of the worst, most overpriced printers on the market, and I for one, will not miss them.

I'm tempted to go out and buy an Arduino and a G-shield for our Cube and just bypass the stock control system and use the existing motors. The existing Cube software is terrible, and the filament spools are expensive and too small.

Agreed. We have a CubeX Trio and the only way it is bearable to use is if we use Kisslicer and CubeItmod, which is an external slicer/plugin combination that you can import STL files into, change settings, and then convert the output into something the printer can understand. Not sure if it will work with your printer, but I would suggest looking in to it as it makes fine tuning and other stuff much easier and allows you to use non-cube filament on the printer.

[jkelleyrtp]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

To quote the link you provided:


IMO, the Cube printers are one of the worst, most overpriced printers on the market, and I for one, will not miss them.

I'm tempted to go out and buy an Arduino and a G-shield for our Cube and just bypass the stock control system and use the existing motors. The existing Cube software is terrible, and the filament spools are expensive and too small.

Agreed as well, for an entirely different reason. We pulled the power cord out and forgot to loosen the barrel end and actually pulled out the entire power jack. The machine has been broken for 3-4 months now and customer service has sent us a replacement, but after repairing the jack, half of the screen no longer works. According to them we have to buy a whole other unit.

[BenGuy]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

To quote the link you provided:


IMO, the Cube printers are one of the worst, most overpriced printers on the market, and I for one, will not miss them.

I'm tempted to go out and buy an Arduino and a G-shield for our Cube and just bypass the stock control system and use the existing motors. The existing Cube software is terrible, and the filament spools are expensive and too small.

You haven't figured out the trick yet . All you do is leave an empty cartridge in and have a secondary supply of PLA that the printer is actually using. It is an effective way to reduce the WAY overpriced PLA that they try to sell.

[BenGuy]

Yeah, the Cube is not the best by any means and definitely overpriced (Apple anyone? Beats? ) but our team won one free in some giveaway last year and it suits our needs well. We have to make a bracket or something every once in awhile and it works great for that but it is definitely overpriced. Can be hard to work with at times, but you can start to figure out common fixes that solve most problems.

[Fusion_Clint]

Originally Posted by BenGuy

You haven't figured out the trick yet . All you do is leave an empty cartridge in and have a secondary supply of PLA that the printer is actually using. It is an effective way to reduce the WAY overpriced PLA that they try to sell.

Does this actually work with the eckocycle?

[BenGuy]

Originally Posted by Fusion_Clint

Does this actually work with the eckocycle?

No clue if it works with the eckocycle, I don't have access to one and so I can't test it, all we have is the Cube 2nd gen.

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by BenGuy

No clue if it works with the eckocycle, I don't have access to one and so I can't test it, all we have is the Cube 2nd gen.

From what I understand, the bypass is possible on 2nd gen Cube is because of an older firmware version, if you update the firmware, the bypass isn't possible anymore. Consequently, I would assume as the eckocycle is a much newer printer, they likely shipped with a set of firmware that already included this fix.

That said, I don't have one of these printers either so I cannot confirm this either.

[BenGuy]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

From what I understand, the bypass is possible on 2nd gen Cube is because of an older firmware version, if you update the firmware, the bypass isn't possible anymore. Consequently, I would assume as the eckocycle is a much newer printer, they likely shipped with a set of firmware that already included this fix.

That said, I don't have one of these printers either so I cannot confirm this either.

I think it should still be possible as it is totally hardware, no software at all, the only way that the Cube knows that something is installed is by a sensor in the bracket, if you leave an empty one there and just have a large and cheaper supply next to it, it should work perfectly fine as long as the stepper can pull it in well.

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by BenGuy

You haven't figured out the trick yet . All you do is leave an empty cartridge in and have a secondary supply of PLA that the printer is actually using. It is an effective way to reduce the WAY overpriced PLA that they try to sell.

Ours won't feed our bulk filament though. This has happened before with Cube filaments too, I think its a setting on the power level of the stepper motor, hence why I want to bypass the integrated controller. Also being able to use open source software would be nice too.

[BenGuy]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

Ours won't feed our bulk filament though. This has happened before with Cube filaments too, I think its a setting on the power level of the stepper motor, hence why I want to bypass the integrated controller. Also being able to use open source software would be nice too.

Agreed about software, and I think it depends on the resistiveness of the bulk, you can't just buy anything as you noticed because it might be too much to pull for the stepper but there are a few kinds that should work.