Up! Box 3D printer - Part 3 - After a Month of use

So I thought I would write up a short review of the UP Box having used it now for over a month.

It has been an interesting month of use, it produces consistently good prints if your careful, and follow good housekeeping of the unit. In this I mean the perforated bed! This seems to me to be one of the Ups biggest strengths and yet one of its weaknesses.

The perforated bed is a great design idea, and simple in use. The idea being it helps the ABS to stick down to the bed by allowing the ABS to ooze into the perforations (The printer is setup to level and auto height adjust to the right height to allow the correct amount to ooze into the perforations whilst achieving a good 1st layer - Get the height wrong and you either get ABS jams in the extruder, or the print doesn't stick). This works great to start off with, but after a while the perforations get clogged up and then the extruder stops extruding and skips on the gear (caused by back pressure) ( and then causing the extruder gear wheel to clog with bits of ABS meaning a complete tear down and clean of the extruder). Looking on the forums everyone suggests wiping over with Acetone prior to printing. Whilst this works to start off with, you can end up wiping endlessly to get it to start working properly (I found a simple wipe after a while did not solve the Extruder skipping).

I have tried a couple of other ideas.

1) Submerse the perforated bed into a vat of Acetone - This is the brute force and ignorance method which works really well, although you do need a well ventilated area and that you agitate the acetone every so often in order to get it to flow through the perforations... I did this with the bed for around 4 hours and seems to clean them out really well.

2) Sit at a desk with a PCB spike (Used for cleaning through holes in PCBs out ready for soldering), or similar stiff spike - maybe one for starting a hole in wood. Push the spike into each hole with ABS in, and this will push the ABS out the back. Then use the pair of wire cutters to remove the neat little ABS plug out. Yes very time consuming, but something good to do whilst you are waiting for a piece of software to load up/ Waiting for your document to load up/ Or simple had enough of the office politics and want to wind down!


The other weakness I feel is the extruder - its a simple gear on a stepper motor which if you get any jams leaves you having to dismantle the extruder (Instructions are given to do this, so they expect you to have to do it often)

and in short would I purchase one for myself... Hmmm hard to say at the moment