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Yet more 3D Printer problems with the DaVinci

A project log for ramanPi - Raman Spectrometer

The open source 3D Printable Raman Spectrometer using a RaspberryPi and easy to find off the shelf components..

flcfl@C@ 10/24/2014 at 22:223 Comments

Awesome.. XYZ again with the DRM cartridges.. I made the mistake of upgrading my software for the DaVinci recently.. Tried printing a new cuvette tray today.. Nope. It claims my cartridges are fake.. I bought a bunch ( A BUNCH ) of their overpriced cartridges from amazon for this project...

Ok, so in all fairness... $500 is cheap.. And it's done a reasonable job at printing most of the time...well, part of the time..there's a lot of frustration involved..and the cartridges are ridiculously overpriced..and there's quite a bit of filament completely wasted in each cartridge because it never lets you use it all...in addition to the pile of empty cartridges I have stacked up now...I probably have $60 worth of filament that I can't use because it's all in the last bit.. This trying to crack down on people using regular filament catches people like me in the crossfire.. I just hope enough people read this before thinking about buying one.. It doesn't turn out as cheap as it first seems...so price shouldn't be your reason to buy one...if there is a reason, it's because you don't have to build it..but as you've seen in previous posts....that doesn't get you out of troubleshooting and maintaining it...or the frustration of having it fail at the worse possible time..

Rant complete... So, I have a support question in through their website because they apparently don't answer the 855.999.3348 support number, instructing you to leave a message and they'll 'get back to you'....seriously..

So it doesn't look like you'll see a cuvette tray in the video for the finals... compliments of XYZ and their DRM...

Discussions

Delta 9 wrote 10/25/2014 at 17:51 point
FL....... Have you considered using aluminum castings for your project...... ?? I have a small shop and have sand cast a lot of stuff, if the parts could be produced in styrofoam, then castings could be made like lost wax is done..... I also sent to you an email to your scientific co.

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davedarko wrote 10/24/2014 at 23:27 point
What a shame! I'm not a big fan of this 'oil vs. oil-lamp' and 'game console vs. games' type of financing products anyway. I've read that there are resetters for the cartridges so that you could use cheaper filaments with it? Good luck for fixing the problems!

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fl@C@ wrote 10/25/2014 at 00:18 point
I totally agree.. And ultimately, it doesn't do them any good.. people still find ways around it.. It's pretty bad when a company seems so paranoid about it that they take drastic measures like this to the point where it won't even read their own cartridges...
I haven't tried to use the restters or anything..... I've seen them, but for the time being I wanted to make sure I didn't rock the boat too much and had a reliable printer to print for the contest...that didn't do much good I guess... ha ... But I violated my own rule twice now of upgrading the software in the middle of a project... and this is the price.. =D
But alas, I did seem to fix the problem for at least this print until I find some more time.. Turns out, I uninstalled the new version of the XYZware and wen to their website to find the older version I had....which wasn't there...surprise.. But they did have a windows XP version which I downloaded and installed....so far so good...it's about 20% through printing right now :) They responded in email to my grumpy message on their website asking me to take photographs of the LCD screen on the printer, screenshots from my computer, photos of the cartridge serial number (this happened on every cartridge I tried), and even a scrreenshot of the sales invoice from amazon!! I don't have time to play photographer for them quite honestly... We'll see how they respond to my spirited reply... but so far I just got a ticket number and an indication it's been forwarded to some other person... I'm not impressed... After everything is said and done here, I'm considering either just hacking the bits of out this thing and getting rid of the XYZ software / firmware or something else... I'm not sure if Amazon would take it back at this point... But I'm much less a fan than I was when I started this project...

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