What's left to do so that the BB is ready for prime time?

Discussion in 'BigBox General Chat' started by R Design, Mar 23, 2016.

  1. R Design

    R Design Well-Known Member

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    Soon BB will enter the post-Kickstarter era.

    I'd be interested to know what little changes you think will turn it into a proper consumer product.

    If I was to vote on one thing: I'd say BB needs a new build of Marlin. Right now BB is capable of too many random (and self-destructive) behaviours to be sitting on shop shelves. Calling it a Release Candidate build was more than willfully optimistic on the part of the Marlin team.

    And then there are the nut traps. I have nothing against them - and even had fun - but on average they make people moan. More regular consumers - less hard-on enthusiasts - might go into and come out of their builds with a bigger smile on their faces if China had already locked the nut into the trap for them.

    Over to you....
     
  2. Kanedias

    Kanedias Well-Known Member

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    If the nut traps were side insert that'd sort the problem in one fell swoop. Although really to be wider adoption it'd want to come preassembled, or with sub-assemblies done and nut traps filled to the frame pieces ready to just IKEA together.


    The software is a far bigger issue imo.

    Auto-home & level should just be automatic at the start of every print

    On ANY failure the bed should drop and the extruder head park

    Pause & Filament swap should be as easy as Sailfish

    Error messages should actually be descriptive: "The Print stopped because the extruder could not maintain Temp"
     
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  3. Henry feldman

    Henry feldman Well-Known Member

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    Um, unless they are selling them assembled a serious editing of the manual. Yes, I agree on the auto-home, bed drops, etc, but man does the manual need good/many-more pictures and application of all the corrections from the forums applied...
     
  4. Spoon Unit

    Spoon Unit Well-Known Member

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    In my humble opinion, 3D printing has way too many variables to ever be "consumer" ready, if what you mean is - for the masses. The adventurous and persistent people will work through the challenges and come to understand the art, and I think it is an art, of 3d printing. From model building, to slicing, to operating your printer, many will just give up and go watch TV rather than work through the challenge.

    Marlin does seem really flaky at times, and absolutely solid at others. It's open source software and will only get better with time. Any one of us can take part in its development if we have the desire to do so.

    On the BB, the nut traps probably would have been a huge pain if I hadn't spent the time glueing the nuts in. They're glued in for about 95% of mine. It would have been nice to have started with an exact number of nuts to glue to traps as I hadn't done about 15 at the start. A set of pre prepared labels to put on all the wires might have been nice. In the end I never even bothered. Including an Astrosyn damper would be nice for new buyers. A better method for getting the bottom on an off would be great. A bigger hole for the SD card for the Pi (especially now the Pi3 doesn't have a spring for the SD card) would be nice, that's just way too small. the ooze dump is whole inadequate for anything more than a simple dual model. For the frog, a better solution is needed; I wouldn't set that job running and leave it over night with the supplied dump box in place for example.

    The RUMBA board was not an impressive bit of kit in terms of build quality. Those green connectors move way to much and made me feel entirely uncertain it would work after I'd tightened things. On that point, some supplied ferrules would have been nice to ensure solid connections.

    The build wiki gets better ever day. Maybe could to with a "Regular Maintenance" section if there isn't one. I feel I should be checking screws and re-applying grease, possibly even re-seating or re-commissioning some part of the printer and various different schedules.

    The OctoPi package should include a Pi3 now for simplicity of connection.
     
  5. mike01hu

    mike01hu Well-Known Member

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  6. Henry feldman

    Henry feldman Well-Known Member

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    I laughed at the first sentence, as I was just showing a coworker the settings in S3D, and we got to the "Advanced" tab, and he laughed with "If that's advanced, what the hell were the first 100 variables?" :rolleyes:
     
  7. Miasmictruth

    Miasmictruth Well-Known Member

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    Great improvments, many of which I am sure will evolve as time goes on.

    A nice piece of fluff would be an offered lighting kit that works off a rumba out put, which if I am not mistaken has been done I forget who to give credit to :/. A future release could come with it by defult or as an option.

    I would also like to see a way to swap between single and dual heads which I am sure will get there with community driving effort if nothing else.
     
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  8. Spoon Unit

    Spoon Unit Well-Known Member

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    The BigBox is, by design, hackable. Adding too much to the default setup would take away some of the fun would it not? :)
     
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  9. Kanedias

    Kanedias Well-Known Member

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    Yeah but I can see the value of having load of option 'kits' that just plug in.
     
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  10. Spoon Unit

    Spoon Unit Well-Known Member

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    Yes. Option kits. Totally.
     
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  11. Mike Kelly

    Mike Kelly Volunteer

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    If you don't like the manual, you can help improve it ;)

    Open Source and whatnot

    All things considered it's pretty great.
     
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  12. Falc.be

    Falc.be Well-Known Member

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    - Filament tension system needs to change
    - firmware should not freeze when there is a temp error


    They already said on kickstarter once that a laser module was high on the want list
     
  13. Steven

    Steven Well-Known Member

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    I would be glad to help document and take pictures of my build to augment any other online build.
    But I have not yet received by BB dual.
     
  14. Miasmictruth

    Miasmictruth Well-Known Member

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    I have another one to add, after struggling to insert the hotends into the X carriage last nightand all the fan mounts being broken (Livi, Rich Rap ect.) I think a redesign or update to the X carrage is in order.
     
  15. Old_Tafr

    Old_Tafr Well-Known Member

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    Lots of good points, things like the nut traps are being changed, not sure that they will make later builds, but in-lieu of that elsewhere is a little spring clip that can be printed to lock the trap/nut in place.

    There may be "consumer" 3D printers sometime soon but not yet, the BB isn't intended to be that, particularly as it's so hackable. Yes lots of things that could be better and I'm sure will be as time progresses as there are not many things that didn't benefit from being used showing up what could be better.
     

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