about ginger bread steel and licorice tubes…

Many users of a M200 most probably would agree that the printer is a rock solid piece of mechanical engineering, but what I found is like with many other products: As it comes to 'mass' production, designs are overruled by costs, manufacturers inabilities and lack of quality assurance (and missing agreements about that between designers and manufacturer).

 

That's also true for my M200 (I have a hardware generation 4 device, just talking about that).

 

I thought it is a good idea to immediately replace the screws that are subject to maintenance actions because the original ones are almost ruined after unscrewing them twice especially if using the provided allen keys. Talking about that with others I learned that term 'ginger bread steel' and this  exactly is what describes it. I just bought regular screws on a hardware store (many will just find them  in their DIY storage bins) at almost no cost and this screws beat the quality of the original screws inside that 2000 Euro printer easily.

 

The filament feed tube is also not of very high quality. It gets easily squeezed by some tube holders (the ones recommended by Zortrax don't have this issue!) and it shrinks a bit at the extruders filament input because of heat and pulling force against it.

 

Up to now I replaced the screws for the extruders housing and the perf board and bought me a higher quality PFTE tube as a replacement of the original filament feed tube.

 

The mod for the extruder gear fan I posted today could make the replacement of the tube unnecessary because it moves the tube away from the heat, but my original one was already worn out.

 

 

I need to replace the screws that afix the ribbon cable assembly to the feeder (the 2 small rounded head allen screws)  They are almost totally stripped out and yes I agree that the first thing is to not use the cheapo allen wrenches that come with the kit as you'll strip out small allen key bolts with them.

I've looked in the docs on Zortrax and can't find a parts diagram for the Zortrax so I can replace the various screws and bolts if I need to.  Anyone know where to find that info.?