The M200 Plus printer is mechanically very sound, but the electronics hardware and firmware update system have been a NIGHTMARE for me.
My printer now is an expensive brick AGAIN, stuck displaying “Error 8 - Unable to communicate with control board”
This new breakdown is probably the 5th time my printer has become non-functional, it’s always been some trouble related to the electronics and/or firmware.
As a design engineer myself, it’s easy to spot a design bodge, the hardware design of this thing is a string of separate boards stacked and strung together with endless fragile and redundant connections.
The physical design makes servicing the electronics a total pain, the industrial designers got their way, forcing the layout into a horrible mess to satisfy an aesthetic criteria - Bravo.
The firmware auto-update is another mess- that’s what bricked my unit last time.
If my printer works, I want it to stay that way, I don’t want to roll the dice every time I turn the thing on.
The basic firmware update from the USB concept was good enough and under the USERS CONTROL, you wasted so much mental energy turning this product into a fragile mess of bloatware.
So much design work went into making this thing “pretty” - the user interface and graphics seem to be far more important to Zortrax than the reliability of the product.