New Z-suite 1,6 : print quality?

Hope you dont go NightShift, your the one of very few people to hit the nail on the head on this forum. always enjoy reading your posts as they can be very educational 

Well said Andy_B! Don't abandon ship Night Shift. Misery loves company. ;-)

Nightshift,

Thanks for the great post! I was going crazy because I thought I wasn't maintaining my Zortrax properly as the quality of my prints has been steadily declining since I bought my machine back in Sept./Oct. despite completing all the firmware and software updates and performing maintenance on my machine quite regularly.

It's sad that Zortrax isn't engaging its community of users to improve their printers, software, and the whole customer experience. I just finished reading The 10 Principles behind Great Customer Experiences by Matt Watkinson and I'd highly suggest that the C-Suite over at Zortrax reads it as well (and hopefully starts implementing it). It's sad that a start-up isn't using its frontline customer's feedback for data analysis and product development/improvement and instead is relying on a small sample of internal employees to implement changes.

As a new user hiding this forum from their main site is just ridiculous. A few months ago I kept looking for the forum and couldn't find it on the Zortrax site anywhere. For me even sending Zortrax a question is a nightmare as they require you to fill out a form with your machine serial number, name, email, street address, telephone number etc. just to get someone to help you with a new product! I've never seen a worse customer feedback form for any company or any product in the world... and I'm a pretty easy going person :)

It's unheard of for a new company in a new industry to not rigorously engage its customers (especially willing ones!) in ironing out the kinks in their current offerings and helping in the product development cycle... heck it's unheard of for any company in 2016 to not engage and data-mine its customer base in order to help to improve their product(s). Anyway, sad to see a new company making such easy mistakes to correct. I literally feel each time I try to deal with a problem with my Zortrax that the experience gets worse :(

Regards,

LHI

Want older version

Hold on tight because this is a long one, but I promise this is the last.

Well do we expect much? Read the older posts and I am sure you will find this same group (minus the new guys) complaining about the same stuff. Every new patch we get is another randomly assorted box of "improvements" that seem to give us a little bit of what we want and undermine what we already have. I said it before and here I am going to say it again with no expectation of change. 

Zortrax uses a small sample size to improve upon. They use their own printers sitting on their desks to improve upon thinking that the upgrades they use will affect every printer in the same way. Even though these are machines using the same parts, for the most part (unintended pun), their environments are not the same and the users do not treat the machines the same. The engineer's Zortrax markets to will tinker with the machine and try to improve it. The hobbyist will follow the engineer and attempt to make a difference in their print production. The school's will leave the machine stock and make feign attempts to trouble shoot when there are issues only to find out it is something they cannot solve. 

Every single one of those groups at some point asks for help and assistance or at the very least the development team to listen to the issues at hand and try to fix them. I only remember one time when Zortrax asked for the community's assistance before a new software was launched. Was anyone given the software to test and give feedback on, because I honestly have not heard anyone speak about it or mention it. 

As some of you know I occasionally have a lot of time on my hands to do ridiculously long prints on the Zortrax and other machines. Im sure some of you have seen my post about the large Sky Blue Cube I printed for work a year ago, and if not: http://forum.zortrax.com/index.php?/topic/1333-truncated-dodecahedron/Post #6 is the full build area print. That print came off the plate without a single overhang, filament hair, burn mark, filament glob or any defects whatsoever. It was a testament to the Zortrax's power and precision. I had thousands of people at Makerfaire scanning it for defects or anything they could see to disprove that I had no cleanup on it. I reprinted that same object with the new firmware and software 2 weeks ago. 3 days 14 hours 15 mins was the new print time. Attached is the new cube, I have put in more then an hour of clean up and at this point I do not think it is worth my time to show this to a potential client. 

The Inventure is 1 year late and is way overpriced. The M300 is just a bigger version of the M200 and it will most likely be a disaster because of the software. These promos Zortrax keeps running are a sign that Zortrax, as a company, is trying to show its new investor they can sell units. Makerbot did the same think once upon a time and look at them now. A reputation worth scrap and a name that brings anger to its customers.

This rant has gone on long enough and I think that I am just about done here. I have always told the truth about what I think and I almost always try to put some thought into what I post and say to people. At times I am harsh or even incoherent but I have always attempted to add something positive. I do not see anything positive in this company any longer and I am done yelling at walls. 

I guess I figured my last post should be my longest.

-NS

Are you sure you've printed blue version WITHOUT support? Also, which Benchy boat is printed on which version?

Thought I'd see if Z-Suite v 1.6.1.1 was better for my parts than v .96 (which I use religiously for ABS).  Results are:zsuitenobetter.jpg

Can I get that model, please?

Are you sure you've printed blue version WITHOUT support?

LOL, I think he'd remember if he had to remove support from that part :)

Can I get that model, please?

Sending you the .stl Marcin.   -David

I had and i have (of couse) some problem with first layer of small cubes.

So today i've tested, for the first time, the Z-Suite 1.3.0. When i take the M200 in january a more updated version was out so i did not test older version.

But i'm happy to test the 1.3.0 because the first layer is much better !

Here a shot (20x20 mm cube).

I told it long before and was banned from the forum for telling the truth: Their SW and FW development circles around it's own center, things change every version to one direction and to the opposite in the next. There is almost no step further in this development except new material profiles. Z employed or contracted the wrong people to do this job, development stuck since 2+ years finally.

BTW, firmware is related to this also. I personally think the best combination is still 0.0.5 and Z-Suite 0.96, actually I use 0.0.8 now for added comfort.

Hi!

FW 0.0.5 and 0.0.8, which do you think better? 

Thanks.

LOL, I think he'd remember if he had to remove support from that part :)

I know how silly that sounds but that model looks like it had something attached to it (marked with red arrows)  :unsure:

Hi!

FW 0.0.5 and 0.0.8, which do you think better? 

Thanks.

I think 0.0.5 might be better with Z-Suite 0.9.6, but 0.0.8 provides more comfort and power saving feature.

But I did not do serious tests about it and as always it might change with different print object shapes.

BTW, I think this is biggest mistake of Z, thinking they could provide a generic printing profile for all of their customers needs (different shapes of printed objects) by letting the slicer adjust the finer print settings and lock out the Users printing experience. Actually they could not even manage stable results over some Z-Suite / FW releases.

Thought I'd see if Z-Suite v 1.6.1.1 was better for my parts than v .96 (which I use religiously for ABS).  Results are:zsuitenobetter.jpg

One side looks pretty poor but other side, pure ugliness.

One side looks pretty poor but other side, pure ugliness.

I'm guessing you printed with 1.6.1.1 (in the thumbnails you attached) ....... are you trying .96 next?  And thank you Marcin for looking into this I truly appreciate it. -David

Thought I'd see if Z-Suite v 1.6.1.1 was better for my parts than v .96 (which I use religiously for ABS).  Results are:zsuitenobetter.jpg

Hello! David, what FW are you using? Thanks.

-_-

Another shot about Z-Suite firt layer quality ...

I'm really disappointed about that. Really.

It feels to me that this is a fairly recent thing - first layer wasn't always so bad. It may have to do with changes that were made in response to people having difficulty removing rafts.

OK, understood.

THEN ADD THREE OPTIONs:

A) easy to remove raft (actual)

B) normal to remove raft 

C) hard to remove raft

And so all are happy.

We have a Ferrari (the M200) and we're using it with a Fiat Panda engine (Zsuite).

Hello! David, what FW are you using? Thanks.

I've always upgraded FW as it was released and never seen issues. All of my issues are between versions of Z-Suite. -David

We have a Ferrari (the M200) and we're using it with a Fiat Panda engine (Zsuite).

You are totally wrong, M200 is just machine which follow the Z-Suite commands. Raft, easy removeable support and other good things come from software.