Very disappointed with my Inventure - need some serious advice!

Zortrax Inventure
1

Hi Guys,

I have Zortrax Inventure, bought it November last year. Since the beginning I have nothing but issues with it and I am genuinely wondering if its something defective with the printer, or maybe I am doing something wrong with it… Or its the environment or the wrong moon phase.

I will give you a brief description of the issues I am getting, and then will provide more information below.

Issues I experienced in the last 6 months

  • Lower extruder fan failure twice (2x) in a row on a 56h complex medical print. (x2 £20)
  • Hot end module completely clogged beyond repair after only 112 hours of printer operation (not continuous but multiple prints) - by the way I only used Zortrax branded filaments up to this stage. (£130)
  • Extruder module getting clogged up after each print. So after each print no matter how small I have to unload both filaments. Open the extruder and clean bits of the support material off the little cog that pushes it through the canals. I have to check all the canals for any other bits by pushing a piece of filament through both holes - both ways (just to be sure). Then I have to resemble the whole thing and load the filaments.
  • After loading the support filament (I am using Support Premium) and starting a new print (after doing maintenance alignments and so on) I have to sit there and wait to make sure that the support material flows properly and I dont hear the click of death. If i do hear it then I have to repeat the whole maintenance procedure again.

I had to buy the polybox to keep the spool of support material dry. That is all fine and dandy but it seems that when the spool is full the little motor in the extruder has issues pulling the material into the extruder. So with new spool you have to sit there and feed it manually for a while. Note: The polybox filament support bars roll very smoothly.

Now the biggest problem is that no one from support ever came back to me - but I guess that’s ok because of corona. I will assume its because of that. Hence I am asking here.

Dear Zortrax - you charge a premium price for your printer and so far my experience has been very poor - please do tell me what i am doing wrong? Can I expect at least some replacement parts from you guys, since the printer breaks during normal operation. Its not like I am using it under the shower!

EXTRA INFO

What am I printing

I use the printer to print complex shapes like ball joints or articulated arms. Also use it for medical prints like working human jaw. Other things that i printed on it were simple boxes and cases for raspberry pi or pi camera (with arm holders and so on).

How often do I print

Due to the time I already lost because of it, I had it running in total for about 5 days in 10 day period.

Times to complete prints

Anything between 16h - 58h

What materials do I use

Mainly ZPLA, Z-ULTRAT and Z Support Premium
Z Support Premium is stored in 0% humidity.

Where is the printer stored

Its in its own room, average air humidity throughout the day is 35 - 45% and the temperature around the house is kept at 20C

Please if anyone has any idea what is wrong here please please get in touch! I can’t believe this printer proves so far to be so unreliable!

Pawel

2

Hey Pawel,

Sorry to hear of all your problems. Zortrax has helped me to work through a few issues but none of those have been nearly as extreme to what you have mentioned (meaning that on average it seems to perform the way its intended to). That said, I do have similar issues where I need to unload and reload support material between prints which gets pretty annoying. otherwise I do hear “the click of death” I’d love it if they could get to the bottom of that issue. I’m not sure if its a filament issue or something else. Just curious, it sounds like you are using spools and not cartridges correct?
-ryan

3

Hey Ryan!

Thanks for answer, much obliged!

Yes indeed I am using spools at the moment. However, when I used cartridges I had the same issue with the support material. Worse yet it seems that the moisture got inside the cartridge and I lost about 150g of quite expensive support premium material.

So now I bought 800g spool and i keep it in polybox and it seems to be working fine, apart from the issue that the motor seems to have v little pulling power.

Once again thanks Ryan!

Pawel

4

Hello Pawel,
I experienced my first filament feed block recently and it is a hard work to fix it. I used Semiflex as filament. When hotend becomes blocked for some reason, Semiflex can cause serious problems. Semiflex is extremely strong and flexible filament, I like it because it produces prints like silicone etc.

Inventure managed to tie itself into a knot, namely filament entangled right there where those wheels turn the cartridge. And then there was a knot and I took a picture but here you can’t add pictures…
Knot was easy to fix but blocked hotend and extruder were NOT. I even had to break hotend into pieces. And some parts of extruder too to turn the motor a little bit with tip of screwdriver and only then filament was released. I have used the original hotend for about 117 hours now. Maybe I have to buy a new one.

My blocks happened just after 3-5 hours of print. I managed the second time to change material without material being cut inside the printer and ran hotend maintenance twice to clean nozzle using PETG. And then continued with Semiflex for 2 more hours.

If you print 16 plus hours then problems may certainly arise. May be you received a Monday machine, like somewhat less quality built printer. Maybe you could try to print some small things every now and then with different filaments than normally to try to clean the hotend.

If you are feeding from spool and not cartridge then those wheels are not turning the filament. So it can be too much work for the extruder alone. I haven’t used spool yet on Inventure. Can you print the spool holders?

Generally speaking I am quite happy with my printers (M200 and Inventure) and the help centre, they usually answer the same day to emails. But I have never tried to get spare parts etc, just advice. There are issues with all printers, I suppose.