I need to ask a clarifying question.
How do you guys actually measure the differences in printing thickness. By this i mean practically and physically.?
Is it adequate to simply be using a vernier caliper?
Or are u using a micrometer?
The differences you have picked up to identify the table was not flat have me thinking one can get carried away here seeing ghosts and replacing parts ad nauseam.
Without a feel for it how pliable is the printed plastic when it comes to measuring 0.1mm or less differences.?
There are two ways of looking at what you guys with the A8 are doing.
One is enjoying the techie ride of building fine tuning and fiddling with the printer, the other side is, when i buy a machine, take my planner, jointer, table saw et al, i want the machines to plane , joint and cut.
I somewhat resented the fact that out of the three examples the only one i did not fiddle with and fine tune was the planner. But that was mostly because they made it so you have to accept it as it is.
The other was these all needed tweaking due to price point.
So it strikes me that there is significant value now, (in hindsight having watched what ya all have been up to) in buying higher up the cost chain if one can ascertain that the higher up the chain unit has been refined to the extent you have done with these A8 machines.
Thats where my doubt and trust factor comes in and it somewhat puts one off getting into this market.
Tech has built this Aura around it of acceptance by the consumer of all sorts of what i consider to be malpractices.
First we have to accept terms dictated on software use or dont get to use it.
Then we buy devices, from a to z types and are expected to accept somewhat unfinished or under developed devices and just accept as you all have done, repairing and evolving them as a community of fixers/tinkeres OR buying into just replacing them when the next developed iteration makes its debut.
I guess its better than the old vapour ware promises of the past , given today most often you get a certain amount of genuine functionality, however as a consumer i truly resent this trend of waste being sold to us as continuous improvement.
Just consider how incredibly old woodworking machines, i think particularly of old bandsaws fundamentally still work and do so well for the owner, that after having changed hands in its lifetime many times over.
I think of the Shapeoko buyers who bought a ver 1 then a ver 2 now its at ver 3.
Yes one can justify all the versions, but let's be real, the 1 came to market with a promise but was not fully developed and was a bit if a bait and switch job by the developers selling a person something they want (cnc) but in a form where it was not truly going to fulfill the end users true desires but did it to match a price point.
They knew the weakness. They knew the rails would need to be beefed up. But they needed to sell.
My apologies i think this stuff is truly great, but as one who has over his lifetime thus far supported tech most often as an early adopter, and been burnt time and time again, this is looking like same thing.
It should not be sold as a 3D printer is my point. It should be sold as a 3D printing learning kit like the mechano kits of our youth.
Seen in that light, bingo its a absolute winner. But if u want to do 3D printing, then like a decent table saw i guess one needs to fork out the extra coin.
I just would like to see these (by these i mean all the low cost kits) sold as what they are and not what they are not.
I don't know if i am up to spending so much scarce time fiddling and diagnosing what is wrong with the unit one receives.
As Bill noted he don't have the same issue. So maybe he has a different issue but he now needs the ability to diagnose cause effect and remedy on his own.
Thats one heck of a indicator to man in street as to the value of a company that supports its products say like a machine supplier like Grizzly for example.
Imagine getting a planner and being on your own and reliant on your virtual community for tech support to make it do what it was sold to do.
I dunno, this techie is getting old i guess.