If only they delivered excellent build quality. If only.
(Software is part of the build.)
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When I talk about build quality I’m only referring to the build quality of the hardware. Software can be fixed and updated. With that said Luban can definitely see some improvements and feature additions.
If only the delivered excellent build quality in their hardware. If only.
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I have no complaints with my Snapmaker, it has excellent build quality and has performed very well, the only issues I’ve ever had with it was Luban occasionally dropping wifi connection and the laser not activating on one occasion early on in my ownership. I’ve had no failed 3D prints, no issues with bed leveling, no issues with the laser auto focus or issues related to the CNC. All my problems are software related and are fixable.
Of course you can’t have 100% reliability and defects are expected to slip through in the manufacturing process from time to time. I’ve owned many cheap Chinese machines as well as machines designed and made from other countries and the Snapmaker is definitely one of the most refined (in terms of hardware) and well built machines in its price range.
The bar to declare something having excellent build quality is higher than just a personal anecdote that you don’t have any complaints. Or have you done a hardware teardown and reviewed the internals in which case what do you think about the quality of the soldering and the mechanical design choices in the lead screw where a sacrificial plastic nut is used to transfer thrust.
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The biggest disconnect between me and Snapmaker (I won’t claim to speak for anyone else) is that we were sold during the kickstarter on ideals of quality, modularity, and openness, but these have borne out more as marketing gimmicks than ideals.
Quality: We got quality packaging for sure, but the build and software quality have been hit or miss. I have not had as many problems as others with quality issues. My bed is warped, so I don’t ever print anything larger than 150 x/y on my 350. The laser and CNC software is limited. These are excusable if the other two ideals are met.
Modularity: yes, we have the ability to bolt on their modules, but with new module prices being based more on customer lock in than competitive market, they might as well not exist for me. I bought my A350 fully intending to get the rotary attachment, and have been looking forward to the new laser since first hints surfaced, but I have not bought anything since the kickstarter closed because of pricing. It would make more sense to just buy three separate systems and avoid the possibility of my entire investment being at risk because of one failed component.
Openness: This issue is really where the whole thing breaks down. We were promised openness, but got only token efforts in this area. While the source code is available piecemeal, the interfaces, cabling, etc. were not designed to facilitate user or third party add-ons. So as new innovations in bed leveling, hot end design, laser, etc. emerge, we are largely dependent on SM for the integration of these into the product at their prices. If SM wants to claim openness, make it easier for us to use something other than Laban. Port octoprint to the touchscreen. Design interfaces and cabling to open standards then publish useful documentation for the APIs and interfaces. Release a how-to on integrating a new tech instead of making us wait a year to get price gouged on your implementation.
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I’ve seen a teardown video before, nothing popped up at me as being bad design or build choices.
Plastic sacrificial nut? Are you referring to the plastic nut/s on the carriage assembly that look like they function as an antibacklash nut? I see no problem with that, I’ve owned a couple of DIY CNC machines with plastic antibacklash/transmission nuts used on all three axes. One of them I gave away to a friend of mine and it’s still going strong with all original parts 4 years later. As long as the appropriate plastic was used (like delrin for example) those nuts should last as long as the expected service life of the machine.
Overall I have not personally seen or experienced bad build quality or bad operation from my Snapmaker. I’m also a relatively new owner so it’s possible newer machines have less defects and better quality control than machines from a year or two ago. 
Maybe if someone is willing to disassemble a new linear module we can see how the smaller details compare to a linear module from 2020.
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I’m looking forward to someone doing this as well. It would be illuminating.
The 2 things I threw out are debatable, they were low hanging fruit. There are other issues, including the roller bearings, the tension mechanism, the overall rigidity of the Z axis mounts, and others. No single thing is a deal breaker, but all combined it chips away at the “premium brand” Snapmaker is trying to position them selves as. Each and every toolhead and module, controller, touchscreen, is filled with compromise that significantly limits the potential of the machine.
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The specs say its 630 grams so weight can’t be the reason, especially when considering the forces generated when using CNC. I do wonder if its because of the smaller workheight of the A150, not because of the risk of collision but calibration. I read when researching other machines which seem to use the same technology that the auto calibration uses light bounced into a CCD and maybe there is a minimum height at which this will work.
EDIT: I think I’m wrong on that too, the Wainlux head is even lower than the A150 would be.
The Snapmaker machines are just one big ball of compromise, but that’s mostly due in part of the nature of a 3 in 1 machine and designing it around a certain budget and market in mind. I like to look at it like a swiss army knife, it’s not great at anything but the convenience of having a knife, screwdriver and pliers in one compact tool is nice and useful.
I can think of a dozen ways to improve the current Snapmaker machine if money was of no concern but I think for its intended use cases the machine (at least mine) performs well. It’s not the fastest or quietest 3D printer in the world, but the print results are good and rival my friends Prusa Mini using Prusament PLA.
The CNC module is incredibly low powered (50w to 60w by my estimation) and is basically a toy but it’s useful for engraving on printed circuit boards, cutting foam or even thin sheets of wood or carving ontop of soft woods. Rigidty isn’t much of a concern given how weak the spindle is and the intended materials it’s supposed to be used for. Using proper feedrates the machine is rigid enough, if it isn’t the machine is being pushed too hard and settings need to be dialed back.
The 1.6w laser module works fine and seems to perform in line with other machines in its power envelope. Other than being slower than a belt driven laser machine the laser aspect of the Snapmaker works well.
The Snapmaker should not be considered a “workhorse” machine, nothing beats standalone single function machines. However it’s great for small projects, making prototypes, and giving creators that don’t have a lot of space a means to have access to an array if tools.
Again we’re comparing a swiss army knife to dedicated tools, there’s going to be quite a lot of compromises and design decisions that might not make sense such as using lead screws when the best FDM 3D printers use belts, but belts aren’t great for CNC applications so Snapmaker has to make concessions there. Of course ballscrews are better than lead screws but than increased costs and weight becomes a concern. Everything about the Snapmaker is compromise but I think the company is on the right track to making a competent and useful 3 in 1.
I emailed the sales team to see what they say. At this point the only thing I can think of is that they just don’t want to officially support the A150. Either they intend to not support it through an artificial software block or they just don’t want to advertise it as working (even though it technically does) because maybe one of the single axis linear modules of the A150 can’t move the 10w laser module around at the claimed feedrates for marking portraits/pictures, but I don’t think that’s the case. However I just don’t care about that, they should let users decide if running the laser a bit slower on the A150 is ok or not. It’s not like anyone is going to be cutting through 5mm thick wood at 100mm/s. Just being able to cut thicker material in a single pass is a huge win, I don’t care if I have to run it at 50 to 100mm/minute, it would still be an upgrade as the 1.6w laser can’t even cut through 5mm thick wood/acrylic no matter how many passes.
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You are right in much of what you say. Their pricing is over the top. Also many (including sadly myself to an extent) tend to fall into the sunk cost fallacy, where we reason, ok I have already paid so much so might as well build on what I have rather than start all over again.
Personally, as a Kickstarter backer for the A350, I cannot say I got a good product. Even running with the built in LUBAN profiles and with a gazillion tweaks, I have get to get a print I could proudly display. It actually hurts me inside to see the prints some people display. To be clear my prints are functional but not aesthetically good enough to showcase or sell. The laser was another let down. As for the CNC I have not tried it yet. I guess I just got a LEMON. Lesson learnt - don’t be an early adopter. If I had waited to buy, today I would get the machine with the new Rails, new Bed, new Power Supply and new Printer head too.
At this point I have tentatively gone with plan B, an effort at consolidating my position. I have ordered the 10W laser so that I will at least have a decent laser cutter and engraver in an enclosure. At the same time given the discounted price I also bought the new printer head in the hope that things might improve on that front. The jury is still out on the new rails although I suppose they could be the cause of my printing woes. Again at a 50% discount I am tempted to take this last gamble.
One alternative I have been considering for some time is to invest in a tried and tested Prusa MK3S for my printing needs. So the choice here is between buying the rails at circa €400 and taking the gamble that it will solve things or going directly with the Prusa for circa €400 more, but being sure of a decent outcome plus support all the way, plus I suppose an almost guaranteed sell-on price if it comes to that.
I have to again say I understand where you are coming from. I am purely a hobbyist and did not set out with the intention of selling anything. I am into other hobbies (electronics arduino robotics) and thought the snapmaker would allow me to indulge in some creativity. So far it has not done that as I have spent more time messing about with it then actually making things.
Thanks for sharing the link and for providing me with the opportunity to vent my frustration here.
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Defects certainly slipped through in mine…
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I received a response from Snapmaker. Their answer is that the auto focus and camera capture doesn’t work right due to the A150s small work area. I’m not sure how much of that is a legitimate hardware issue that is impossible to fix or if they could fix it through software but that’s their answer.
I then asked them if it’s possible to manually focus the 10w laser module similar to how the 1.6w module let’s you manually focus. I also asked if the user doesn’t care about the camera capture is it technically possible to run it on an A150. Lastly I asked them if why they didn’t take the A150 into account when designing the new laser module since currently a lot of users would be left out of the upgrade.
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Sir, you must be the only person in the universe that is so happy with their A350…
I had much more written but deleted it due to it being Thanksgiving Day.
Regards,
B
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I have the A150, I guess its smaller size prevents it to have some of the problems that the A350 has. I’ve had zero issues with bed leveling, laser auto focusing, etc. Aside from a few software glitches from Luban my A150 performs great, I have no complaints. Print quality rivals my friends Prusa Mini (as long as I use Prusament), the laser works great and the CNC is useful for engraving my PCB boards.
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For anyone that cares about the 10w laser module working with the A150 I have some additional information.
After some more back and forth with SM support they have stated that the 10w laser module will indeed work with the A150 with a couple of caveats that are due to the focal length of the camera.
The first one is that the auto focus feature will not work, this means you’ll have to manual focus (which SM confirmed can be done on the A150). If the manual focus procedure is anything like the 1.6w laser module this is a non issue and isn’t really a detriment.
The second is that the camera capture feature will not work. They didn’t go into detail on whether the feature would be disabled through software (unlikely) or if it would simply just return a blurry picture. How blurry the picture would be is up in the air, but it could turn out to still be serviceable depending on what you’re capturing.
Overall the message that SM was relaying to me was that the 10w laser module will work on the A150 so long as you manually focus it and you’re not reliant on the camera capture feature.
In my opinion this didn’t need to be a problem but SM decided that having the camera capture feature function by taking just one wide angle picture versus stitching 4 together (like how it currently is) was more important than supporting the A150. Pretty odd design choice if you ask me.
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Glad you’ve got some answers.
What when you use the Z-Axis Extension Module for the A150 with the 10W Laser. Is it better for the focus?
Adding to your news, I just want to say that during the last days, snapmaker has been updating the configurations for the laser, and the changes and additions included the A150. So, there is hope.
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