Just wondering what y’all What think of these machines, am I the only one that is beyond frustrated? What would you change, if you could? Speed? Make the software more user friendly? Troubleshooting help easier/faster? Glitches in the software? Just curious … I’ve used other brands, and now I wish I would’ve purchased something different.
I love it for the fact that it’s a 3-in-1. I’m well aware that there are better dedicated machines out there, but Snapmaker has in my opinion gotten better slowly and steadily. Good calibration and tuning alongside 3rd party programs gives quality prints/laser cutting. Continued support for the 2.0 series of machines is a large part of why I’m happy.
One thing I’d improve - reduce noise.
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I also love the machine but not the software. Luban is only a reference for speeds and such. Using Luban alone for all operations would kill my love to the machine.
Use PrusaSlicer, Lightburn and Fusion 360 if you are keen to use the machine to it‘s real capabilities.
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For me personally, the laser function is the only good part of the machine. Everything else about it falls seriously short. There are so many flaws in nearly every aspect of it, it’s just not worth much. In my case, I can get two other machines, one a dedicated laser and the other a dedicated 3D printer, and it will cost less, and both machines will be far superior in capability and reliability than the Snapmaker. The only real reason I could ever give anyone for buying an SM is if they really have a serious limit on space.
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Here’s my take on pro’s and con’s after using the machine as a hobbyist for several years now - with low frequency:
Pro:
- 3-in-1 - saves space and with somewhat limited invest you have three CNC-tools at your hands. It is a good way to find out if 3D printing, milling and/or laser is something that adds value to your workflow.
- Quality OK to very good - the general quality of the components is good to very good - with a few problems - see in Con.
- Gets results: I personally have mastered all workloads to the level that I’m able to get the results I want. I have a lot of joy and success using the machine, and it extended my capabilities and workshop options considerably!
- Flexible control: Having the option to use the touchscreen, Luban, serial port or APIs to control the machine, gives a lot of options to create the workflow that best matches your working style.
- Support: Snapmaker to the day stays committed to the 2.0 machine, despite it being now a few years out and despite having the next generation out with Artisan. I highly appreciate this commitment!!!
- Versatile - many options with the different modules - incl. the rotary, which adds a new dimension.
- Development: Ever once in a while a new module comes out that adds capabilities to the machine.
Con:
- Slow - every workload is limited in speed by the 3-in-1 concept. You find faster 3D printers, faster laser units and faster CNC mills.
- Quality/Engineering has flaws: While in general the quality of the parts is OK to very good, some oversights exist and some engineering decisions are questionable. Some of them considerably influence the precision and rigidity of the machine, and this IMHO leads to 50% of the typical frustrations users report.
- Luban: The software tries to do everything and tries to do it user-friendly and easy, but IMHO every of the three workspaces is too limited to be really satisfactory as soon as you’re beyond simple beginner level. This leads to the other 50% of frustrations you find reports on.
- Master of none: Dedicated machines - as Mxbrnr rightly states - give you faster, better and more consistent results.
- Firmware: Snapmaker did not really embrace the Marlin ecosystem and forked in a way that makes it difficult for them to stay connected to the Marlin development. Current Marlin version on Snapmaker is considerably outdated by now, and instead of making use of the power of the community, Snapmaker introduced questionable self-made solutions.
- Price policy: Snapmaker products tend to stay on the pricey side of things. It is somewhat OK if you consider that they still make an effort to support the 2.0 machines with new modules etc. - this of course costs money.
So in order not to be frustrated with the 2.0 you need to…
- Be willing to learn (and sometimes invest into) 3rd party software
- Be a patient user that can do the necessary calibrations and workarounds for existing flaws
- Accept that this is a hobbyist machine - if you need professional results, look elsewhere
- Have the time and patience to wait for the slow machine and to redo a workpiece after an occasional failure
If you are willing to do so, you get good results and a lot of satisfaction. I certainly do not regret getting my 2.0, and with Snapmaker still continuing and supporting that model after several years, I feel that I made a good choice!
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What “other brands” in particular are you comparing to? I suspect this would not stand up that well to the current top of the heap woody-grass-stem brand, or the more expensive grand-daddy companies out there (Ultimaker). But compared to many others, and considering the design origin – I don’t think we’re that bad off, overall…but that’s perspective of a longer term user. Would I buy this today with what else is out there, at current offered pricing…? I think probably not. Or maybe I’d only have bought the Ray.
A250 user here, bought way back during original low power 1.6W laser and original milling head and original rails, with housing. Original PSU (slightly modified - removed some of the front-end blockage to improve air intake flow, swapped out PSU supplemental fan and had to replace internal one at one point) still in use. Have spliced in my own additional external fan and printed a large ‘plenum’ up to a top tupperware box full of charcoal and filtering for extra smoke inhalation while lasering.
Purchased the ‘faster’’ rails on a coupon but have not bothered installing yet. Do have the slightly newer print head (with side venting) and the 10W laser which has absolutely kicked the original 1.6W to the curb.
So all above is for context. That said:
- OVERALL I’m reasonably satisfied. I use my machine probably 75% of the time for 3D printing, 95% of that in PLA, and 25% of the time lasering. Coming from a much more primitive “Solidoodle” 3D printer, it’s been pretty great. I do have the urge for a new machine though after seeing some of the quality available these days from the likely names you don’t need me to name. BUT – in the time since purchase I do believe I’ve gotten reasonable value out of this, and intend to keep running it even if I do ‘upgrade’. (The A250 will become my laser-only, assuming any new purchase comes up to speed for the print task.)
- Trouble free enough that my wife who is not ‘tech savvy’ (that’s sort of unfair – she runs Silhouette vinyl cutters all day long and plays with all sorts of epoxy, but actual 3D design was a hill she was not prepared to climb) is comfortable turning it on, homing, preheating the bed, then executing a print stored on the USB stick that I’ve designed for her needs and has almost never had to tell me “um something happened” vs. just getting what she wanted. (Those rare occasions were usually brand new spool freewheeling a little and the filament getting wrapped around the axle, so the extruder either starved or chewed a hole in the side of the feed because of the excess tension.)
- Slight modification for faster tool switch to laser by just gluing a big magnet sheet to the back of the laser bed, and printing some edge-of-three-piece-plate clips, and just “dropping” this atop the print bed instead of having to remove and unplug all that rot, was a help. Going from print to laser consists of unloading filament, 4-screws to swap the actual toolhead and plug it in (be careful of different orientations!), plopping my magnetted laser bed atop, then running the camera calibrate as a validation check, and I’m ready to go. Of course if I downgrade this to laser only that’s wasted, hah. Maybe then I finally print a bedsling-to-roller capability to laser rounded items as an option, then.
- I suspect I might be more dissatisfied if I printed in higher-complexity material (even as little higher as straight ABS)…or if I had the larger A350. I have had to dial in my squish and do see some imperfections sometimes, but I’ve learned what I can and can’t get away with. I also don’t try to use the entire bed range but stick to probably 180 x 180 of it. I think many of the quality and use complaints come from the scale of the A350 and both the slinging and level meshing not really living up to expectations, but at the A250 size it’s never been more than an occasional mild annoyance.
- I’ve NEVER used the milling function – I had hopes but in the end decided with where it is, I didn’t want to deal with the mess.
- They never lived up to the whole “modularity - design and build your own shape/size/span variant” promises of the linear rails. And linear rails do have a speed limitation. And bedslingers do have their own ‘vibration’ or tilting influence on print qualities. That said - never having had to fiddle with belt tension has been probably the most quietly beneficial result I’ve ‘enjoyed’ to the point I just didn’t really even realize it, until I started researching new alternatives. (again, coming from a VERY old printer you had to nursemaid thru any slight humidity or temp changes in the room in terms of both bed level (there was no ‘mesh’ back then) and belt slippage… it was that bad.)
- Oh I should mention I prefer to export Gcode files to a USB stick and plug that into the machine. vs. wireless or wired control. I only plug in the machine rarely (been putting off a firmware update for quite some time because I don’t want to re-do a bunch of laser gcodes for the new grayscaling and such). I don’t really want this machine on my wifi most of the time. Not paranoid or anything, just prefer treating it like a kitchen appliance vs. a connected device. So many of the wifi/disconnect/file transfer complaints I’ve read just passed me by.
What might I change?
- General software quality and improvements. Luban is not that bad, I’ve used it almost exclusively. But while it gets the job done, it is clearly falling behind of things I’d like to try.
- Filament switching is a bit tedious. Turn on, home, then move extruder down in Z and to middle of plate for easier access, heat, yank, push in the fresh. Head switching is kind of similar, I tend to turn on the machine, move to where it’s easier to access the screws, turn OFF again so I can unplug head with power off, then need headlamp because inside the enclosure is dark without the LED lights. Would be nice to have some sort of ‘safe unplug’ state that turns off CAN bus and power to the head cable so you could swap while machine power was on in general, then re-enable it. But I’m sure some users would get into trouble.
- Laser touchscreen interface doesn’t seem to have an easy ‘home’ button. It asks to ‘home’ when you first turn it on, but thereafter seems to be kind of missing. It hasn’t really screwed up though. The focus calibration using the target seems to work well (I laser on things like slate coasters a lot, and it measures that in auto-thickness mode just fine). I don’t trust the camera though…always define a home and run-perimeter a couple times for every single job. Would be nice to be able to store a PERSISTENT “this is my preferred center” without having to do so via GCODE hacking or whatever. I’ve been lazy.
- The machine definitely needed a supplemental filament guide to keep it from trying to loop around the nearest Z axis rail during some X moves, but that was an easy print and mount. Similarly the basic ‘rod’ spool hangar is just too basic. I never understood why printers didn’t bother to at least have a nice rotating rod for less back tension on the feed gears. Yes, printed my own designs here too easily enough, supplementing with skate bearings. And yes, too easy to rotate on tugs results in the freewheeling problem mentioned earlier on brand new spools. But that’s a far easier issue than too much tug resulting in either missed steps at worst or just periodic starvation of extrusion thru a print. I don’t know – both of those are pretty lame whines. One could almost suggest that basic filament feed management is a necessary “are you too stupid to use this?” user training necessity.
Perhaps more wishy-washy rambling than you were after??
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I like my snapmakers, i have/ had an a350, a150, a150t, a250t, a350t, f350 and now the Artisan.
I print some times, laser most time and use the 200w CNC. And I do Not have any of the problems the user complaint about. BUT: I use it as a hobby machine. Just for me, Friends, colleagues, Family. I did Not sell anything. So “runtime” is not critical for me. If I Print a benchy in 38 or 43min is No Point for me.
If a CNC cut is 0,3mm heigher or deeper than it should, is not a point for me.
If a laser mark is to dark, is not a point for me.
Mostly I print with my a150t, this is absolutely fine. The bed is so small that it is fast hot and there is nearly no wobble at all. Printing sucked as bigger the snapmaker was, or maybe as bigger my print was? Now with Artisan I did some huge prints without any problems. And this is one pro: i can switch the toolheads from snapmaker to snapmaker. i can use one dual head on my a250t, f350, a150t or my Artisan. When needed (because i have to create few pieces) I can Run all my Machines lasering. I did some stuff for weddings (privately) and birthdays and it was fine to run few machines on same discipline. When I buy a a1 Mini for printing, i will lose that flexibility.
The cons are: Software. Not luban, more the Firmware and organisational stuff. Handling multiple printers sucks at luban, you create a nice Laser Job, Check the settings and See you have selected wrong Laser head. Change it and without asking, your whole Job ist resetted… wtf… as i have 1,6W, 10W, 20W and 40W Laser, this is a daily Problem for me.
Or other problem now with my Artisan with dual head. I start the machine, dual wants to calibrate, but it stucks in saving the Y Offset. I can Press “save this” x Times but nothing happens. Frustrating.
Next con: buy never a Module on launch. The Hardware is not tested, the Firmware IS finished on Same day. Nothing really works. Wont to that again. Did it with 40w, dual head, 10w (i think this Launch was ok) and in Rotary, most sucked first days.
I have lightburn for lasering (which is also not perfekt - especially the Missing Base shapes and the rudimentary Test Matrix), and Fusion for milling. I normally do not mill Forms or shapes, but objects i create in lightburn, so doing the milling Paths there is obvious.
For printing i have Cura with octopi, but also use luban sometimes. Works okay for me.
Another con is the new magnet shield of Artisan which is not compatible with the glassbed. I buy a modular Maschine to replace the Print Sheet and am not able to use both? You need to purchase new heatbed to easy swap between Glass and Pei. Costa 250€… Bad planned.
So as a hobbiest who use all disciplines: i am happy with the machine. I would not use it for my work. Machines are to slow, the competitors have single discipline Machines that are faster.
Also I won few of my Machines since i do every challenge, every event, every wheel of Fortune, Monopoly Game, whatever. And I won a few really nice stuff. This is amazing.
And few of my colleagues also have snapmakers, so we can share modules (Like rotaries, 10w lasers and so on) and experience and this is also very helpful. One time I Had to engrave stuff for 200 people within 3 days. And I run 8 snapmakers in parallel. This Rocks
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That was an awesome synopsis! I love the feedback, it makes me feel like im not that crazy 
the frustration is partly normal anyway.
Thats really awesome! I think if i had a hands on community that would help immensely. My family just thinks i m rambling nonsense when i can firgure something out with the snapmaker, or snap-(want-to-)maker im having difficulties with my machine (firmware updates) at this time so I’m completely frustrated.
Yeah…that worries me. I’m still parked on a firmware from like a year ago or more … whatever the first required one was for the 10W laser. I’ve read a fair number of update issues what with the new rail steps and all that spooked me from adopting until I rebuilt with the new rails, to the later complaints about the new laser capabilities also bringing along a few bugs and probably invalidating gcodes for cuts generated prior.
As far as communities go though, this one seems pretty good and helpful? At least it was when I started out, I confess I personally haven’t been on as much lately…once you get into a groove (rut?) in a fairly comfortable place you sort of stop posting, or at least that’s my pattern. I hope you’re posting the actual questions or issues you’re running in to? There are still some good helpers here … not numbering myself as I am out of the loop. I’m generally congenial but not functionally helpful. Now I’m haunting a couple other fora as I look for second / different machines.
(One of the ones I’m looking at just uses Discord as both forum and all support…which frankly I hate as an interface, and that’s almost enough to make me want to discontinue considering them.) The other has a pretty prevalant Reddit /r with a fair number of users. And no, I’m not looking at the woody-grass-stick company even though I read mostly good about the machines. Needing a cloud connection as an intermediary to print is a dealbreaker for me.)
generally congenial but not functionally helpful 
that’s me too haha! I agree about the cloud, no thank you… good luck, and thanks for being congenial and replying 
Rebecca 
I’m using a Snapmaker J1s and so far it is working well. I quit using the Luban cura, and now using Ultimaker Cura 5.8 with the Snapmaker plug in. Much better, more options and easy to switch back & forth with my Ultimaker S3. Also changed the Bowden connectors so I don’t have to open the top every time I load filament. New type of bowden connector for Snapmaker J1/J1s by rlasse | Download free STL model | Printables.com
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I realize this probably isn’t going to be comforting or helpful, but mine works great. Did right out of the box. I’ve printed a ton. Many from thingiverse and many of my own design. I’ve probably had a 5% actual fail rate. Several I had to redesign for sure, but mine is a reliable part of my making workflow. I did an animatronic skeleton for Halloween and many of the mechanical parts for that were 3D printed. I also use it to make parts and fixtures for woodworking and other projects.
My son was exasperated that I opened the box and did the first three demo projects and they all worked immediately. We gave him a Creality for Christmas a few years ago and he still hasn’t gotten a good print.
I don’t say this to make you feel bad or make my life look great. Only to let you know that some of us are experiencing something very different such that I’ve got a dual extruder and a higher power laser ready to be installed for specific projects on the action list. I’m happy to exchange Q&A after you’re able to get a print out. While it’s in brick mode, I don’t really have any ideas. It’s probably Linux based and that isn’t my strong suit or experience base.
I’m serious about that offer, so feel free to ask once you’ve got something to ask about.
PS. I took a look at some of the other comments and I agree about Luban. I ONLY use it to launch jobs. I use Fusion for design, Cura for 3D slicing etc. LIghtburn for laser etching. I use Fusion for CNC cutting.
Good luck and email me when you need help.
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10 posts were merged into an existing topic: 3D print doesn’t completely seal the surface of the project
This machine used to be fun, but with every update, I have trouble making it do the simplest of tasks. With the last update, now I can’t do 3d printing anymore since the infill doesn’t engage. It only does the outer surface making all of my prints fail. The laser, while now moving faster, it gets to 77% of completion and then just ends. I have no idea why.
I suspect the problem is the updates because I never had these problems before I updated my firmware and software to the latest versions.
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Well, thats not good! I hope you conquer it, that sounds SO frustrating!
This same problem is being discussed on two separate topics.
Sorry, still figuring out the forum as well.
I took the freedom to move the regarding posts into the separate thread you started.
Thank you! 
Rebecca