Printrbot Simple Maker's Kit Model 1405 3D Printer, 4" x 4" x 4" Maximum Build Dimensions, 100 Micron Maximum Resolution, 1.75-mm PLA Filament

I purchased this kit the first of March, and since then I have replaced every single part except the motors and the base. Everything else has been replaced by printed parts, longer rods, better bearings, etc. The kit is a decent value, but the sag on the Y axis is pretty terrible. The bed leveling probe only really works if you have a perfectly flat bed, and even then it seems to like to smoosh down the layers at the back of the bed. The acme screw was not straight so I had z axis wobble for days (I briefly fixed this by using a flexible coupler, and later I replaced the screw). The UBIS hot end is ok, but after going to an E3D V6, I could never go back. My biggest beef is that through all the issues with the kit that I fixed or dealt with, (semi-warped bed, bent screw, sag from the design), when my Rev F4 board went out, I was told that the warranty is only 30 days. It is totally my fault for not visiting printrbot.com to see their updated warranty. When I purchased a bot in '13, I got a replacement on a bad part 2 months later. I was foolish to assume that the same warranty applied in 2015. The email support was also dismal, taking four days to get my first reply. Luckily I had an old board on hand, and I was able to start printing again.All in all, if I had to do it over again, I would have spent my money elsewhere. Fixing the issues with the Simple bumped my costs up to over $500 for the bot. Around that price you can get a decent i3 kit with a bigger print area and better electronics. The warranty of 30 days has also soured me on the company. They've gotten bigger and with that their support has gotten worse.

I've had my Printrbot simple for a couple of months and I'm quite happy with it. My reviews tend to be fairly critical so I will note what was good and what was not so good. First of all, if I could rate this item separately on customer service, I would give it 6 stars. On both occasions that required technical support, I received a response within 24 hours (in the middle of holiday season in late December more importantly) and the necessary parts needed for correcting the issue were sent to me expedited.Now on to the details. This is a kit, and as such will require some amount of patience and a good eye for detail to get things working correctly from the get go. I went to their site and found fairly decent step by step build instructions that were fairly easy to follow. It did take me about 10 hours to build the unit which I did an hour or two at a time over several days. When I first opened the kit and saw that the body was constructed from laser cut wood I had my doubts (I work in aerospace and am used to designing fits in the thousandths of an inch so I may be overly biased with precision) however the parts fit together remarkably well and this pleasantly surprised me.During the build I encountered two major flaws that do have fairly easy fixes. The first was in the Y-travel, the zip ties when put together very tight ( a good thing since you dont want things vibrating around) cause an interference with the linear bearings. I did a search in the printrbot site for this as I expected this to be problematic and as another reviewer has mentioned finding answers to questions was difficult. Rather than waiting for a response from the forum of users, I decided instead to put in a ticket. This seems to be the best way to get a very quick response from the company. Within 24 hours I received an email that requested verification that I had purchased the unit so I sent my amazon invoice and the next day they shipped me additional wooden parts to fix the problem. Unfortunately this did not correct the problem so I did a little DIY correction by sanding off a little bit of material to clear the the zip ties.The second major flaw was at the end of the build when I was adding the power cable and looked at wiring compared to the photos on their site. The black-red negative-positive were reversed!!! If I had not payed attention to this quality oversight I would have likely fried the pcb board before ever getting anything printed. Again I went to their site and saw others had this issue as well, I put in a ticket, and with no questions asked, customer service shipped me a new cable.After the build and calibration I am happy to say, this unit prints beautifully. So to summarize here are my thoughts:1. this thing is a kit and as such may require some fiddling to get it working correctly. If you can follow photo instructions, are not afraid to do a little extra sanding here and there, and have the patience to take a few hours to work on this, then you should have no problems with this one.2.As I see it the world of 3D printing is still in its infancy, Printrbot strikes me as a fairly new company that as I noted has made a very good entry level printer that has some remarkable results. With that said, my two issues above show that they certainly are still working through design/tolerancing issues as well as quality control problems. If you are careful and pay attention to your build you can catch these and correct them with a little ingenuity. More importantly from my experience with them, their customer service is top notch which shows the company really cares and is willing to improve.

Let me tell you, building this is a very nervous process if you are a novice as I'm on 3D printers. You may crack surface of the parts if you apply too much pressure. I had a few small cracks that are not critical. Read all comments in Printrbot's instruction page before moving forward at each step. It will pay. One of the most useful comments was about using clamps to squeeze parts. It made life really easy. But once you are done with the printer, it worths every second. At the end you will know the principles of 3D printers, and appreciate the design.After reading all kinds of complaints, I was really worried about the board. To add my anxiety, Printrbot's support says they allow only 5 interactions with the support (I guess per incident). Also, the guarantee is only for 30 days if you build it yourself. After I built my printer in a week or so, when I plugged it to my computer, it did not registered as a USB device. You can imagine my disappointment, especially after hoping I wouldn't have any board problem. Luckily, a re-flash solved the problem. I'm surprised that it was not registering the USB at all (windows 7, no USB device popup, Linux nothing in the logs). They have a list of troubleshooting steps (including using an SD card to print). The customer support was responsive though and they were ready to replace the board. I wanted to get their permission before reflashing (without USB, I was thinking I couldn't upload the new firmware, which turned out to be not a problem. A reflash actually made my printer be visible in the USB connections list). After the reflash, my first print was good, but until I accidentally changed some parameters, it was not matching Printrbot's Youtube videos. The second day, the print was perfect. Printed 28 key-chains without any issue at high speed. Next day, I switched to a Hatchbox filament I got from Amazon (labeled HIPS for PLA printers, making me think it was PLA) and spent next 3 days trying to print something, anything. Finally I went to local Micro Center and bought $15 Inland PLA filament and I'm back to good printing.Even if you end up with a faulty board or one that stops working after a few months, it worths buying this as there are alternative/cheap boards. While working on the board problem, after reading horrifying stories, I had ordered two RAMPS boards (one from amazon for fast delivery, and one from China for cheap but slow delivery). Even though I don't need them any more, I know if I have a board problem in the future, I can use them. Further more, I can build an additional printer myself now.A few suggestions (mostly from the boards, and comments on the instruction page): after you open the bags, put all washers, screws and nuts to their own cups. It will help you in the future. There are plenty of screws and ties. Even after I finish building, I got several left as spares. I think Printrbot was generous in case you make a mistake or loose them. Look at the pictures to understand the names of each part. Have a ruler to measure the sizes of screws, as they are not in labeled packages and there are several screws of the same type in different packages. Use clamps to gently push parts together. There are a few parts that requires 6-7 holes/inserts which are tight. In some cases you may need to file them before to fit smoother. Make sure you read the additional items that are required but not in the the kit (such as thread locker) and have them ready. If you do not have well ventilated workshop room, and worried about smell etc, buy a window fan (less than $30 and works great). Have lots of blue mask to cover the metal plate. For some reason (or perhaps my Z calibration is little tight), my prints stuck very strongly so I have to replace the tape almost all the time. Have a filament spool rack (I got Hatchbox's and happy with it). The Printrbot filament is very good, but doesn't have a spool. It will get tangled very quickly. I have used a paper towel stand I had and it helped greatly with feeding the filament. The way I align autolevel probe is to put the hot-end over the plate, have a regular printer paper to evaluate the distance (the paper should be able to move between plate and the hot end, but must have some drag), and then have the autolevel go as high as possible while still having the red led turned on. This will be higher than official method of using provided plastic rectangle, but it will give some extra space as I have seen the Z-probe may hit some parts during the printing if you do not have calibrated your printer well (too much filament, low or high temperature, very fast). I have also noticed that the 3D printed fan cover may hit to the 3D print the same way z-probe does if the printer is not fine tuned. There are some other fan designs that may help with that. I haven't tried them yet. Have an electricians' tape ready. While instructions don't mention how to use them. the pictures have them (for example for axis-stop switches have each cable protected with the tape at the connections). I have also used them two cables are connected to make sure they don't get separated later. A head-mounted magnifying visor was helpful for me. Amazon has great ones for a few bucks. I have considered painting the printer (there are several suggestions that doesn't impact the wooden parts, but decided against it, mainly to not risk anything, but also didn't want to wait a few more days to get the paints, do the job, wait until they dry etc. I didn't even sand the laser marks as some suggested, and I think the end result is just fine as it is.This is my first printer and I'm impressed with it. At slow speed, with high resolution, prints are very good. The prints at high speed are good but less smooth.