TwoUp v3 3D Printer Kit 7" x 7" x 5" Build Dimensions 50 Micron 1.75mm PLA Filament

It's an okay 3D printer. after you calibrate, heat up. print, calibrate...etc etc. I got this because it was a cheap printer kit and I wanted to learn the mechanics of it. It's definitely a pain in the ass to get a proper print. Though I still have most of mine, it's been turned into a franken printer with some upgrades and a homemade enclosure. 1 year UPDATE: So it has been one year since I have gotten this printer. Since then I have come to know that Quintessential Customer support needs a COMPLETE overhaul. It's almost like a bunch of 5yr olds throwing parts in a bin with 0 quality control and double checking. The printer itself is cheap for what you are getting. The parts alone would cost more than buying this kit. With that said, it is definitely for the person who like to play with stuff and fix it when it's broken. From what I understand the new kits come with the RAMPS 1.4 board, which is a nice upgrade from the PrintrBoards. You'll get okay resolution with the stock extruder but it would be best to upgrade to the E3D or a clone of it. The PrintrBoard ended up dying on me a few months old so I bought a RAMPS 1.4 myself. The power supply was also sub-par, especially if you want to add a hotbed. I used an old computer 350watt PSU and haven't had an issue since. The community is pretty good on the forums fabric8r.com/forums if you're interested. Final line: get it if you want to save money buying parts. Get it if you like to tinker with stuff. DO NOT get it if you want something that works right out of the box. ~Good Printing.

In terms of value, this is without a doubt the best printer you can buy. However, as others have said, this is not plug-and-play. This is a printer for DIY'ers. Some have complained that the assembly is awful - but it all depends on your skill level. There are a LOT of pieces in the kit, probably 150+. The assembly manual is 67 pages long, if that helps you understand exactly how "unassembled" this printer comes. Expect the assembly to take 4-6 hours, a couple evenings of your time. Personally I found it not too much more difficult that putting together a large, complex Lego or Knex model. The assembly manual PDF is FANTASTIC although it is a little outdated, a handful of parts have changed since the manual was written. If you see something in the manual that doesn't exactly match what you've got, don't get worked up. Use glue *only* where suggested in the manual. Once you have it assembled, you may find some slop in parts - use glue only where needed to true things up. Things I used for my install - a whole pile of metric allen wrenches - sandpaper - triangular file for enlarging holes in MDF - super glue - lots of zip-ties (more than the kit came with - buy more) - double-sided tape for holding the x-carriage belt (this was later replaced with hot glue) My kit was complete with no missing pieces, so that was great. I did have a few hiccups though. One of the MDF parts for the extruder bearing tensioner was cut from what appeared to be a little bit thicker MDF, so I had to sand it down to match the thickness of a mating part. Some of the laser-cut MDF pieces didn't match up with holes/tabs exactly either, so I had to file some of the openings a little larger. Also, my extruder gear had a few broken teeth on it out of the box. QUBD was fairly quick to replace it. I also did not have a fan mount, but this was easily rigged up with some zip-ties. Once assembled, you have a working and *fair* quality 3D printer. This is the product objective - get you working, so you can print some parts. There are a multitude of excellent 3D printable upgrades mentioned in the manual and on Thingiverse. Once you get the upgrades printed and installed, you have a VERY GOOD quality 3D printer, right up there in quality with machines costing 5 or 10 times as much. If you want to learn every aspect of how a 3D printer works, this is definitely the kit to buy. The great thing about building something yourself is, when it breaks, you usually know how to fix it. The Fabric8r forums are a good resource if you need help.

From the very beginning, there were red flags. I did not go into this expecting some amazing printer, or something that would make things that look like they were injection molded. But I was still incredibly disappointed, frustrated, and angry. Some of the parts were not the correct size. Rods didn't fit into the bearings, holes were not drilled with the proper alignment, a linear bearing even had its bearings falling out. They sent me a couple new rods and bearings, but even the replacements didn't roll smoothly and stuck a lot. I didn't feel like wasting more time with getting yet another replacement. The mdf material this is made of cracked in several places during assembly, since the 'laser cut' (apparently not precision cut) pieces didn't quite line up. After a few replacement pieces, and finally completing the build, the first big problem was the X gantry sags. A LOT. As the print head moves around, the right side raises and lows, since it has no support. It sags so much, that I was unable to fully compensate for it even with totally raising one side of the bed and completely lowering the other. I did eventually purchase the heated bed from QUBD, hoping that would help some of the other issues it was having, but it didn't. They actually didn't even send me all of the parts that were supposed to come with the heated bed, and the bed has a crack in it, and after 6 days, I still have no response from them. But back to this travesty of a printer. As the gantry sags, you can see the top support sway, which throws it off even more. No matter how tight the screws are, there always seems to be play in the parts. The software that was loaded onto it when I received it did not work properly, and had the X and Y axises mirrored, and one of the motors had different colored wiring than the others, adding to the confusion of building, since this is the 'new' version, which apparently has very little support out there and the instructions had several spots that did not match the parts in the kit. I tried flashing the marlin firmware, and eventually found a firmware on the qubd site that did get it to actually print, in that it would move in approximately the appropriate motions, but still with all sorts of errors. The Y belt is never able to get quite tight enough, without modification of the pieces that hold it, so as it prints, it introduces more and more shifting in the Y direction. The X motor has always made a sort of grinding noise, and jumps a lot when making small movements, the extruder gear is not actually round (or the hole is drilled off-center) causing the filament to either not have enough tension to be pushed through, or too much tension and it tears it up or skips back, with every revolution. The Z motor is now skipping any time it moves more than one or two steps, and just lightly hums, so when the extruder is lifted to heat up, then goes down to start a print, it has to be manually moved back down to the correct location. The bed (non-heated) is not actually flat. It seemed to have a bulge in one spot, slightly off center, and no matter how often I leveled it, it would not allow me to use the full size of the bed without print errors. I have spent a month looking on forums, getting advice, and even had someone with much more 3d printing experience come over, but all to no avail. If the print speed is anything about around 20mm/s, I don't even get something that will resemble the model, and even with it going slow, the extrusion rate has to be cranked way up, which causes all sorts of deformations. The extruder PEEK (the cylinder insulator that basically holds the extruder to the carriage) has never fit properly into the 'mounting' and generally sits about 2-3 degrees off of vertical, causing smears and eventually ruining the layers. I have rebuilt this thing 5 times so far, and the extruder at best sits off-kilter, and generally shakes itself loose and will actually wobble around as it moves. Anything that is printed higher than about 5-7 layers starts gettings holes, spirals, gaps, missing layers, etc. This has been a nearly wasted month. I say nearly, because I did learn that I will not use a printer with a single z motor, made from mdf, or that is the 'cheapest'. I just hope that I can get my return approved, I would even settle for Amazon credit at this point.

So just to kind of summarize what to expect from the TwoUp 3d Printer is, it does work, it has the potential to work fairly well, and it is difficult as hell to get to a working state. Thankfully, there were decent instructions I found online to assemble, upgrade, and repair serious design flaws otherwise this thing would have been in my trash weeks ago. The only reason I can't drive myself to give this printer 5 stars is because of the several design flaws that could potentially make this printer unusable if the consumer wasn't directed how to fix them. If you are serious about purchasing this 3d printer, beginner, novice, or expert, I do encourage you to read on to understand what to expect from this purchase. Before I bought this printer I had zero experience with 3d printing and 3d printing driver or design software. That is why I decided to go with a kit for my first printer because I really wanted to learn how these things go together and work. So why did I choose this kit? Well mainly because of the price tag. I wanted something that wasn't going to leave me broke and at the same time give me the experience I need to build, support, and/or troubleshoot a more serious 3d printer down the road. A lot of other comments suggested a 4 - 8 hour build time for a beginner. Well, it took me more like 16 - 24 mainly because I had take apart and rebuild it several times. Below, I'll explain some of the complications I had and at the very bottom I will have links to important information and upgrades that I did to improve the printer. 1. The Y axis bearings are a joke, so remember to superglue them really well to the base MDF otherwise the print bed will be all over the place when the Y axis moves. 2. Tighten all rod bearings very well with the provided zip ties. 3. I had a lot of difficulty putting the extruder assembly together because all the predrilled holes were way off. I tried to re-drill the holes with the correct positioning but they turned to be a little off as well and I till couldn't get the thing to hold together. After trying a few different things, I ended up emailing the seller explaining the situation and they responded within 24 hours and had a replacement extruder assembly mailed to me that arrived in less than 5 business days. The replacement did assemble well following the assembly instructions and I was very impressed with the seller response time and resolution. 4. After I finally got everything together tight and after a couple test prints, the Z axis motor died on me. I would hear it getting power but it just did not spin. I tried it out on another port on the printer main board to make sure it was the motor. I actually had 1 spare NEMA 17 motor at home (just because I'm into arduino projects and have a bunch of spare hobby parts). I practically had to take everything apart again and put it back together to replace this motor. The replacement seemed to work well and I have not had problems with the other motors. 5. I had to attach the extruder assembly to the axis belt using industrial Velcro connected with superglue. 6. I had difficulty attaching the threaded aluminum pulley's to the motors and they slipped frequently. I ended up using a little superglue at both ends of the pulley. Be careful here if you use glue of any sort because you don't ant to get glue into the motor itself. After a bit of superglue the motor pulleys have been solid performers. 7. Make sure all the belts are as strait as possible. My Y axis was a little off and I had to put it back together so prints weren't off balance. 8. The X axis gantry sags like a beast because there is no support on one side. This is a huge design flaw and I personally don't think this printer should be sold without the parts needed to resolve it and that is the main reason it lost a star. I ended up adding a pulley system to mine that you can see in the pictures and I added the parts list below for items I bought at the local home depot. I got the pulley idea from a thingiverse.com upgrade but I didn't want to spend hours printing plastics while manually holding up the X gantry and have to buy several bearings online that I did not have or could get locally. My solution ultimately took less time and money. 9. My kit did not include an extruder fan bracket. I printed one from a link you can find below. So, above are all the complications I ran into so you can understand why it took so long to get this thing together to a working state. Honestly, for the price, I am impressed plus I learned a lot. Further below are important links and documentation I strongly suggest you review: Assembly Instructions: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jasonpreed.com%2Fpdfs%2FQU-BD_OneUp_and_TwoUp_Assembly_Instructions.pdf&ei=fnX2VJnVFYX5yASqr4KgCQ&usg=AFQjCNE6WfF6ZFc8XjWmUwprgT1o9NxvtQ Software and Drivers: http://www.repetier.com/ http://goo.gl/PHlgTx Software G-code Information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-code Instructions to install drivers in Win 8/8.1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR4-R_8tZhk Suggested Printable Upgrades: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:699109/#instructions http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:276178 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:281856 My Repetier Host Settings: If you are more advanced with 3D printing I'm sure you won't need this information. If you're new like me please review the below software configurations. I had a difficult time knowing what to adjust in Repetier to work with my TwoUp printer and after some messing around I found the changes below to be best. On a side note: When printing skinny, taller objects I found it better to use 3M tape because the print really attaches to the tape better and doesn't easily move around during print jobs. I set my 'first layer speed' in the slicer config to 20% when using 3m tape. Kapton seems to work best with bigger and flatter objects. I set my 'first layer speed' in the slicer config to 50% when using Kapton. This is just what I experienced using this printer on these 2 tape options. I'm betting this is way different on other printers more so if they have heated print beds. Slicer config settings I use for the TwoUp(This is a list of ONLY the config I canged from default): PRINTER SETTINGS Layer first height: .2 mm Fill Desity: 30% Fill Pattern: line Top/Bottom Fill Pattern: rectilinear First Layer Speed: (Read above, I adjust for tape used) FILAMENT SETTINGS: Diameter: 1.75 Extruder Temperature First Layer: 210 Extruder Temperature Other Layers: 210 PRINTER SETTINGS: Start G-code: G1 Z10 F5000 ; lift nozzle End G-code: M104 S0 ; turn off temperature m106 100 ; enable fan M84 ; disable motors Nozzle Diameter: .4 Suggested Pulley System for X Axis Sag: x3 - Lehigh 30 lb. 3/4 in. Zinc-Coated Fast-Eye Single Pulley Model # 7071S-12 Internet # 100210239 $2.50 per x3 - Crown Bolt M4-0.7 x 16 mm Zinc-Plated Steel Socket Cap Recessed Hex Screw $.80 per x1 - Small Tensioner $2.50 per x1 - Spool 25lb test Fishing Line $3.50 per x3 - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:454656 (Printer at 15% larger) Connect spacer, pulley, bolt at top and bottom of left support rod. Connect spacer, pulley, bolt on top right support rod. Use fishing line and tie well to both left and right side bearing zip ties and tensioner at top. Leave tensioner open when connecting so it can be adjusted as needed to reduce sag. See my pictures if needed. PrintBed Upgrade: I found it difficult to level the stock print-bed for my prints. The stock print-bed worked okay, but my prints really turned out better when use the mirror glass. Why? Because mirror glass has to be completely level for the mirror. If its not level, you can very easily tell by you're reflection being warped. So I bought a 7" round mirror glass from my local crafts store (Because they were out of square at the time) and attach it to the bed using 4 binder clips I got for $5.00 at OfficeMax. This works very well because I only have to level one end of the MDF board bed where the mirror glass is attached and I have a perfectly level print bed on the glass. The binder clips keep it very securely attached to the stock print bed and I have had no problems with it slipping during prints. You can see the setup from my pictures attached. If you are seriously considering buying this kit, I hope you find this really informative and it helps with your decision... and I really hope this mess of information doesn't scare you away from this option. For the price, I don't think you will find anything better even if you individually price out each piece and build your own from scratch. Good Luck & Happy Printing!

First clue these people don't have a clue is the way it can packed, both ends had splits in the cardboard USPS flat rate box and it was a miracle nothing fell out. Main ACME screw was bent, the brass ACME nut in the sales literature was replaced without notice by cheap plastic but it's the poorly cloned hotend that makes this a complete waste of time and money, not a single replacement part is available for it including the tip which is considered a "consumable". The thermistor included was either the wrong one or defective and read about 25C higher than it actually was and the hotend itself is worn out after only 6 weeks and only 3 weeks of real use and the poorly machined PTFE tube in the PEEK causes it to jam where it mates with the brass tube in the heat block but isn't available anymore for replacement necessitating buying a entire new hotend from a vendor that know what the heck they are actually doing,> This Anubis hotend looks like it was made in 8th grade shop class ..... B grade parts from a D grade company that doesn't look to have any actual engineers on staff By the time you spend enough on upgrades and replacement parts just to make remotely usable you could just buy an i3 kit and have something that works twice as good and prints twice as fast ...

Still in progress for the construction, after 2 weeks. I was given the X and Y belts for the OneUp (which QUBD promptly sent replacements for, props to their customer service) and the Y drive pulley system I received the OneUp's length bolts. I'm still missing the Yspacers that are used to align the pulley system with the belt drive. The vertical threaded rod supports came with M4x8mm bolts, which are WAY too short to make any contact through the mdf to the rods, had to order M4x16mm from Fastenal in order to get the X gantry to attach to the rest of the machine. Instructions are fairly good, except when referring to differences between TwoUp and OneUp variations. BoM has a few errors especially in regards to differences between the two models. Quite a few of the laser-cut MDF parts need modification, extra hour or so of sanding and modifications to get everything to fit, some of the parts were even 3-5mm off of where they should have been. Will update when I get the M4x16mm bolts in, and hopefully can get it fully assembled without any further issues. Update: Recieved a set of belts and bolts for the y-axis pulley system, but the support apparently doesn't know the difference between YSPACER and YIDLERGUARD parts and they sent me more YIDLERGUARDs instead of YSPACERS, so that part is still messed up, hopefully I can jury-rig it enough to print a replacement. The M4x16mm bolts came in, and that part of assembly worked perfectly with the replacements, the M4x8mm they supply are indeed WAY too short. Kinda disappointed. Once I can get a test print and make a replacement for parts they didn't supply I'll update again.

Contrary to what everyone else has said, this is a fine printer. It is far from the greatest 3D printer available. Hell, it may even be the worst 3D printer on the market, but it is also the cheapest 3D printer on the market. I have been able to get multiple high quality prints and as I have gotten better at knowing what setting to use I have also been able to print parts that make the printer better. This is NOT the printer to get if you want to open up the box and start printing in a couple of hours. This is the printer to get if you want to open up the box, curse while building the thing due to its poor design (which is still adequate enough to get you started), then spend infinitely more hours tweaking and redesigning and printing new parts for upgrades. This is for the person who wants to know every detail about 3D printing and how to get the best prints with the least hardware. It is also for the person that would enjoy using their printer to make it better. Since purchasing my printer, I have printer a completely new gantry, extruder, y bracket, and x mount and I get great print quality now. In conclusion, if you want to start immediately printing your ideas to play with, look somewhere else. If you are a curious individual who loves taking this apart and putting them back together to figure out how they work and make them better, and are willing to put hour after frustrating hour into tweaking and working out every kink this thing will throw at you? Then this is the printer for you. You will not find a printer that needs more tweaking or has more room for improvement that you can easily do than this one. Below is a link to my Thingiverse page makes to see some of the things I have made with this printer so you can get an idea of the quality. https://www.thingiverse.com/dsprehe89/makes

the printer works fine with simple mods. first thing to do is order an e3d v6 pico or promethius hotend. when you build this find a way of having a fan blow across the peek barrel. this will solve the problem of heat creep on your filament causing it to clog until you can install the e3d hotend. and dont buy the cheap version. buy the real deal. you wont regret it. use hot glue to secure the bearings to the wood. superglue wont work well. and make sure the zipties are tight. dont over tighten the tension bearing for the extruder. you will break the ears. what i did was when mine broke it wasnt destoryed so i used a silacon mold material and fasioned some replacements out of jbweld. it worked until i could get the replacement extruder printed. outside of that it is a good printer and will teach you how to fix things.