Rasie3D N1

First impression on receiving the box was, wow this machine is heavy! On opening the box I was presented with a very well built, sturdy machine that suggested good value for money. It took a very short amount of time to get the machine ready for its first print run. I did run into a problem very early on in that in cold temperatures (below 5C) the machine will not boot up, but displays a couple of different error messages. Unfortunately the user manual was useless in solving that issue and the user forum was of limited benefit. I found a solution by trial and error by blowing warm air onto the hotends for a few seconds and then the machine worked fine. I reported this to Raise3D and they said the machine would not work in such a low temperature, so I suggested that should be made clear in the user manual - they agreed!

The IdeaMaker software does not share all the same settings as Cura and other leading slicers, which makes obtaining good results quite frustrating because the best settings guides found on the Web often refer to settings IdeaMaker does not have. As a result, I'm not really impressed with the finish of the prints at the moment. That said, IdeaMaker is very easy to use and quick at slicing.  The applying of supports to a design is not very reliable, nor consistent however and that has lead to a number of print fails that could have succeeded with a better support facility. I am currently looking into using other slicing software to see if I can improve the situation, but few list Raise3D as being compatible (not all flavours of Gcode are the same, I've now found).

The machine is a duel extruder type, but after 6 months of use I cannot get the right hand extruder to print reliably because the left (primary) extruder drags over the top of whatever the right extruder has laid down causing the print to fail. I have followed the extruder height setting procedure many times to no avail, so I am using the machine as a single extruder at the moment and in that mode it works just fine.

The one aspect that is not working very well at all is the networking facility including WiFi. I have configured it and have connected to my computer, but it is unbelievably slow. I find it much quicker and easier to just use a flash drive to transfer data on.  One must be aware that the machine will only read a flash drive formatted to FAT32, so the now more usual (modern) windows format will not work and you just get a message telling you to use a FAT32 drive!

Overall, I am pleased with the machine. I feel confident that I will be able to get the quality of print I believe it is capable of producing, especially if i can apply better supports when necessary and get the second extruder working reliably. Would I recommend a Raise3D machine? Yes, is the simple answer.

I should point out that this is my first 3D printer having sent my designs to commercial printers previously, so I am very much learning about obtaining the right settings to get the best results from this machine.