2011 uPrint Plus Revival

Robby,

We received the spool of material on 6/1. I was able to load it without much issue. Luckily, my search for a single spool of material lead me to your company’s website.

Our issue was trying to determine if our circa 2011 uPrint Plus printer was on its way out or still functional. Without getting into all the sorted details, we were having issue with the material extruding through the tip. It seem that there could be a heating element issue, thinking that this may have allowed the material to solidify near the top of the tip entrance and when it came time to advance the material, this blockage wouldn’t allow the material to extrude. Yet, we knew we had aging material, possible some damage tips and the unit in need of some preventative maintenance.

So, while we invested some money in the other aspects, it wasn’t truly solving the issue much. It finally came down to trying new material. But, as you know, we can only purchase the 6-pack of material from Stratasys for $700+ per spool for each of the support and material. The support was still extruding ok, so we just needed a solution for the material.

Once I was able to install and get through the z-axis and x/y-axis calibration (finally), I tested the printer out with a few hours build that alternated between the support and material to determine if this solved the material extrude issue. I was able to build back-to-back parts without an issue. So, it’s possible the largest culprit in our issues was the aging material after all. Time and usage with tell, but at least the unit seems functional now. Thanks to having the option to purchasing a single spool of material allow us to determine the functionality of our unit without having to go the more expensive, bulk purchase of material route. We even tried working with Stratasys to see if a single spool of material was an option to test out our unit, but to no avail.

Below is a picture of the Product Label of our unit. That was an interesting side note in our discussion with Stratasys in trying to evaluate the issue with our unit. In response to an inquiry about the tips, they indicated that by the listed Serial Number, that our unit was uPrint model, not a uPrint Plus model and the issue was the usage of the wrong tips, soluble support and material not usable in a uPrint printer. Everything pointed to that we had a uPrint Plus unit, from the size of our modeling trays, the tips used and the usage of multiple color material over the past decade, despite their claim.

ell, so much for not giving a lengthy details (but truly, this synopsis really is the overview and I’m glad to finally have a functioning unit again).