While makerspace folks are all about hacking things, sometimes it’s useful to get someone who makes them for a living involved. Our Rostock 3D printer was an early purchase and with some recent intermittent problems occurring and wanting to do some upgrades, we decided to take it back to the factory in northern Indiana where we bought the kit in 2016 for a tune-up. Besides, we figured it would be a great chance to see some of the latest improvements in 3D printing with a Delta!

We scheduled some time with Steve Wygant at SeeMeCNC in Ligonier IN to look over the makerspace upgraded Rostock Max V3.2 to see if he had some clues about the intermittent problems we were starting to see. If you’ve printed a lot, especially in an environment with multiple people using the machine, you can understand why it’s important to have a 3D printer that just prints. And one where you don’t have to keep tweaking settings to get things printed correctly.

One of the first things we learned: all SD cards are created equal. Ours ended up with a generic card in our Duet controller. Steve had a stack of bad used cards pulled from troubleshooting other printers. After upgrading the Duet firmware to the latest SeeMeCNC configuration, we also installed a PanelDue – an upgrade we’ve wanted to do for a while.

A hotend replacement with an improved connector and resetting the Cura settings/configuration finished the job. And after a month of trouble-free and much improved printing quality, I can truly say the time & trip up there was worth it. It’s really nice to have a printer with online guides and the support behind it to keep it running for over 6 years, plus it still makes prints that people are impressed with. And not having to pitch & buy a new printer when it wears or something goes wrong!