We sold exactly 5 units of Materium, shipped to Indonesia, Brazil, and Sweden.
The buyers were early adopters; they were ready for the unpolished edges.
But Materium at that moment had more than unpolished edges, it had fatal flaws.
Here are some of them :
Image 1 and 2 : Disassembly was a lot of work.
And we mean a LOT. Add the fact that you have to wear heat-resistant gloves to do so, your limited dexterity could accidentally yank the fragile PT1000 and heater cables off and snap them. This actually happenned. I had to replace the entire barrel because of this. If it clogged, nobody had a way of knowing where the clog is : is it on the nozzle? the upper barrel? the middle? So you had to tear everything down, and access screws on the far back, near the heat, to then grab the hot silicone to pull the barrel down. We hated this very much, as did our users. We shipped it because we thought it will never clog. It did day one.
Image 2 : Resin printed parts.
Not a good idea. Will not survive international shipping. But there’s a good thing: A user didnt know the heatsink is supposed to be cooled. They thought the part cooling fan is cooling the heatsink, so they didn’t bother with the heatsink fan. We diagnosed this because the resin part (the pellet chamber) cracked. But it’s better to remind users that the heatsink fan should always be on rather than having a part crack to see it.
Image 3 : Sucky prints.
This is not news for pellet extruders. But we designed the V5 because we want smooth extrusion. But we forgot about the E3D nozzles that restricts flow so much and created melt oscillations.
Image 4 : The Wobble.
This is the worst offender. Because the barrel is basically a brass pipe with a flange, the forces of extrusion generates an asymmetric axial spin. THis got reflected on the soft brass barrel as +-0.5mm wobble during extrusion that matches the revolution of the screw.
What happens now?
We are designing Materium V6. It will solve all four problems and more.
Stay Tuned!
