Things that I see are lacking or would help me and likely others.
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Spare parts availability. We do have some information on the Wiki and in a pinch, we could probably all figure out via the Wiki and the forums where to buy a belt or pulley. However, I was looking at the Inventables site last night based upon a post Will put up and was kind of ashamed at how much they have available to just buy. I looked at belts, pulleys, inserts, eccentric nuts etc. and thought man that would be nice to just order what I needed from Carbide.
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Excellent Customer Support - I did see Robs not above and that is awesome that we could call and get something if we had a failure and not rely on Chinese deliveries. That is customer service that we have grown to love and the support from you guys is great and we appreciate that. So that would help soften the blow if we had a failure leading to item #1
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Recommended Spare Parts List - I am a planner and always put contingencies into place. In that vain, I would like to have a recommended spare parts list with the ability to know I am purchasing the correct parts. This list would include the normal wear parts and projected failures. Similar to what we in the industrial world would call a preventive maintenance kit. It would be awesome if these were put into packages where we would know that after 100 hours of service these parts are prone to failure, 1000 hours these normally fail, etc. Think service manual of your car. We could then by these kits and have them on hand or simply replace them at some interval. Nothing worse than doing a customer project and a vee wheel breaks and you are down for 7 days for a $3.00 part with $15 shipping.
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Documentation - better instruction manuals for installation and modifications
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Documentation - Troubleshooting guidelines with example photos. For example, loosing steps, this is what it would look like, flattened vee wheel, this is what it would look like etc. For example a recent issue i recently experienced. For months my machine was working great. 3D carves perfect, spot on distances and cuts. Then slowly I noticed my depth of cut was gradually getting a bit out. I recalibrated. Worked for a short time then started drifting. Then started noticing it would cut a profile for awhile fine then not all the way through. Then I started hearing an audible clunk and lost depth in pretty large chunks. I originally thought my belt teeth had gotten damaged so I took off the Z axis and looked at the belt. No problems there. I then turned the Z axis pulley back and forth and it would free spin for a short distance and then start turning the shaft, back the other way same thing, turn for a short distance then turn the shaft. In the end, it was the allen set screw had worked it’s way loose. I removed both of the screws, put loctite on them and tightened them back up and it works great again.
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Learning projects - I love Apollo’s projects. More of the beneficial learning projects from people that have done them as examples for others to learn from. The most recent example is this one by Gary Lamon.
How cool is that that not only did he post the work he did but he gave us access to his design so we can try to duplicate it. I expect I will learn a few things from him when I undertake the nerve to try to cut this out and assemble it.
Enough of my rambling. I hope this helps and inspires other to put out their thoughts. Last but certainly not least, thanks to all of the Carbide 3D team. You are an inspiration to us all and without your inspiration we wouldnt be in this wonderful hobby that we participate in at this point.