CubePro 3D Printer Review 

CubePro Trio review. I have decided to share my experience with CubePro 3d printer. I have this printer for 18 months and I have tried all variants of filament materials, that the manufacturer offers. I have printed many models but unfortunately more models where destroyed or misbuild then successfully build. The printer cannot give you what the manufacturer and salesmen’s promises to you. Design - first touch is very impressive and nice. The printer design looks nice and smooth. Is completely enclosed and no moving parts are mounted outside so the cube is the only space it needs. Build chamber id lighten up und the front and rear panel is transparent so you can see your model emerging. The printer is very user friendly, the full color touch displays is intuitive and setup wizards guides the user thru maintenance and trouble shooting. The filament cartridges handling and replacement is very easy. Also the print preparation is easy. The printer comes with all tools necessary to maintain it.But this is all what the printer offers on positive side. User software - software is very user friendly and easy to use, but it is very buggy. It crashes for no reason. When you try to customize the build options the software is not able to create support for models on edges and ignores the sidewalk options and perforation. The same happens when you enable the fine detail options. And also if you move your models on build platform the software is not able to create the build program and crashes. When you leave all in default settings it works fine, but the default option is suitable only for small and easy models. On bigger and more detailed models you need to adjust this setting or you will see how the printer vastest tons of material or the model is misbuilded.The software updates come out very often, but the major bugs are not fixed, mostly new features are added. I don’t know what the software engineers or testers do that they don’t find this bugs. I have the feeling that they just ignore this bug reports. Firmware - the firmware for model building is very buggy. The print algorithm causes sometimes collisions especially when you have more than one model of different shape or color. Ones the collision was so bad that it damaged one of the print heads. When the printer pauses the print for layer cooling and hardening a small amount of filament comes out of nozzle and instead to clean the head (the printer is equipped with very nice cleaning mechanism with waste bin) the printer continues to print and damages the model, so you have to post process the model with sandpaper or knife or you throw the model away and build it again and you hope that this time it will be not that bad.Firmware updates are also very common, but again instead of fixing the bugs, the only concern of the manufacturer is to ensure that the user uses only the genuine filament cartridges by improving the security algorithm for filament cartridge chip validation. (you will find lots of articles to this when you google a little bit) Mechanics - the mechanics is designed on strong chassis with very solution for y-axis (it uses two step motors) the mechanics is well prepared to handle motions dynamics. The cabling and filament guide pipes are installed very professional.The problem is the sliding bearing which are pure quality and they causing movement jams and noises. This leads to model misbuilding by shifting of layers. The electronics causes also trouble. My printer was in service center twice for both problems, but they replaced only the mainboard (twice) the sliding guides are still the original ones installed in factory and causing still the same problems.The filament feeder mechanism is good but too precise for the poor quality of the filament string. This causes the user to disassembly the mechanism and clear it every time when a jam occurs (what is in most abs filament very often). This procedure is time and patience consuming. Filament cartridges - oh yeah, the biggest problem for this printer. At first I liked the idea that the cartridges are equipped witch ID chip which provides all the necessary info for the printer what type and color of material is inserted, but this is not the main role of this chip (you can do this with barcode is cheaper than the chip), the main role is to ensure that you use the genuine cartridges provided by 3ds! This should be not the issue if the price is fair for the quality and material amount. Chips are faulty, there is only 680g of material and the string miserable quality for 99 Euro. I have tried all types of materials and many colors.ABS - the worst material. Avoid it at any cost. Especially the red one. Strings has too many defects and causing filament jump! The printer build platform cannot handle the ABS shrink properties and it gets bended or the first layer is fused into platform. The print algorithm for this material can compensate for abs material properties and the printed models look terrible. Big models are NO GO for abs!PLA - this is the right material for this printer. The models are good, no shape shifting, good surface quality. The problem is only, when the filament is in printer for more than 3 weeks, the string starts to crack in guide pipes, what leads to filament jump in print head. To get the filament then out of guide pipe is not an easy task. When the string cracks near the entrance of the cartridge, it is pulled inside and you have no option but to open the cartridge and get the string back to where it belongs and of course you lose the warranty to this cartridge.NYLON - very strong and good material, but the printer cannot handle it. When the print is paused for layer hardening, the filament is overheated and you see burn mark in model and of course the filament comes out during this pause and the printer do not clear the head and destroys the model! Interesting is also the fact that you cannot configure the printer software to use different materials when nylon option is used for other print heads. So when you want to use different material then nylon you have every time to reconfigure your print software. Multicolor printing - forget this feature! It is brutally time consuming for printing, because the printer cools down the head which is currently not used reheats it again when it needs it. (which is of course on each layer). This leads to material overheat and waste during this process, because the printer releases a string to waste bin to get the over burned material out of nozzle. The different material color causes by fusing (because there intersects on multicolor model) deformations and the model looks not that pretty. It is better to print monochrome models or the different color parts sparely and the assemble them than together. Which requires good skills be model design to reflect the different color material properties, so that the parts fit together ;) Service and support - the onsite technician which has done the service for my printer has done his best. His hand was in many cases tighten by manufacturers service contract. All troubles have to be verified by manufacturers tech support and they didn’t listen to problem descriptions provided by customer. They wanted photos and videos, so I did my best to satisfy their need to make proper analyses of my printer’s issues. But in the end they ignored everything and send me stupid instructions that never solved the issue. My printer has mechanical problem proved by video and they told me to update firmware. Of course it didn’t solve the problem, only expensive filament was wasted on next model. In the end the motherboard quitted and the printer was taken to service center for repair. I waited 3-4 weeks for its return and they of course changed the mainboard for a one with defective usb port, so the center has to wait for new mainboard again. After return the mechanical problem is still present. They give me of course advise to lubricate the faulty bearings regularly. Cool idea to lubricate those bearings when the bearing manufacturer forbids this, because dust is collected in this lubricant its pulled then inside those bearings and they get slowly damaged. So now I’m waiting for total failure of those bearing. Software issues are ignored by default at support. Filament and spear parts supply is short and it takes weeks to get it. Final assessment - the idea of user friendly 3d printer is very good and this printer has mastered most of this idea good. But the philosophy to get huge money from customer for cartridges is a gall. The printer is not able to print what the manufacturer promises. The support is ignorant and incompetent. The printer is not worth its price. You will be very fast disappointed. I regret this purchase. There are better printers on the market that this one. They are cheaper, maybe uglier and more skills are necessary to operate them, but you will get the output you want from it. This printer is pure waste of money. Maybe another manufacturer will inspire their product by the philosophy of user friendliness, case design and software interface.

I purchased the cube pro trio and it is an amazing printer right out of the box. I've only had a few issues such as the build plate coming apart which 3dsystems knows about and replaced fairly quick, I added superglue as a temporary fix. Also you can print an abs with pla support with a chamber heat warning but you cannot print an only abs part with a pla cartridge installed. Best work around is if you wish to print a model that is only using the abs cartridge then all you need to do is disconnect the wire harness leading to the cartridge instead of completely removing the filament and cartridge. I install my pla on port 2 because it lays down to allow easier access to the filament tube during cartridge changes also exposing the wire harness to disconnect. I may do a video showing the problem and the fix, just kinda busy with customers and projects atm.

Hello All, I am NEW to 3D printing PERIOD. I am aware of the technology but have never been introduced t it until now. I have access to a CubePro Trio. As far as pulling it out of the box and setting it up, I am in the dark. I have been looking for a video showing all of the basics of the set up. I cut loose the head, and am holding off installing the wiper tray to make sure I understand what the book is telling me. I know nothing about calibration or the software needed to create models in. Any help would be appreciated greatly. Thank you All.

At that price that bed should be heated.Robo 3dR1 is heated for lots less and the TAZ5 is heated and both can use just about any filament on the market.

This printer is not good, I do not recommend, the software is really bad - crashes all the time, when cartage runs out its still 30% full of filament but the printer doesn't accept it anymore. When you try to print in multi-material the ABS warps, the printer can't handle making support for complex parts. Essentially useless

it seems like you have calibration issues. have you done the Z-Gap and the plate calibration man? Sorry if you have mentioned it in your video and I missed it.

@00mandingo00 The print times can be reduced significantly depending on your settings at build if you run the high resolution solid honeycomb infill it will take 4x the base print , if he set the Keychain to standard almost solid line infill, lowered base and top layers by one and outer walls by one he could print it in 9 min ;)

Hey, What CAD Software did you use?

Cubify looks just like Alibre - now Geomagic Design. Cool.

Can I have a link for the better printing material and the printer itself. I'd love to buy one

How do you print with ABS i heard that the cube pro has no heated bed ?

I remeber the sounds from this printer at my school and I just got a chanse to buy one of these new from a warehouse with 5 cartridges for 250 but it's a 40 mile drive how do you think this printer stands in 2019

For the price i would buy a ultimaker 2

nice review. How are you liking the cube overall? I have two on order for my office. I am hoping to print supports with HIPS or PVA. Have you tried anything like that?

Thanks for the review.

As far as creating multiple color prints...it's a problem. Lol, the way to do it currently is just as you describe with a twist. In this case you'd create the Keychain export and then create the letters and export. Using a 3rd party software called meshmixer you can open both of the exported models and put them together. I haven't tried opening them both in cube software yet, but I know you can open multiple models and build them on one build I just don't know if you were to stack them in the software and build them would the printer do this during print

does the 3D model have to be a certain scale before exporting to cube pro systems?

how do you remove the heated wax or glue on the plate? what is the best or fast way to remove the heated wax? or I can print without wax or glue? is that safe? It's hard to remove the heated wax. maybe you can help me about my problem. thank you in advance :)

was thinking of purchasing this printer, any further thoughts? I would be only printing in abs

Have you found out how to fix this problem ?

How long does one cartridge last?

Thanks for doing this review! In your opinion, how would the Cube Pro work for designing tiny intricate jewelry (such as rings with great detail). Do you know of any other printers that would work better for such an endeavor?

Any one have the software

Thanks for posting this. Your timing is perfect. I am very interested in getting the 3 color unit. The prints looked really crisp. I use Solidworks top design my items. I guess it is all about getting used to the software. I am likely to get NetFabb as well to improve the meshing.

hey, lower the temp when using pla :)

And to think I was just about to buy a 3D printer..but after seeing this video and the outcome ..I'll pass, I'll just stick to my cnc plasma, vinyl plotter and epilog laser engraver and leave the 3D printing for someone else..

Expensive and bad. Feel free to contact me incase you have the smallest intention of buying this printer and I will help you change your mind.

wow those prints look nasty and these cost how much! sorry but my ultimaker 2 produces parts so much better than these at a fraction of the cost.

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