Zonestar 3D printers are junk and are a scam. I bought the Zonestar Z9V5 Pro MK3 in May 2022. The 1st problem was one of the holes was drilled slightly off and it was very difficult to put together. The 2nd problem was that the x and y axis wouldn’t home and it would just keep going until the belts jumped. They wired up the x and y limit switches so that they could never indicate that the switch was made up. They broke off the terminal that was supposed to be used. I ordered new limit switches and fixed that problem myself. The 3rd problem is that Zonestar strongly suggested I order a different hot end, the 4 in 1 non-mixing head so I did that before I even received the printer. The machine I ordered came with the 4 in 1 mixing head. I tried both hot ends. Every print I printed was skipping layers. I printed the xyz calibration cube about 30 times at different levels and temperatures and with different PLA and it always skipped layers. I contacted the sales department and technical support and they are somewhat slow to respond, don’t answer all my questions, and are not very helpful with troubleshooting. The 4 in 1 non mixing head is a piece of junk and clogs up very easily. There is a very small hole for each of the filaments to travel through. When it switches filament it has to retract the current filament which deforms the filament making it larger at the end and then it either can’t retract through the hole because the end is too big or it gets all the way through the hole and then cools and becomes bigger and can’t go back in the hole. Maybe some setting changes would help with that but technical support is horrible. I finally figured out on my own I could print a good xyz cal cube with using only extruder #2. Extruder #3 works ok. Extruder #4 is poor. Extruder #1 is horrible. I’m working on ordering new PTFE tubes and adjusting the tension on the extruder filament to see if I can get the other extruders to print better. Technical support’s last suggestion was for me to just use extruder #2 and use it as a single color printer. They have given up. They have not offered me good help.
The Zonestar Z8PM4 Pro I have isn't junk. It works and I have done good prints with it. It's what I experienced. Yes you can clog it if you push down the filament too much and you have one or more channels open(without filament or cleaning tool). It's also mentioned in user manual. If you change filament you first push down filament and then pull out the filament. Then you don't have problems that filament is too big to come out. Try to clean the extruder with cleaning tools(remove nozzle and all filaments during cleaning). Adjust extruder tension. You can try different temperatures and retraction settings. I didn't need technical support, but if they have given up and said use as single color printer then it's very bad.
I have a Zonestar P802NR2. It's a four year old model. When it came out it was extremely cheap for a dual material printer. Being a i3 clone with an acrylic chassis, it wobbled a bit, and after 2 years some of the acrylic parts developed cracks. But repairs were easy, spareparts, where needed, cheap and readily available. I think Zonestar is doing a good job with their printers. The more modern systems seem to be locked with some vendor-specific firmware instead of the usual open source firmwares such as Repetier or Marlin. But seeing how many people use Windows, I think only a small minority of people like myself will actually be bothered by that. I think that Zonestar pritners are okay given they are on the cheaper end for their configurations.
It seems to have some Z wobble, I noticed on the cubes that the layers were not all even, of course this could be just this machine, I have tried mixer hot ends before and they are not the best way to make multi-colour 3D prints, but they are the least expensive.
I bought one of these, my question is how do you get it to print what you want? What slicer? What programs will talk to this printer? I have used matter control and designed thing I wanted to print and have printed on my other two printers, but I can't find a driver that talks to this printer.
You can use Cura slicer and add 4 extruders to settings, then you can use it as other printers. Gradient print settings you can choose from the printer interface. Info should be available from user manual.
With the printer came microSD card, where you find cura setup manual and resources files. The manual helps you to make your basic profile and you need to try different settings to find best for your filament. I used different settings with different prints. I lost my cura profile after cura update and I haven't done new one.
4 extruders and 4 filament spools on top of the X gantry without a gantry stabilizer... really? I wouldn't use this printer if you paid me... let alone buy it.
Yea. Its one of the problems the QuadFusion had when I used it on my Ender 3. Also, one of the reasons the developers used built in (weak as they are) extruders is that they found the pressure and distance of the bowen pushers would make the colors and filament flow inconsistent. That being said there is STILL no good software for these mixer extruders. Whats the point of them if you cannot modify the color without using presets.
