Hey Brandon,
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
Let me prefix this post by saying that we have a number of 3D printers in our shop as well. We’ve probably had 20 or more in the last decade. We bought every single one of them as a kit, and we do so on purpose. Building the kits is an excellent way to learn how they work, understand their strengths and weaknesses , and learn how to fix them when needed.
So I’ve gone through many assembly instruction sets. Some are very detailed because the assembly is involved. Prusa3D, for example. Some instructions are short and sweet because one of the design objectives of the architecture was making assembly easy. Creality is a good example.
Just my opinion, and put out without judgment, is that more focus should have been put into the user experience of this upgrade. I’m hopeful that the end result will be worth the $ investment. But the upgrade process could have been design so much better in a number of ways. Just to stay on point, non-rotating tee nuts should have been used wherever possible. (More on that in a second.) But just as importantly, the instructions that guide customers through this upgrade are maybe1/4 as detailed as they should have been. I don’t think the problems we’re experiencing were anticipated by the team because they just didn’t think like users. They kept thinking like the designers and technicians that they are. That was an unfortunate business decision that affects the Inventables brand.
Now, to your questions. This upgrade of the z-axis involves replacing the front and back plates on both sides. This would have allowed non-rotating tee nuts to be inserted into the T slot for the top of the stiffeners without any additional disassembly. Temporarily removing a corner bracket and loosening a couple of wasteboard screws on each side would allowed similar access to the slot used by the bottom of the stiffeners.
No, I’ve still not completed the upgrade, both because there have been a number of other challenges we’ve had to overcome, and because we just haven’t had to opportunity to spend as much time coming up with solutions as we’ve needed to. But I expect to complete the upgrade before midweek.
Finally, you explain the reasoning behind why I was locked out of the forums. I get it. Except that the Inventables team just wouldn’t answer the support line or call me back. So, though we’re promised support, all we’re in fact left with is the forums. Again, think about my user experience - a complex upgrade design, with insufficient assembly instructions, the promised phone support not available, then getting kicked off the forums. Again, no judgment, just not an acceptable experience.
