Friday 18 October 2013

Filastruder Unboxing



My Filastruder arrived today after I parted with 46UKP to Her Majesty for the privilege of bringing it into the country.
It took a total of 25 days from ordering to arrival. Three of those days were spent in Her Majesty's customs whilst they sent me a letter demanding the fee mentioned above. I was able to track the package using UPS's tracking service throughout the journey.

It arrived well packaged:



Box was not too cramped:



And included a hand written serial number....an unimportant, but nice touch:



Unpacking all the bits reveals:



All the small parts are bagged up together:



A 110-240V a.c. power supply is included. I will need to change the mains plug to a BS1363 one:



I was a bit disappointed to find the feed tube had not been finished. The steel tube had swarf inside and the machined edges were in desperate need of filing. Filastruder warn that a file will be required so I don't mind this, but watch those edges they are sharp!



Both my reprap machines use 3mm filament, so I ordered the 3mm nozzle die as the kit came from the USA, I realised I might find it difficult to get the correct threaded parts. The nozzle looked like a real Friday afternoon job with the hole being off centre. Had I known this was to be the case I would have ordered an un-drilled die and done it myself. Would it break the bank to do this on a lathe? I do not believe it will affect the performance of the machine though:



Also, the piece of wood used to mount the filament bearing and the cooling fan was broken on receipt. Again, not a problem for me as I have this sort of stuff lying around...This may well have happened in transit but a simple examination of the piece before packing would have shown it liable to break.



So, am I satisfied?..Yes. It has saved me the trouble of sourcing and machining the required parts...nuts and bolts and other bits can be difficult to source without buying in quantity. However, the quality of some of the parts could be improved a little. I'm happy with the kit and wish Filastruder every success.

1 comment:

DDevine said...

It does say on the order page that a file is recommended.
The hole being that off centre is really sloppy, but it shouldn't affect the performance.
The block of wood being broken would be a problem for me as I really don't have random wood laying around, and it should have been obvious that the piece of wood was crap when it was cut or when it was packaged.