Renkforce RF100 3D PLA Printer, updated 14.03.2021
Tools
December 2016, after 3 years of testing and fiddling with 3D printing I bought a Renkforce RF100 PLA printer for 299,00 €. It is a small all metal built 10 x 10 x 10 cm volume printer. 0,1 mm to 0,2 mm layer height, autohome, plug and play. The printer was ready to print after 5 minutes unpacking. It just works fine and the results are very good.
February 2017, so far I had no miss prints hardware related. If something goes wrong it is always in the design or the selfmade handling mistakes. As I have made a lot of smaller parts I use 100% infill. Adhesion seems no problem for me, as I strictly wipe the bed very quickly with aceton as described in the manual. I rather would say that it is hard to get the print from the bed. In between prints you have to shortly switch off and on the printer, as for some reason it forgets the SD card reader. It will not show up in the menu. Otherwise I'm really happy with the printer. I so far used 3 different types of standard PLA and the standard Cura settings which came with the printer.
September 2017, I continues printed some of my watch boxes and some other projects. The only thing which happend once is an unsuccessful filament change where I had to unscrew the hotend to get the last old part out. The easiest way to change the filament is by cuting the inserted filament and press "Load filament" in the menu and simultanously feeding the new filament until the color changes.
November 2017, for some reason the filament stopped to be transported correctly. I checked if there was something on the roll wrong but there it seemed to be ok. Putting a bit pressure onto the filament helped so I checked the hotend. Cleaning the bearing, oiling and cleaning if the transport wheel was done. The old filament was removed and all assemlbed again. Still no transport of the filament. With the help of the Renkforce RF100 forum I could pin down the error to the harness for the extruder. Exchange of the harness with a new one for 7,95€ solved the problem, the printer is up and running again.
February 2018, some new self designed parts printed. Designed, sliced and printed, no problems at all.
February 2019, the last year the use of my 3D printer was a lot of routine. Designing new parts like dial boxes, watch boxes, small help parts, pocket watch holders with Fusion360, preparing the print with Cura and starting the printer. Works very good and I consider the use of a 3D printer usefull.
September 2019, the nozzle clogged up and I had to remove it and clean it. Seems to work again, maybe it is time for a replacement due to wear and tear.
March 2021, the RF100 has done its job very well and is retired now as I have projects which require a bigger build volume. I have switched to a Prusa MK3S+ printer.
Renkforce RF100 Timelaps Video