I have 6 workhorse printers that I’m thinking about updating with the workhorse + bundle. Has anyone done this upgrade and did it really make a difference? We are having a lot of printing issues with our current printers (SE 0.5mm extruder) and was hoping the upgrade would help. TIA!
Not the Workhorse+ specifically, but I have done similar upgrades to my Taz 6.
When both the Workhorse and Workhorse+ were available for purchase, the + was a no-brainer over the standard one, but cost to do the upgrades? that’s tough to justify.
The Octograb aluminum bed and magnetic print surface is a huge upgrade from the PEI sheet on glass, and having extra sheets on hand for spares is substantially more convenient than extra glass + PEI sheets.
The Meteor 285 is also a huge step up from the Titan Aero-based extruders in just about every way as well, but if the material you’re using is working well with the SE 0.5, I wouldn’t spend the $400 on it, let alone $2400 to outfit all six.
Runout sensor? it’s good to have, but it’s a simple filament presence detector, so it won’t do you any good for jams or stripped filament, and it’s $30. Doing custom firmware with a smart filament sensor goes much further, by sensing movement of the filament. Sensors like BTT’s SFS 2.0 can be had for less than the official one, and can be put on the RAMBO board, or connected to Octoprint. To get the SFS, you will be diving into custom firmware instead of staying official though, if that’s important to you.
But, with all that, you still won’t have BLTouch or similar leveling off the bed itself, so you’ll still be fighting for a clean nozzle every time, which is ultimately the most frustrating part of the Workhorse and Taz 6. If you’re looking for true quality of life upgrades, add BLTouch and firmware to enable it.
So for the money, magnetic beds are good, but spending $30 on a BLTouch clone, smart filament sensor, and a bit of time recompiling Marlin will go a long way with these machines.
In my experience the taz workhorse+ is just a upgraded Taz workhorse the biggest difference is the magnetic bed