How good is a sub ?100 3d printer ?

[curious aardvark]

why is this stuff so bloody complicated.
The annoying thing is I can't start using the machine until I can change the configuration. Well I could print a couple 10 and 20mm cubes. measure it and work out the percentage it's printing too small and then resize each print to that degree.
But that would mean I'm still stuck with the acreen and baud rate and as it's on an extended usb cable, it really doesn't like that high a baud rate.
I could move it nearer, but since i switched to flashprint, I'm now using the klic-n-print a lot more (it just works and I never got simplify 3d to work with it properly ) and want to get into some exotic dual filament printing. So that's stayiong where it is and the i3 will have to live with the long cable.

Plus I'd rather use the better screen with the full size sd card onboard anyway - since I've got it and it doesn't count towards the budget :-)
Plus IT's already attached to a mount and ready to be scrwed to the frame :-)

So far nothing has been able to either talk to the board or if it can talk, won't update firmware.

Last thing I saw was a chap who used the latest ide and marlin firmware and just swapped out the configuration.h and added some acceleration settings.
I'll try that today - assuming I can find the post again lol.
If that doesn't work - I'm currently out of options.
Given that my backup board doesn't have 2 z axis motor sockets, not sure how you go about re-purposing the second extruder socket (can't remember if it had one or not now lol).
I suspect that'll be pretty heavily covered in various places online.

So to sum up the: cheapest 3d printer on ebay experience so far.

Nice hardware, shame about the 'brain'.

It is weird that a company would deliberately release a machine with incorrect settings in the firmware.
I presume the boards are mass pre-programmed on the production line, so ctc probably don't have the software to change the configuration. Given that it wouldn't cost them anything to release it - and not releasing it is doing them harm, I dunno, just seems bizarre.
I do sometimes wonder about the marketing side of these chinese companies.

Right, lets see what marlin 2.0 will do for us !