Regarding Chinese suppliers

Has anyone here picked up electronics packages from banggood.com or dx.com What was your opinion of them?

[www.banggood.com]
[www.dx.com]

$50 odd dollars with shipping and making a profit, they must be cutting corners on the quality/components somewhere, personally when it comes to these components i would avoid them like the politicians

---

-=( blog )=- -=( thingiverse )=- -=( 3Dindustries )=- -=( Aluhotend - mostly metal hotend)=--=( Facebook )=-

Quote
thejollygrimreaper
personally when it comes to these components i would avoid them like the politicians

So, no personal experience, just opinion?

Quote
Riffraff

Quote
thejollygrimreaper
personally when it comes to these components i would avoid them like the politicians

So, no personal experience, just opinion?

critical thought more than anything, how on earth can they make something like that and ship it for $51.50 to $52 , some of the people who have bought these cheap boards before have found usually the corners cut are on things like mosfets that are incorrect or are much lower spec than they should be, copper thickness on the pcb itself is lacking along with a variety of other things ,

---

-=( blog )=- -=( thingiverse )=- -=( 3Dindustries )=- -=( Aluhotend - mostly metal hotend)=--=( Facebook )=-

For a Chinese supplier I use robotdigg. One stop shop and haven't had any complaints yet. YYou do however need to order a decent amount to make it worthwhile due to shipping.

---

greghoge.com

HUGE 3D PRINTER PARTS SALE!!!

Quote
thejollygrimreaper

Quote
Riffraff

Quote
thejollygrimreaper
personally when it comes to these components i would avoid them like the politicians

So, no personal experience, just opinion?

critical thought more than anything, how on earth can they make something like that and ship it for $51.50 to $52 , some of the people who have bought these cheap boards before have found usually the corners cut are on things like mosfets that are incorrect or are much lower spec than they should be, copper thickness on the pcb itself is lacking along with a variety of other things ,

True enough, however I have seen reviews of the $8 arduino clones that found no or little issues

A friend of mine has bought stuff off of DX.com. He tests everthing out and yes there are some problems with quality but some of the gear is ok. I am not sure what the return policy is like I haven't asked. So it's a crapshoot sometimes you roll 7s sometimes boxcars.

Thanks Mike

I've got two full sets of electronics (arduino, RAMPS, LCD, pololu's) from Aliexpress. They were in the order of $50 including shipping, and both have run flawlessly (one for 3 months, one for 9 months) printing pretty much every day. I know 2 is a pretty small sample, but they're definitely not 100% dodgy. I could by 4 sets for less than the price of a single set from local sellers, so even if one does die I can get another (and another spare) while I'm at it, and still be up on the deal. Only downside is the shipping time.

Quote
Opus
Only downside is the shipping time.

Oh, I know another downside. The major reason why these vendors can offer something that cheap is, they can copy the entire Arduino infrastructure for free. The more popular these cheapo offerings get, the more useless it becomes to develop something open source. Accordingly, buying cheap votes for technological standstill.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Quote
Traumflug

Quote
Opus
Only downside is the shipping time.

Oh, I know another downside. The major reason why these vendors can offer something that cheap is, they can copy the entire Arduino infrastructure for free. The more popular these cheapo offerings get, the more useless it becomes to develop something open source. Accordingly, buying cheap votes for technological standstill.

cheap sadly seems to be the driver for a lot of this activity, however for a lot of these components it's already hit the point of development standstill, the voting is kind of done and dusted.

i do wonder if the majority of the buyers of these products know they aren't really putting any money into developers pockets for future development , ultimately as highlighted with the jhead clone situation it doesn't always pay anyway to get the dirt cheap components straight out of china as you inevitably end up replacing it with something of more substantial quality anyway.

---

-=( blog )=- -=( thingiverse )=- -=( 3Dindustries )=- -=( Aluhotend - mostly metal hotend)=--=( Facebook )=-

I bought a ramps and 5 drivers from bangood still building my machine but have tested the ramps with one driver and it drove a nema23 motor fine.

I'm using a taurino arduino mega as the base device though.

Ben

Quote
Traumflug

Quote
Opus
Only downside is the shipping time.

Oh, I know another downside. The major reason why these vendors can offer something that cheap is, they can copy the entire Arduino infrastructure for free. The more popular these cheapo offerings get, the more useless it becomes to develop something open source. Accordingly, buying cheap votes for technological standstill.

Copying is exactly what the license allows. I've been to events where Massimo has given presentations and he has no qualms with copying the design and encourages it, in fact. The only issue is they (rightly) don't want their trademarks infringed. That is the basis of open hardware and something many here, including you in this instance, do not get. Without open hardware and people iike Adafruit, Sparkfun, Hackvanna and Seeed the open hardware movement would not exist as it does today. In fact Sparkfun makes an Arduino derivative with the blessing of Massimo. I see discouraging the intended use of open source licenses in the same light as I see patent trolling. Open hardware is first and foremost about not restricting the use. As such, an NC type license is not considered open source.

As for the quality of electronics from China, like anything else there are good parts and bad parts. The millions of iPhones that went on sale earlier today come from China as do most of the other electronics products and sub assemblies in the world. China, specifically Guangdong, is where electronics come from. Even the good parts. You can get cheap crap there but you can just as easily get quality parts. RAMPS assemblies with quality components are under a dollar in quantity and they are making tens of thousands of them. The Arduino clones aren't much more, largely due to the cost of the AVR. I'm all for supporting developers but the truth is most of them don't have the capacity (or in many cases the desire) to build quanitities suitable for wholesale consumption. This is true particularly with RAMPS and the JHead. The application of 3D printing has evolved past the cult of personality within which some live to become at least a mainstream presence and nearly a mainstream application. This requires manufacturing capacity and open hardware platforms are the best way to address that and deliver machines with value to the end users who are primarily wanting to print objects and not become involved in a technophile tech war.

Quote
vegasloki
I see discouraging the intended use of open source licenses in the same light as I see patent trolling.

Nobody discourages the intended use of open source here. Even Mr. Banzi prefers people to buy from one of the official channels. Because these official channels share some of their revenue, they report back issues and help improving the design and they make sure you get the actual design, not just something similar looking. And they support their customers, of course.

What we see recently are super-cheapo clones which share not much more than the look and name of the open source design. You save a few dollars and get a bet on wether it works as intended or not. No customer support, no developer support. That's definitely not the intended use of open source.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

I've bought quite a bit from dx.com . I got one of those RAMPS boards but haven't actually tried it yet. The parts quality looks fine. A Melzi board from them worked fine except for having 10k thermistor pullups.
A dozen or so Arduino clones have all been fine.
The LED light bulbs I have got from them have generally not been good.
I suspect they have some sort of cheap large quantity postage arrangement. I recommend always buy 3 of something in an order to get the bulkrate option and check the option to wait for all items in the order before shipping it. That way all items are sent by faster registered post. Items not sent with the bulkrate option can take months to arrive.
I would consider hotend pseudo-clones a very dubious investment just from the various issues I have seen posted here about them.

My experience:

I have purchased from DX.com for the last 7 years. Replacement cases for PS portables. Replacement LCD screens and other internal bits for PSP and Nintendo DS. Replacement bits for iPhones. Odds and ends like microswitches and SSR relays. Quality on all of these items were just fine. I did get one $7 MP3 player the size of a quarter that issues with its touch screen, but it still plays fine. Shipping is always free, and takes like a month.

For printer parts I buy from RobotDigg and GEEEtech. Belts, pulleys, RAMPS, DRV boards and one printrboard. The printrbaord had a design flaw where the trace between power and the MOSFET was ridiculously undersized and blew out. I soldered a thick jumper and it still prints today. Not bad for $35 vs $100 from 'others' and they have since fixed the problem on the board. RobotDigg is trustworthy, but I can tell you it feels fishy to do business through email and paypal. He will get more business when he finally invests in a shopping cart for his website. Oh, a tip: RobotDigg defaults to 'less than a week' shipping which can be pricey. Ask him to ship HK Post and it gets super cheap, just takes 3 weeks to get it.

Chinese stuff is what it is. Its cheap because labor is practically nullified, and everything is made in super-bulk volume. As for quality, I have found that it is as random as US manufacturers. Some stuff is bad, some stuff is good. Its no more a risk than buying from Walmart rather than direct from the high-end manufacturer. So it falls into "You get what you pay for". But you should also realize that most 'local' 3D printer parts suppliers are getting their materials from these same Chinese places themselves. It only costs $1 more per board to have them make a thousand with your name on it, and that is $1 added to the already deep discounted bulk pricing.

---

"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."

Hi Hazer and all,

I was curious about RobotDigg. I am shopping around for a 300mm x 300mm heated bed and I came across one from them:

[www.robotdigg.com]

It is 12V and only $20, but they don't say alot about it. This other place seems to carry the same item (from the pictures they look the same) but a lot more expensive, but they do give more information about it.

[store.quintessentialuniversalbuildingdevice.com]

What are your thoughts on the this item?

I am just starting out and trying to piece together my printer. Also I had been looking for electronics from various places and I have seen a range of prices from high to low. Very interesting on the price differences, like $45 for a complete Ramps setup with LCD from Banggood.com, while places like Elecfreaks.com has a setup for $189.

I ordered a few items from DX.com in the past, two orders both around $50. Mostly items for soldering work.

Thanks.

Most cheap Arduino and Ramps boards are built by low end Chinese manufacturers, regardless of who you buy it from.
Both DX and Banggods, the Ramps is made by Geeetech, not sure about the Arduino itself. That Ramps lacks the mosfet heatsink required for a heated bed, but you can easily make or buy one, but do it fast, as it won't take much to blow. The stepper drivers also may need heat sinks and a fan depending on how hard you drive them.

I've had several cheap Arduinos and ramps, and while the Arduinos did fine, the Ramps boards inevitably blew out the heat bed mosfet and regularly tripped the resettable fuse. Some of this has to do with the Ramps specifications, but mostly, they're cheap and you get what you pay for.

As for Geetech, we looked at them for the Griffin Pro, and went with the Panucatt Azteeg X5 instead at a slightly higher cost. Panucatt has better quality control, parts/connectors were in a proper line, nothing was bent, solder joints looked good... Plus Smoothie/ARM is awesome.

As a "leach" of the open source IR and an American to boot, I feel compeled to stand up for my Chinese counterparts.

Those who say "we" who make things cheaper are cutting corners; I say, "Make something. Make anything."

We are blue collar Chinese, Americans, and Europeans.

It's you who leach on us. Not the other way around.

Quote
ChileMaker
Hi Hazer and all,

I was curious about RobotDigg. I am shopping around for a 300mm x 300mm heated bed and I came across one from them:

[www.robotdigg.com]

It is 12V and only $20, but they don't say alot about it. This other place seems to carry the same item (from the pictures they look the same) but a lot more expensive, but they do give more information about it.

[store.quintessentialuniversalbuildingdevice.com]

What are your thoughts on the this item?

I am just starting out and trying to piece together my printer. Also I had been looking for electronics from various places and I have seen a range of prices from high to low. Very interesting on the price differences, like $45 for a complete Ramps setup with LCD from Banggood.com, while places like Elecfreaks.com has a setup for $189.

I ordered a few items from DX.com in the past, two orders both around $50. Mostly items for soldering work.

Thanks.

RD and QUBD get their electronics from the same place. But maybe not these. From what everyone is saying here, you are gambling pretty much either way as there is no guarantee that the one from QUBD is any higher quality (or that the one from RobotDigg is lower quality).

Sheepdog43 brings a good point. There are problems with the clone RAMPS boards, and these problems are well documented. I too bought heatsinks for my MOSFETs and have active cooling. Mostly due to the heat generated by the headers which are undersized for 15 Amps (they all are not just the clones). But hey, my choice was $17 for the clone, or $100 for the Azteeg. I choose the clone and it has been running for 12 months. I also have a spare.

The same goes for a cloned printrboard I mentioned earlier. Bought it for $38 and had to fix a poorly designed power trace. Which has since been fixed by the manufacturer. So you can get the board from Geeetech for $40 or get it from everyone else for $90 and there is no difference. But you must aware you are always taking a risk.

---

"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."

Quote
ChileMaker
There are problems with the clone RAMPS boards, and these problems are well documented. .

Other than the MOSFET, what are these "well documented" issues with Chinese Ramps boards. Also, how are they "clones" when they are open source, anyone can build and sell, hardware?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2014 03:08AM by Riffraff.

Quote
Traumflug

Quote
Opus
Only downside is the shipping time.

Oh, I know another downside. The major reason why these vendors can offer something that cheap is, they can copy the entire Arduino infrastructure for free. The more popular these cheapo offerings get, the more useless it becomes to develop something open source. Accordingly, buying cheap votes for technological standstill.

I say the opposite. If you open the design so everyone can get it without paying the expense that comes with a proprietary design, you can't complain when a situation springs up that allows for exactly that. Cheap chinese manufacturing means that anyone can afford an Arduino, which is pretty much the reason it was opened sourced. This means if the designers want people to buy from them, they need to be constantly improving to give people a reason to do exactly that. You don't run a business selling open source items, you run a business adding value to open source items. If you look at open source software, there is never any price to pay, the developers get no money from the distribution of the product. They get money from supporting it, adding to it and improving it, and providing services around it. There's no reason why the situation with open source hardware should be any different.

Riffraff, how you quoted that, it sounds like I said that.

But I would like to know what these issues are too. Can't really be a clone when it is open source hardware, can it?

I guess it boils down to part substitution. I would think that the larger companies can get prices down since they can get things in bulk, whereas a small company can't.

But even the big companies like Samsung can cut corners and substitute cheaper parts. Which brings to mind the capacitor issue with a number of their LCD monitors. I have two Samsung SyncMaster 204B LCD monitors (from 2005-2006) that I had to replace a number of the capacitors on the power supply boards last year.

Quote
Riffraff

Quote
ChileMaker
There are problems with the clone RAMPS boards, and these problems are well documented. .

Other than the MOSFET, what are these "well documented" issues with Chinese Ramps boards. Also, how are they "clones" when they are open source, anyone can build and sell, hardware?

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2014 02:51PM by ChileMaker.

Quote
Robert_Paulson
As a "leach" of the open source IR and an American to boot, I feel compeled to stand up for my Chinese counterparts.

Those who say "we" who make things cheaper are cutting corners; I say, "Make something. Make anything."

We are blue collar Chinese, Americans, and Europeans.

It's you who leach on us. Not the other way around.

we don't care that there are people who are making these things purely for profit however the issue is wether it is being done properly, as is evident by the Chinese jheads it clearly is not,
we (the reprap community) are expected by these people to then provide customer for what they have sold and nearly none of them take are responsibility for any that don't work as claimed.

in the case of the Chinese jheads I've been defining them as "variants" which is exactly what they are , if you ask most of the Chinese jhead suppliers for the sources for what they have produced as they should be releasing them as per the licence they just point to the wiki to which to which their jhead doesn't even remotely fit against the source done by the original designer. it's now the same situation with a lot of the E3D variants on aliexpress as well

we get the same type of behaviour with the electronics boards as other components as well.

a lot of people will argue the "it's opensource" argument, yes it's opensource however these people are not really abiding by the rules as per the licences and they certainly don't contribute to the community through development or supporting their "variants" instead claiming their variants are something they aren't which in most countries in the western world holds legal consumer protection questions. some would even use the word "counterfeit"

while you get a cheap price alot with a little risk, the bigger question is why should we support these people when they clearly have no interest in playing fair to the rest of the community? eg selling jheads as a variant and named properly and not as the real thing trying to trick people into thinking they are getting something made to the specs released by the designer

Quote
thejollygrimreaper
the bigger question is why should we support these people when they clearly have no interest in playing fair to the rest of the community?

1. "These people" are factory owners- they are not part of your community. Nearly all are older and survived the Cultural Revolution, leading to behavior that nearly all young Chinese also find unacceptable.
2. These factories "support" you by making your hobby affordable. If you feel otherwise try and make a 3D printer without any Chinese parts. How popular would 3D printing be without Chinese manufacturing expertise to bring down the cost of printers and supplies? Making something cheaper and more accessible to a larger number of people is an improvement- otherwise Henry Ford did not accomplish sh*t. Affordability has always been considered one of the greatest innovations and Chinese factories have consistently lowered barriers to entry in 3D printing- while Ultimaker and Makerbot have tried to keep them high. Who's the real enemy of the "community"?
3. Beijing Tiertime did original engineering- the Up! extruder and other hardware designs got stolen by Makerbot and the Cube. No one said a word about "knock-offs" then.
4. Innovation. Remember wood printers? Loosening screws and shaking themselves out of spec after a few prints? Where did all the acrylic derivatives come from? Then all the sheet metal ones? China. Each time Western manufacturers have been behind the curve and playing catch up- responsive to the structural improvements Chinese factories were making.

All this aside- these are the factories. The actual people in the Chinese 3D printing community are huge proponents of Open Source. It’s important to make the distinction because most of the factories in China are run by people who know nothing about 3D printing and are just trying to make a fast buck. We don’t like when Makerbot is held up as a representative of Western 3D printing, the same applies to China.

Tough to read with Google translate but this is a pretty typical review from an actual member of the "community".

Just FYI here are some of "These people":

Quote
Timaz

Quote
thejollygrimreaper
the bigger question is why should we support these people when they clearly have no interest in playing fair to the rest of the community?

1. "These people" are factory owners- they are not part of your community. Nearly all are older and survived the Cultural Revolution, leading to behavior that nearly all young Chinese also find unacceptable.
2. These factories "support" you by making your hobby affordable. If you feel otherwise try and make a 3D printer without any Chinese parts. How popular would 3D printing be without Chinese manufacturing expertise to bring down the cost of printers and supplies? Making something cheaper and more accessible to a larger number of people is an improvement- otherwise Henry Ford did not accomplish sh*t. Affordability has always been considered one of the greatest innovations and Chinese factories have consistently lowered barriers to entry in 3D printing- while Ultimaker and Makerbot have tried to keep them high. Who's the real enemy of the "community"?
3. Beijing Tiertime did original engineering- the Up! extruder and other hardware designs got stolen by Makerbot and the Cube. No one said a word about "knock-offs" then.
4. Innovation. Remember wood printers? Loosening screws and shaking themselves out of spec after a few prints? Where did all the acrylic derivatives come from? Then all the sheet metal ones? China. Each time Western manufacturers have been behind the curve and playing catch up- responsive to the structural improvements Chinese factories were making.

All this aside- these are the factories. The actual people in the Chinese 3D printing community are huge proponents of Open Source. It’s important to make the distinction because most of the factories in China are run by people who know nothing about 3D printing and are just trying to make a fast buck. We don’t like when Makerbot is held up as a representative of Western 3D printing, the same applies to China.

Tough to read with Google translate but this is a pretty typical review from an actual member of the "community".

Just FYI here are some of "These people":

110932zuw25w8csc2xwb1w.jpg

105428eixiuiuuzcwpaj55.jpg

161930a7sttbatmr7a4tai.jpg

165335aw1qay8awqcytuy3.jpg

124927muvvv0ubvaf80isi.jpg

Affordability isn't the issue and never has been , by all means i'm not going to stop them from making dirt cheap boards as yes it does make my hobby/buisness cheaper, they have the resources to do so it's not a problem as long as they support it to some degree instead of just relying on the community for customer support, however.., it's the dodgy and outright fraudulant marketing practices some companies (not nessessarily isolated to chinese) who for example sell their variant on ebay while leading the customer to believe they are infact getting something that is properly made to the drawings, some have even in the past used actual photos from hotends.com instead of their own photos, we have caught quite a few of them who have gone as far as to claim that they are the designers of the jhead and recently the E3d hotends,

again, affordability is and never has been the issue, the dodgy marketing practices employed by the dodgy companies are the problem and we (the chinese reprap community as well) shouldn't not support people who do this

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2014 01:12AM by thejollygrimreaper.

Quote
thejollygrimreaper
affordability is and never has been the issue

For whom? On every 3D printing board I'm on it is the main issue for more than half of people considering a printer purchase. Lower printer costs are widely considered to be a bottleneck in wider adoption. If affordability is not a factor for you then why not simply use American and European made components?

Quote
thejollygrimreaper
it's the dodgy and outright fraudulent marketing practices some companies (not necessarily isolated to chinese) who for example sell their variant on ebay while leading the customer to believe they are infact getting something that is properly made to the drawings

I'd be hard pressed to decide who rips more people off- ebay vendors or kickstarters. The point being is it's hard to source 3D printers and parts directly from random sellers who have little in the way of accountability. You get consistent quality and accountability for Chinese products by going through a local distributor with quality control agreements in place- this is how nearly all electronics work, and with Afinia and now Dremel pulling the industry in that direction it's how 3D printers will most likely work.

Quote
thejollygrimreaper
dodgy marketing practices employed by the dodgy companies

The entire consumer 3D printing industry is built on dodgy marketing. I know because I have the exact same conversation at the other end- Chinese who have spent a fortune in import tariffs for a P.O.S. Makerbot 5th Gen and cannot understand how American's could be "this dishonest and sell a printer with so many problems. Look, even on Amazon everyone says it does not work- why doesn't the government fine them for fraud? Oh, are they government owned? Maybe the boss is an officials son…” and so on.

We see it constantly. Photos of assembled multi-part prints sitting on printer beds with the support removed in every product brochure? "Open Source" printers that never publish their source? "Dual Extruders for Dissolvable Support!” (How many people do you know who can actually use that “feature”?). No disclaimer that most printers require constant fiddling and usually only experts really get consistent prints without constantly changing settings? Most people can learn to whittle in less time than it takes to learn to dial a RepRap in for reliable use- an in most cases the whittling would be faster. The whole "oh you can't expect printers to actually work because we're all so hip and open source is awesome" scam?

Yes a hotend should be as advertised- but going after China for overhyping and misrepresenting the typical quality and performance of 3D printing products truly is the pot calling the kettle black.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2014 04:30AM by Timaz.

The Chinaman is not the issue here dude.

I guess it all boils down to separating the wheat from the chaff.

It would be nice for people on the list to give a shout out to those Open Source vendors (Chinese or otherwise) that are in it for the long run and not for a quick buck.

While cheap or inexpensive can be good, it seems that it can be a crap shoot when you got that route exclusively. That is without some vetting from others.

Thanks for the community link.

Arduino Mega, RAMPS, five steppers and five 8825s of eBay, all the cheapest I could find, all work great. Just my two cents (or cent and a half on eBay).

I hadn't given this issue much thought before as I am still relatively new to RepRap. But now I am curious about the G3D RAMPS kit I bought from an eBay Hong Kong seller. The MEGA has "Arduino MEGA 2560" with the TM symbol on it. Does this mean it is a 'genuine' product? And does genuine mean it must have been made by the original company? Or could anyone stamp "Arduino MEGA 2560" on the board?

I know the MK2a heated bed that came with the kit is NOT etched from copper but rather is plated. It's clear because the holes and pads are copper colored. So this was obviously a case of getting what I paid for. So I won't use the heated bed because it is is inferior to the properly made bed. But if the bed is not made to spec what are the chances the Arduino and RAMPS will be?