Good, Fast, or Cheap? Pick Two

Hello,

There is a saying that you can get it good, fast, or cheap. Pick two.

I am the designer and a manufacturer of the J-Head hot-end. I have been seeing people state that they bought a cheap hot-end, off of E-Bay, and now it doesn't work. So, they blame the type of hot-end. (Note: I've seen complaints about cheap J-Head clones, cheap E3D clones, and other products.) When you buy a clone, for cheap, it is cheap for a reason. Maybe it isn't made to the proper specification or maybe they eliminated some important steps when manufacturing it. Though, to be honest, it could be that they have a $250,000 machining center and can tap into the "economy of scale". From looking at the clones, that I bought, it is not only an economy of scale issue. It is that they saved money by modifying the design in ways that negatively affect the performance of the part.

If you decide to buy a cheap clone, you are saving money. Maybe. If it works. You may have got it fast, cheap, and not good.

When you pay the money, for a properly made part, you are ensuring that you get the part made to the proper specification. You are also buying a warranty that it will work. For me, it is my job to ensure that it works for you. (I have also heard good things about how the warranty process is handled for an E3D.) Another thing, that you are buying, is research and development. Research and development costs time and money. The people, that make and sell cheap clones, do not do the research and development. In fact, a case could be made that the cheap cloners, who do not even follow the published specification, are just taking your money and running. They do not even care enough, about what they are making, to make it to the proper specification. In my case, I care enough about my product that I scrapped an entire production run of PEEK nozzle holders because I accidentally selected a CNC file that contained the instructions for the previous sub-version. Those scrapped PEEK nozzle holders probably would have worked fine. However, I did not want to subject my customers to the possibility of finding out the hard way by having a single failure.

On the other hand, there is a distinct possibility that if enough people buy the cheap clones that the original designer will not bother to make, sell, and improve upon the product. Why would somebody want to develop something if it will be cheaply and poorly copied and then marketed in such a way that the entire product gets a bad reputation?

I'd also like to mention that it is possible to find a part, that is not from the original manufacturer, that is made to the proper specification. For example, I have a Makerfarm J-Head Mk IV-B that is very nicely made to the proper specification. I do not consider this to be a clone. Makerfarm followed the proper specification and sold me a very nice J-Head Mk IV-B. As my product is an open-source product, I do not have a problem with this.

Best Regards,

Brian

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2014 01:13AM by reifsnyderb.

For all the good open source does, this is one down side to open source. Even printed parts for printers can be made improperly, sometimes you can see it like if it's warped sometimes you can't. I bought some parts that appeared to be well made but I soon found they printed parts that take loads with 2 perimeters and 10% infill so they were easily broken.

Since you are the designer you also suffer as you mentioned with people claiming the product is bad without mentioning it was just a poorly made clone and not the original.

I feel for you.

Brian, I could not agree more. I have bought several j heads and parts from you after bad experiences with another make and type of extruder. I wanted trouble free operation and ordered from you because of your good reputation. I am an engineer with my own model making lathe and I think your machining is superb. I could have got cheaper or faster (I am in the UK and ordered from the US) but not better.

A Clone is a clone, is a clone.

If someone copies an original design, they have only the ability to try and copy, not the ability to create, nor to back up their product.

Time spent in research testing and development, a never ending circular iterative process, is something cloners are either not capable of doing or not willing to do. Some lead, others follow!

I once had a JHead that failed, due to my own actions. Brian replaced it without question nor quibble, and he was indeed proud to do so. This is when i really understood the item i had purchased, and the company i had purchased it from.

I will always have and always will point people to the original JHead and state they should only buy the original, for the exact reasons outlined in this thread.

If you buy a clone/copy, dont come crying. Its your money and your risk.

Brian, keep up the good work. You have given me many many hours of trouble free good quality printing, afterall, no matter how good the printer, the Hotend is THE business end of the machine where it all comes together. Why pay a few bucks less afterall the time and effort into building a machine.

Once bought a 'clone' but it was an exact copy, and worked very well. The second version I got from the same supplier had flaws, nothing I could detect by myself, but probably there was a minor flaw in the hotend causing my filament to get stuck.

After all I was very happy with the first hotend so I guess this was just an unlucky version.

After using the J-head I went to get a Merlin hotend and this one was bought in the period when it was just new, so no clones existed back then (and I think there are still no clones today). This has been the best hotend I've ever had, but it's probably just as good as an original J-head

If I am ever going to test another hotend, it will probably be a E3D, I see what they are doing and it just looks so damn good.

The Budahschnozzle was also great btw. I have it on my old printer and I have to say I am impressed!

It is on the list to be replaced with a Merlin hotend OR a J-head, but I am now thinking of putting the Merlin on it, since I am so happy with my current Merlin hotend on my MendelMax.

I've always bought the hotends at shops that said they made it up to the original specs, and I've never been crying over any of them (except for the failing 1.75mm J-head from another store). I see a lot of these hotend-extruder combinations coming from Aliexpress and I cry just seeing an image of them.. It looks too good to be true and I've read so many topic about those extruders+hotends.. If you still buy one of those and complain... Man, it's really your own fault.

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http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

I have bought several tens of units from Brian. Not a single problem (as far as you keep the temperature within bounds).

It is my hotend of choice for ABS and PLA. And if bought in bulk Brian can beat most clones price-wise too. And Brian always included some spare resistors and thermistors just in case.

Once (due to a short deadline) I bought some clones made/sold by reprapworld: not anymore. They were useless and even more expensive than original ones.

I strongly recommend Brian's J-head V-B and is the one used for our workshops.

The real J-head may not be trendy or glamorous, but there's a reason it's the standard others are measured against and everyone copies.

I can't tell you how many people told us we (Griffin 3d) could save a lot of money if we just used generics. Yes, we could have, but we would have sacrificed reliability and ease of use. You really have no idea how much hassle your parts are causing you, until you use something better.

@reifsnyderb, glad you pick this up. It's actually a well known problem and those caring about reprap.org try to introduce countermeasures while keeping the advantages of Open Source. At least one high quality hotend maker here in Germany, reprap-fab.org has gone closed source already, for the problems you described and also because these cheapo copiers simply have a broader standing in the market. The latter means, many many people pick up a cheapo clone on ebay before they even know what the real J-Head is. People can either invest time into development or invest time into marketing, but not both.

About the countermeasures: Please maintain the J-Head wiki page, not only regarding build instructions. There's a suppliers section and people do look into there. Remove at least those known to be unwilling to copy exactly. To some extent I'd even pledge for allowing only suppliers which have proven to do good work. Like by sending you one of their copies for review.

IMHO, keeping quality high is the challenge with Open Source / Open Hardware. Feel free to come up with additional measures supporting that, admins here will happily pick that up.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

I think that the bigger issue here is the current patent laws, specially in regards to "open source " because simply there are non existent.
A lot of people are simply not aware of "cloning" and in their minds only one question remains: why would they pay more for the "same" item?.
I'm absolutely in favor of open source, it's the best way to advance the technology at the needed pace, but honor and respect needs to be given to the creator. If we force the modernization of current patent laws and the implementation of open source clauses, everyone would benefit from it. Whoever wants to copy an open source design, would have to put the word (clone) and give the information of the designer (this will allow the buyer to decide from whom to get it) also a symbolic royalties fee could be applied so it is small enough for the manufacturer to pay and an incentive for the designer to keep on doing it and improve upon.
To everyone doing open source: please "never give up, never surrendered" you are all the heart and soul of technology. Don't become the next makerbot traitor.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2014 08:57AM by ggherbaz.

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ggherbaz
I think that the bigger issue here is the current patent laws, specially in regards to "open source " because simply there are non existent.

This might be an issue, but it's not solvable by the RepRap community. I think we should focus on finding ways to achieve this with tools we have and tools we create.

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ggherbaz
Don't become the next makerbot traitor.

Happens in many ways already. Just click trough RepRap Options: Many models without sources, almost all read-only open source, a pure marketing place. Hint: there are easy steps to improve the situation now, things everybody can do!

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Hello,

Thanks for all the support!

Patents have a big problem, in my opinion. The issue is that unless you have a dedicated lawyer, who is paid to pursue any patent or copyright infringements, it is a losing battle for the "little guy". Personally, I think of patents as being a tool for big corporations and not much more.

When it comes to J-Head hot-ends, I have resisted releasing a new, and improved, nozzle holder because it has a major manufacturing advantage and I figure that the Chinese counterfeit hot-end makers will start using that design as well. It shouldn't have to be that way. So, I've been sticking to what works for now.

If anyone has any idea as to "counter measures", please feel free to post them. The problem, that I see with the wiki page, is that many people would just go to e-bay and buy what they find there without carefully checking the wiki page.

Best Regards,

Brian

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reifsnyderb
The problem, that I see with the wiki page, is that many people would just go to e-bay and buy what they find there without carefully checking the wiki page.

That's certainly true, but there's not much you can do about that. What I envision is a trustable wiki, so words like "before hitting the buy button, check the RepRap wiki for this part" spread in all the maker communities. To ease this, vendors can link to the wiki, of course.

That's not much, but short of changing law and law enforcement, that's perhaps the best we can do. We have no lawyers, but we have the headcount of buyers.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

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Traumflug

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reifsnyderb
The problem, that I see with the wiki page, is that many people would just go to e-bay and buy what they find there without carefully checking the wiki page.

That's certainly true, but there's not much you can do about that. What I envision is a trustable wiki, so words like "before hitting the buy button, check the RepRap wiki for this part" spread in all the maker communities. To ease this, vendors can link to the wiki, of course.

That's not much, but short of changing law and law enforcement, that's perhaps the best we can do. We have no lawyers, but we have the headcount of buyers.

The jhead page is one of the pages i visit fairly frequently to remove the counterfeit suppliers from, so the supplier list there is for the most part trustable , however ebay and aliexpress is another problem altogether which i believe to a point is still handleable,

As i see it most countries have laws against the sale of counterfeit goods and for the better part once aware of them most companies will remove the offending advertisements however this is an evidence based system,Aliexpress and eBay take counterfeit sales very seriously and both have a reporting system for this and other issues that crop up, however it requires a little more than just a report saying "this is counterfeit", whats needed is a dedicated page on hotends.com which states how to spot a counterfeit and where the genuine ones are sold show images the difference counterfeiters have been using that can be linked to, generally if the person handling the report can get all the information he/she needs within one clickable link he/she is more likely to do something about it.

The other problem i believe is the usage of the word "clones" or "clone" , by calling something a clone the implication is of an exact copy or replica which in the jhead and e3d case is far from the truth, the word "counterfeit" is more accurate and right away has the correct implication for whats going on for some reason we haven't been using it or some have been afraid to as it isn't something that is considered to be a problem in most opensource licencing as far as i know.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2014 02:27PM by thejollygrimreaper.

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reifsnyderb
Hello,

Thanks for all the support!

Patents have a big problem, in my opinion. The issue is that unless you have a dedicated lawyer, who is paid to pursue any patent or copyright infringements, it is a losing battle for the "little guy". Personally, I think of patents as being a tool for big corporations and not much more.

When it comes to J-Head hot-ends, I have resisted releasing a new, and improved, nozzle holder because it has a major manufacturing advantage and I figure that the Chinese counterfeit hot-end makers will start using that design as well. It shouldn't have to be that way. So, I've been sticking to what works for now.

If anyone has any idea as to "counter measures", please feel free to post them. The problem, that I see with the wiki page, is that many people would just go to e-bay and buy what they find there without carefully checking the wiki page.

Best Regards,

Brian

Depending on what you do it may not be patentable anyway. A better way to do it would be to trademark JHead or whatever name you came up with for a new one. Were I going that route I'd think of a new name and market it as "from the creator of the original JHead" or some such as JHead has become a generic catch all for a peek FFF hotend. That wouldn't help with offshore shops using the name but a place like ebay or sites hosted in the US and western Europe are receptive to takedown notices. For example both ebay and Big Commerce typically respond to takedown notices from those with a valid trademarks. Under the safe harbor provision in the US they are required and if they don't a simple letter or email from your lawyer should take care of it. That won't work everywhere in the world but on the big US sites it will. Trademarks aren't difficult to obtain, you can go to someplace like Legal Zoom for a few hundred bucks.