folger tech ebay seller review

ok im going to be honest here and tell my opinion of this company

i bought one of their 319 dollar printers..
first off the bat i had missing parts.. emailed them 2 weeks later i have no replacement parts
when i got done assembling the parts 1 of them was broken not by my fault.. but quality of parts..

so i have to say this avoid buying off them.. they ignore your emails and don't send you the replacement parts..

there is no videos on their product worthy of mentioning.. their Google drive has a bunch of useless junk in it.. its not organized or clean.

they withhold giving you feedback.. they have not given feedback to anyone in 6 months...

all they do is put together a kit you can buy in pieces yourself... i really don't see them creating anything

the reason they take forever to ship is because they are printing out your parts and ordering motors etc from other sites.. they state it takes time to put the stuff in the box.. id wish they'd be honest..

for me im regretting buying this thing i mean its a cool thing and far cheaper than buying on your own.. but by only 50 bucks i saw other kits for 450 shipped on other sites...

also they never answer their phone or messages from them... if you have a technical ? you wont get an answer.. they will stall you
they claim to be busy that's well and fine.. but as a company if your that busy you build say 10 of them then ship... you hire more people i mean selling 900 of these things you think they can afford to hire 2 more workers and packers and phone people


the only good thing is the price...
they sell you a cheap product then they run like hell and tell you your on your own...

to me that's not a great company.. and im not happy...

the one thing that bugs me is the parts are sub par... yea the printed parts are to be expected.. tolerances are super tight hard to get bearings in.. the y carriage well bends over time... it just seems like they could do more to make sure its a solid product..

please don't slam me for this.. someone had to say it...


i love this forum wihtout some of you guys helping us newbies out we would be stuck..

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locutus_40
all they do is put together a kit you can buy in pieces yourself... i really don't see them creating anything

So...they are like an overwhelming majority of 3d printer retailers on the internet?

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they withhold giving you feedback.. they have not given feedback to anyone in 6 months...

The entire ebay feedback system is crap. My life feels so much more complete since I've gotten numerous "Great Buyer. A+++!!1!1" feedback. Because future sellers are going to see that I'm so awesome and will want to take my money, just like from every other paying customer.

For the record, I bought a decent amount of the parts for my printer from Folger Tech via their ebay store and I was very satisfied with everything I received. I've had zero issues with any of the items they supplied, it was as good of price as I could find anywhere in the States, and they shipped fast.

I'm also an unhappy buyer of the same kit. Some to add to this :
- 25 days befor shipping, then 10 more days to recieve it, then you need to be quick to build before paypal's waranty time !
- Nothing realy holds the parts inside the parcel, eveything move. The motors lay on a piece of a bulk polystyrene packaging with a piece of adhesive on it. Results :
- Broken frame parts,
- Some hardware bags slashed
- the two 5mm Z theaded rods are totaly bended.
- No awnser to 5 messages, hopefully they payed attention to the paypal dispute opened just in time.
- The overall quality of the kit is minimalist.
- 4 bearings loose their balls, and both are noisy.
- The 8mm rods are 7.78mm so you get too much play
- You've got 2 bulldog clips (too expensive to get 4 maybe...)
- 2 stepsticks were out of order.
- The frame is 5,68mm instead of announced 6mm.
- The extruder did not work for me, at any temperature or feedrate.
- And a motor blocked within 300 hours.
I'm done... I wish an "USA" kit could be better !

There's some chinese kits much better with a proper wade extruder and a proper 8mm acrylic frame, for less with free shipping. For example, the Geeethech owns a proper spring loaded direct drive extruder with a larger heatsink, a LCD controler, a 8mm acrylic frame, 2 proper 8mm leadscrews with brass nuts for the Z axis, better enstops mounting and belt tensionning, 4 bulldog clips (!), a ramps case and cable sleeving, and all the needed tools for assembly.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

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The entire ebay feedback system is crap. My life feels so much more complete since I've gotten numerous "Great Buyer. A+++!!1!1" feedback. Because future sellers are going to see that I'm so awesome and will want to take my money, just like from every other paying customer.

I agree to this statement from cdruvery much. I sell on eBay as well (sellerID: saccountyreprap) and most of the time my buyers don;t even leave feedbacks eventhough all is good. The rule of thumb for me is that if they haven't complained or sent me a return request, then I would assume that all is OK and that they are happy with the product. The rating system is a quick way to put a negative comment on someone when things don't go the way as it should, but barely reflects as to how good a seller actually is... =) Basically, all sellers can do is hope that the buyer would leave a feedback when all is good.

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For the record, I bought a decent amount of the parts for my printer from Folger Tech via their ebay store and I was very satisfied with everything I received. I've had zero issues with any of the items they supplied, it was as good of price as I could find anywhere in the States, and they shipped fast.

I never bought the I3 kit, but I have purchased a few "MUST-HAVE-NOW" items from him in the past, and yes, I can agree that he offers the lowest prices in the US with fast shipping and haven't had any problems with the items. He is a "re-seller" of "Chinese" products, so most of the items should be expected to be somewhat cheaply made.

I've read much of the same experience across several different websites. Makes me think about trying to sell some kits... I feel like although the saturation of the market is high, so is the demand for quality. As long as the parts were quality I think you would gain a good reputation fairly quickly.

There's a lot of topics here "Help to choose a kit" alike. Most people wants to buy a price, not a good machine. When you notice all the worrying points on it and give a link to a better kit that is of course a bit more expensive (worth the money), that guys whant to stick to the cheap kit anyway, or ask about another cheap kit. They realy don't care about features or quality. Otherhand there's also a bunch of cheap kit buyers who think they still own one of the world's 3D wonders without any way of comparison. Of course, the print quality of their parts talks anyways, but when they say their kit works pretty well, will a newbie know ?

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

Locutus_40,
I am very sorry that you had such a poor experience. First I would like to apologize on behalf of everyone here at Folger Tech for the bad taste that was left in your mouth. Second I would like to touch base on a few things.

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first off the bat i had missing parts.. emailed them 2 weeks later i have no replacement parts
when i got done assembling the parts 1 of them was broken not by my fault.. but quality of parts..

I own this 100%. It is my personal responsibility to send out replacement parts, and your messages to me somehow got lost in the fray and it wasn't until you followed up that I realized I hadn't sent the parts. They have been sent now. So for this I really do apologize and hope you have been able to get the printer up and running. It is my normal practice that once support@folgertech has approved replacement parts I send them out same day.

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there is no videos on their product worthy of mentioning.. their Google drive has a bunch of useless junk in it.. its not organized or clean.

All the videos on You Tube were made by customers like you. We don't advertise that we offer build videos and I think it's a little unfair to hold it against us for not providing you a detailed step by step build video. We do offer a a nice .pdf document that has a great step by step assembly with pictures.

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they withhold giving you feedback.. they have not given feedback to anyone in 6 months...

This is something that has become a bit of a burden for us. We have over 100 sales a day, on top of that being only 3 people at the company and having to find time to pack kits, answer emails, answer phone calls, and respond to forum threads we just haven't figured out a way to keep up with all the feedback. Trust me If there was an easy way to work in responding to 100 buyers a day I would do it in a heartbeat. We are not withholding feedback because we don't feel you deserve it.

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all they do is put together a kit you can buy in pieces yourself... i really don't see them creating anything

Yes we offer a kit, and yes you can buy the pieces yourself. But we buy in such bulk that we are able to offer a great price, support (as slow as it might seem sometimes), and the ability to get replacement parts with little to no hassle. It is labeled exactly as you buy it "a kit of parts to build a prusa i3 pritner" we also provide the instructions to build it. We wanted to offer the parts to build a 3D printer as cheap as we possibly could! We want to help make 3d printing a cheap and affordable option for anyone!

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the reason they take forever to ship is because they are printing out your parts and ordering motors etc from other sites.. they state it takes time to put the stuff in the box.. id wish they'd be honest..

This statement is false. We get all of our plastics from crunch and all of our parts come direct from the warehouses we order them from in quantity of 500+ for most of the items. I invite you to come to our office any day of the week to see the process that goes into packing these kits. There were 14 sub-kits in your kit. Each of those sub kits was packed here by hand by one of the 3 employees that works here, after they had finished shipping for the day, and answering emails, and eBay messages, etc... I am sure I sound like a broken record here but I believe I deserved a chance to defend the company that I work for.

Again I am sorry you had a bad experience, we are only human and mistakes happen. If you want to email me directly I will give you a $20 off coupon for our website, and I really hope you understand that nothing was done out of malice, or to be deceptive. We are busy and very small company that has started to grow a little to quickly. We have just hired 3 new employees to hopefully help with the workload here. I don't mean to come off defensive, you are entitled to your opinion. So I am sorry.

Thanks,
Dan

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2015 04:47PM by Dan_FolgerTech.

I can say that I had a problem with my mega and they got me out one very quickly. I didn't order their complete kit, but I did buy one of their packages that included some electronics, gears, etc. I contacted them through eBay with a description of the problem and a request for them to propose a remedy. Within a day or so they apologized and said they would get me a new one out. I had a new mega in probably 4 to 6 days from the time I submitted the issue. The replacement looks like a legit arduino too. I can't actually confirm that, but it looks the part.

I can understand the frustration of some, but I did want to share my experience.

I can say that I do believe that Dan intends to run a clean company, but has probably had more success than anticipated. I wish I had a business with that problem.

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DRobs86
I can say that I do believe that Dan intends to run a clean company, but has probably had more success than anticipated. I wish I had a business with that problem.

Thanks! I am just the manager here but yes the amount of business and work load very much exceeded our expectations here and we are working very hard to get on top of things and come up with a nice fluid system moving forward.

We also have a fully assembled (ready to print) printer coming out end of this month that will be fully enclosed and be priced VERY competitive. But we need to work out some internal kinks before we are ready to release details.

I wish you'll get a better quality/price ratio

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

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Zavashier
I wish you'll get a better quality/price ratio

Trust me we work very hard to try to find the best quality products for the price. And we are always trying to watch the forums to see where issues arise and how we can fix them. It's a bit of trial and error, but we really do evolve as a business every day and we hope that the quality only improves over time.

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Zavashier
I wish you'll get a better quality/price ratio

Trust me we work very hard to try to find the best quality products for the price. And we are always trying to watch the forums to see where issues arise and how we can fix them. It's a bit of trial and error, but we really do evolve as a business every day and we hope that the quality only improves over time.

The overall quality of your delta seems to me better than your I3. The worst about my kit was the bearings and the extruder. Some Igus Rings or brass bushings will work fine and are not expensive. For the extruder, yours needs a better heatsink and my fan wasn't powerful enough. I hope that will help you.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2015 12:35PM by Zavashier.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

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cdru

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locutus_40
all they do is put together a kit you can buy in pieces yourself... i really don't see them creating anything

So...they are like an overwhelming majority of 3d printer retailers on the internet?

Quote

they withhold giving you feedback.. they have not given feedback to anyone in 6 months...

The entire ebay feedback system is crap. My life feels so much more complete since I've gotten numerous "Great Buyer. A+++!!1!1" feedback. Because future sellers are going to see that I'm so awesome and will want to take my money, just like from every other paying customer.

For the record, I bought a decent amount of the parts for my printer from Folger Tech via their ebay store and I was very satisfied with everything I received. I've had zero issues with any of the items they supplied, it was as good of price as I could find anywhere in the States, and they shipped fast.

of course the feedback system sucks.. but when sellers deliberatly hold back feedback it pisses me off ive paid ive not tried to scam you i think i deserve my feed back

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Zavashier
I'm also an unhappy buyer of the same kit. Some to add to this :
- 25 days befor shipping, then 10 more days to recieve it, then you need to be quick to build before paypal's waranty time !
- Nothing realy holds the parts inside the parcel, eveything move. The motors lay on a piece of a bulk polystyrene packaging with a piece of adhesive on it. Results :
- Broken frame parts,
- Some hardware bags slashed
- the two 5mm Z theaded rods are totaly bended.
- No awnser to 5 messages, hopefully they payed attention to the paypal dispute opened just in time.
- The overall quality of the kit is minimalist.
- 4 bearings loose their balls, and both are noisy.
- The 8mm rods are 7.78mm so you get too much play
- You've got 2 bulldog clips (too expensive to get 4 maybe...)
- 2 stepsticks were out of order.
- The frame is 5,68mm instead of announced 6mm.
- The extruder did not work for me, at any temperature or feedrate.
- And a motor blocked within 300 hours.
I'm done... I wish an "USA" kit could be better !

There's some chinese kits much better with a proper wade extruder and a proper 8mm acrylic frame, for less with free shipping. For example, the Geeethech owns a proper spring loaded direct drive extruder with a larger heatsink, a LCD controler, a 8mm acrylic frame, 2 proper 8mm leadscrews with brass nuts for the Z axis, better enstops mounting and belt tensionning, 4 bulldog clips (!), a ramps case and cable sleeving, and all the needed tools for assembly.

the one thing you forgot to mention is the y slider frame.. its plexi and bends and when your bed heats up your tip to surface tripples in distance... an aluminun y sled and top plate would be great.. i ordered one for mine well see how it holds up... using those 2 big arse clips are well to big they should give 4 small ones. yes my 5mm rods too were both bent.. quality control going out the door is what this company needs to check on... have a second person look though the kit... and using 5mm threaded rod isnt the greatest.. they sell that ball screw thing.. if they could only take that and inpliment it for alittle more money and the y sled and the missing parts issue and the communication issue.. i mean if you sell that much stuff and are over whelmed then just make say 10 kits availible and update your ebay page or home page or hire more people.. hire somone to do phone calls and send emails only all day and somone for customer service..

You're right, I needed to make and install a proper Y carriage !

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

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Zavashier
You're right, I needed to make and install a proper Y carriage !

ILL LET YOU KNOW how mine turns out for referance these are what you need.. [www.ebay.com]
[www.ebay.com]

Well I built mine, it's dead flat and works fine. Thanks for the links through, that may help someone.

I forget one another important point ! You definitely want to change the printed pulleys provided by Folger because they are ways to big. Some explanations : The Folger's printed pulleys have a contact diameter of 15.8mm. The pitch diameter of a 20 tooth GT2 pulley is (Pitch x Number of teeth) / ∏ = (2*20)/Pi = 12,73mm. So they're definitely wrong. BUT, the pulley's pitch diameter differs of an idler pulley contact diameter. Because the tooth lay inside the pulley, and must have enough space on the idler pulley for the same belt pitch diameter. You need to remove the tooth eight plus the PLD of the pitch diameter to get the right diameter. So the GT2 belt's PLD is 0.254mm and the tooth eight is 0.75mm. You need to substact those two times for the diameter, so the formula is Pitch diameter - ((PLD+Tooth height)*2) = 12.73 - ((0.254+0.75)*2) = 10.72mm So you'd rather use the bearing alone, you're more closer ! You need to print a 10.72mm idler pulley if you've got a nozzle thin enough (0.3 or less) and/or buy a 694ZZ bearing mounted with M4 bolt and nut.

Everything you look at in folger's kit, you notice it's wrong. Boring.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

got my alum bed here is a video of it printing perfectly a holder for the lcd.. i highly recommend using the foldertech firmware it works out of the box i used hair spray and glus stick.. to hold it down and kapton tape


get this bed kit see my previous post for the links .. it evenly distributes the heat far better than glass



[www.mediafire.com]