Generation 6 Electronics - chat and support thread

Hi there!

First of all, I apologize this topic is from my personal experiences but...

Has anyone ordered and already got items from Mendel-parts.com?

I'd just like to know how long it takes to ship from complete payment if you have ordered from them.

My items include GEN6 electronics and they said it takes a week or bit more.

Since I ordered items on Oct 6th, I have not got any action from them. (btw, I got an e-mail that the status became "processing" from "pending" on Oct 11th, and it also says they'd have GEN6 in 1-2days.) I send two e-mails but i dont know if they realize or not.

I'm not hurried but just worried cuz it's been 15days since I ordered. I love what they have in the store so far and quite useful for all reprap users I think.

Does anyone get something from them?

[Edit: I changed the title of this thread to reflect the contents. -Sebastien]

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2010 04:16PM by SebastienBailard.

I preordered the gen 6 and had to wait about 40 days, although i expected that. They only started shipping the first batch on Oct 4th. and i received it on the 13-14th.

The store is based in the Netherlands, so shipping to the US probably requires an extra thorough look by customs, unfortunately.

They are going to be overloaded for a couple more weeks, i feel, until they get caught up with all the gen6 orders.

They have answered all my emails, unlike some other reprap stores, but i did have to wait a couple days for the last response. they must be very busy!

btw i'm extremely happy with my purchase. I can be up and printing, and then learn all about electronics.

Thanks for response!

I see... 40 days are.... well I can wait I'm just worried...

I have NO offence in this topic and I really like what they have in the store, and busy is good!

And that's good to hear that you are having a fun with your new items!! I'm really exited cuz I'm building my first Mendel! I will be really into that with Gen6

I hope I can get them soon until Dec!!! (cuz of my flight to Japan!! ooh hoo!)

Thanks Buback!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2010 02:44PM by Hirohiron.

I doubt you'll have to wait as long as i did. I ordered around sep 1 or so knowing that they wouldn't ship 'till, at earliest, sep 25.

I had to order everything else and build all the mechanics first for my mendel anyway, so the electronics arived right on time.

I'm a first timer too! best advice I can give is be patient and careful!
The 2 month build time, btw includes lots of waiting for shipping in my experience. Perhaps it's also commissioning: I only got my Mendel to "print" last night but it was a virtual print, because i don't have my extruder hot end made yet.

My gen6 and motors are in the mail. I know several folks that have purchsed hardware from them.

Camiel in IRC the guy that runs it, nice dude. Just go into IRC and you stand a 20% chance of seeing him.

---

repraplogphase.blogspot.com

I think my situation is similar to you because my order includes lots of other stuffs such as printing base and motors.

And thanks for your advice! I still need to prepare base construction of mendel yet so have to finish it to be ready for electronics! (well some other hardwares are included in the order.)


I will also try to catch him if it's possible, but thank you for the info! I actually realized that most of hardware except printed parts and metal frames will be from mendel-parts.com. I will be looking forward to test them

Hi Hirohiron,
can you give me your order number please?
I have too much customers...

Ill say few short things:
*This last week I skipped 3 nights of sleep to work, work.. new record.. not sure if postive or negative.
*My help this week had a scooter accident yesterday, so that delayed alot yesterday/today..
*Tonight I almost decided to close the webshop to solve things first etc. However I didnt (for now)

So thats just a quick thing of what is going on here..
Most people dont understand what running a booming reprap store means..
starting any booming business.. adminstration/ordering/printing parts/developing/searching suppliers/handle orders/ship orders/manage payments/custom invoices and just general reprap questions to answer and probably thousand other things I cant come up with now..

It simple, we are very very busy, and I dont like what is happening, I cant give personal support anymore etc..
So Im in doubt what todo, I mean I love doing it all, quit my very nice job as engineer for it and took financial risk etc, but I'm reaching a point that things are growing out of hand, unless some big changes come quickly...
(thats what Im working also on lately alot.. "prepare for future", so future customers can have next day shipping and that is more complicated then it sounds, but I wont stop untill we have reached that.)

Anyway short answer:
best is always to use my private email address as mentioned on the contact us page if web mail dont respond...
I answer those very quickly most times.
Also going on IRC and talk solves things very fast, so we dont need 3 emails etc..
Or pm on forum works too

And for now all I can ask is please be patient..
Just imagine there is always one person that is waiting longer in front of you that did ship that day.....

Best Regards,

Camiel

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2010 06:56PM by camiel.

Heej Camiel,

dont give up!! You have a very nice webshop there, with a good assortiment. And your Dutch too

I live a bit too far away to offer you help in your office, but if there's anything that I can help you out with from here (Flevoland) in a remote way, just let me know. I happily volunteer during the weekends........

Oh, and if I were you, I would stop taking orders for a couple of weeks ( a month or so) to get back on track!

Keep up the good works,

regards,
Tom

Just dropping a good reference here for Cameil

I ordered stuff from mendel-parts.com a few times and no issues.....and I'll do it again.....hahahha

Communication is good
Shipping is good
product is good
he stocks what he sells so that's really good.

As you can all see from Cameil's post above he's getting a bit overworked.

Personally I think some of the folk here have no patience when it comes to ordering anything online and they are a bit too quick to burn somone on the cross. Things out of our control happen to all of us every day, technology fails us all at some point but things pretty much always work out in the end.

I ordered gen6 electronics, nuts, bolts etc from medal-parts.com. They have arrived and all parts are of very good quality, no dodgy chinese stuff. Each differnt size of bolt/nut/washer are in their own bags which makes it much easier when getting together the correct parts for each step of the build. The electronics look very well made and come in an anti-static bag.

I think poor Camiel is a victim of his own success, being the only one-stop for everything supplier, we are all ordering from him and creating a big backlog.

The only neagtive I have about the gen 6 electronics is that there are no instructions, specifically how to set up the current limit for the steppers using the test point & a volt meter. I am in no rush for this info as I am still building the mechanics. no doubt the answer will pop up somewhere.

Would it be worth starting a gen6 forum thread? I am new to this reprap lark and will need help with the soft/firmware side of things.

niglyn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Would it be worth starting a gen6 forum thread? I
> am new to this reprap lark and will need help with
> the soft/firmware side of things.

You have no doubt seen the wiki page?
[reprap.org]

I think the wiki page should be the instructions. That way, Camiel could just direct people to the wiki for answers.
I'm putting all the info up there that i can find, but anything that you can add would help, because i'm new to this too.

erm, nope, but then again I am new to this lark and have not explored every corner of reprap.org yet.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, shall go of & have a nose.

Hi Camiel!

Thank you for e-mail!

I really understood how you are busy now and how you are giving effort for it! But again, do not push too much yourself!

I think I got used to other online store like amazon too much, and sorry about that. I had no idea about the nature of this.

Well I really like to support his store and want to use again and again (of course!!)

And thanks for all feedbacks for this!
.

Looks like we are 'the first 50' to build the gen6.

I have searched the wiki, however there is no information on how to set the Allegro stepper chip output current. I know it needs to be done as I use the Allegro chip for contol of both a cnc mill and lathe. The board has both the test points and the preset pot to adjust it. Now it maybe the info is already here somewhere and I have not found it or the presets have been set before dispatch. Any info appreciated

Just looked at the stepper chip, it is a Texas 8811. The data sheet gives more details on setting the Vref.

[focus.ti.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2010 06:20AM by niglyn.

niglyn:

Im not sure if I understand you correctly, but the potmeters (not that other pot we have here alot in NL..) are halfway on default.
Which should be fine, or maybe you can set them little bit higher.
But it is not like gen3, where there is one magic setting...
And yes i have build four gen3 machines, so I know what im talking about and not just saying this out of the blue..

My settings for example: i have the extruder potmeter 10-15% higher, in case some filament is little thicker etc, just to be safe.
My Y motor potmeter is also bit higher (because i have 6mm alu beds, which are bit heavy.
But in general the motors should be little bit warm.. altough if you can print and have no skipping on cold motors/halfway or less that is fine too, then your mendel is just very low friction.

I have started yesterday on first info for GEN6 (howto change/upload new firmware and calibrate electronics):
[www.mendel-parts.com]

soon more to come!

Hi Camiel, keep up the good work. you are offering the best one stop shops for Mendel parts.

As for the trimpot on the gen6 electronics, I am not too happy with guessing the settings and so have worked out the following...

The trimpot sets the max pwm chopping current to the stepper.

The formular to work out the current is:-

Ichop = Vrefx
-------
8 * R isense


So, if the the trimpot is set to give 3.3 volts measured at the test point,
3.3V / (8 * 0.22) = 1.875 A

Assuming the trim pot is linear, setting half way will give 2.5v (based on 5 volt supply)

2.5 / (8 * 0.22) = 1.42A


-----------------------------
Vtestpoint chop current

1V 0.56A
2V 1.13A
3V 1.70A
4V 2.27A
5V 2.84A **********WARNING********


****WARNING*****
THE MAXIMUM RATED CURRENT IS 2.5A SO BY SETTING TRIMPOT TOO HIGH WILL DESTROY THE IC

The IC uses a thermal pad to remove heat from the IC. Without seeing the design details & the size of the pad I cannot confirm what the max current can safely be set to when used on the gen6 pcb. I would suggest using the lowest current possible that will allow the steppers to move without stalling. When mine is up and working, will be able to give my trimpot settings.

My Tip: If you were a Gen3 user plan on a redo of the molex connectors. Some difference in left to right pins. It's no big deal as the layout (#1 pin) etc are clearly layed out on the Gen6 motherboard.

Hehe, interesting to hear how Camiel's getting on. Many thanks for building the webshop up!

Reminds me of the social assimilation bell curve. All the innovators have Mendels right now. Self assembled; cheaper but many man-hours invested sourcing components. Now Camiel's making life very easy for the early adopters, who don't have so much specialist knowledge yet.

My order's somewhere in the processing stage so far. Ordered four days ago, so most likely a little bit back from the head of the queue. Good to know about this support group, it atenuates the impatience a little haha.

Woodsmoke

I like to hear stories like this.
Camiel I wish you all the best with your business.

I placed an order with Botmill for a complete unassembled laser cut Mendel over a month ago.
My order status changed to "dispatched" within 2 days and I was given a USPS tracking number. Well to date that tracking number still doesn't show up on their online tracking, although I have been promised numerous times that it would ship "soon".

Reading this thread, and checking out the price of the mendel-parts.com full Mendel kit, I am tempted to lodge a dispute through Paypal and cancel my Botmill order, and rather order this one.

Ah it's like a horrible cycle! honesty and openness leads to too many customers, which outstrips supply, so Camiel is honest and open about delays, which leads to more customers...

Don't forget to sleep, Camiel!

PS, name your next electronics after pink floyd albums or songs (if your videos are a hint, you like Floyd), it will help get us out of this Gen n mess, And it would just be cool!

Hello,
I am waiting to my order from mendel-parts.com from the 10/10/2010.
And with no infomation i am a bit worried about that.
I undestand that the responsable Camiel has a lot of delay,
but i think that mister Camiel must send an e-mail to all the customers an explaination of this problems et ask for a patien's wait.

Another suggestion, the website must display the stock information to avoid to order unavailable goods.

Thanks
Daniel
Order #343

Hello,

I'm waiting my order as well. I order a lot of parts the 30th of October and ... no more information. I'm waiting, as i'm worried i send some e-mail, i try to send e-mail via Mendel-parts.com and to hotmail but he don't answer. Some other people had order on this site around this date and are always waiting the order?

I know Camiel is very busy but i order two weeks ago....

Thanks.

I ordered my parts on October 15th, and got them on Friday.
Don't worry - be happy!

---

Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

Yahouuuuuuuuuuuuu, one month of delay!! I think it was around two weeks.

So, ok i wait for two more weeks. Thanks a lot rhmorrison

He is over worked but his products and prices are top notch!

---

Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

Maybe I'll get mine in 2-3 weeks with this speed. ordered on 24th.

Hi Comrader,

Can you tell me when you received your order from mendel-parts.com. As i had order the 30th of October, when you received your order, mine shouldn't be far.

Hi there, I successfully finish my mendel this week (yay^^) another photostream
With a lucky gen6 board (the 12/50 to be exact), which is wonderful and worth to wait some weeks (especially since I knew almost nothing about arduino/programming).

I'm just wondering about three things :
-The led "debug" is always on, I don't know if it's a good thing or if that mean I have to debug something
-The sound made by some motors at rest (but after reading other posts about that "humming" it may be normal)

-And surely the more important : when printing the extruder's motor turn in the wrong way (pulling back the filament)...
When playing in Repsnapper to check everything, I just set "reverse" to extrude some filament over the purge plate, but unfortunately that don't work during a normal print.

So I tried to tweak the firmware but don't know what to change (it seems simple to inverse something)
Or you think I should redo the molex-connection ? (although it's wired as the other motors)

Thanks

Manu.j3 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Comrader,
>
> Can you tell me when you received your order from
> mendel-parts.com. As i had order the 30th of
> October, when you received your order, mine
> shouldn't be far.

Sorry to let you down, but I calclated that if the guy that got his stuff 2 weeks ago and ordered 2 weeks before I did, I should be able to receive mine in 2-3 weeks.
I havent received the parts yet.

what was your order number as mine was 429

I ordered my 'complete kit' including Gen6 but without reprapped parts on 19th of October. But I've still to see delivery or even a change in the original order status of 'processing(UPS)'.

Anyone else ordered and received, or not? Perhaps we can build up a more accurate picture of the wait period.

Woodsmoke