Vendors I (we) Like.

Hey everyone I am making this thread firstly and mostly to let you all know about a vendor I recently dealt with. Please understand this was nothing but a GREAT experience
Disclaimer: I AM NOT RELATED TO, NOR WORK FOR, OR ARE IN ANY WAY TIED TO THIS COMPANY AT ALL. I am simply a customer with something to say

So let me explain....

I have a Prusa I3 which I bout as my second printer and it was a kit. It was a Chinese knock off and it was well reviewed and of good note. I have printed a great many parts for my specialized Duet + Krakken enclosed custom build (stay tune for that thread with pics!) This little printer with its single print head has worked well for the smaller parts which print in less than a 50mm footprint. Soon as I get near or pass that mark the part starts to lift. I have tried every trick under the sun from ABS juice, Kapton tape, painters tape and the list goes on. Many of these suggestions you great people have helped me with. In the end there was one last thing to deal with.... the heat bed, yes I know some of you were already screaming at the screen while reading this post. I have listened finally - I bought a new heat bed.

To that end I make this posting. I had to go into the myriad of vendors who sell 3D printer parts on the internet. I think there at least 5 or more out there now... alright that was a joke. I did find one that looked promising here is the link - [reprapchampion.com] and much to their domain name they really are champions - certainly in my humble opinion. WHY? Well to put it simply I made an order for these 2 parts...
The new heater - [reprapchampion.com]
and the new Y carrier plate - since mine was plastic and I was upgrading why not?.... - [reprapchampion.com]

This is where I made a mistake and my champion took care of me. It was Friday morning. I ordered the wrong size Y carrier and they caught my mistake. They emailed me right away and noted my two items. I could have kept these two items. They could have simply mailed off my order and buyer beware! - instead the fixed my order and charged me the difference and sent my CORRECT order out that same day! I even got them in the mail today (Monday) which means they had quick shipping as well.

The point is - they took the time to help me when I made the mistake. They didn't make me return the wrong part then reorder the right part. They didn't even cancel and make me redo the order. They fixed it and got it out the same day!!! I think vendors like this need proper recognition when they act this way. I do hope this lengthy story gets you to visit their site [reprapchampion.com] - they have TONS of parts that we all want in every category! Possibly the best customer service ever! The 300x200mm Aluminum heatbed was a great find alone! No printed circuit board heater with aluminum support plate and piece of glass sammich for me! Now its just glass clamped to this wonderful item! On a carrier that will not sag due to heat issues! I think they saved the little Chinese knock off from the scrap heap!

I want to send a personal whole hearted thank you to them - I want to encourage you to shop with this vendor [reprapchampion.com] - I also want you to reply with your trusted vendors as well - lets support the good guys! [reprapchampion.com]

God Bless!
~Coog

Well since we are on a positive vibe I'd like to say a big thank you to Martin at 3DPrima who listed some large 2.3kg reels of PETG on amazon but at the wrong price. I ordered some as it seemed very reasonable. I emailed him to ask if the price was correct and he said no they had made a mistake, but he would honour the price as had I not emailed to question it he would have ended up selling a lot of this material at the wrong price.

So I got 3x2.3kg reels of high quality PETG for around 40% of their retail price. And very nice filament it is too.

---

Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

KAYS fastners on Ebay, for all things nuts and bolts top notch service and pricing

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2016 05:48AM by jinx.

E3D. Not only do they make top-notch hardware, they give excellent support and they open-source everything even though it leads to rampant cloning. They pour quite a bit of their profits into R&D, and then use that R&D to make even better designs and products.

Yes, it's more expensive than a clone, but if you value your time or the OSHW community it is absolutely worth it.

Not sure how buying a clone is a threat to the OSHW community. The whole reason for open source is so that the design can be used and hopefully improved upon by others. While I agree that the original E3D is the best out there, the clone market is all part of the open source process. Look at the number of Prusa clones out there. Josef Prusa has never complained about it. As with any industry you get what you pay for.

Yeah and E3D seem to be managing the balance between selling products/developing new products, and managing to position themselves for the quality of their genuine products enough to keep things hopefully profitable. Delicate balance but respect to them for doing it. There are other cases where this balance could not be found.

---

Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

I agree, E3D is doing a great job keeping that balance right.
Great admiration for them for being able to do that.

Lykle

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KDog
The whole reason for open source is so that the design can be used and hopefully improved upon by others.

The key there is improved upon. It seems that a lot of the clones are just cheap knock offs that don't conform to the specs and are not improving anything. They are having the opposite effect by making the original look like it is poor design.

Now the clones that actually do improve things, they are good for the community. Problem is trying to figure out which is which.

I disagree. The Chinese E3D clones are obviously inferior quality and I've never heard anyone say otherwise. Folks are having nothing but problems with them. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they are not the same as the original. At the same time people are figuring out how to make them work because they don't have the $70 to get the original. Nothing wrong with that. They were never going to be customers of E3D anyway.
There are plenty of threads on this site showing how to convert Chinese stuff to working stuff. The market figures all this stuff out. Good open source companies are constantly improving their stuff to stay competitive. Outside of China there are plenty of examples of folks coming up with "improved" versions that compete directly with the originals. Nothing wrong with that either. E3D is not in any trouble.

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KDog
I disagree. The Chinese E3D clones are obviously inferior quality and I've never heard anyone say otherwise. Folks are having nothing but problems with them. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they are not the same as the original. At the same time people are figuring out how to make them work because they don't have the $70 to get the original. Nothing wrong with that. They were never going to be customers of E3D anyway.
There are plenty of threads on this site showing how to convert Chinese stuff to working stuff. The market figures all this stuff out. Good open source companies are constantly improving their stuff to stay competitive. Outside of China there are plenty of examples of folks coming up with "improved" versions that compete directly with the originals. Nothing wrong with that either. E3D is not in any trouble.

The problem as I see it are with the newer people who don't realize there is a difference to start with. I have seen comments in the past saying the E3D hot end are crap only to find out they had a bad clone, but they are now soured on E3D. There is a group of people who never would be a customer of E3D, but there is also a group that had they not had the bad experience to begin with, or known the difference, would have been. Making a poor clone and calling it by the name bad for all environments, not just 3D printing. Other businesses have more ability to flex legal muscle against cloners than the 3D community.

So my input on good vendors...

Keenovo - They make silicone heaters, and other types. I have 3 mains powered units for my printers and love them. Customer service was great. When I had one go bad after a few months (they have 1 year warranty), they only asked me to send a picture of the problem (connection on the heater burned) and my order number. They quickly got a new heater right out to me.

INTSERVO - Seller of eSun filament on Amazon. I use eSun almost exclusively and they have the best prices I have found. When there was an issue with a spool varying in diameter, I contacted them to find out if there had been other reports of this problem. They said no and offered a replacement spool even though I wasn't asking for a replacement.

One vendor I had an issue with...

MakerGeeks.com - I thought I would give them a try (US maker of filament) when they had a special on some new type of filaments they were making. You didn't get to specify the colors, just the type. I asked for two of the same type and they sent me one that was correct and a second that was wrong. After contacting them and showing them pictures of the labels, they admitted they sent the wrong one and they would send a replacement. After a week, I contacted them about it and they said they hadn't shipped it since it was out of stock, but he had a spool he just got off the line to send me. After another week without hearing from them, I wrote back and they said it was out of stock still (what happened to that spool he said he had taken right off the line?) and that it would be another couple weeks. They gave me the option of just cancelling it and getting my money back, which I took. They did let me keep the incorrect spool though. While I didn't appreciate being led on and will personally not deal with them again, I still would not tell people to stay away. Just be careful when dealing with them.

I'm going to Ooznest and Mutly3d to the list.
Ooznest has always answered my technical questions on facebook and always been fast sending out orders.
and Mutly3d for his Printbite.

This is exactly what happened to J-Head hot-ends.

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ElmoC

Quote
KDog
I disagree. The Chinese E3D clones are obviously inferior quality and I've never heard anyone say otherwise. Folks are having nothing but problems with them. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they are not the same as the original. At the same time people are figuring out how to make them work because they don't have the $70 to get the original. Nothing wrong with that. They were never going to be customers of E3D anyway.
There are plenty of threads on this site showing how to convert Chinese stuff to working stuff. The market figures all this stuff out. Good open source companies are constantly improving their stuff to stay competitive. Outside of China there are plenty of examples of folks coming up with "improved" versions that compete directly with the originals. Nothing wrong with that either. E3D is not in any trouble.

The problem as I see it are with the newer people who don't realize there is a difference to start with. I have seen comments in the past saying the E3D hot end are crap only to find out they had a bad clone, but they are now soured on E3D. There is a group of people who never would be a customer of E3D, but there is also a group that had they not had the bad experience to begin with, or known the difference, would have been. Making a poor clone and calling it by the name bad for all environments, not just 3D printing. Other businesses have more ability to flex legal muscle against cloners than the 3D community.

What happened to J-Head is what can happen to any company. The product stayed the same for too long. Not only were there plenty of J-Head type hotends available, (it is open source btw) many American made, but you had companies like E3D starting up which were busy revolutionizing the all-metal hotend. In J-Head's heydey you only had PLA and ABS print options. Newer hotends were trying to push temperature limits and succeeded. Go back and look at E3D posts from the time and you will see lots of folks saying that an all-metal hotend would never work. Show me a new printer being sold today that is using a J-head nozzle. Open source has its pitfalls but lack of innovation will kill any company and if the clones become as good as or better than the original then the company is sunk. I'm not advocating the use of E3D clones, they have big problems as I've already stated, but folks trying to build a RepRap for under $200 are not going to have an original E3D on that printer. The best we can do is to keep telling folks what the difference is between the clones and the original.

There were only ever two American companies producing J-heads and only one of them innovated new J-Head designs. Most J-Heads were (and now are) chinese made knock-offs that had incredible flaws. The chinese just took their flawed knock-offs and spammed them everywhere so as to bury the real thing.

I am perfectly aware of the J-head temperature limits. New J-heads were developed that were good to 288 degrees. Also, true bowden J-heads (Mk 9) were developed as well that didn't have the chinese short-cuts that resulted in early failure. An ultra high-speed J-Head was developed as well as a dual mixing J-Head. None of these were ever released as too many people bought the chinese knock-offs instead of supporting the company that innovated. The guy who designed the J-Head decided he'd rather not be china's J-Head research and development guy.

Interestingly enough, J-Head Mk 8's are quietly being sold as long as the re-seller does not market them as J-Heads.

Quote
KDog
What happened to J-Head is what can happen to any company. The product stayed the same for too long. Not only were there plenty of J-Head type hotends available, (it is open source btw) many American made, but you had companies like E3D starting up which were busy revolutionizing the all-metal hotend. In J-Head's heydey you only had PLA and ABS print options. Newer hotends were trying to push temperature limits and succeeded. Go back and look at E3D posts from the time and you will see lots of folks saying that an all-metal hotend would never work. Show me a new printer being sold today that is using a J-head nozzle. Open source has its pitfalls but lack of innovation will kill any company and if the clones become as good as or better than the original then the company is sunk. I'm not advocating the use of E3D clones, they have big problems as I've already stated, but folks trying to build a RepRap for under $200 are not going to have an original E3D on that printer. The best we can do is to keep telling folks what the difference is between the clones and the original.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2016 11:54AM by reifsnyderb.