How is Mendel-parts still in business?

ikr? whatever you do M-Pdotcom never put the phrase "out of stock" or "backordered" or "6month wait time" on your site.
cause then you cant take money from new people.

Well im another pure newbee that didnt see This fora before ordering my orca... Well hope ill get it.
Starting to Think it Will be more convinsing if ill collect it my self....

That should do it!

let me get this straight, James, your saying i should leave my home in Indiana drive to
Chicago then take a plane to somewhere in Europe, then drive to eiendurrholmstien and
somehow "convince" camiel to give me what I have paid for and paid shipping for?

I've given up trying to work out how to get Camiel to deliver. He's a nice guy, and a great engineer, but running a mail-order business isn't rocket science.

I spent hours when I was there trying to be a good mentor, giving him advice, but it's all fallen on deaf ears, apparently.

He's not a crook, he's not trying to defraud anyone; he just let's the whole thing get on top of him. It's too much for one person.

Hope he eventualy delivers. I still gives him the posibility to deliver. But if not i Can recamend Mahnbescheid that is a bit drastic but it is The cheapest Way to force a refund, cheaper Then a trip around The World that is...

If you want a refund, and you can get hold of him, he will give you a refund. If you can't get hold of him, and you paid by PayPal, or credit card, then you have recourse there.

I've no idea how you would go about getting a court order in Holland.

It sucks that Camiel can't employ someone to handle PR, make sure orders are shipped on time etc while he concentrates on the inventive & techy bits. He has great knowledge & vision from what ppl say about him, but unfortunately no business sense.

Yes. I actually had a small consortium of people willing to invest in the business and take the burden of mail order off of his hands, so he could concentrate on the development side.

But when he wouldn't reply, and they saw how much bad feeling he was generating, they withdrew, and are thinking of setting up something in competition.

I'd love to see that work out James,.. reliable & long term customer service would almost be a unique selling point for reprap in europe!

Well, we'll have to see how it works out.

Right now I'm totally fascinated by the phenomenal success of the Printrbot Kickstarter project [www.kickstarter.com].

Yepp, the Printrbot kickstarter project will be a real challenge for Brook Drumm!
How is he going to deliver nearly 400 at feb? He will need a lot of help from the local community.
Really fun, let us hope he is up for the task!

(Any earned money will probably go to a rest home in mars )

dear all,

Camiel has notified me Friday that my Orca has been sent to UPS.
also, I got tracking number from UPS ... a 16 kgs package is on the way to my home ... currently is in transit in Germany ...

thank you very much Camiel !

best regards,
mihai


moltean Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Camiel,
>
> order placed ! thanks !
>
> I like companies run by a single person which
> knows everything about his products.
>
> I think that many great products have been created
> by one-man companies ...
>
> I hope that I dont have to call you ... I know
> that phone calls will interrupt from work, and I
> dont want to do that.
>
> thanks again,
> mihai
>
>
> camiel Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Hi Mihai,
> >
> > yes thats true, well lets say if nothing really
> > strange happens we should be able to ship that
> in
> > 3weeks.
> > However to not dissapoint you, I would count
> for
> > at least 4 weeks, and maybe keep one extra week
> in
> > mind for strange things that happen.
> > So worst case maybe 5 weeks.
> >
> > And if you have problems getting in contact
> with
> > us via email, (we still have some delay on
> email,
> > but by end of this week we should have catched
> up
> > on that) try phoning us between 10am and 11pm.
> > 0031 40 202 67 49 (UTC+01)
> >
> > hope that answers your question.
> >
> > regards,
> > Camiel Gubbels

Can you tell me your Order Number?

So that I can look at mine

congratz Mihai, glad to hear some good news.
and at least we know that camiel is still alive.

wow i just checked the site and to my amazement, its been updated!
and he even did some of the things we were calling for!
this looks like a good-news day.

I believe it when I see it!
An update on the homepage is worth nothing if nothing happens.
He still have not returned my money or contacted me and that you don't need many minutes for...

At least he has stopped taking orders for the moment! (So ok, there was 1 good news)

Has anybody heard from mendel parts lately. I'm waiting for an orca 3 ordered at the start of november. I've posted on the forum and emailed him but heard nothing back and his last blog post only said he'd ship all of octobers orders in the following few days. Theres plenty of scope to be hopeful but I suspect hes waiting for an order of some important part and he might be being a bit economical with the truth. If anybody is going to his build party next weekend could they give him a prod and maybe post what he says back here.
Pete

I am in Gubbels Engineering, right this minute, getting my O3 printing nicely (and it is, after a few tweaks that I hadn't known about, and using Slic3r 0.5.4), and starting to build my O2.

I am here until Tuesday 6th at 15:00.

He's shipping orders: send me your real name, and your order number, to my e-mail: james@jameshardiman.co.uk if you want me to chase him.

James

james,

could you tell us what kind of tweaks we need in order to make Orca print ?

I'm in the process of building mine ... and soon I'll try to print ...

thanks,
mihai


JamesHardiman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am in Gubbels Engineering, right this minute,
> getting my O3 printing nicely (and it is, after a
> few tweaks that I hadn't known about, and using
> Slic3r 0.5.4), and starting to build my O2.
>
> I am here until Tuesday 6th at 15:00.
>
> He's shipping orders: send me your real name, and
> your order number, to my e-mail:
> james@jameshardiman.co.uk if you want me to chase
> him.
>
> James

Depends why yours isn't printing!

If it prints OK, then it doesn't need tweaking.

Mainly, during the build stage, make sure that everything is square, or parallel, as necessary.

If you run into particular problems, post them here ... there are lots of people who may answer them.

i am wondering what is the highest order # that has actually received their printer?
mine is 857 and have not.

i think its OK to post a mail from another person, hopes that helps..

From Peter:

Quote

i think hes going through in order. he said he had 20 in front of me which means hes on 879 and hes expecting to ship those 20 this week. I called him at 7 yesterday and got through as hes running his workshop. If hes being truthful (i'm assuming he is for now) he should be shipping yours in the next couple of days).

i have #881... nothing here

I talked to Camiel over phone over a week ago about me canceling the order and wanted a refund (thanks to James). Later that evening my father got a mail that the order was canceled and the money refunded. However, no money has appeared yet . (I'm in EU so a bank transfer should take maximum 2 days according to the EU rules)

Bank Transfer: I have often thought all sorts of things about Camiel, but never thought him dishonest or a crook. He did tell me had done the bank transfer refund.

Try calling his work number quite late; it's very likely he'll be there, and is the best chance of getting him.

James

I bought a Mendel from Camiel last year and it took 4 months to arrive I wasn't impressed back then with the lack of contact either.

Since then I have started my own business here in New Zealand making and selling Prusa parts and have just sold my first full kit.
However on my website I make sure that no orders can be placed when I don't have stock by using a Virtuemart shopping cart I have complete control, I simply adjust the stock level to reflect 0 and no further orders can be placed but it sends out an email to anyone who enquires as soon as the stock level is listed as 1 or above. It's not rocket science and it stops people getting annoyed

---

__________________________________________________________________________
Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

I agree. I am considering setting up in business myself, but my major skills are as a trainer ... I would only supply machines in a training class, where I can be certain that everyone who leaves does so with a machine that is working, on their laptop, and that they understand enough of some CAD system that they can also design and print their own things.

It takes a while to get all that in place!

Well, I'm a carpenter by trade but not working due to injury and never will work in the building industry as a trade again, So I built a Mendel, taught myself CAD, how to read basic Gcode, how to read and change firmwares and then started making Prusa parts. Now I have people wanting full kits, I sold one so far and making another as due to no income it has to be completely self funding, also started selling other components and as funds become available I get more stock

---

__________________________________________________________________________
Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

@NelsonRap: Way to go on the people wanting full kits. If you ever doubt that there's enough demand to make a living, check this out: http://www.Building3DPrinters.Com/2011/12/amazing-success-of-crowd-funded-3d-printers/.

What CAD are you using? I'm trying to work out which system gives the most power for the least learning curve, and am beginning to think it MAY be RapCad / OpenScad, possibly combined with Alibre or QCad, but I'd love to know what other people are using.

About the only thing I'm committed to so far is Slic3r instead of SkeinForge. I am using Pronterface, but mainly only because I haven't got a ReplicatorG driver for my machines.

Hi James, That's a nice list, thanks for doing it - I'm totally astounded by the success of these projects especially the Printrbot, I think the only thing now that would put people off, is waiting 3+ months for the kit - that's something that JM managed very well shipping 300+ eMakers out at lightning speed, even then people still ordered thinking they may need to wait 6+ months.
The level of interest in the Printrbot almost justifies soft tooling of some parts, but they seem to be addressing that with the Printrbot+

A fair chunk of the cash is also taken by the campaign organiser, but I doubt many of them would have been as successful if they were just advertised for sale on a website.

It's almost attracting too much attention, but whatever happens it's going to be very interesting seeing this progress.

Sorry, we are getting a little off topic...

---

[richrap.blogspot.com]