RepRapPro closing down

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dmould
As idle musing, I wonder whether it would be possible to use the jet for a paraffin or gas stove as a nozzle?
Dave

Yes, they have been used before, with varying degrees of success. An example: [reprap.org]
And a couple of forum posts: [forums.reprap.org] [forums.reprap.org]
From memory, the main problem is usually that they are a bit flat around the nozzle (leads to the filament sticking to it, and getting dragged around), the internal diameter of the nozzle (most are 5mm, so it's difficult to use with 1.75mm diameter filament), and sealing the back of the nozzle so it doesn't ooze is a pain (as with all hot ends that use a separate nozzle connected in the heater block).

Ian

Quote
Darathy
I converted it to STL for you : [attachment 69158 y-axis-end-plate.STL]

Many thanks Darathy.

Printed them off in ABS and they were too flexible so I printed in PLA and that seems better. Got a cheap 12mm reamer off Amazon, clamped the pieces together and cleaned out the holes with the reamer in a drill press. (Turning the chuck by hand) The bars are a nice tight fit and it all went back together OK. Levelled the bed and got almost all of the twist out, down to about 0.07mm. Tried a couple of small prints and it all seems fine.

When I have a few moments I will look at strengthening the Y axis as I'm not overly happy with the robustness of the design.

I too bought an Ormerod 2 immediately after Christmas from RS and am sad to hear they've ceased trading. I deliberately bought an RRP machine rather than a pre-made consumer one so that it had far less chance of becoming 'abandonware', which is a common problem with consumer 2D printers and scanners.

I'm hoping the worries about spares get cleared up as I'm just starting out with my printer and would hate for it to become useless due to lack of a replacement nozzle or similar issue.

Good thing abaut reprap you can mostly modify them and there are clones of the nozzles on ebay or you can add E3D or any other type(you will have to check if there are mounts already made on www.thingiverse.com or design one yourself)

Quote
Darathy
Good thing abaut reprap you can mostly modify them and there are clones of the nozzles on ebay or you can add E3D or any other type(you will have to check if there are mounts already made on www.thingiverse.com or design one yourself)

I'm thinking I ought to get started on arranging an alternative hot end and extruder now so I'm prepared. No good thinking about it once the printer is borked and I can't print any of the necessary bits.

It is always a good idea to have (printed) spare parts. I nearly was at the situation that I would have to buy printed parts from another person, but I could manage it by commissioning my second printer earlier as planned with some faulty printed parts, but it was working.

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Slicer: Simplify3D 4.0; sometimes CraftWare 1.14 or Cura 2.7
Delta with Duet-WiFi, FW: 1.20.1RC2; mini-sensor board by dc42 for auto-leveling
Ormerod common modifications: Mini-sensor board by dc42, aluminum X-arm, 0.4 mm nozzle E3D like, 2nd fan, Z stepper nut M5 x 15, Herringbone gears, Z-axis bearing at top, spring loaded extruder with pneumatic fitting, Y belt axis tensioner
Ormerod 2: FW: 1.19-dc42 on Duet-WiFi. own build, modifications: GT2-belts, silicone heat-bed, different motors and so on. Printed parts: bed support, (PSU holder) and Y-feet.
Ormerod 1: FW: 1.15c-dc42 on 1k Duet-Board. Modifications: Aluminium bed-support, (nearly) all parts reprinted in PLA/ ABS, and so on.

I hope, in this post, to inform you about a number of things to do with RepRapPro Ltd:


1. What happened to RepRapPro Ltd?

We were making a profit, but that had been falling. We decided to close while we still had some funds and no liabilities.

The closure may be permanent, or it may not. There are other people interested in buying the company, and one of those deals may go ahead. If no such deal can be achieved the company will close for good.

If the company is sold it will remain open-source. The company Memorandum of Association contains the following clauses:

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60. Special shares and Intelectual Property

The Ordinary B shares issued under certificates numbered 15 (initial owner Jean-Marc Giacalone), 16 (initial owner Sally Bowyer), 17 (initial owner Adrian Bowyer), 18 (initial owner Emma Giacalone), and 19 (initial owner Christine Bowyer) shall have special powers over Section 60 of this document

The powers of the Ordinary B special shares shall be transferred with the shares to their initial owners’ heirs and assigns.

The Ordinary B special shares are only special with regard to Section 60 of this document.  In all other respects they behave as all other Ordinary shares in the company.

No part of Section 60 of this document may be altered, amended, deleted, or added to without the unanimous approval of all owners of the Ordinary B special shares.

The company shall be an open-source company.

If the company acquires or takes out any patents, those patents shall be freely and publicly released for use by anyone without the payment of royalties.

All software, CAD designs, documentation, or any other intellectual property created by, or owned by, the company shall be freely released under the GNU Public Licence, or a similar software libre licence, at or before the date when the company sells or releases any product incorporating that software, CAD designs, documentation, or any other intellectual property.

Section 60 of this document shall not apply to copyright material intended purely for the company’s sales and advertising, nor to its trademarks.

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I shall retain my B share if the company is sold, as will the other initial shareholders. I will not agree to any change in that clause.


2. What will happen to the RepRap Project?

Nothing bad. The Project and the Company are entirely separate. The only link between them is that I started the RepRap Project and was one of the founders of RepRapPro Ltd. The company was based on the RepRap Project, just as almost all small 3D printing companies are (whether they acknowledge it or not). The RepRap Project will continue undiminished, and all its servers, forums, wiki and so on will be unaltered as they are entirely separate from the company and are wholly administered by people who have nothing to do with the company.


3. What will happen to RepRapPro China?

Nothing bad. RepRapPro Ltd and RepRapPro China Ltd are entirely separate. We helped to set-up RepRapPro China, and have worked closely with them ever since. But they are an entirely autonomous company. However, they were contractually obliged to sell only in China. The closure of RepRapPro Ltd in the UK would remove that contractual obligation, and so they could then sell worldwide.


4. Why did RepRapPro Ltd close?

Competition. If you search for 3D printers on Google Shopping you will see the very large number of companies that have grown up in the last couple of years. When we started there were only about six. Of late, we have been breaking even, but our financial projections in late 2015 clearly showed that this would not continue. And we could see no way of expanding without borrowing $CrazyAmount from people who would have wanted to exert control over us and would have tut-tutted at our open-source Company Memorandum of Association. This we were not prepared to do.

It has not escaped my attention that this great flowering of small companies (all essentially based on the RepRap Project) making commercial life difficult for each other was pretty-much what I predicted when I started the Project (see various old videos of me giving talks online). We (the RepRapPro Directors) knew that this was eventually going to happen when we started. But we expected it to take decades, not four years.


5. How did RepRapPro Ltd close?

Before Christmas we were not quite sure if the company would close completely, or if we might be able to sell it. That is still the case, but we could not expect our employees to remain with no income between then and some uncertain future sale date.

Our first priorities were to do the right thing by those employees and by our customers under the financial constraints that we had. This meant informing the employees of their impending redundancy on the day that we made the decision that we were going to close or to sell the company. This allowed us to make sure that we had enough cash to give them their full redundancy payments as required by the law.

Then Dr Rongsheng Zhang of RepRapPro China stepped in and worked tirelessly over Christmas to try to find us a buyer, or to finance a buyout by RepRapPro China. His work on this is ongoing.

Our online shop had been suspended for the Christmas break. After Christmas we finally knew that the Company would not be selling online for the forseeable future, so we put the notice up on our website the same day that we found out. We closed the shop. We knew that we could supply all outstanding orders and pay all outstanding bills at that point.

Throughout the whole process our aim has been to achieve a soft landing, with nobody out of pocket and with the Company remaining solvent, all the while telling everyone as much as we could as early as we could about what was going on. This was surprisingly tricky to do...


6. What will happen to your stock and the data you have generated?

Every last bit of data on our Github repository will be retained in perpetuity for free access by everyone.

As many of you will know, Ian has laboured long and most effectively over the documentation for all our products. This will all be converted to PDF format and added to the Github repository.

All the CAD designs and their derivative files (STLs, Gerbers etc) are already in the repository and will be kept there.

We don't have much stock left. But that that we do have we have split equally between the two parent companies, eMaker Ltd and RepRap Ltd. Those companies will be selling that stock to people for spares.

We have put a list of useful resources on the front page of reprappro.com.


7. Anything else?

We will do our best to answer queries, e-mails and so on after our official closing date of 15 January 2016. But this closure itself has generated an enormous amount of ongoing work, and there are only the three company directors to do that.

I hope that I have answered the most common questions above, but if you have any other points to raise we will do our best to answer them given the constraints described in the previous paragraph.

Life is great, except for the end bit. And running RepRapPro Ltd has been a really enjoyable experience for all of us, except in the last few months... That enjoyment was because we have had such supporting, loyal and knowledgeable customers. I would like to end by thanking everyone other than me who put RepRap information freely online (which gave us a great technical base), those customers, our dedicated ex-employees, and our faithful suppliers. Without you all we would have been nothing.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2016 12:54PM by Adrian Bowyer.

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best wishes

Adrian

[reprap.org]
[reprapltd.com]

It might have been hard but I think you made the right decision, and sorted it out in an admirable fashion. It's always hard when companies close but doing it right I think softens that blow. The legacy will live on I feel

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2016 03:58PM by Davek0974.

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Another RS Ormerod Mk1 meets the world

Retired now but I used to make....
CNC Machined Mk1 aluminium bed support plates for the Ormerod
CNC machined X-plates and ribs for Mk1 & Mk2 Ormerods
CNC machined bed support arms for the Mk2 Ormerod.
Dual Hot-End heatsink blocks.

I find it really sad to see RepRapPro Ltd closing up, especially after the vast improvements we have seen over the past years. But Adrian's statement makes clear why this had to happen and I agree that such a decision - even if it's tough - must be made before it's too late. Just as many others here I found Ian's support to be excellent throughout and I wish him and all other ex-employees the very best to get past this difficult time.

I also want to thank everyone at RRP for the opportunities given and for the great support I have received. If RRP survives despite all odds, I would be glad to assist again wherever I can. Independently of this cirumstance I will still continue my work on the Duet firmware and web interface to provide an even better open-source 3d printing experience.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2016 06:29PM by chrishamm.

It's very sad, but Adrian, Sally and Jean-Marc have obviously taken the right decision to quit before the company starts losing money. Many years ago I was in a similar situation of fading profitability because of new entrants to the market that I had no hope of competing with, so I know what it feels like.

My thanks to present and former RRP staff - especially Adrian and Ian - for getting me into the field of 3D printing. I will continue to work on RepRapFirmware, and I am in discussions with T3P3 about further development and marketing of the Duet.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

All I have to say as an end user is that I wish all involved the best for the future !

I have grown to love my Ormerod (Mk1, green) and found a whole new line of creativity (never really used CAD packages) that I thought I didn't possess (can't draw for toffee !)

I really enjoy all the exploits of various users and hope that at some point I will be able to contribute to our ever growing userbase.

I'm really grateful to all involved !

Pete.

Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you

My advancing years have been full with all aspects of my ormerod 1.
I have managed to achieve a reasonable standard of skill with openscad which has kept my mind active.
My days are full of interesting ormeroding all thanks to Reprappro

Sorry to see the end of the company in it 's current form.

Good luck for the future

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appjaws - Core XYUV Duet Ethernet Duex5
firmware 3.1.1 Web Interface 3.1.1
Ormerod 1-converted to laser engraver, Duet wifi
OpenSCAD version 2020.07
slic3r-1.3.0, Simplify3D 4.1.2, Cura-4.4.1

Hi Adrian, Sally, Ian
I am sorry to see you in this position. I know RS was a poor representative of your product in Australia. Maybe that was a bad long term decision.
I am sad for the loss of jobs as well as for the loss of talent to the development. Open Source is a double edged sword, particularly in a country with a high labour cost.
Even moderates can be extremists on some issues. I am 100% behind that decision. This 3d thing is just in its infancy though - don't punch out now.
Cheers
Andrew V

OK, that makes a lot of sense, and kudos to the directors for closing when they saw the "writing on the wall" rather than running it into the wall and leaving people out of pocket as is regrettably a far more common scenario.

Dave

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DADIY

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shadow651
Has anyone ever tried this multicolor filament merger that Adrian posted to the O2 GitHub a couple of years ago? [github.com]

At this point I'm thinking this might be an easier solution for multi-color upgrades. You would only need to get a DueX4 (depending on your duet version), bowden tubing, and the bowden brass unions.
The only real question would be where to get more brass union pieces?

Also dhgate have the bowden start/end - dont know if they are any good as Ive never delt with them.
[www.dhgate.com]|221821102

I finally received these, They sent me all bowden starts - which is fine by me since that's what the merger uses; but it's not what they advertised.


I understand the reasons for RRP closing down - thanks for the explanation.
That said, I wish getting spare parts was going to be a little bit more organized

Out of interest - How many would be good to get made? i.e. How many would people be looking for? Orders now!

...it's a sound business decision, and I'm really gutted & sorry for the folks that lost their employment. But thanks for the support and getting me into 3D printing, I hope by summer there will be good news for everyone....I will watch this space...