Makerslide Availability Europe

[dave3d]

I live in the UK and I have built an Ord bot Hadron from an ATI kit, which I imported from the States.
It is now working OK thanks, but largely due to my own efforts with advice from this forum and others. There was no support at all from ATI. I should have ordered it from the Hong Kong supplier with hindsight.
I am pleased with the design, but planning future mods I now need a couple of longer lengths of Makerslide.
Ordering from Makerslide Europe is however a joke. They have been out of stock for as long as I have had the Hadron. Latest now is end of February.
They had a delivery of twisted Makerslide a while back and some of these were actually delivered to customers according to feedback on the Reprap forum. Basic quality issues. It also seems to be a one man band. The guy was involved in a car crash and things came to a halt over Christmas.
The latest is that a new die is being made. Why? Aren't there spare dies that can be sent from the States? It is just dragging on and on.
A topic came up on the Reprap forum recently about the most popular reprap printer to build. I mentioned the Ord Bot and again there were comments on non availability and poor quality extrusions having to be returned.
What gives? I feel the brand is damaged.

[bobnet]

I have some small amounts of MakerSlide available. https://www.openpart.co.uk/

You could always use OpenRail (also available on OpenPart), 2 pieces of which on a 2040 is dimensionally the same as MakerSlide.

Rob

[cvoinescu]

Hi. My name is Catalin. My wife and I are the two people at Amber Spyglass Ltd, aka MakerSlide Europe.

There is a bit of confusion here. RepRapDiscount (the Hong Kong supplier of ORD Bots) are the ones who had twisted MakerSlide in their kits. I don't know how they handled it, but from the little interaction I had with them they seemed to care about their reputation. We never sold ORD Bot kits.

Our rail was straight; the only problems we had were dents and scratches affecting the Vs (a good number of them acquired in the factory and not during transport to us), and incomplete rinsing after the anodizing bath. Other than the careless handling and white gunk in the core holes, our rail was otherwise very good. I checked every single piece before shipping it or packing it into an eShapeOko kit, and only undamaged rail left us. Given that we had no complaints for this batch (zero!), I assume it reached the customers in perfect condition too.

There are many sizes and types of aluminum extrusion press, and dies are not portable between them (or that's what I've been told by pretty much all extrusion companies I spoke to). A die costs as much as a second-hand car, so nobody is going to donate one, or have spares made and available. In addition, in Europe, standard practice is for the company doing the extrusion to share some of the cost of the die with the customer. That sounds good, but it's actually bad: it means they co-own the die, so we can't just take it and move it to another company. These, plus a typical lead time of 2-3 months, are the reasons why we can't switch extruders easily. Before the last batch, the old extruder had given me firm assurances that they had changed their procedures to avoid damage to the rail, that a quality manager would personally supervise the entire process, that they would change their packaging, and so on -- then they delivered the worst batch yet. After that, they took about three months to decide they would not attempt to fix the quality issues. However, instead of openly refusing to take another order, they just dragged their feet, did not return calls, took a week to respond to email, scheduled meetings then cancelled at the last moment -- that sort of stuff. I figured out what was going on from an off-hand comment by one of their people.

Had I been the one dealing with this supplier from the beginning, I would have realized much sooner that they weren't really interested in fixing the problems. I had not dealt with them before the August 2013 batch, though. MakerSlide Europe was started by Harry Raley with a Ulule campaign (this was just before Kickstarter became available in the UK). I helped a little, and we shared an online store, but Harry decided to pursue a career that would not leave him time for this, and sold the die (well, the part-ownership of it) and his remaining stock to me. Harry was the one who chose this factory, and the one who ordered the first two batches. I don't think he was aware he was getting a sub-standard product. Despite of my constant moaning about the dents and defects, the factory never got any complaints from him (or, at least, that's what they told me).

Incidentally, my car accident (I got hit by a guy who ran a red light) did not slow this down. I had just requested quotes before the accident, and the responses trickled in over the next week or so; I was able to respond to them and keep working on it. Things did come to a halt later, during Christmas and New Year, but that's because practically all extrusion plants close for two weeks around that time.

[dave3d]

Hello Catalin,
I do not know the history of MakerSlide Europe or what the relationship is to Amber Spyglass. I also did not know you had taken over MakerSlide Europe. From what you have said I assume MakerSlide is made under licence.

When I googled Makerslide I got to the following websites:

http://makerslideeurope.com/index.php

http://www.ulule.com/makerslide/

I have also been following the blog on the website from time to time. I did not know the blog is you, It does not say. I thought it was the other guy Harry Raley.

I have ordered things from you directly in the past and you were helpful to me in my OrdBot build. Thanks.

The comments about twisted MakerSlide were on the Rep Rap Forum. I don't think they were actually delivered as part of an OrdBot kit. I understand someone ordered a couple of extra 1M lengths and they were twisted. He was in Europe but he may have ordered via Hong Kong. I don't know for sure. Other comments were made about it not being considered for a build because of non availability in Europe, which is a shame.

If it has the MakerSlide name on it then surely the quality of the brand needs to be assured regardless of where it is sourced from.

You seem to have a lot of production problems. Hopefully will get sorted out. It is unfortunate about your car crash also. Hope you have recovered.

[bobnet]

dave3d wrote:
> From what you have said I assume MakerSlide is made under licence.
MakerSlide is Open Source hardware, the licence doesn't require the permission of the creator. Anyone can produce it.

dave3d wrote:
> If it has the MakerSlide name on it then surely the quality of the brand needs to be assured regardless of where it is sourced from.
There is no TM, it's not a brand it's a product.

MSE are only a joke if they made any claims or promises that they didn't keep. Not in my experience.

Rob