Mendelmax 2 review, MUST READ!!! (Page 2 of 2)

I think you should redesign the printer to your spec. and sell it. I will be your first customer.

As noted previously, we are unable to discuss any of the elements specific to this dispute except via the Paypal dispute system.

However, I do want to clarify that we are not just some enthusiasts operating out of a garage. Maxbots, the designer of the MendelMax 2 has nearly 5 years experience in the RepRap community (a lifetime in this community, the RepRap itself is just 6 years old), and his printer designs are among the most widely used in the world. Maker's Tool Works is a small company, but we leverage Max's design experience, along with my 25 years business experience, and have an obsession with making the best tools we can while keeping our prices as low as possible. We firmly believe the MendelMax 2 is one of the best 3D Printer kits on the market today. It was designed from the ground up to be easy to assemble and as easy as possible to use. Unfortunately, as anyone who spends any time in these forums or any other 3D printer mailing list knows, even with a well engineered printer there is a lot that can go wrong, and a significant amount of patience and debugging skill is needed.

It is important to recognize that when you buy a kit from any source, even a bookshelf from Ikea, there is a certain amount of user skill required, and a 3D printer is far more complex than a bookshelf. We do our best to make 3D printing as simple as possible: we have widely praised docs that allow direct user feedback so we can immediately fix any steps that are confusing, pre-made configurations for Marlin and Slic3r, outstanding near-real-time support via our company IRC/Webchat channel, a mailing list, a newly launched forum, and more. Even with all that we cannot 100% assure that the kit can be built and used by every user. However, as we noted before, out of over 300 printers shipped, nearly all of them are printing without problems.

Our goal with every customer is to get them happily printing. In virtually every previous case where we have had a frustrated or upset customer, we have been able to work through the problems to get them up and running. We know that 3D printing can be frustrating, and we will work though that frustration with you. As a result, many of our most ardent supporters now are customers who were upset at one point due to some issue. By working with those customers and addressing their problems, we are usually able to turn them around into very satisfied customers. In the end whether we can succeed at that is out of our hands. Customer service is a two way street, and requires the two sides to work together as a team to solve any issues. Customer service cannot succeed when one side resorts to hostility and ad hominum attacks and ignores any guidance they are given.

Finally I want to clarify one final thing: We absolutely do provide a warranty as clearly stated on our website. In addition, we have experienced buyer's remorse ourselves, so we offer a money back guarantee on the products we sell. We normally charge a 15% restocking fee, but in extreme cases we will even waive that fee. However we cannot be expected to pay for shipping when we provide the product in good faith. We will of course pay for any shipping on warranty replacement parts as is our normal policy.

Tl;dr: MTW sells well engineered printers and stands behind the products they sell but cannot help people if they aren't willing to work with us.

Jeff Davis,
CEO, Maker's Tool Works

I stand corrected.  Sorry, Stoptiludrop09. MakersToolWorks seems perfectly reasonable and your posts seem hot-headed and difficult by comparison.

We do provide a warranty, which can be found on our website at the bottom "Refund Policy" (sorry, my account is not able to post links on this forum).

As you stated, you are a noob too home (aka hobbyist) 3D printing.  Had you done even a little bit of research on the topic, you would have been exposed to EVERY ONE of these hurdles, as well as tons of solutions!  Y bed skipping:  adjust your acceleration settings and jerk.  Melted extruder: keep a fan on the hotend holder.  ETC.  You don't seem to understand the economics of a REPRAP 3D printer.  As others have said, if you want a well engineered printer you gotta pay in the tens of thousands to get this plug and play you thought you were getting. 

I've had a Mendelmax for over 15 months, and you can bet it took me a few months of constant play before I got high quality prints, but I knew exactly what I was getting myself into because I spent weeks researching before I even started buying parts, and continues surfing reprap forums and the rest of the internet as I troubleshooted along.  That said, I ran into probably 10% of the most common issues people were running into and I'd say I had a relatively smooth learning process.  But then again, I gave it time and patience.  I've recently started building a MM2.0, and I'm very happy with most of the design.  REPRAP has been going for almost a decade I think, and things have gone a looooong ways in just the 15 months I've been involved.

Mais quesqu' tu dit?

hum! being French and living in France, I can tell you, first you can sell anything without warranty.
you have to explicitly say so.

You can do pretty much anything in a contract.

Second the legal base warranty is 1 year not 2.

however and it's my third point, a company selling stuff without warranty will not go very far, and in France even without warranty, you have basic protection. it's even worse in uk with the super duper "consumer act.

so yes Solidoodle will have to change there policy if they want to sell in Europe.

as for me that did not stop me to buy one...

I brought it in full acceptance of this fact. and for what I have read on this forum and other. They do offer an "unofficial warranty" anyway so....

Is there not a Mendelmax forum? Not sure why this is in the Solidoodle forum.

Nice print anethema, but a yellow yoda would've looked cool too

Mendelmax should give step buy step insrtuctions on how to set slic3r.

On a lighter note:

Lucky me I did not come across this post before I bought my MM2
This post is just so wrong that I had to register to comment
It is a brilliant printer
It’s very solid (due to laser cut metal parts)
It’s very fast (130mm/s and more is no problem if the settings are correct)
It can use all materials (I can’t find any limitations here)
I personally printed object with 20 micron layer resolution !!!
the print was very clean with that resolution i could not see any layers though it took forever to print
and thus i don`t want to go lower than 100 micron ever again as there is just no point to do so though possible

In my experience they provide brilliant support
They answer all the questions even the stupid ones that have nothing to do with them,
Like where to get good quality cheap materials,
How to set it up,
And they will advise you for free if you want stuff like a dual extruder,
Also if any of the printed parts would got damaged during assembly they will send you new one in no time
And did I mention that on the IRC channel they have opened up you can as for help 24/7

The only problem is that pal would buy a DIY kit to save some money and then have no skills to put it together
Or like in case of the user that stared this post who just can’t read instructions

Allow me to clarify the issues he had

issue no. 1

According to their specifications the heated bed should be at 110 degrees Celsius so that the abs adheres to the bed.
The bed can’t reach it and was topping out at 106.

In the instruction it says that in order to print ABS you need to redirect air current from the PSU somewhere to the side
as it cools down the bed, (empty box after cigarettes worked for me in my first prints until I installed plastic part

issue no. 2

after playing around with the printer attempting to get some good results I started to hear a crackling sound similar
to plastic tape, I stopped the printer looked under the bed, Wow the heating element is completely delaminating from the
Aluminium plate is affixed to.

hahaha so first this dude could not read the instructions than he damaged the hotbed and now he has a problem

issue no. 3

I moved on to printing something larger, they provide a CAD drawing for an LCD box so that you can operate the printer without a computer.
I’m halfway through printing, it is about 3hrs into the print and the bed skips. the weight of the glass bed(570g) plus the weight of the part about 100g lead to
the stepper motor skipping, too much inertia for the little thing.

again read instructions and get your settings right . From that guys description I can read that something is at an angle
and makes movement hard or maybe he forgot to put a washer somewhere.
Once I had similar situation but that was when I did not notice when few drops of abs juice got on to Y axis rails.

issue no. 4
this is the one that put the nail in the coffin I am still trying to print the lcd holder, every so often the model splits.
mainly due to the temperature difference in my room and the temperature above the bed. abs seems to shrink dramatically.

that is not an issue with a printer in fact its not an issue at all.
the shrinkage on ABS is an attribute of ABS plastic the same as toughness is attribute of ceramics
and if you want to print large ABS objects you will find the same thing on all printers and its not easy to fix
in fact when anyone does injection moulding for ABS the mold has to be a little larger than the expected product.

issue no. 5
The printer extruder is melted

you would not have this problems if you would do your research right
just F**** read the stuff that’s in front of you or get a f**** brain

so the bottom line is that some people will always say that they are just brilliant and perfect when the whole world is bunch
of morons who only do stuff to cause suffering to the perfect ones

PS

I don’t understand whyyyyyyyyy would anyone above age of 10 would buy a makerbot
the only thing that I like on the makerbot is the look of the case
and the thing`s I don’t like about it are:

small print volume
limitations to type of plastics you can use
upgrades are not possible
Price (its extremely overpriced it will become apparent once general public learns a little more on 3d printing)
It`s the Apple of 3d printers (Only because something is popular and trendy it does not mean it`s the best, if that would be the case everyone would only play "FarmVille")