New message on solidoodle website (Page 1 of 2)

its about time

sounds a bit permanent

This update will likely follow the same schedule as their printer delivery... so if they said in a few days, look for it in a few more months!

Still no update. Speculation why?

Personally, if their finances are so bad they can't keep their website and help desk up, then things are bad. These are relatively low cost items that they can't generate revenue without.

Chinese people came and screwed up Solidoodle's business somehow?

Their biggest problem which led to their eventual failure was their inability to deliver the product in a timely manner.

It has nothing to do with China.  China manufacturing can be a a great asset if you know how to plan ahead and do it right.  Solidoodle over-promised and overextended, and failed to deliver.

China was just where that production line was when Sam chose to use them to make and release a 3rd new model at same time as 2 other new models made in the NY shop. and everything about the China production was just 1 HUGE screw up after another from Tool & Die work all the way to shipping and delivery. yeah right nothing to do with China LMAO!

the whole fiasco can be read about in Sams letters he posted months after each issue. and NO a US manufacturer would not have had all the same issues because in the USA when you pay to have molds etc made, you own the molds NOT in China.
when tool & die need corrected you dont have to fly half way around the world to oversee the job. and you dont have to rely on world wide shipping (on real Ships) for product delivery nor union strikes at the Ports that unload those ships, then the USA manufacturer is bond by laws not to use the equipment you bought and paid for to clone your product and sell it for less themselves (since they invested zero dollars to do so). but that has been the case with doing business in China since the late 1960s with companies from the US hiring them to manufacture products for them. I know this first hand from products I have bought long ago and can give names of the US companies and the invented names China gave the cloned items. I also have 1st hand experience of the very poor quality materials and workmanship in those products compared to the ones made in the US they cloned. including building materials for construction and Medical supplies etc.

wasted thousands of hours labor and too many dollars to count due to it. also seen dozens of company's dry up shortly after going to countries like that trying to save a buck. I also know how & why this continues and nothing will ever be done to stop it as long as companies let Greed make their business choices. every one of the "foreign trade agreements" any US President has done has backfired in our face and only limited us from selling our products, never the other way around. because the USA is way to busy trying to be "politically correct" and bending over backwards for all but our own people. like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

so yes Sam as CEO/owner of Solidoodle did make some mistakes and the biggest was thinking he knew enough about "Big Corporate" dealing and international trade. Solidoodle was no where near ready for that step until they got their own house in order 1st which never happened. this is the difference between whats known as small bisiness and big. if you screw up over 10% of the time and your bottom line dont plumet nor effect anyone elses business then your 'small' but if your big and you screw up say 3% of the time and your stocks drop, board members place an add for a new senior management position, support businesses fail, etc.

this also explains the difference between residential repairmen and Commercial/industrial. I had an CFO ask me once when I was Facility engineer for a multi site clinic. "why do you have to watch the contractor work on our Air Conditioning equipment? I dont do that when they come to fix mine at home"
I said "if your guy screws up something and burns your house down does it put 600 families out of income? does it cause 10,000 patients to seek medical help elsewhere? does it cost you 10 million dollars and 4 years to rebuild your home...?

he never bothered me about it again ;^) 3 months later I got to show him how that earns my salary when I saw a repairman do something wrong that caused that site to be without heat 4 days and he got to send that contractors insurance company a bill for $40,000 for lost Revenue.

try that In China, Mexico etc. thats what being Bonded and Insured means in the USA. bet not many attorneys for it in those countries either since the laws dont exist.

Seriously....

I first started writing this lengthy rebuttal, but then I realized how silly this thing really is.

To me the issue is that they bet everything on the press.
The press appears to have failed because they went straight from conception to design to production without any design testing and validation and then (as should have happened) redesign or design refinement.  With the press, the issue is more poor design than it is poorly manufactured and this is nothing to do with China.
I admit that there were also manufacturing issues (loose screws, missing screws, poorly calibrated), but these can all be fixed.  The crappy design, especially with the way this has been designed, cannot be fixed without MAJOR modification.
Issues such as having such a long build platform supported by a very short linear bearing (compared to the length of the platform) as well as not having any way to level the build platform.  And before people try to tell me that the build platform doesn't need to be level because it automatically detects the platform angle, a big issue is the head dragging over the surface leaving an ugly finish and causing all sorts of other issues.

Anyway, I guess it'll all be over soon and I'm stuck with a very noisy filament tangling device.

n2ri, just a quick rebuttal and I admit I didn't read your entire post.  I personally oversee the purchasing of metal stamping tools from China all the time and I can assure you that we own the tools, and the engineering and designs.  If you work at it, you can actually find / develop good shops there and expect a high level of quality from them.  Don't believe everything you read.  I don't want to wade into the big debate here just wanted to counter that specific point from first hand knowledge.

So I guess I'm glad I started converting my workbench to a new controller.  Time to draw the rest of the parts.