Another reason why not to by a clone (of anything)
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I'm on the fence with regard the posatives and negatives of cloners and their overall effect on the open source community.
Quality costs regardless of the geographic origin and crap parts can originate from the UK. Likewise I've previously got stuck in a rut of using uk community favorite suppliers only to find out they couldn't for example guarantee whether I was getting a motor coupler that had axial grub bolts or an offset pinch bolt - it depended on what their supplier sent them! A proportion of the stock these guys were reselling apeared to be just aliexpress etc imports.
The threat of cloners does help reduce the likelyhood of profiteering where people are charging needlessly high costs for a product. Equally it encourages constant evolution in order to stay ahead of the cloners and strict quality control of their suppliers which is not possible for single unit purchasers.
Ebay is flooded with micro importers and I'd suggest many of these would struggle to furnish you with a legitimate CE certificate or simple disappear if there was an accident that the Heath and Safety executive decided to investigate. The manufacturers outside the EU block can't be sued. So in these cases there's little insentive to ensure the machines are safe, and not filled with carconegenic or environmentally hazardous materials. What this does is make it difficult for UK suppliers who are thourogh and complete to compete with these imports.
As a community I think we have embraced the cheap import machines too much with too little time spent giving them a hard time on their weaknesses. This has made it near impossible to make a business of offering mid range printer kits, and entry level is impossible because that is now assumed to be £200 ish rather than £500.
On an equal measure some of us from the self built printer comunity profit from leaving machines running overnight and unattended that are built cheaper than they should be with minimal to no reliable safetys and then charge unsustainable prices that are a low multiplier of material cost alone. This making it equally dufficult to run a sustainable turnover printing business.
My thoughts are rapidly becoming political now but essentially I fear we are engaging ourselves in a race to the bottom. Imports should be allowable as should cloners but companies like ebay should step in to ensure basic quality, saftey, and accountability standards are met. It's impossible for single buyers to do that. With that in place you'll most likely find that a large chunk of the cost difference dusappears.
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@doctrucker, Quite agree with your position about eBay like companies. Currently the British authorities are working on this matter. But what I could understand from their responses is that those companies are not willing to do this. In most of the cases they say, that they are “global” companies and the customer should comply with their rules, rather than the opposite.
My suggestion is when a consumer has problems with a product to contact the consumer protection organizations. They do not do anything in most of the cases regarding Asian suppliers, but as one lawyer stated, the complains are logged. Based on the number of complains latter a political decision can be made etc. Speaking about the consumer protection, I also experience issues and read lots of complaints on this and other forums about problems with RRF firmware, Duet boards etc. Those issues seems in some cases not properly addressed, developers like @dc42, @chrishamm … do not respond etc. Although some people on this forum found my communication to sound “nasty”, I would like guys to assure you that the EU consumer protection organizations regarding companies located in EU could be quite effective. Go fix your products or you going to be forced to do this etc.
Lastly, if a customer purchased fake, counterfeit products, let say a board that the seller claimed to be a Duet board, but it is a clone. I recommend you contact the local police or Interpol. Based on my experience, Interpol can be very effective regarding such matters.
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I think it boils down to CE marking being left to business to look after themselves and until an accident has happened being trusted to have done the work.
Doing it properly it would cost me in the order of £100-200 per standard (maybe six or eight of them) to give me an idea of what I can do to prove compliance with the appropriate regulations and have to documentation in place to support a self issued CE certificate. Ontop of that collecting certificates of incorperation for all my components to prove they are not made with toxins and carconegens would take a monumental effort and rule out many aliexpress and ebay like cheap purchases pushing my priduct cost up. But less scrupulous could collects a few CE certificates from known brands, copy them and make a decent effort at the build making sure wiring CSAs and colours are correct, fusing and shielding present and they may never have to produce the documentation.
I think the only way to address this is random spot checks and product audits on CE certification documentation funded by heafty fines and partly by upper tier corperation taxes.
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@fcwilt said in Another reason why not to by a clone (of anything):
Is it ironic that while having fun with these attempts at translation we ourselves are having trouble with our vises having vices?
Frederick
Only American English vises can have vices. British English vices can indeed have vices.
Out of curiosity, are there any German words with the same spelling that can have completely different meanings?
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@deckingman said in Another reason why not to by a clone (of anything):
Out of curiosity, are there any German words with the same spelling that can have completely different meanings?
Of course there are many. Like the german word Gericht means both Meal and Court of Law.
The Biggest problem i had was with Speed and Velocity. They both translate to the same word in german.
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Ah, going from 70um to 35um makes sense to save, sounded more like putting work into reducing the area of a ground plane which didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. 70um does indeed drive up the cost.
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@veti said in Another reason why not to by a clone (of anything):
Of course there are many. Like the german word Gericht means both Meal and Court of Law.
The Biggest problem i had was with Speed and Velocity. They both translate to the same word in german.
Well they mean almost exactly the same thing in English and one is often used in place of another. The only difference is that velocity is a vector so it's the speed (or rate of change of position) in one direction. Whereas speed can be applied to circular motion where the direction is constantly changing, or indeed anything that can happen in a period of time. So velocity is a type of speed and is always measured in m/s. Whereas speed can be m/s but can also be revolutions per minute for something that is revolving, or words per minute for typing of talking. Anything that can happen in a unit of time can have speed but only linear motion can have velocity. Is there no German equivalent?
Edit. Actually, it gets a bit more complicated than that because it is possible to have angular velocity but I need more Caffeine before we get into that..
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I'm pretty sure anyone hanging around here has bought a fair share of Chinese imports, and has likely had both good and bad experiences with them.
I've also sent my share of money into the Asian market, so I get it.
But I definitely believe in supporting the original designers when I can, or when it matters. That said, my first I3 printer was definitely not an original, same with my Makerbot clone printer. They were both cheap Chinese clones, because that was the money that I could invest in the printer at the time. I'd have rather bought an original in both cases, and for the first would definitely have had a better product (That I3 clone was really crappy) but I'd always intended to design and build my own.
I was able to buy genuine Duet boards, and genuine Precision Piezo boards, and am happy to support the development of these products.
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i bought an Anet A8 knowing full well that i had to invest a lot of time into to make it work and safe.
But i did that for the learning experience.I have also bought a fair share of stuff from the Asian market after i realized that a lot of the stuff that is being sold for 3d printers on Amazon is the same.
However there are Sellers where you generally get good quality products. like Robotdigg, Trianglelab and to some extend FYSETC.
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I did fall for the temptation to order a $55(!!) FYSETC Maestro clone on the recent sale, and measuring the difference in thickness on the corner where there is no copper, and the adjacent fill the difference is pretty much 70um, so 35um/1oz each side.
Can stick it in the Up Mini 2 where the bed is now mains powered, motors at 400mA and 24v hotend it should be fine. But its definitively something worth considering for more heavy duty applications.
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@veti said in Another reason why not to by a clone (of anything):
The Biggest problem i had was with Speed and Velocity. They both translate to the same word in german.
Also worth mentioning are "pitch" and "lead" which also translate to the same word in German "Steigung". But that's another one where the English meanings are also very close.
Manuel
Duet 3 6HC (v0.6) with RPi 4B on a custom Cartesian
with probably always latest firmware/DWC (incl. betas or self-compiled)
My Tool Collection -
@wilriker said in Another reason why not to by a clone (of anything):
@veti said in Another reason why not to by a clone (of anything):
The Biggest problem i had was with Speed and Velocity. They both translate to the same word in german.
Also worth mentioning are "pitch" and "lead" which also translate to the same word in German "Steigung". But that's another one where the English meanings are also very close.
Now I'm going to confuse you even more because "pitch" and "lead" can be totally different. One can "lead" a horse which basically means hold it's reins and walk in front of it, and there is the metal "lead" (chemical symbol Pb) but that is pronounced "led" which is the past tense of "lead" as in the horse example above. Also you can "pitch" a tent (put it up), or play ball games on a "pitch", and helicopters gain height by increasing the "pitch" (the angle) of the rotor blades, musical notes can have high pitch or low pitch. So "pitch and "lead" can be many things but when applied to screw threads, they can be the same if that thread is a single start thread but different if it is a multi-start thread.
It's no wonder that the Chinese can mangle instructions so badly. Which brings me nicely back to the topic I started.
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English, though tough, can be understood through thorough thought.
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@phaedrux said in Another reason why not to by a clone (of anything):
English, though tough, can be understood through thorough thought.
Ok, now you twisted my tongue!
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Just on the Clone FuD, did first prints on 1oz copper Maestro clone. No cooling, 800mA X,Y&E0, 1200mA 2xZ. 12V 10A bed, 12v, 4A hotend.
After two hours, hottest area is around Z stepper driver. 52C. When idle, 30% motor current, the W500 seems to be the hottest area with its 37C. Pretty sure at moderate currents and with some forced air this will be fine desipte the shortcut in copper thickness. Z stepper lower left, Ethernet upper right.
"Full" load
"Idle"
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Just found this on fleabay
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Duet-2-Maestro-Clone-Board-Motherboard-32-Bit-TMC2224-3D-Printer-Prusa-I3-UK/401764968426?hash=item5d8b0ee7ea:g:2lMAAOSwRW9c1Zn1Same price as an original board!
Personally I think it is shocking that Duet3D have to support clones.
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What makes you say they have to support clones? Thats not even remotely true, you are completely up shit creek without a paddle if something happens to your clone.
The firmware on the other hand, they choose to support the free and open source firmware because it benefits them regardless of the hardware you run it on, you can buy the genuine board, you can build your own, or you can gamble on dodgy clone.
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@bearer said in Another reason why not to by a clone (of anything):
What makes you say they have to support clones? Thats not even remotely true...................,
Well actually it is kind of true. Admittedly the Duet team are not obliged to support clones but it it is they who have invested the time and effort into putting all the documentation together, which the clone manufacturers and sellers can leverage at no cost to themselves.
There have been a number of people who have bought clones and then post on these forums asking for advice on how to configure them or how to troubleshoot a problem. Personally, I feel they should go back to the seller for that advice so I won't spend any time trying to help them. But those are the ones who admit to buying a clone - there must be many more who won't admit it but still turn to these forums for advice, which in itself is support that is provided by someone other than the clone manufacturer or seller.
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But thats the firmware, not the cloned hardware. I understand your point, but I also think the Duet team were fully aware of the implications before releasing both the hardware and software as open source, and see the benefits as greater than the potential drawbacks?
Another point is Duet3d aren't actually selling boards to the end user in any case so they clearly see it as not worth it to deal with low volume sales and would rather outsource the work and the profit to resellers who as you put it, leverage the free firmware at no cost to themselves? -
@bearer I take you point but I'm old fashioned enough to think that people have a moral obligation to buy the genuine hardware, because it is the profit from sales of that hardware which funds the development of the free and open source firmware that everyone wants to use.
Oh and Duet do indeed to sell their products directly to the end user. https://www.duet3d.com/ Where did you get the idea that they don't?
