Bait and switch  

Re: Bait and switch

If you have done so much research surely you would've picked up on this issue prior to ordering? I thought it was fairly well documented.

In any case I would hardly call it a case of bait-switch.

Re: Bait and switch

You obviously didn't research before you bought. I wouldn't call it bait and switch because there is so much info on the web explaining the issues they had in production. The spring steel powder coated one is supposed to be available at the end of this month, so your order will most likely ship with it. Additionally the sticker based one is still outstanding and works perfectly. It's not the big deal you're making it out to be.

Re: Bait and switch

Bait and switch? Prusa is currently shipping the stickered PEI sheets which actually cost about 15% more than the powder coated ones will and they work flawlessly.

Giving you a more expensive product in replacement is something that few companies would do as the result of a parts shortage. I see no valid reason for your negative comments.

Prusa Research have proved many times they are an honourable company.

Re: Bait and switch

and btw, the smooth PEI stickered sheet works just fine. Not a single issue for me. Printed PLA and PETG, both stick really nice and detach without issues. No sillyu gluestick/blue tape/3dlac shehanigans needed.

Re: Bait and switch

OP, it's a shame your six months of research on this printer neglected to include the last two months of venting us early adopters have been doing. At least you have the option to cancel and go get something else. 🙂

That said, if you are upset about the PEI sheet, let me give you some others from us who got blindsided!

While I am extremely frustrated with Prusa over the status of this machine when it was released, I have really enjoyed working through the problems with this community. There's still a host of issues, but I am sure we'll work em out.

Re: Bait and switch

Not to pile on what everyone already said but weren't orders getting the powder coated sheets starting at the end of the month? If you just ordered you may be OK.

Now to pile on, the PEI stickered sheet was actually what I wanted to begin with. I was an early order who considered canceling when the powder coated bed was still expected and the only expected bed surface that would be available.

Edit: OP, you do terrible research. Almost every YouTube video out there on the MK3 mentions the bed surface debacle

Re: Bait and switch

You gotta love all of you just blaming the customer, rather than dare question the prusa overloads 😆 While I don;t think his particular issue is that bad, I do have a big issue with some of you guys' reaction and attitude.

There is absolutely no indication on the product page that the printer does not currentlyship with the expected bed surface , I've just checked. (I quote: "textured powder coated PEI (which is the default option)"). The only real indication of this only gets shown to the buyer after the money has been taken. This is wrong IMHO. They should temporarily change the product page to add that warning, so this is obvious to everyone.

People saying "don't worry, yours will ship with it anyways". Prusa has now pushed their expected shipment of power coated sheets 3 times already, and there are no indications that this will not be the case one more time.

Also, there are many reason people want the power coated sheet, one of the main one being that it will (supposedly) be more resilient and will not get scratched/damaged as easily.

Also, you guys are well aware of this issue because you've been following the launch from the beginning. Someone coming from the outside will not be as informed as you are. Proper video reviews from the usual "trusted" sources are only coming out now, and mainly the information you get out there is about the MK2/S being one of the best sub 1000$ printer. It is therefore not hard to imagine that someone doing research on what printers to get would settle on the Prusa printers, without necessarily having read all the freaking material out there. Especially since he mentioned that he settled on the MK3 a while ago and was saving up until now, meaning that he potentially settled on this printer before the launch.

I will never understand the prick-ish attitude of some people in this community.

Re: Bait and switch

You gotta love all of you just blaming the customer, rather than dare question the prusa overloads 😆 While I don;t think his particular issue is that bad, I do have a big issue with some of you guys' reaction and attitude.

What big issue is that? The OP vented, which is fine. Others reacted to the OP over-reaction, which is also fine. That's life in the bad old world of public online forums. Don't be so precious. 🙄

Re: Bait and switch

+ 1 for this guy ^^^^^^^

Absolutely nailed it.

Re: Bait and switch

You gotta love all of you just blaming the customer, rather than dare question the prusa overloads 😆 While I don;t think his particular issue is that bad, I do have a big issue with some of you guys' reaction and attitude.

I will never understand the prick-ish attitude of some people in this community.

^^^^^^^ +1 for this. You nailed it guy. The "Prusa can do no wrong" attitude is pretty disgusting.

Re: Bait and switch

Published on November 30th, I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.prusaprinters.org/mk3-is-shipping/

Re: Bait and switch

You gotta love all of you just blaming the customer, rather than dare question the prusa overloads 😆 While I don;t think his particular issue is that bad, I do have a big issue with some of you guys' reaction and attitude.

I will never understand the prick-ish attitude of some people in this community.

^^^^^^^ +1 for this. You nailed it guy. The "Prusa can do no wrong" attitude is pretty disgusting.

LOL, nobody suggested Prusa can do no wrong at all.

Re: Bait and switch

You gotta love all of you just blaming the customer, rather than dare question the prusa overloads 😆 While I don;t think his particular issue is that bad, I do have a big issue with some of you guys' reaction and attitude.

What big issue is that? The OP vented, which is fine. Others reacted to the OP over-reaction, which is also fine. That's life in the bad old world of public online forums. Don't be so precious. 🙄

The big issue is that we get a paying customer coming on here to complain about a genuine issue (whether or not it's that important to us is irrelevant, as it is important to him), only to get shat on by all of you lovely people, basically laughing at his face telling him to learn to search better.

The way prusa is handling this powder coated situation is ridiculous, they are not taking the necessary steps to inform customers before purchase, yet it is somehow the buyers fault because he didn't go read prusa's blog articles before ordering? Give me a brake.

Its incredible the amount of stuff 90% of the prusa community will put up with when it comes to prusa research.
Were it any other brand/company, the pitch forks would have been out for far less.
I mean fucking hell, if I had bought a laptop and it was being shipped with the wrong type of LCD panel (lets say TFT) because of manufacturing issues and was told "it's okay, send us 50$ and at some point in the next 6 months we will ship you the correct screen. But don't worry, this TFT screen works also super great!" while in the meantime, they still advertised everywhere that the laptop was shipping with an OLED panel, People would tell them to fuck right off!

PS: Its worth noting I don't have an MK3, nor don't I have plans to order one so do try and spin this as me being a salty customer 🙂 I'm just trying to stay objective and helpful to the OP.

Re: Bait and switch

I also researched for 6 months before deciding on this printer. And i knew within the first week of the mk3 launch that there was a PEI bed issue im pretty sure i even read about it in blog of official site. If you missed this it was due to willful ignorance as info is widely available both from prusa and mentioned in first few min of literally every you tube review of this product out there.

Re: Bait and switch

Q: Why are people expecting the powder coated beds?
A: Because every review tells them to. Because Prusa advertises it in the main image of the shop and in the More Info description of the Mk3.

Where does it say, up front, that you wont get the bed they are advertising the product with? People shouldn't need to go reading forums to find out if the advert is correct, this isn't a blind purchase of a cheap kit from China.

People have a right to be annoyed about this, Prusa have had 3 months to get the message across.

Re: Bait and switch

I'm just trying to stay objective and helpful to the OP.

Really? Me too. The subject line certainly isn't though is it? The OP making his very first post here decides to have a whinge, about a well known but fairly insignificant issue, after claiming to have done a lot of research. Well then, objectively speaking, he got reminded that he obviously didn't do as much research as he thought. 😉

Re: Bait and switch

The way prusa is handling this powder coated situation is ridiculous, they are not taking the necessary steps to inform customers before purchase, yet it is somehow the buyers fault because he didn't go read prusa's blog articles before ordering? Give me a brake.

This, except it's not just the PEI sheet, but you are absolutely correct. Check out Josef's most recent post itself. It pretty much blames the end user for any problems experienced:

Hello there 🙂 It is a big surprise to see problems on support forum of self assembly kits, right? There is almost 4000 MK3s in the wild in just 2 and half months to give you a perspective.

Let me go thru the OP list:
OctoPrint Problems - Fixed in last few firmwares.
Bearings problems - What problems exactly? You just see couple of guys telling they suck and they switched to Misumi. Same bearings as on the MK2S. Wrongly sent rods are being replaced for free.
Belt Problems - What belt problems? If you misalign them, they rub on the idler pulley, but not causing any harm. Same as with MK2/S.
X axis has no belt tensioning mechanism - Did you see the manual? There is exact way how to tension them properly. Same as with MK2/S
Power supply failure - Not above average we saw with MK2S, but everyone just freaks out about MK3.
Fail self test - Well, something was connected improperly during assembly and self test caught that 🙂
Fan Errors - Printer is detecting the fan isn't having the proper RPM. Again printer is detecting what it should. So far we saw broken wires of the PCB during the assembly barely making contact.
Heated Bed failure - You probably mean thermistor wire getting pulled? Addressed in the article.
Calibration fails - Most common cause is that people put the filament holder to the front preventing the printer to reach full Z, or they put Z nuts upside down, or they have something preventing the axis movement....
Filament sensor problems - fingerprints on the sensors, dust, etc. 3.1.1 FW introduces some mechanisms to be more robust too.

With these ones I have no idea what do you mean?
XYZ Axis Fine Tuning - ?
XYZ Axis Problems - ?
Print resume bug - ?

Everyone keep calm and print on 😉

Where do I start?

It is a big surprise to see problems on support forum of self assembly kits, right?
Except many people experiencing these issues went the Prusa assembled route (myself included).

OctoPrint Problems - Fixed in last few firmwares.
We don't think disabling Linear Advance is a "fix".

Bearings problems - What problems exactly? You just see couple of guys telling they suck and they switched to Misumi. Same bearings as on the MK2S. Wrongly sent rods are being replaced for free.
Many people have had issues with the bearings being very scratchy, bad movement, or falling apart. I have the correct rods, and still had to replace one in the Y axis.

Belt Problems - What belt problems? If you misalign them, they rub on the idler pulley, but not causing any harm. Same as with MK2/S.
This one is the best. The biggest offender here is the X axis, which is misaligned because the idler pulley screw hole is incorrectly aligned in the model. I can't tell if they are blaming the customer here or themselves, but many of us have seen better prints by getting this alignment fixed.

Power supply failure - Not above average we saw with MK2S, but everyone just freaks out about MK3.
Probably because we paid a mint for what was supposedly going to be the printer that came straight down from the heavens? I didn't experience this issue, but expecting customers to chill out isn't good customer service. Instead of accepting that margin of error, you should push for a better product next time.

Fan Errors - Printer is detecting the fan isn't having the proper RPM. Again printer is detecting what it should. So far we saw broken wires of the PCB during the assembly barely making contact.
Heated Bed failure - You probably mean thermistor wire getting pulled? Addressed in the article.
Calibration fails - Most common cause is that people put the filament holder to the front preventing the printer to reach full Z, or they put Z nuts upside down, or they have something preventing the axis movement....
Can't comment on these, so maybe some real assembly problems going on there. 🙂

Filament sensor problems - fingerprints on the sensors, dust, etc. 3.1.1 FW introduces some mechanisms to be more robust too.
I haven't tried it as of this last firmware update, I will be sure to give it another shot.

With these ones I have no idea what do you mean?
XYZ Axis Fine Tuning - ?
XYZ Axis Problems - ?
Print resume bug - ?
And this I think is probably just chalked up to Josef not browsing the forums as much as he should (or maybe have some community guys hired for Prusa to handle this). We've got numerous topics regarding axis rebuilds, print quality issues, etc. They should be going over this board with a fine toothed comb.

In the end, I will be happy to have a properly functioning Frankenstein of a Prusa i3 MK3. I think that hacking this printer is awesome, and the ability to do so is the reason I bought it; however, at the price it is being marketed at it shouldn't be experiencing these kinds of issues out the door. While I am coming to love my printer after the days of work I have put into fixing it, I won't be buying another Prusa product.

Re: Bait and switch

In the end, I will be happy to have a properly functioning Frankenstein of a Prusa i3 MK3. I think that hacking this printer is awesome, and the ability to do so is the reason I bought it; however, at the price it is being marketed at it shouldn't be experiencing these kinds of issues out the door. While I am coming to love my printer after the days of work I have put into fixing it, I won't be buying another Prusa product.

Same here.

My printer is currently out of action whilst I get a new Pinda sent from Prusa.
It was already limping along whilst the blower fan was chewing it's bearings and I was awaiting those from Prusa.
This is after Prusa sent me new rods which I was waiting to install (doing this now whilst it's out of action)
And before that Prusa had to send me a new filament sensor and extruder housing because the first one went up in smoke.
And via a blog I discovered I needed to ditch all the spiral wrap or the printer has a chance of killing itself.

Now I'm getting a friend to print all my new Mk3 parts from the latest github on his Mk2 whilst I basically do a almost ground-up rebuild. I think the only thing not getting torn down is the frame.

Things I know about Prusa and the Mk3:
- I've had lots of problems. Far more than I expected from an expensive kit, which was one of the draws to the Mk3. I remain unconvinced about the robustness of the sensors, electronics and power supply.
- Prusa support is actually really, really good.
- UPS deliveries and free replacement parts to me must be eating a lot of Prusa's profit from my kit.
- Prusa could be a lot more proactive about telling us of issues. A blog post telling us all that spiral wrap could tear out thermistors is not good enough - are you expecting every owner of a Mk 3 to need to read all forums and blogs? Really? Prusa should be mailing all owners about issues like this. We find firmware that essentially fixes the printer via someone saying they found it on the forum? Again, Prusa should be emailing us about this.
- I want an MMU. Having read about the Mk2 MMU and all the problems I've already had, I really don't think I will ever get the MMU.

Re: Bait and switch

The big issue is that we get a paying customer coming on here to complain about a genuine issue (whether or not it's that important to us is irrelevant, as it is important to him), only to get shat on by all of you lovely people, basically laughing at his face telling him to learn to search better.

I think things may have been different if he hadn't started off saying he'd spent 6 months reading, reviewing and studying 3d printers. That makes it seem like the PEI sheet is some super-secret thing that's being hushed up by the company which you need a secret handshake and 6 different passwords to find out about. Yes, it probably should be on the product page on the website. But if someone has done as much research as he claimed, it shouldn't come as a surprise.

He complains that he can't see the shipping schedule until after he'd ordered it, but there is a bright orange banner on the shop saying that new orders will ship in March, which is both an indication of when it would ship and an indication that they have a backlog of orders.

And no, it isn't like the laptop screen example you gave. It's like a laptop company saying "We're having manufacturing problems. If you want to wait for the correct screen, let us know, and yours will ship when we have them in stock. If you want your printer sooner, that's fine, we'll send you a different screen, and we'll give you a discount on the correct one when they come in stock."

People that act like Prusa are evil for not shipping a 100% perfect product are irritating. As Josef pointed out, some of the things that people are complaining about are the same as they were on the MK2S (e.g. X-axis tension adjustment). There aren't that many people active in the forum, so when 3 or 4 people get the same issue, it *looks* like it's a big problem. We do only see a subset of the data though. Prusa are shipping 300+ printers *a day*. People talking about problems on here probably amount to ~20 people total. It's not a big enough dataset to judge just how bad failure rates etc. are.

Basically, yes, they're not perfect. There are things they could improve. I don't think anyone supporting the company is saying "they never do anything wrong", but plenty of people bashing the company are acting like Prusa have taken their money and left them with something completely unusable.