The Shapeoko Forum

hello all,
this is my first post here. my name is michael, 44 years old, live in germany. i was looking for a affordable cnc and i think with shapeoko i found the right thing.

unfortunatedly i have to report negative things in my first post. i do that to inform others that they dont do the same mistake as i did.

since the makerslide profiles were sold out before christmas, and i wanted to build the cnc during my christmas holiday, i ordered an expanded version 100 x 75cm not from eshapeoko as i first wanted to but from myhobby-cnc.de in germany. he had everything on stock.
the shapeoko2 set was not officially launched in his shop, but he offered one. it is not the original shapeoko2, it is an "improved version" as the seller stated.

the set came after a few days. there was no manual at all, nor any fotographs sent, nor any explanation. so i used the original shapeoko2 manual.

it started with 2 missing ball bearings. after putting together the x axis i found out the distance from one side to the other is to narrow to fit in the double x rails. later the seller said i should have put 3 washers! to the metal distance tubes. i dissembled, looked for 6 nuts with same hight measurements and it worked. in literally everystep of the assembling was something that went wrong: screws too short, missing screws, design changes that did not look so well....

the eccentric nuts have no screw thread, still the old version, so much harder to adjust. the z axis makerslide profile is just 200mm long, so when you change the z axis design to the eshapeoko version you miss 5 cm. there are no belt tensioners, the belt just gets holded by a simple screw, see attached photo. but it is very hard to get to the motor screws to tighten the belt. in the eshapeoko set you have support for the longer y axis, in this set you have not.

i really like the shapeoko2 but i cannot recommend that set from germany at all. too many missing parts, very cheap solutions like the washers for x axis and the belt system. i had the expression the seller wants to save every penny. the price was 383€ for the bigger set, so not very cheap in particular. there were no insertion nuts to attach the y axis metals to the 20x20 extrusion. he recommended to use the shcs screws with a round head to put inside the profile and put the nut outside.

good old days when germany was a land of engineers

i am still waiting for the missing parts...

attached are some photos,

michael

Welcome, and thank you for posting.

Sorry to hear that you're having problems.

It seems that the guys who sold you the machine never did a clean room assembly. Both Edward and I use a 3-D model to figure out what components are needed and how many, and then pick that number of each component, go somewhere else (a "clean room") and assemble a machine. This way, any discrepancy is noticed and recorded, and the model and bill of materials are corrected. The same procedure is also useful to compile a list of all tools needed to assemble the machine, for the documentation. Because Inventables contracts out the actual packing of the kits, they also assemble a machine or two out of kits as packaged by the kitting company.

About the eccentric nuts vs. spacers: I find the spacers slightly easier to adjust. The main advantage of the nuts is that they reduce the number of parts and the length of the screw, so they make the assembly a little easier and the machine a tiny bit cheaper.

Oh, and I'm sorry that the eShapeoko was not (and still isn't) available. Working on it...

I have to have some words with the people from myhobby-cnc.de, because they took some images from my site without permission.

Disappointed to hear about your difficulties, but glad to hear that you are working to overcome them. Really appreciate your posting the photos and explanations of what you had to do / the difficulties which you're facing.

I try to search for ``ShapeOko'' every so often, but hadn't thought to try international search engines --- looks like there's at least one other German vendor:

http://www.fabbmatic.com/Produkte/Seite ... e/ShapeOko

Did find one rather ingenious mention using a French search engine: http://chantierlibre.org/fablab/la-fraiseuse-numerique/



Hmm, is there a search engine which integrates multi-lingual search results?

I am sorry you are having a problem. This machine was not ordered from Inventables. We have several quality checks in place to prevent issues like this and we have a Customer Success team that handles any issues customers have if issues resolve after the purchase.

Shapeoko is an open source project. Inventables is one of the companies that sells the machine and in this case MyHobby-CNC.de has stolen our product photography so it appears as if we have caused this problem because our logo and photos are on their site. They are using our photos in an unauthorized manner. We have politely requested for them to take down our photos and use their own photos.

Open Source Hardware means people are free to make their own version however it does not mean they are free to steal our marketing materials and brand. In Open Source Hardware the only differentiator we have at Inventables is our quality and service. We pride ourselves on having a very high level of both.

We are excited you have decided to join the Shapeoko community so despite the fact that Inventables didn't sell you the machine if you are unable to get this sorted out with MyHobby-CNC we can try to help you get this sorted out. Once you have exhausted your options with the MyHobby-CNC feel free to email help@inventables.com and we will do our best to help you out and get you milling.

Regards,

Zach Kaplan
CEO, Inventables

thank you all for your support. it is only one guy who sells these kits, so not a big company. but he is doing a really bad job with this kit, and especially his customer service is beyond description. yes, he had no full list of his kit and therefore so many parts are missing. he does not care whether his customer spends a lot of extra time figuring out how to put all that togehter and searching for missing screws and parts in his own workshop. he wants to safe his time at the expense of others time. it does fit the picture that he is even unable to make his own photographs and thus steels them from others. how can one expect that he would do a decent manual at some point??? he even does not bother to take your pictures offline after you complaint.
all that you say fits how he behaves. that is the negative part of open source that people like him with that qualification can offer stuff over the internet. but lookily there is a community where you can make these activities public and others can inform themselves.

the shapeoko is already running, with a proxxon spindle and a rumba electronics from a 3d printer. it seems to work fine. i printed out some belt tensioners and mounted them, that works now.

i also developped a way to mount an airbrush pistole on the shapeoko. i use the signals from the extruder stepper driver to control the air pressure with an electro magnetic valve. i slice with slic3r. with extrusion the pistol sprays and with retract it stopps spraying. so you can transform a .svg in blender to a .stl with the height of one layer, sclice it and you can paint.

michael

neptunier wrote:i also developped a way to mount an airbrush pistole on the shapeoko. i use the signals from the extruder stepper driver to control the air pressure with an electro magnetic valve. i slice with slic3r. with extrusion the pistol sprays and with retract it stopps spraying. so you can transform a .svg in blender to a .stl with the height of one layer, sclice it and you can paint.

That is a wonderfully brilliant idea. I would like to see it in action!

Glad to hear it's running.

We haven't black-listed anyone yet, but it sounds like this may be the guy to start with.

We do have a list of vendors: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/ ... ty_vendors

But maybe this guy would be a better fit under: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/ ... al_Vendors
or http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/ ... ew#Sources

I have bought a complete kit from this supplier and am happy to report, that i had a good experience in doing that. My status is right now, that my bigger build shapeoko is finished and i have made some first tests. I found the supplier to actually be quite nice and helpfull. @neptunier, i'm sorry for your experience, but i was not able to reproduce it.

To have a look at my build, you can visit my blog at http://omar.toomuchcookies.net/ .

regards.

hi toomuchcookies,
glad you did not have any problems, but in my case i still did not get the missing parts.....after half a year.
i think that speaks for itself.

michael

I also bought a mechanical kit from myhobby-cnc.de, and can't report anything bad about the seller. Only one spacer in my kit had the wrong size (probably mixed up in the factory, because I don't think he would stock both 50mm and 52mm spacers). When I told him about that, he sent me the right spacer (and some spare ones) immediately, and we also had a nice email chat about possible upgrades.

I don't understand many of the points that neptunier complains about: Z Makerslide is the same length as the original Shapeoko2 (200mm), and I find the way the Y belts are mounted pretty nifty: around 30mm more Y travel "for free" (using a narrow slot in the end plate instead of the stock belt clamps). Some other things are more a matter of taste (eccentric spacers or nuts).
The Makerslide he sells does not hat have to be tapped, and currently he seems to be the only one with Makerslide on stock.

The changes that he made are described in detail on his Wiki, along with a link to the original shapeoko docs. Maybe they were put up after Neptunier's build, at least they were there in March. There were no printed instructions (at least as I remember), but I think that's also the case for the other kits.


PS.: Just a happy customer here, no other connection to the seller. Just didn't want to leave this uncommented.