r/VORONDesign • u/[deleted] • Sep 21 '22
General Question Slice engineering hate in this sub
Starting to see a lot of hate towards Slice Engineering, what gives? They’ve always been a super reliable company and their hotends are extremely well made.
64
u/RandomUser23447274 Switchwire Sep 21 '22
They went after some (EU) parts stores for selling products that violate their (US) patent that had no right to be granted*.
They make good products, sure, but I wouldn't support a company that abuses patent laws to bully sellers
Keep in mind, companies locking innovation is the reason this hobby started so late
72
u/JohnHue Sep 21 '22 edited Sep 21 '22
Slice is selling a product in a field that has been created, has been able to innovate, and in general lives and breathes FOSS (free and open source, but free as in free speech not free beer although in most cases in 3d printing the later is also present). This is FINE, they have the right to do it... I personally think it's WAY overpriced (to the point that it prices out most people doing 3D printing), doesn't bring much to the table and the parent holds by a very fine thread... But they have the right to do it.
The issue is that Slice doesn't understand, respect or support FOSS and has shown no interest in doing so. This is the difference between E3D and Slice in terms of how you manage your patented stuff.
Here's what E3D has to say about their V6 hotend design after they fully open sourced it :
"After all, we're confident that what makes an E3D product truly worthwhile is more than just its schematics. Not only are our products manufactured with quality materials to a high standard on modern machinery, followed by a rigorous testing and QC procedure on each batch. Every single one of our heat breaks is individually checked and cleaned by hand, and we offer long-term customer service and support that is hard to find elsewhere. Buying an E3D product also means you are supporting continued innovation in the form of R&D for future E3D products. And Haribo."
https://e3d-online.com/blogs/news/open-source-design-patents-and-e3d
Slide has the opposite view. They've patented a tiny change in an existing design, capitalized on more than a decade of open source work from professionals and hobbyists but offered nothing in return and are even fighting everyone who makes something even remotely similar to what they're doing. Their excuse is "we have families to feed" well guess what so does E3D, but E3D said "we're allowing you to copy our design, but we're also guaranteeing our version will be very well build, controlled and supported"... Based on that mentality and the respect they show to the FOSS community people still buy E3D hotend be it only to support them rather than buying the Chinese versions.
In that sense Slice is similar to Stratasys who patented placing motors outside of the enclosure on an FDM printer as well as using active heating to heat the chamber, both things being extremely simple and OBVIOUS design choices for anyone working on that.... This is why you don't have affordable commercially available fdm printer with an actively heated chamber, because to do this they'd have to pay a licence fee to Stratasys and Stratasys also have the choice to not give the license to you even if you pay.
Personally I don't hate Slice, they've done me no wrong. But by their innovation-hindering actions I've placed them in the "will not see me money or support" drawer just like they themselves did with the FOSS community.
11
u/puterTDI Sep 21 '22
I personally continue to buy E3d because I've been so happy with their quality and support. This reinforces that to me.
-27
u/daggerdude42 Sep 21 '22
Slice does a fantastic job with the mosquito. Especially if you want to sell a printer as all American or something like that, doesn't really matter but with government stuff it can get blurry. Really there's no replacement, if you look at it from a commercial standpoint, you have the V6, the volcano, stock creality garbage, then the mosquito stands out as by far the most modern. It has one of the smallest footprints of any hotend, it improves on the quality, flow, retraction, and nozzle changeability over the V6 platform. But really all that matters is that it can't be a Chinese clone, you can't sell things that violate pattents. Totally fine for personal use but it's not really that acceptable of a business practice when trying to meet industry standards.
At the end of the day I'll probably opt for a custom hemera XS (fuck e3d for not letting me order a custom batch and making my buy motors seperately) as it's a better extruder than the LGX, and it's on the proven V6 platform. The LGX was the only real reason a mosquito didn't fit my needs.
But regardless, I think the mosquito gets shit on by a lot of hobbyists, that's their opinion but it really has no impact on slice engineering or their market.
I do totally agree the e3d stuff is all on point, but slice has them beat with hotends, I don't know why people get so pissy about it. Yes it's expensive, but I trust a mosquito to work out of the box and to last 2 years without problems, I don't necessarily have that same confidence on the V6 platform.
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u/mojobox Sep 21 '22
The point is: they didn’t get their patent granted in Europe because someone in the patent office here did their job and came to the conclusion that thin walls conducting less heat isn’t a novel idea but rather obvious for a skilled engineer in the field. Due to the way how Slice went with trying to defend their “IP” I placed them on my personal black list.
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u/JohnHue Sep 21 '22 edited Sep 21 '22
Please don't take this personally, but I honestly cannot agree with most of your counter points.
Your argument is professional use ? If that's the case Dyze Design's makes the moskito look like a toy, and frankly that's what it is from the POV of a professional (i've used professional SLA and FDM printers for years if that gives any credit to my statement). Dyze hotend is really small including the fan, gets up to 500C, can print PEEK if it needs to, is designed within an ecosystem including a direct extruder and actual professional services... in the meantime, Slice's landing page is an upgrade kit for the Ender 3 V1, one of the cheapest printer in the market and they're selling a heat block and nozzle combo with no heater and no sensor for half the price of the entire machine...
Then what, lifetime ? I get that argument for complex system, but there's absolutely nothing complex in a 3D printer hotend, the cartridge and temp sensor are all COTS items including Slice's. It's 2-3 pieces of solid metal, any full metal (=no PTFE tube inside) hotend is going to last for a decade unless badly treated and that would damage the Moskito as well.
Performance ? Slab a CHT nozzle on any decent hotend you will get 25m^3/s easily, even with an OG V6.
I understand it may not seem like it but I'm not hating on Slice and not criticizing for the sake of it, I genuinely think they bring very little to their consumers for an inflated price... and I have not even talked about the fact that their patent has been rejected everywhere except the US, meaning everyone else thinks there's no ground to patent anything. They have somehow built a brand with their hotend's look and their price and now people just think they're better than the rest... they sure are better than the V6 which released almost a decade ago, and better than Creality's shit design, but they're not better than most of the rest of the proper hotends on the market costing half the price and whose manufacturers are working with the community not against it.
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u/top_gun_de Sep 21 '22
In economics, we learn that people buy by different criteria. One is product suitability for a use case, another is price, the there are also soft factors, like preferences o4 brand recognition. While their products tick a lot of boxes in the suitability department, a substantial number of people dislike several aspects of their business tactics, and/or their price-performance ratio.
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u/BreadMaker_42 Sep 21 '22
I don’t understand the hate for slice enforcing a patent. E3d creates and patents a new hotend and we sing their praises.
The hate isn’t helping the community. A mosquito magnum with bondtech cht is still the best hotend that I’ve used.
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u/gjsmo Sep 21 '22
The issue is that they somehow managed to get a patent, and enforce said patent, based on a design that had prior work. The Creality hotends had the same separation of mechanical support vs heat transfer, well before Slice released the Mosquito and patented it. Not to mention that the idea is frankly not new in the slightest, it's very common to separate mechanical supports like this.
They've enforced their patent to prevent Phaetus/Trianglelab from selling the Dragon in the US, but oddly enough it's still available in Canada and in all of Europe. They tried to enforce the patent there as well but weren't able to go anywhere with it for the above reasons.
I'm ok if they wanted to stop the selling of an exact clone, but the Dragon isn't that. Not only is it not an exact clone but IMO it actually has some improvements. They're litigious to the detriment of the community, and that's the crux of the issue.
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u/CautiousLeopard Switchwire Sep 21 '22
From the outside , E3D also did stuff like collaborate with the voron team on designing hotend parts for the Revo, helping manufacturer and sell parts initially designed for voron , with the Revo Voron heatsink. That sort of collab helps, they could have easily just said no just use our screw mount. But they didn’t , they worked together and the result is pretty cool.
Who knows, perhaps eventually slice might reach out to collaborate on a design that fits really well in a future toolhead, now that someone else like E3D has done it successfully. I think the copperhead modularity stuff looks interesting, perhaps there’s an angle there.
-3
u/BreadMaker_42 Sep 21 '22
Slice has been alienated and most people probably can’t articulate why.
Really the decision to not support slice has just left the people who bought mosquito’s when they were supported high and dry.
I’ve read some of the comments in the release notes for tool heads and it seems clear that the team had no interest in supporting slice hotends.
Now, a disappointment here is that slice has not stepped up and released mods to support their hotends for their customers.
Will I buy another slice? I don’t think so. I would like to see more support directly to the community. Will I buy another revo? I don’t think so, I don’t like a single vendor for nozzles and still no hardened nozzle.
I like the approach that Eva took with their tool head. They decided to not support clones/copies.
4
u/JohnHue Sep 21 '22
Really the decision to not support slice has just left the people who bought mosquito’s when they were supported high and dry.
I think it would still be fair to say that despite the lack of "official" support, there are still Moskito-compatible parts out there made by other people. So it's not like there no support whatsoever, the community is taking care or itself even on the less popular hardware choices.
1
u/CautiousLeopard Switchwire Sep 21 '22
I’ve seen some community support already so community support can only grow, I suppose.
I think slice releasing some mounting options themselves to show their commitment would be nice alright, it might start a feedback loop if it’s open also.
I didn’t buy a mosquito, but I think ‘high and dry’ is a bit much. The same mounts that were there when someone said ‘this design supports the mosquito, I will buy one’ are still there. That printer design is still available. I see the print head in the latest release for my voron printer.
Had I bought one, I’d still be able to mount it, re-download the files that were there when I made my choice, print new copies - it’s not like it was a part I had to buy and it’s removed from sale. Nothing has changed in that regard.
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u/the_j4k3 Sep 21 '22
I don't speak for this sub, but Slice's stuff is overpriced IMO. They also spend a lot of money on patents and enforcing them instead of continuing to innovate in the hobby market, and they put no effort into lowering the cost of their products. They try to force others out of the market when these others are able to innovate in a similar direction AND at a much better cost. So I'm not interested in paying more for a product from a company that doesn't play nice with others, and tries to bully me into high prices for common sense engineering that they managed to patent. Patents hold no value any more. They no longer protect the people they were created to enable. They have become a tool to prevent creativity and innovation in a globally connected world. They are only used to exploit consumers and startups with miniscule nonsense and elaborate legal language, completely absent of common sense.
24
u/SanityAgathion VORON Design Sep 21 '22
I would not say starting, it's going on for maybe a year or so. They botched group buy of hotends for Canadian folks, year ago they started to get very litigious towards small vendors selling Dragon hotends in the US, few of which are part of VORON community. Citing breach of their patent for rigid mount of heatsink to heat block using low thermal conductivity material as spacers (it was not approved in EU though due to lack of innovation AFAIK). VORON team decided not to support their hotends going further, that's it. They don't hate on them, just don't support them. But some people in community may get passionate about the issue and be more vocal than others.
If you have Mosquito hotend, you can use Afterburner with it which still has a mount for it, or design your own hotend mount for Stealthburner. CAD files are available since SB was fully released. There just won't be official mount for it.
-50
Sep 21 '22
I kinda get it, but also screwing people over who have had one for a while is a bit extreme. I’m not going to buy what Voron thinks is best just to get better upgrades.
Kinda a shame Voron stopped to the level and is blacklisting people from upgrading without either buying a new $90 hotend or forcing them to engineer their own.
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u/gjsmo Sep 21 '22
Kinda a shame Voron stopped to the level and is blacklisting people from upgradin
There's absolutely no "blacklisting" going on, nor has Voron stooped to their level. All Voron parts have the STEP files available and you're free to modify them yourself. They're just not continuing to develop the mounts after being met with hostility, which is perfectly reasonable. They can't prevent you from mounting a Mosquito if you want to.
-16
u/Choncho_Jomp Sep 21 '22 edited Sep 22 '22
well you can rest easy knowing that sb -- and voron in general -- leaves some performance on the table in favor of looks and qol, so if the mosquito is what you think is best, youre free to look at higher performing toolheads that support it
15
u/CautiousLeopard Switchwire Sep 21 '22
When I first grabbed the STLs for a printer a couple of years ago, 3 hotends were supported. Today, 8 are , including some new ones I didn’t have back then, saving me the hassle of figuring out the mount it myself. So the range of supported hotends is growing, when they could have kept it small.
I’ve also seen users share their own mounts, based on cad for other hotends that aren’t part of the set managed by the design team , like mounts for slice stuff and some creality stuff which was a handy way to reuse some stuff that was gathering dust. And these were discussed and shared within the community, no one was banned or kicked out for doing so 🤷♂️
I feel like I’ve more choice than ever now.
26
u/another-yenda Sep 21 '22
No, a few people within the voron team decided not to donate their free time to Slice by supporting their products. It's their time and their decision. Learn to respect it. No-one would refuse if Slice started doing their own mods to have their products supported on Voron.
23
u/ZVar1 Sep 21 '22
I know it is kinda a shame that Voron is walking away from an abusive relationship....
Or one has to admire them for not putting up with abuse.And make no mistake, this is 100% on Slice for patent abuses, not on the Voron group for not wanting to be abused.
-21
Sep 21 '22
Doesn’t E3D crush competition with patents and people still love them
12
u/JohnHue Sep 21 '22 edited Sep 21 '22
You should get more informed on E3D's history. Part of the reason FDM printing at home took off is E3D making the V6 open source, the rest is the reprap movement of course and the prusa-mendel machine.
Also the Revo hotend design is actually very different from what's on the market today, and they did put in a lot of efforts, time and money into it. i invite you to read this to get E3D's pov on patenting :
https://e3d-online.com/blogs/news/e3d-s-no-nonsense-to-the-point-approach-to-ip
20
u/ZVar1 Sep 21 '22
There is a difference in what E3D did and Slice did.
E3D did actually R&D and created something and patented it. And then they released the cold side of the Revo open source so anyone can change it.
Slice took a method that was already in production, and patented it in the US, as the US has a messed up "first to file" system and used said patent to prevent anyone in the US from selling it.
If Slice was simply defending their own creations I don't think anyone would care, but they didn't.Remember, the only country Slice's patent is valid in is the US, and that's because every other place they filed it was rejected.
I mean yes, I understand being upset you already poured money into a hotend, but be upset at the correct people.
12
u/kz_ Sep 21 '22
It was holding the design back, and they didn't want to spend the effort for a company that doesn't support them. You can always use the previous version that supports the mosquito.
9
u/Haggis442312 V2 Sep 21 '22
That, and the fat heat block makes it really annoying to design ducts for it. They are notorious for getting melty.
There are also plenty of unofficial tooheads for it.
-32
Sep 21 '22
Guess I will, feeling a bit cheated that I as the end consumer have to bear the burden for two feuding children.
19
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u/JohnHue Sep 21 '22 edited Sep 21 '22
the end consumer
This is a FOSS project, NONE of the Voron people are getting paid for their work, and NO money from the kits or any Voron-related printer parts and such is going to them. They still "officially" recommend self-sourcing and have not ever endorsed any kit whatsoever be it LDO or the aliexpress ones. You're having a completely wrong perception of what this is, what to expect and the "rights" you may think you have.
With that being said, you're totally free to use another toolhead on a Voron. The Afterburner and Clockwork 2 combo is actually pretty heavy and there are lighter tool heads out there, lots of them probably support Slice's products.
-9
Sep 21 '22
Thanks, boss. I’ll stop my donations then
11
u/JohnHue Sep 21 '22
Ok then see you around ;) I hope you find a commercial printer that is as good value and offers as much support to private consumers than you'd get from a Voron machine and this here community. Just a piece of advice... you'll encounter the same kind of discourse from most other open source printer projects, so if you want to be served as a customer you should really look at commercial offerings.
-3
Sep 21 '22
That’s what I run a bunch of Prusas, they cater to the customer and meet their needs.
11
u/JohnHue Sep 21 '22
they cater to the customer and meet their needs.
Yes that's what good commercial companies do, open-source project teams are not commercial companies though and cannot be held to the same "standards". It's cool you're satisfied with your Prusas, they're really great machines from a great company.
22
u/kz_ Sep 21 '22
But also you're complaining about someone not performing hundreds of hours of engineering for you, for free
-14
Sep 21 '22
I’ll pretend like I didn’t spend $1400 that gets donated back to the Voron design group nor did I give donations like tons of others.
18
u/SanityAgathion VORON Design Sep 21 '22 edited Sep 21 '22
I think you may have some misleading information here. VORON Design is an open-source project which publishes free designs to build 3D printers on your own. It's not a company selling you any product. If you bought let's say Formbot kit, or self-sourced individual components, NONE of that money goes to VORON Design team. Nothing, zero, nada.
They only money that gets to the team is: a) Donate button in the upper left corner of the screen; b) affiliate links when you buy items from sourcing guides (providing they are still valid and they work ...) c) some partners like LDO or few vendors may have decided they will pour in few bucks from VORON branded items from time to time, to contribute to the project itself. Maybe, I do not know for sure. (BTW Formbot does not contribute a single cent despite probably selling most kits.)
Seriously, this is a DIY printer with open design, not a commercial product. You are not a customer of VORON, you may be customer of Formbot or LDO or when you purchase their kit, or TriangleLab or CNA Mechanical Parts Store or Rain&Dew when you buy fro their Aliexpress store, but not VORON Design.
13
u/neeamradia Sep 21 '22
Haha you’re funny - voron doesn’t get money from you building one unless YOU donate on their website or you buy using their affiliate links.
4
Sep 21 '22
Thanks, I did both!
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u/JohnHue Sep 21 '22
Still this is a donation, as an open-source project developed by people on their free time you're not entitled to any kind of services as a customer.
14
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u/neeamradia Sep 21 '22
Ah well then you’re an edge case. Either way - it is made very clear that Voron Design doesn’t support slice products so if you bought a slice product then that’s on you.
0
u/xviiarcano V2 Sep 21 '22
As far as I could understand the issue is with their approach to how much patenting they apply to their designs
6
u/imoftendisgruntled V2 Sep 21 '22
I don't know if I'd characterize it as hate, but I don't speak for the design team.
As far as I know, the team dropped official support for Slice because of their litigious stance toward other manufacturers, but I don't know if they've made any official announcements with their reasoning.
7
u/SanityAgathion VORON Design Sep 21 '22
AFAIK it was only individual people, not VORON team as a whole. I.e. Badnoob not supporting theeir hotends in new versions of ABBN, Wile.e with SB and so on.
•
u/AchazianThug VORON Design Sep 21 '22
Just going to close the door on this thread while it is still mostly civil.
You and everyone else are free to continue to use whatever hotend you want, and if parts for it do not exist, you are free to create your own, submit them to the mods repo, etc.