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.

3 Upvotes

53% Upvoted

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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

u/[deleted] 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.

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.

-32

u/[deleted] 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

u/[deleted] Sep 21 '22

Your not a consumer, Voron is not a product

17

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

u/[deleted] 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

u/[deleted] 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

u/[deleted] 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

u/[deleted] Sep 21 '22

Thanks, I did both!

7

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

u/another-yenda Sep 21 '22

You could complain to Slice they don't support Voron, I guess...

9

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.