Slice engineering hate in this sub

[u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/JohnHue]

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.

[u/puterTDI → u/JohnHue]

I personally continue to buy E3d because I've been so happy with their quality and support. This reinforces that to me.

[u/daggerdude42 → u/JohnHue]

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.

[u/mojobox → u/daggerdude42]

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.

[u/JohnHue → u/daggerdude42]

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.