Help to setup BMG clone extruder
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People need to tread with extreme caution on this topic. As this is a Duet3D hosted site I feel the admins have the right to dictate owners of clone Duets are not welcome to seek support here, fair enough.
However in terms of the effect of clones on the original company what is the difference between me buying second hand rather than new compared to me buying a clone? For instance in the cold light of day I would have to say the logical conclusion is likely to be I am causing just as much damage to Duet3D buying second hand and asking questions on here as I would be if I had bought a clone. I would like to think I am able to pitch in and help every now and again though balancing my value to this forum.
If we support this user in their infancy in the hobby now and lightly enthuse about the benefits of original products they are far more likely to remain, become active contributors and replace their sloppy cloned parts with genuine when they can afford to do so.
In terms of intellectual property we also need to be careful. Our hobby and in some cases our livelihoods were made possible by the expiration of a patent. Is the predominant failures of the cloners is to add any innovation to the product? Cost reduction could be classed as their innovation, they after all have tooled up for injection molding rather than plastic sintering? But yes without diving too deep into politics the cloners location and legal isolation/insulation leaves our manufacturers unable to compete on a cost basis. So really you are just highlighting the failings of free market economy and blaming the end consumer who has exercised their freedom of choice rather then the governments for failing to balance this inequality. For our companies it forces rapid innovation in order to still attract people to purchase direct, and ensures they do not sit for too long. Alas without further market control the sweat shops of the world have taken the cherry from the cake for product production. Development is tough, support is tough, and selling a stable product is supposed to be the easier money bit that has now less profitable.
Bondtech essentially adapted a type of mig wire feed to a polymer filament feed. If the E3Ds Hermes (that name tickles me!) is little more than using a no-idle-roller bontech design in a re-engineered housing (the tooling for injection molding thet the cloners have done is, after all a not insignificant amount of engineering effort) are we going to be as negative about people buying E3D Hermes over Bontech?
Edit: the cherry on the cake is lost by going open source, that is the nature of the beast. But the company benefits be developing a loyal user base that in turn supports other users. When this is established the original company benefits from this free support and development that would have otherwise need to be paid for. So the cherry is not given away for free, there is a benefit.
Edit 2: This is naturally a topic that will stoke many peoples emotions and provoke strong responses. I have been wanting to raise my opinion on the matter but I do not wish to make this personal. We are free to hold whatever view on the subject that we want to! In a strange sense this is both not the individuals fault, but all of ours.
Running 3 P3Steel with Duet 2. Duet 3 on the shelf looking for a suitable machine. One first generation Duet in a Logo/Turtle style robot!
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Confession time:
I have 2 cloned bontech extruders, but I plan to replace them as soon as my workload picks up to the point were I can pay for their replacement.
Likewise all of the boards I own at the moment are v0.6, or v0.8.5. 4 of them are second hand.
However when in a previous employment I had upgraded their v0.6 to a Duet Ethernet + Panel Due +Duex5, and a Bontech extruder. I can clearly see the benefit of the non cloned and more recent generations of systems. I'm not adversely pro clone or Luddite in nature.
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I don't think anyone has ever been turned away when seeking support for using a clone. They may get some gentle ribbing though.
The origins of RepRap has meant seeking out the cheapest parts possible to replicate as much as possible. RAMPS clones and cheap chinese vitamins have made a lot of the 3D printing market as it is viable. And without that market place there wouldn't be a market for Duet either.
Hopefully if people buy a clone and come here for support they feel welcomed and appreciate the support and in the future decide to make good on it and buy genuine.
However, if everyone decided that cost was the most important factor and only bought clones going forward how would Duet justify the R&D for new products? It's reasonable for supporting cloning to be discouraged, and there's valid arguments for supporting the innovators. The only real valid argument for buying a clone over genuine is to save a few bucks. We're not talk large sums here.
I don't think buying a clone should be vilified as badly as it has been in some comments sections around the internet. But a little bit of education and social pressure is warranted.
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@Phaedrux said in Help to setup BMG clone extruder:
... there's valid arguments for supporting the innovators.
A Donate link would be useful here.
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No arguments with either of you there!
I was going to be say it would be awesome if a proportion the 'balancing' tax on the clones at import went back to the original developers of the cloned open source items! Alas the logistics would be challenging.
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@DocTrucker Each individual has their own opinion of what is right and what is wrong and it's not my place to make moral judgements. But at the same time, I have my own set of values by which I run my own life. For that reason, if a person buys a clone then I personally will not offer to help them, because to do so would be helping the vendor or maker of the clone, which is against my own personal principles.
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@deckingman fair enough fella.
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@DocTrucker .......but buying used or second hand is OK in my book
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Edit: Nothing else on offer now you've a duet3 is there?...
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@DocTrucker said in Help to setup BMG clone extruder:
clone Duets
I would like to make this clear I do NOT have clone duet.
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@TPJensen Didn't mean to imply you had, sorry if it came across like that.
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@DocTrucker said in Help to setup BMG clone extruder:
@TPJensen Didn't mean to imply you had, sorry if it came across like that.
That is okay... dont worry I like your post and follow you 100%...
I have a mate that did buy his first printer 1½ years ago and he did buy alot of clone things and I helped as good as I could.... Now the same mate have only orig. parts and 6 printers.... Untill I started to help him he had given up and put his printer up for sale put with a little help he went from boring failed prints to good prints and he did thing is was fun and he has just ordered Ultimaker 2+ Extended.. So if your help one also with clone parts then it can be good for the original company also.. (in this case very good)Just has you also say @DocTrucker
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Does the Duet license forbids commercial cloning? If not, they must have their reasoning for allowing it.
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@zapta said in Help to setup BMG clone extruder:
Does the Duet license forbids commercial cloning? If not, they must have their reasoning for allowing it.
No. See: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/T3P3/Duet/master/LICENSE
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@grizewald said in Help to setup BMG clone extruder:
No. See: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/T3P3/Duet/master/LICENSE
Some developers choose to allow commercial competition (e.g. Arduino, Duet), some not, and some even include license hardware in their product (e.g. Teensy). Each and their goals and considerations. Would be interesting to hear Duet's explanation why they chose to allow.
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@zapta If you watch Tom Sanladerer's video from today, he asked exactly that question.
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@DocTrucker said in Help to setup BMG clone extruder:
However in terms of the effect of clones on the original company what is the difference between me buying second hand rather than new compared to me buying a clone? For instance in the cold light of day I would have to say the logical conclusion is likely to be I am causing just as much damage to Duet3D buying second hand and asking questions on here as I would be if I had bought a clone.
Absolutely NOT damaging to purchase second hand. In fact, it HELPS the original company establish value, and brand equity. It helps quite a bit. It's called a "Healthy secondary market". Knowing that a given product can be re-sold for more than a pittance, that knowledge helps original purchasers make the decision to buy that product up front.
Contrast that to a clone. No benefit to the original, and a high potential to damage brand equity, because of poor clone quality.
I could expand on both statements above quite a bit... I think people get the point, so I'll keep it short.
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@Danal appreciate the different view point. I was considering it from a purely revenue point of view.
Edit: That makes sense to me, and I can see why second hand is better than clone for companies like Duet3D that have embraced Open Source. With terms like 'planned obsolescence' kicking around it is not always embraced by all industries, some of which purely see coin as king and look little further in directing their business. The latter likely to be a failing of shareholders who only care for their dividend.
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@zapta said in Help to setup BMG clone extruder:
Would be interesting to hear Duet's explanation why they chose to allow.
As I mentioned before I imagine they are able to punch above their weight due to the the community pitching in on support. But there is more to it.
The more restrictions put on something the more you come across as self centred and closed. RADDS being an example of something that should have really killed off RAMPS but the fuss around the open source but not open source left it struggling for a market corner. It's there, but not as much as it should have been. ...or is my exposure to Duets clouding my judgement a little and far more RADDS boards were shipped than Duet v0.6/v0.8.5?
Allowing others the right to manufacture also removes a little of the worry about 'what if company x goes bang' for companies who rely on the Duet hardware in their business. License restrictions don't always die with the company. So for bigger (edit: read as customer) companies it allows a little more room for letting the guard down a little and not spending too much resource maintaining familiarity with a secondary architecture.
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Three on the bounce, sorry! Final point on this one before I drop back to my code and Primordial Radio podcast....
Another factor about this is trust and honestly. If you completely open source the product and don't limit the manufacture then you are leaving your self open to being undercut. Due to that you aren't likely to mark up your products as heavily as a closed company. You are outwardly stating you don't think you are unduly profiteering from your product. I'd say this is borne out by the difference in price of genuine to clone duets. Yes it is a significant value, but not something like a quarter of the original price despite being manufactured in a far cheaper location with little development costs, no support, and little government and environmental oversight.
The margins on Bondtech are more stark, but as I illuded to before the cloners have cut cost by tooling up for injection molding. This was a gamble by them, as there is a significant investment in at least time to get a tool running well before you can make your £0.40 copies. It also means they are not as free to innovate (fat chance, more like cut more cost) or adapt. It wouldn't surprise me if a ready to run tool would cost a UK company £10-20k. The cloners will also be tolerating a larger deviance from spec than Bondtech, and additionally may have made other sacrifices in either material quality (maybe even legality) and design for manufacture to reduce costs. In addition they can't innovate as quick as the original developers.
Because Bondtech (I'm assuming these are open source and not being illegally copied?) and Duet3D are Open Source and planned for such the cloners are likely to need to cut corners in order to offer any reduction in price. For both that maybe being a few revisions behind current and for Duet that may include hidden corner cuts like the thickness of copper tracks.
As others have said it would be unfair to evaluate a Bondtech with a clone. The titans are cloned too. I had a job lot of genuine E3D stuff from a seller on ebay (who was moving out of the business) and that included a clone titan (which wasn't complete - so I ironically bought the spares from E3D meaning they profited from a clone!) that I tried using on one of my Ormerods and it proved both worse than the RepRapPro style extruder and the genuine article years ago. Likewise the clone Bondtech I have isn't on parr with the genuine article that I have also used.
I do look forward to casting out the two clones I have - the clone titan is not in use! The only way I could have bought Bondtechs right now would have been on Finance. Yes I could have afforded the cost but that money would be better spent on filament and tolerating a RepRap extruder for a bit longer. Current price for a Bondtech (yeah, I've been spelling it wrong!) is £76.51 after conversion to Sterling from Euro. Bank of England base rate on interest is 0.75%, lets say 5% for the sake of argument. So I have cost a bank or lender in the order of £12 in lost interest over the maximum of 3 years that I intend to use them. However, had the clone option not have been there I would have gone RepRap and so it is a fake lost profit if that makes any sense?
Running 3 P3Steel with Duet 2. Duet 3 on the shelf looking for a suitable machine. One first generation Duet in a Logo/Turtle style robot!
