BMG vs clone test

Kolbi

@zapta Seems GPL-3.0 License - or at least partially.
https://github.com/BondtechAB/Bondtech_Prusa_i3

zapta

If the real grumble here is the fact that some of the east asian countries...

Confusing between Korean, Japanese, and Chinese is almost as insulting as confusing between Scots, Irish and Brits. Completely different animals.

DocTrucker

@zapta I did say earlier that I appreciated that not all countries in that area are the issue, hense 'some'. Not only China, and to be fair not only within east asia. Third World isn't accurate either. What's the best way to describe a country whose product can under cut competing nations due to their significant natural resource and low paid workers?

zapta

On a second thought, preventing Chinese cloning may not be that hard, Duet for example can lay out the Duet 3 components to say "Winnie the Pooh" or any other forbidden speech.

OwenD

@droftarts
Yes, they have been used in MIG welding for donkeys years.
All you need is something like this and all four wheels are driven.
You would need 1.7mm knurled rollers which are readily available and used for flux cored wires.
Then ditch the DC motor for a stepper.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/4RA-4-roll-24V-DC-MIG-Welder-Welding-Wire-Drive-Motor-Feed-Feeder-Roller-/183142075319

They larger drive rollers would provide more contact area on the filament.
A tad too big for a direct drive though

DigiD

Hey Jens

I pretty well have the same experience with the clone I purchased as you

I purchased the DotBit version.

I had some minor setup issues with mine , the grub screw would get loose and the same filament gears offset and grip pattern on filament that you observed.

Loctite for the grub screw and a small 3mm washer for the idler gear offset to pad it in one direction improved that.

"There was however a substantially amount of black dust. I examined all the bits and I have not been able to find where this dust comes from"
Same experience here , I have greased it lightly with silicon based grease that reduced it considerably

Today DotBit failed , at first I thought it was a setting in the slicer as I have just switched from s3d to Ideamaker . It printed the bottom part fine but failed when it it got to the smaller details and retraction activity went up significantly . watching it print while failing I could see the large white nylon gear was actually slipping on the main shaft .

I took it apart and just using my fingers and applying hard twisting could make it move on the shaft , even pull it off.

Plan A) Tried drilling the nylon and shaft to pin it but failed when I hit that stainless steel shaft , barely scratched it .

Plan B) Glue , but not just any glue . Pulled the nylon gear off cleaned the serrated shaft with alcohol and roughened the smooth inner surface of the nylon gear with a dremel . Applied Bondic a UV activated glue , a couple of drops spread on shaft serrations and inner face of gear and reassembled , then shone the UV light down the drilled hole and at the edges .

When I went to roughen the gear I did notice on the inner surface of the nylon gear it was totally smooth no serrated marks from the shaft at all , which really surprised me , the serrations of the shaft stood up a bit but probably needed to be significantly higher or sharper to cut the nylon .

I'm going to adopt a Chinese manufacturing and cloning philosophy here

“Cha Bu Duo”, which can be translated as “not far off” or “close enough”.

So far it seems fixed, managed to complete the print !

jens55

@DigiD, thanks for the 'heads up' I will check out the gear.
Which surfaces did you grease to reduce the black powder ?
The pinning would likely weaken the shaft too much so it's a good thing you didn't succeed.

DigiD

@jens55
I greased the large white nylon gear , same one that slipped .

Just enough to coat the gear teeth with out globs hanging off going around and around

I used a silicon based one that is fairly plastic friendly called superlube

Edit :
Clone usage details , purchased in May 2019 for 25AUD printed somewhere between 2-3kg PLA before it failed

jens55

@DigiD, Thanks!

Corexy

I've never used a clone, but I have no problem paying for the original ON PRINCIPLE.

We all whine about jobs going over seas, but at the same time we want good pay...there's only one way that goes, higher prices but also better quality. The Duet boards are a classic example, also cloned by the way.

At them moment my life has been drastically changed, and my industry (Australian beef) was viciously attacked by China as a warning shot just for asking "what the fk happened?"

I'll give them as little as humanely possible until they lift their game. I don't think it's a cheap shot to mention the ethics of stolen IP, in fact it seems poor form not to acknowledge it.

When buying Chinese clones, you are buying STOLEN ideas executed poorly.

Any of us here would scream absolute blue murder if we invented something and went through all the drama and expense of bringing a product to market, only to have clones pop up everywhere. I'm sure we'd see it differently then.

jens55

@Corexy, I have no problems paying a reasonable price which is why my Duet stuff is original rather than clones. I do have a problem paying unreasonably inflated prices for the real McCoy.
Buying a clone does neccessarily mean stolen ideas. Duet being a perfect example - the design is open source and anyone is free to use it ---- not stolen (call it borrowed with permission)
I agree that I would be VERY unhappy if I had a product that was patented and it was cloned but I would not be surprised about clones if I sell a product that I can produce for $5 and I charge $200 for it retail. The chances of a clone being produced reduce drastically if I sell my $5 cost product for $50 instead of $200.
If China can't make a decent profit, they will not clone the product. Having said that, if I can produce an item for $5, chances are that China can produce it for $1 and they can sell it for $10 and still be quite happy.
Anyway, it is a never ending story and I don't see a real solution. You will always have areas that can produce stuff cheaper due to cheap labour or poor environmental practices or whatever. If not China then somebody else. On the other hand, if it wasn't for these cheap products, our lives would be totally different and not in a better way.
Let's start with a basic car to go from A to B costing $30k now. How would you feel if the same car cost $300K? While it would be great for the environment, it would totally screw up society.

zapta

@Corexy, there are several dimensions here, legality, morally, personal interests, and and national/local interests, that eventually contribute to a single buy/no-buy decision and like many things these day, it's complicated.

fma

In there book, "The Second Machine Age", Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee explain that chineese clones push people to always improve and innovate. By beeing a step ahead is the way to survive.

Look at E3D-online: despite the fact their products are probably the most cloned in the 3D printing market, they are still here, because they never stop producing new and better products.

fma

Mmm, I think I read that in Chris Anderson's book, "Makers: The New Industrial Revolution".

deckingman

@jens55 said in BMG vs clone test:

..................Let's start with a basic car to go from A to B costing $30k now. How would you feel if the same car cost $300K? While it would be great for the environment, it would totally screw up society.

For sure most of us can't afford $300k for (say) a Rolls Royce so we settle for the £30k jobby. But hey, the Chinese make rip off copies of everything - including cars. So one could buy a Lifan 320 for example which looks almost identical to a Mini Cooper but is a quarter of the price. It has an NCAP safety rating of zero but if you aren't too worried about whether yopu or any occupants would survive an accident, go for it. Mind you, the power output is only about 60% of the original but hey, they are cheap.

You might have a job getting hold of a Chinese car clone in your part of the world because most of them don't meet Western environmental or safety standards. Things like catalytic converters, ABS and air bags all add cost, so leaving them off gets the price down.

deckingman

@fma said in BMG vs clone test:

In there book, "The Second Machine Age", Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee explain that chineese clones push people to always improve and innovate. By beeing a step ahead is the way to survive.

Look at E3D-online: despite the fact their products are probably the most cloned in the 3D printing market, they are still here, because they never stop producing new and better products.

I think the opposite is true. For every company like E3D that has managed to survive, I could name dozens of other manufacturing businesses that have been forced to close due to cheap foreign copies of their designs. I'm of an age when I can remember all those companies which have gone, the premises have been demolished and replaced with car parks, out of town supermarkets, or shopping centres. With the loss of every company comes the loss of the skills of the people who used to work there which in turn stifles innovation. Why bother ploughing money into R&D if you won't be able to sell the end product at a cost which will re-coup that expenditure? Companies that simply steal other peoples' intellectual property will always be able to undercut a company that invests in R&D.

If we hadn't lost those companies and the skills of those workforces, what other innovative products might we now have?

dc42

Innovation does help to keep one step ahead, however our OEMs and resellers don't like us to change the product too often. OEMs want to be confident that the changes won't affect their product, and resellers don't want to be left with stock of old versions.

A very large part of our costs is firmware development. As well as me full time, we have two part-timers writing firmware and software. The cloners don't have these costs.

A further significant cost is testing our products to check whether they meet CE and other standards. This is very expensive because we have to use an external testing facility with a fully shielded room and all the right equipment. Usually our prototypes don't meet all the required standards first time, so we have to make changes and test again. Sometimes it takes several iterations to get it right. Every iteration means we have to make new prototypes (which itself is very expensive in small quantities) and pay for testing again. Cloners don't have these costs either.

And of course there is support, which is very important but takes a lot of time and more money.

jens55

@dc42, and yet your product is only marginally more expensive than the cloned product. There wasn't even a second thought spent on buying the original instead of a clone because your product provides much more value. Now if the Duet 3 was $3000 and the clone was $300, the question of value would have a different outcome. The real BMG is roughly 10 times the price of a clone.

zapta

@dc42, your second paragraph is more about business location than cloning vs innovation. A UK cloner would have to go through the certification while a CN innovator would not.

The CCP treats IP like bananas, growing on the trees and ready to be picked up. Duet3d and the rest of the developed world should do whatever they need to protect themselves, trade secrets, limited licenses, litigation, tariffs, sanctions, etc. We started to do it here on our side of the pond and hopefully UK and Europe would do the same. But for fairness, I think you also need to disclose to your customers which of your products are open sourced and which ones are not.

deckingman

My last business venture before I retired was designing and building garden decks. Being a "one man band" with my business premises consisting of an office in a spare bedroom and no other staff to pay wages to, my overheads were a lot lower than larger companies. But I would often get undercut on price and on average I landed about 1 job for every 3 quotations that I submitted. Not that it bothered me because I was always booked at least 3-6 months ahead and a lot of people didn't want to wait that long.

People would often say that they had a cheaper quote and sometimes ask if I could match it. My reply was always the same......

"Sure I can, getting the price down is the easiest thing in the world. I can use budget decking which is 22mm thick, and made out of Scotch Pine which doesn't come with any guarantee, rather than the 33mm thick premium decking made from Scandinavian Redwood which comes with a 25 year guarantee against rot or insect infestation. That will save £nnn. Or I can use plain rough sawn timber for the frame and posts rather than PAR tanalised timber and not bother treating the cut ends. That will save another £nnn. Again, that doesn't have any guarantee and will likely rot after 5 years or so, whereas the tanalised framing timber comes with the same 25 year guarantee. Or I can wack it all together with a nail gun rather than fixing it with exterior grade or stainless steel steel screws. That will save another £nnn but the nails will likley spring as the timber expands and contracts, and those that don't will rust away so the deck will warp and twist before it falls apart completely in a few years time. Or I can not bother with the heavy duty weed suppression fabric. That will save another £nnn. etc etc. Which of those options would you like me to amend the quote for?"

Funnily enough, they invariably ended up going with the original quote.