Announcement: Duet 3 Toolboard revision v1.1

JayJay

@t3p3tony said in Announcement: Duet 3 Toolboard revision v1.1:

@JayJay I will try and address the points you raised.

We supply our resellers in the order they put in their orders to us. In this case we have backorders from a number of resellers and are supplying them in turn. If EU resellers had a backorder in in advance of US resellers they would have got them first. There has been no delay on our part due to our perception of "old stock" being held by any reseller, we had backorders because resellers had run out of stock, or were about to run out of stock. In addition our manufacturer is producing, testing, and shipping this product to us in batches which means we do not receive the whole production run at one time. As we get them in, we fulfil the back orders.

That said we do recognise that when a new feature is added (or a whole new product) it would be better to delay announcing it slightly to give more time for as many of our resellers to receive stock as practicable.

Finally we are not selling directly through our website precisely to allow our small team to focus on shipping to resellers as efficiently as possible. Plans to grow the team were put on hold due to COVID. Once the UK vaccination program is sufficiently advanced we will revisit this.

It still Doesn't explain why as of the other day (I haven't checked again since) NOT ONE EU/UK re-seller was advertising the updated item.

if as you are as you previously said

I know we are shipping them out as fast as we get them!

Surely out of the list of 22 EU/UK official re-sellers at least ONE should have obtained stock and have the product available for sale if not then there is a systemic failure on the part of EU/UK re-sellers not providing an adequate service or something else is going on.

The logic of another administrators comment must also be analyzed.

the problem was that the moment we announced to the user base that we are working on a new version with more features, there was a risk that our resellers would be left with old stock that they can't sell. So we were trying to let stocks of the v1.0 tool board run out before we announced the V1.1. It's not fair on our resellers to leave them with old stock, and our margins are not big enough for us to scrap and write off a large number of older boards in the supply chain.

if you analyze and break down the comment, you can only but reach the following conclusion.

As the announcement of V1.1 was made, logically that means Duet3D felt that a suitable stock depletion level had been reached, therefore it would again be logical to assume that stock would be being provided to EU/UK re-sellers otherwise the announcement would not have been made.

And just because the ~~fanboys~~ sorry fan base does not like the difficult questions being asked, they should still be asked on behalf of ALL EU/UK customers

Diamondback

@jayjay Why would any reseller announce the new version if they still have the old one in stock? They want to sell those first of course...

You seem very upset about this, but rest assured, this is industry practice and nothing out of the ordinary...

JayJay

@diamondback said in Announcement: Duet 3 Toolboard revision v1.1:

@jayjay Why would any reseller announce the new version if they still have the old one in stock? They want to sell those first of course...

You seem very upset about this, but rest assured, this is industry practice and nothing out of the ordinary...

I would request you to READ the content of my post above yours as that will supply you with the answer to your question. if after that you still cannot work it out please reply again and i will try to break it down in to easier to understand bites for you.

Diamondback

@jayjay Oh well, sorry, not going to participate in a passive aggressive discussion with you, I have better things to do
You seem to be purely here for the attention and not looking for a productive conversation with people that actually explain you the reasoning.

JayJay

@diamondback said in Announcement: Duet 3 Toolboard revision v1.1:

@jayjay Oh well, sorry, not going to participate in a passive aggressive discussion with you, I have better things to do
You seem to be purely here for the attention and not looking for a productive conversation with people that actually explain you the reasoning.

Thank you for the reply, the content of which means you were not able to understand me so I will try to break it down for you in baby steps.

There are 22 official EU/UK re-sellers listed on the Duet3D website (are you with me so far ?)

So logic would dictate that at least ONE of those re-sellers would not be holding old Stock
agreed ?

if so many re-sellers are still holding on to stock you need to ask the question as to why that is so ? is the item not selling, did the re-seller order too many, if the item is not selling then why is the product being updated ? it makes no economical sense to introduce an updated version of a product if it is not selling.

To back up that statement please look at the screenshot below.

I just took this a few minutes ago, which shows at least ONE official reseller showing ZERO Stock. So we have proven that at the very least one Offical re-seller is not holding off on announcing the new unit to sell old stock. So if at least one EU/UK re-seller that is not holding on to old stock they have no reason to NOT advertise the new unit, and we know at least ONE non EU/UK has the new version available for sale now, so if a non EU/UK reseller can have stock why out of 22 official EU/UK ones is it unreasonable to expect at least ONE of those EU/UK re-sellers to be able to be able to do the same ?

engikeneer

@jayjay is the issue here not just that the EU resellers are just slower at listing things (and potentially placing orders!) than Filastruder?
This was certainly the case with the Duet Mini when released. I saw some people on here in the UK who got them shipped from the US and had arrived through customs and fitted to their printers before E3D had even listed their stock.
At the end of the day, surely this falls to the reseller to sort out (though maybe there are other companies Duet3d could sell through?)

FWIW, the new toolboard does have marked changes (built in accelerometer, different connectors etc) so I could see it being listed as a separate item (potentially with a slightly higher RRP), but this is Duet3d's call.

JayJay

@engikeneer said in Announcement: Duet 3 Toolboard revision v1.1:

@jayjay is the issue here not just that the EU resellers are just slower at listing things (and potentially placing orders!) than Filastruder?
This was certainly the case with the Duet Mini when released. I saw some people on here in the UK who got them shipped from the US and had arrived through customs and fitted to their printers before E3D had even listed their stock.
At the end of the day, surely this falls to the reseller to sort out (though maybe there are other companies Duet3d could sell through?)

FWIW, the new toolboard does have marked changes (built in accelerometer, different connectors etc) so I could see it being listed as a separate item (potentially with a slightly higher RRP), but this is Duet3d's call.

Thank you, this is the first common sense (non-fan boy) reply.

If that is so, it is a rather disappointing admission to have to make that the quality of service from 22 official EU/UK re-sellers are evidently so very bad is it not ?

And if that is so it leads on to the question:

Why does Duet3D not have at the very least ONE core external supplier who it trusts implicitly to be able supply at the very least a certain amount of Goods within the EU/UK Geo-location.

jay_s_uk

I'd quite happily resell Duet stock out the UK. Maybe I should reach out to the Duet team...

T3P3Tony

@jayjay you are missing the point I made above.

In order for our resellers to sell something, we need to supply that to them. We started supply the tool boards in the order that we had back orders.
Rather that wait for EU resellers to get their boards and list them, we announced the new tool board straight after we started shipping them. In retrospect this caused you to feel we were being unfair to EU customers. I have taken on board the point that delaying the announcement so more resellers have stock would have improved the perception. We will certainly look at that going forwards. In this case it would not have advanced the EU availability of the boards. only delayed the US availability.
The announcement timing was in no way driven by our perception of reseller stocks. It is entirely possibly that some resellers ordered later than others due to there stock of existing boards, but I don't know that. That is down to them. As you have now discovered the majority of our resellers are out of stock and eagerly awaiting us getting boards shipped to them.

JayJay

@t3p3tony said in Announcement: Duet 3 Toolboard revision v1.1:

@jayjay you are missing the point I made above.

In order for our resellers to sell something, we need to supply that to them. We started supply the tool boards in the order that we had back orders.

Rather that wait for EU resellers to get their boards and list them, we announced the new tool board straight after we started shipping them. In retrospect this caused you to feel we were being unfair to EU customers. I have taken on board the point that delaying the announcement so more resellers have stock would have improved the perception. We will certainly look at that going forwards. In this case it would not have advanced the EU availability of the boards. only delayed the US availability.

The announcement timing was in no way driven by our perception of reseller stocks. It is entirely possibly that some resellers ordered later than others due to there stock of existing boards, but I don't know that. That is down to them. As you have now discovered the majority of our resellers are out of stock and eagerly awaiting us getting boards shipped to them.

Thank you for confirming that US customers received preferential treatment.

Phaedrux

How is filling the back orders in the order they were received giving preferential treatment?

Luke'sLaboratory

@jayjay

So in the inverse, if some EU resellers had gotten V1.1, it would be the EU having preferential treatment?

I don't see any preferential treatment here, other than preferring customers who order parts sooner than later. It happened to be vendors in the US this time, and because of the global chip shortage, its really pronounced.

I bet there are other releases where EU got parts first instead of the US. shrug

vistalert

Wow I can't believe how off topic things have gotten, and how much energy is being consumed. It looks like there is a 1.0 -> 1.1 so minor revision.

I can confidently say as a customer (not someone who is thinking of buying) that I expect revisions and major upgrades to be released. As long as the product I bought meets my requirements, I've not been disadvantaged, underserviced or left behind in anyway. I got what I needed, and paid for, even if a new one comes out tomorrow.

The Duet team is incredibly honourable, and many have given 100s to 1000s of hours of their time supporting this community.

I love that Voron design posted previously which really integrates the tool board into the carriage assembly. Nice work.

Can't wait for v1.1 to arrive in Australia. Everything should land here first, as we're upside down, underneath most of you, so a few boards should fall down here quickly I think

T3P3Tony

I have updated the documentation with an point for those designing mounts for the board. This is a diode on the back of the board that projects about 1.5mm from the back. this is less than the back of the through hole components but might interfere with a mounting solution if that is not taken into account.

https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Duet_3_Tool_Board?revisionid=HEAD#Section_Revision_v1_Num_1_1

The STEP file linked has also been updated to include this.

Ariana

Hey Guys,
Hope you are doing well.
Any chances that I can get the schematic and PCB of the new Version?
Thank you in advance.

KipK

So I need a Toolboard to finish a current build now. Which reseller in EU is supposed to receive 1.1 stock shortly?

fotomas

@kipk
I have reserved one at
https://www.dold-mechatronik.de/

They expect it to be in stock next week.

KipK

@fotomas thanks for the tip

martin7404

@pixelpieper looks great , but what about the orientation of the accelerometer?

zapta

@t3p3tony said in Announcement: Duet 3 Toolboard revision v1.1:

@lbi we looked at that but, as you can see, there is not a lot of space left!

Every board has two sides.