@jepho - Sorry for the delay. I’ve had your post open for almost a week now, because I wanted to set aside time to really understand all the issues you raised, since you clearly put a lot of time and energy into trying to make things work.
I haven’t been nearly as active as you, and contributions like yours are what make this a useful forum. Of course, I agree with your assessment - SnapMaker is not a responsive company. The recent holiday is actually a great example: I mean, no company elsewhere in the world would shut down the entire company and go completely dark. Startup or no, that’s just now how business is done. Yet over the last week, I’ve seen countless posts where frustrated and angry newcomers come in asking for help, and are told by well-meaning CUSTOMERS (not staff!) that it’s a national holiday in China, and that they work 8 hours ahead, so it will take a day to get a response.
The reality is, you’re not likely to get a response, period. Ever. At least not from staff. It seems you have to raise the threat of legal action before you finally get them to acknowledge and respond, or complain so loudly that they finally must take notice and engage with the conversation.
It’s funny you talked about a ‘free ebook’ by another community member in another forum. I’m actually working on what I think needs to be the SM “Second User Manual” - with all the errata from the book fixed, tips and tricks for NOT gouging your print bed, workarounds for quirks in the software, etc. So hopefully, some day we too will have the “Must Read” guide that takes you past the “Hello World” projects that they put in the user guide.
I posted long ago (back in February) asking for the Snapmaker official response to print head gouging? They have yet to really provide one, and are certainly not treating it as a systemic problem.
I’ve been nervous to even use the 3D printer, because gouging the bed seems to be the norm. The first time I went to level, it was off the bed. The second time, it got to the 5th spot, went off the back of the bed, and again, pushed down on it. Thankfully, since I had seen SO many issues, I was always standing right by the power switch when leveling, printing the first layer, etc. So far, have avoided damaging - but I shouldn’t have to be this timid about a supposedly production-ready printer, which was designed and built by a company that has already done this with SM1. (A BIG part of my reason to go with SM vs. others was because they had already released a product, had a thriving community, and were supposedly going to open source Luban. As a software engineer, I was eager to be able to customize - and even improve for everyone - the tools. Alas, that has not panned out either.)
In the end, SM is falling into a bit of a bland bucket - the company is all but useless on support, the community is where it’s at, and basically it’s a machine for hackers who are willing to spend a lot of time and energy futzing and fiddling. Personally, I’m OK with that, and I enjoy the learning. But I have no illusions that I’m doing this alone.
So many people have expressed their intense frustration, and yet nothing changes, so I think it’s important for people to know what they’re getting into. Like you said, the sales team knows how to put together a slick campaign, but the production team is understaffed, underfunded, and underperforming. It’s a serious crisis of confidence they’ve got on their hands. Frankly, I’ve had several friends ooh and ahh at the machine, and I’ve told them to hold off on getting one until I’ve put it through its paces and see how the company responds. This is actively costing them sales, but they don’t seem to care.
This is why it’s so particularly painful to see strong contributors like you leave. The company isn’t holding up the bargain, but if we all help each other, maybe we can all get some enjoyment out of our machines. Like I said, you’ll be missed.