M2 Kit Sales To Pause

[pyronaught]

Kind of a side tangent, but you realize you didn't really save "$75/hour", right? If I recall correctly, the shipping cost for a kit was $90 higher reducing the savings by that much.

I did not notice a difference in the shipping cost for kits vs assembled. I thought shipping was the same for both. The total shipping charge was $90 if I recall, so it could not have been a difference of that amount unless the assembled units shipped for free.

[Jules]

I could easily put one together now, but back then, buying the assembled version was the right decision. (At least for me it was.) It let me focus my energies on learning to use the Rhino design software and learning the characteristics of the materials themselves, and understanding the mechanics of deposition. (Saved me a lot more time than the few hours of assembly in the long run.)

Well, you'd be spending time on learning how to use the machine no matter which route you went. Since we are only talking about 4 hours of time here, you would only delay your learning curve by 4 hours. Now that assumes there were no problems during assembly, and that you are good with following written directions, using tools etc. As mentioned, since the components have not been pre-tested as with an assembled machine there is the potential for something not working to cause a delay.

It might only delay your learning curve by four hours - there would have been a learning curve associated with assembly for me that would have far exceeded that......chuckle.

[innkeeper]

places like printbot sell the kit for the same price as the assembled model. frankly that makes sense to be because typically as a company, your going to end up spending a large amount of time supporting the builders.
I suppose assembling it yourself is interesting. but frankly, since any company builds the same model over and over, they can do ti faster and better then you.
Personally, i got mine built... could i have assembled it, sure.. can i sure... do i think i could have learned something i didn't already know or, of importance by building it myself. not really. And it hasnt detered me from modifying the heck out of it.
i think the only incentive to build a kit is the price, and frankly... i don't see the upside for a company making a higher end product offering a kit at a discount cost. its more a liability for them.
thats my 2 cents.

[pyronaught]

places like printbot sell the kit for the same price as the assembled model. frankly that makes sense to be because typically as a company, your going to end up spending a large amount of time supporting the builders.
I suppose assembling it yourself is interesting. but frankly, since any company builds the same model over and over, they can do ti faster and better then you.
Personally, i got mine built... could i have assembled it, sure.. can i sure... do i think i could have learned something i didn't already know or, of importance by building it myself. not really. And it hasnt detered me from modifying the heck out of it.
i think the only incentive to build a kit is the price, and frankly... i don't see the upside for a company making a higher end product offering a kit at a discount cost. its more a liability for them.
thats my 2 cents.

I can certainly see why a company would not want to sell kits, or why they would make kits the same price as the assembled version. What I can't see is why customers would buy a kit if the assembled version was the same price, or even just only a slight bit cheaper.

[Quark]

I trolled this forum for 6+ months and was set on buying a kit, same reason as most, to save some money and learn to build. I'm confident in my mechanical skills, heck, I swap out motors in my cars, so it was natural for me to go with a kit. When I was ready to purchase, Rick had stop selling the kit, I was super bummed, but I realized that I had made up my mind to buy the M2 not primarily because it was cheaper than my other choices, Lulzbot 5 or Ultimaker 2, but because everyone says the M2 was rock solid and runs hundreds of hours in without major reliability issues. So I bit the bullet, bought the assembled one, and I haven't regretted one bit! Could I have learned anything from building it myself? maybe a thing or two, but with the open frame design, and if you are mechanically inclined, you could figure it out just by looking at it. Sure, it costed me $300 more, but it got me printing stuff within an hour of unboxing it. At $1800, it was still cheaper than what I was looking at. I could have used the extra $300 to buy filament, or anything else, but I just chuck it off like a missed Black Friday deal. Was I going to wait till next year to see if kits go back on sale, hell no. I'm perfectly happy where I am now.

[pyronaught]

I sell a hobbyist version of my fireworks scripting software and one of the ways I keep the price low is to eliminate tech support. It is understood upfront that the customer can not call me on the phone with problems, then the tech support component of the product price is eliminated. I wonder if a similar thing could be done with M2 kits to make them viable again?

[insta]

Not really, because people will go to social media to shame the company with an "inferior" product.

[pyronaught]

Not really, because people will go to social media to shame the company with an "inferior" product.

It would be a bogus claim, the product has nothing to do with the customers inability to follow directions and the support limitation would be stated up front. I think most people with no mechanical skills will naturally avoid the kits to begin with, but those who still pursue it just for financial reasons would be further deterred if there was a "your on your own" policy. That should filter down kit buyers to just those who can get the job done without any hand holding.

[insta]

But it doens't matter if it's a bogus claim, there's no positive outcome. You end up with a youtube clip on the front page of Reddit with "MY EM-TWO SUCKS SEE THE MOTORS ARE ALL BACKWARDS" with a video of the head running into X-max while trying to home because some dummy can't follow directions. It's a losing battle for Rick -- he can either try and refute the claim that "his" product is flawed (which gets downvoted), he can let it ride and eat the negative publicity, or he can provide free tech support anyway.

[rpollack]

This thread is going off on a tangent. It is not really about kits being viable. We don't need to offer kits.

We offer kits because I want to offer kits. Many of the most active users on this forum are kit builders.

There are, however, several practical considerations with kits which are what I mentioned before - time consuming to prep, hard to support, writing good instructions takes a lot of time, etc. They are not available at the moment as we needed to get machines in stock and pausing kits allowed us to do that. That said, I am not sure yet when they will be available again.

Rick