HAHA, I’ll get you with a very large set of parts soon…
yes 2, I use 1.5" aluminum angle with these in case you want to go grab some.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvKnBdr9GAs Timelapse of one.
https://youtu.be/qUNS1DMCOsQ And a realtime shot.
dang, that is fast. No wonder you are keeping up with me…
@Barry, it’s not a competition, because I would lose ?
Ha, just realized all my X parts are labeled Y…Dang it. If they get revised I’ll rename them, other than that I’ll leave the goof…too much work to change it.
AAAAAnnnndddd I wasn’t paying attention and I have some M3X20 and Some M3X25 screws in the assembly. Could have easily made them all the same. It’s the little things that make me less than a pro.
You are as pro as anyone. You should be making these kinds of mistakes during creation, and they should be caught in peer review. You can’t be generating and editing at the same time.
While you’re at it, there is a 6/32 labelled 6/23 I’m the z assembly.
Sorry for taking so long guys.
The freaking emails are just insane lately, I’ve been at it for 4 hours straight and they just keep coming. By the time I get done with emails and shipping I’m pretty burnt out. I have to start treating them differently I guess. FB, G+, PM’s, Emails, Forums, it’s too much. I have to be a little more upfront with the new guys I think. I can’t trouble shoot in all forms of social media. The FB group is the worst, the same questions over and over, The worst part is some peoples answers they are just so horribly wrong I feel I have to monitor it closely.
Unless you guys have another suggestion I think I will just stick mainly to the forums and any other new getting started questions I will just send a cut and paste response to please use the forum and answer the sticky?
It all comes down to solving problems in the public, and making it easier to find the existing solution than asking it again. Good forums heavily use the search and stickies, but I’ve never liked them as much as a good front-to-back explanation. Some things that help forums are getting good guides stickied, and then close the topic, so people don’t add bad information to them.
What about a wiki? You can choose to moderate it all yourself, but that can be a lot of work, but letting the community edit it could produce some pretty nice documentation. Different perspectives can lead to better explanations. I don’t know how easy it is for you to generate the “info” pages you have, maybe that’s just better than a wiki? I hope I’m not just suggesting a ton more work, but really a good wiki could be the “manual” and “normal troubleshooting” with the forums being the “development” and “edge case troubleshooting” and “Check this out”.
If you do make something cookie cutter, to respond to people, the one piece of advice I’d give you is, think about where they are coming from. They may not have searched, or they may have been searching for hours, give them the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to find the right info, but they just didn’t get the right link. Since it’s cookie cutter, you only have to do the massaging once…
w.r.t. time management, you could sort of try to think of it as percentages. If troubleshooting is taking 50% of your time/energy, that’s probably not the right allocation. But 0% isn’t right either. I haven’t visited the FB group (I dislike FB a lot), but maybe cut yourself to an hour or less, and answer the interesting questions, and quickly send the rest to your existing documentation. You don’t want to cut off FB altogether if it’s generating business.
I’m still printing though, I haven’t made any CNC cuts yet, and I’m still on the corners/spacers. I bought my steel and aluminum angle though. I just got my router from amazon yesterday too. I’m committed!
I have the wiki, no one has added anything. As far as I know it is open.
Documentation is hard every person likes it differently. I had all the information only listed once, as in it was on one short page. I tried to break everything up. Now I am listing as much info on each page but in my opinion it makes it so much worse. Every page is getting much larger with more links, but I still get the “I didn’t see that info anywhere” response. All the info is usually in at least 3 places. It is getting to the point that some pages are so dense no one bothers to look at them.
If you see the early pages I had a “are your steppers spinning the wrong way” page. It had one picture and a sentence, “flip this plug over” I preferred that. Now I have to put that on every page that mentions the steppers. And I still get emails and forums questions about it.
But yes, a time allocation is due. and the canned response of “please post this in the trouble shooting forum and answer these questions”.
There’s a wiki? I didn’t see that info anywhere! Ha Ha.
There’s an information theory lesson in here somewhere. I just have to find it.
I can see the benefit of having a picture, and step by step instructions, and a FAQ section being useful, but having three places with the instructions is just more maintenance.
No matter what you do though, people will always ask questions, if they have the patience to wait for an answer, and don’t have the time (or willingness) to read the docs that are prepared.
It, of course, sucks for you unless your goal in life is great customer service.
We get the same thing over at XDA Devs. The information that is needed is usually in the first post, but the question gets asked at least every 20 posts or so. A lot of times, it gets answered, but sometimes you’ll see a “read the OP” reply, then 5 or 6 posts about XDA not being “noob friendly”.
I used to be pretty die hard XDA. Then it became a case of diminishing returns, the time vs the bugs. I needed something that always worked, I lost the free time to set everything up all the time.
I think here it to me/us it is the same question getting asked all the time, they just don’t know what to call it so it gets asked a lot. When we get them sorted out is is just the same ol’ issues, usually just missing some nuance in the instructions. Luckily here no matter how irritated I get by have to milk out all the details, usually we get them working and they are very appreciative. It’s the ones that get an attitude, and bought all sorts of random parts and expect us all to dedicate a ton of time helping with non standard things.
Don’t get me wrong I love non standard ideas, it is just better for the more experienced to try and push the envelope. You would not believe how many emails I get telling me I should fill the tubes with something to improve rigidity.
As mentioned above, stickies that get closed are usually great sources of info and put people in a position to ask a more informed question. They are better if useful content gets added to them (keeping them current) that is first approved by the admin or moderators.
I think redirecting everyone to the sites assembly page and then the forum is the way to go and if a specific thread can be referenced, even better.
Also, some sort of troubleshooting guide either on the main site or here that gives possible scenarios or different names for the same problem may help.
Just my $.02
If questions get asked often in the same way in the forums I put them in the FAQ’s, if it is about assembly I try and update the instructions. examples would be square gantry issues were handled with an instruction update, and endstops, tolerances, shipping ect, are in the faq’s, then things like size questions got there own page, linked in multiple places.
It is extremely difficult to just keep adding pages. We update things all the time. The more pages the more links I have to keep track of. Just this morning an instruction manual from a year and half ago was linked in the forums…I have no idea how or where it was found.
I feel forum stickies are not the solution because if I was providing all the right information the forums would not even be necessary.
I had never seen the FAQ before searching it just now. There is a lot of good stuff under the information tab. I always went to the instructions first then the forum for info if I couldn’t get what I needed from the instructions. I never really noticed the information tab until now.
By the way, thanks for putting so much work into this. I’m a happy owner of a mpcnc and I’m looking forward to both a lowrider and a mp3dp. I’ll post a build thread once my parts are finished printing. Good timing too as I was just about to attempt a 4x8 plus sized mpcnc. Glad I have another option now
I figured I should move the FAQ to the main menu. I think that just solidified it.
I just put the standoffs on thingiverse. you will need 12 small ones and 4 big ones.
You can print these with very minimal infill, like 10%.
Right after I put them up I realized the logo was sideways on the standoffs, so I switched them but didn’t rev the part, nothing else changed just cosmetic. in case yours is the first version.