Here goes.
After saving up months I was finally able to order the flagship prusa printer, the mk3. And low and behold: the waiting did pay off: I could now actually buy the newest, the MK4 !! 🎉
So I did. End of June. Got a nice rol of filament too. Couldn’t be happier. Yes the lead time was a chore but still. In august I would have a very nice upgrade from the mini.
August came: no printer. Backlog. I already sold the mini to my dad. Guess I’m going without one for a week or so, no biggie.
Shipping schedule appeared. Great! Mine was planned for 4/9. Oof. Ok… The first week of September: nope we had to push back a week! Damn 😓
And then last week:shipped!!
Spend a day building the marvelous thing. dreaming what I will be testing first. Planning. Ah great things!!
And then it came: the magic moment of doing the self test. Tension rose, green check marks appeared… aaah 😌 victory would be mine! Boy oh boy I cannot wait!
Beeeeeeeeep. Bright red screen “loading cell error” 😱
Ok no panic, maybe the cable got loose… happens… sure I will get to printing soon; let’s see…
I started testing cables. Running tests. Resetting everything. Re-flashing. Damn the usb stick broke! Aaargh … ok… Nope. Nothing works.
Onto chat support it goes. Doing the same tests. Filming them. “Hmm I need to ask our MK4 expert” after we both came to the conclusion the loveboard is probably failing (filament sensor is error too)
“We will contact you soon, next week” given it’s Friday at this point.
And now: we’re waiting again. Staring at a broken MK4. Sitting there. Tempting me to dream of my next printing project.
Support was great and all that. They will make it right I trust them. I just wanted to share my story to people who will probably exactly understand what it’s like. To wait. And wait.
In Dutch you have the saying “geduld is een schone zaak” (having patience is a great good). Meaning how waits in peace and calm will be rewarded. But also hate that saying too.
But still hope that your patience will be rewarded with clean and prefect prints!
Oh! Totally forgot about that one. Always hated it too!
Totally got a flashback here, when I read that awful saying - lol For me it always felt like as a “yeah well deal with it, now keep quiet” kinda saying, don’t you agree?
Anyway… on topic: yeah I hope so too. I think the technical issue is something I can accept. As a tech person and developer that’s my life basically; thinking about this today made me realize it’s the “not being able to do anything while I know I could probably fix it” and the “ok now when exactly are they going to get back to me?” Thing that really bothers me.
The not knowing. Uncertainty. That’s it. Just like I don’t know when a bug will be fixed in my code, this is what my clients feel.
Anyway I’m getting a bit physiological here, sorry about that. 😊