Mooz 3 in 1 Maker Machine – March MadMess

This thumbnail references the classic meme known as “Shoop da Whoop“.

I may have been a little bit generous with this machine in the video. The truth is there’s a lot of issues with it, but it’s only of the only machines I know of, at this price, that enables home users to 3D print, laser etch, and route. And maybe if people were more excited about this, others would jump in and help make it happen again, and we’d have machines like this cropping up all over.

But is the Mooz a great product? Besides the points I listed in the video, I’ve got a few bullet points to gripe about:

  • Unnecessary interchangability
  • No wire management
  • No folder organization for files
  • No help sourcing materials
  • CNC router mess

Why are the arms these interchangeable, self-contained things? What does it benefit? I know that theoretically it could be reconfigured to be a delta, but why would anyone do that? Maybe if they were lego simple to take apart and put back together, but this thing is held together with a ton of screws. It is not meant to come apart. So why enclose the motor, drive screw, and limit switch in a uniform case that you can’t modify? The only thing it does is limit the size this machine ever can be, and that’s not a good thing.

The wire management on this thing is non existent. Behind it’s pretty front is a mess of wires like I haven’t seen since the 90s behind my parent’s entertainment system. Honestly, this thing makes the CR-10 look good.

When organizing your files on the SD card, you’d better not put things in folders, because the file system can’t read them. Yup, anything in a folder is invisible to that fancy touch screen system. And on a machine that can switch functions, the ability to organize files, at least by function, would seem a no-brainer to me.

There’s nothing in the manual or on their website about where to source materials, or even a suggestion of what materials to use. You’re on your own here. Never mind that if you buy a sheet of wood or whatever, and it’s too big, this thing isn’t going to help you cut it down.

I’m more than a little concerned about the mess of sawdust that this thing is going to produce, falling into the modular axis block used for the Y. How am I supposed to clean that out and will this thing get gummed up?

This all adds up to one big question: Did anyone at Dobot actually used this machine to make anything? It’s like they proved the concept, and started the kickstarter. And while I feel like this thing has some possibility, I could use some help seeing it. Maybe Dobot needs some help seeing it too. I’m reminded of stories about Makerbot having a printer on every associate’s desk and them excitely using these printers every day. They were their biggest fans. IS Dobot their own biggest fans? Maybe not for this machine. Though they seem pretty excited about their robot arms. … Actually, I’d be pretty excited to have one of those robot arms.

I invested far more effort into editing this video than its blown out white levels deserved. A 20 minute video needs a little something to keep it going. So I tried zooming in, adding text, images and even funny sounds, and then I noticed the chickens were being picked up by my mic, so every time I heard them I added a little something to the video. If I could just get my quality consistent, high quality videos, high quality audio, and good editing all in the same video all the time, I would be able to run with the big boys.

Look at my links. My links are amazing

Gearbest is also having a huge event for it’s 4th Anniversary. Check it out:
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