Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

Team 1305 got everything on their wish list.

• (1) Compressor
• (1) cRio II
• (2) 1/4"x1/4" Rigid Couplings

Took about 15 mins to checkout (using Chrome), but all in all, a pretty good experience.

I too did not receive a confirmation e-mail, but did save the invoice.

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

I think that means you had order #138. I had order #1000 at 12:03 and shortly thereafter others I know placed orders 1018 and 1041.

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

I got a confirmation email just now, so they probably will be coming for everyone.

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

Yeah just got 4 :)

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

We went with the M2, Replicator2, Cube. I'm familiar with the MakerGear folk, having a custom Prusa Mendel I've been puttering on getting working for the past year or so. Replicator2 because it's atleast open-ish and you can use whatever filament you want. Cube last because of the printer-ink profit model and closed system. There might be a way around the over-priced filament, but there currently isn't a way around the software lock-in. Good slicing is the key to good printing, and there aren't as many adjustments available on the Cube software.

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

I basically agree with this for our choices too, overall the M2 looks like the best of the machines to me as far as build space and flexibility, in our case however we prioritized the Replicator2 over the M2 because the M2 came in a kit and the Replicator2 comes assembled. I wasn't confident we could get the M2 built and calibrated in time to actually do anything useful with it this season and figured the Replicator would be the simpler way to go.

Either way, both options are better than the Cube due to the restrictiveness of the software and material costs.

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

We got torched, our order failed to go thru and we had our 150 credits restored on Monday. Say good bye to the Talons.

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

I kept the PDF that was in my order section of my account. Is that still there for you?

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

Did you get a ship date yet? I ordered 1/7 but the only message I see is the order is 'processing,' the same since I placed order a week ago.

BTW my invoice was 4047 - I had little good to choose from. I am hoping the 'snow blower motor' can be incorporated into a ball launcher mechanism(ha ha).

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

Click into the order and see what it says. I had been looking at just the summary page as well, which still says processing for both of our orders (the initial 150 and the second 450), but the first arrived a week ago, and the second on Saturday! Clicking into them shows the shipping info at the bottom, although I never did get an email for shipping the second one...

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

I ordered for Team 63 at 4pm Kickoff Day. My order showed as shipped on 1/11. It is scheduled to arrive 1/15. Given the massive amount of orders and the weather related shutdown of Indiana, I think they did a great job of packing and shipping!!!

Re: FRC Blog - FIRST Choice: Take Three!
 

So, There are a few things I have to say about FIRST Choice this year:

The website issues were horrible and quite unexpected, considering the learnings from last year and the beta test this year.

For the 2nd round of points, we managed to get our order completed on Kickoff day after about 30 minutes of waiting for page loads and refreshes.

They have a big clear warning across the top saying you need to refresh if using Internet Explorer, and they're not kidding. Important info like my order history page wouldn't show up unless I refreshed it.

And now for the final story:
Like many of you, I never got a shipping notification for our order, but when I checked on Saturday, the website showed the order having shipped on Thursday and Delivered on Friday. Sunday when I finally got the package in my hands, it seemed a lot smaller and lighter than I was expecting, considering we ordered one of the 3D printers. Turns out, AndyMark FORGOT to ship our 3D printer. :mad: It wasn't checked off on the packing list, and it sure wasn't in the box.
Late Sunday night (around 10 pm) I emailed them explaining what I had on my end and asked what was up, expecting a response some time on Monday. 3 minutes later I get a response explaining how the printers normally ship and a promise to look into what might have happened to our order in the morning. How's THAT for customer service?!? :D They checked, and sure enough, it was still sitting in the AndyMark facility. I hear it's been shipped now and am looking forward to getting it soon.
Any company can run into issues like this, but I continue to be impressed by how quickly responses to inquiries come and how easy the staff there is to work with to resolve an issue.