Pegasus review, lies and greed of FSL3D

[jenn]

So i received the pegasus back in november, had a good print or 2 but set it aside for a couple months until i had time to tinker. We needed this printer for printing of many types of parts for clients, and for the most part quality is great but the success rate is maybe 20% and i have been doing this for a LONG time, i am no average user. i have been 3d printing since the first rep-raps and have owned and maintained all types of equipment from 4 color offsets, scanning galvo laser markers, all types of stratasys printers to FDM and polyjet 3d printers that i have maintained all on my own. I have dealt with companies from all over the world, pre Pegasus FSL included (they WERE amazing, really top notch). The old fsl would cover costs that were their fault while we owuld cover costs of maintenance cause by usage or normal wear or improper usage, if we did not agree on who was responsible we would split the loss but that only happened 1 time... Well, NOT ANYMORE!

This review is mostly about the company and how they have treated me, the printer may work but with a company who treats buyers the way they do it is just one more reason to not get the Pegasus aside from the sub par ability to separate layers properly and the lower quality laser diodes that lead to bad prints. the printers are cheaply made, i do not recommend at ALL.




more importantly your printer has no value after purchase, it has no resale value once this info goes public, or atleast a much lower resale value... you can not resell, they wont even talk to you if you purchased used, you have to pay a "transfer fee". i ordered directly but they still play this game with me, more details below. I ordered my form 1 used, never had an issue and they knew i bought it used, but i bought my pegasus new and still have Issues. the following review states some of the problems i have had with FSL3D, but i can not describe the way they have treated me, it was like being robbed while the person robbing has no idea what they are doing is wrong, this woman seemed perfectly content screwing over a person that is already upset about being screwed over 4 other times.... any normal business would know I AM TRYING TO GIVE YOU MONEY, take it and stop digging for more and dont try any more shady up sale tactics on me for at-least a week or 2. but not unlike blackjack they busted and tried digging a bit to deep in my pockets before i snapped.


the ywill dismiss me as a problem buyer but i am high spending, educated and very understanding person, i hope this makes them change their ways but i know it wont.

and here is the key point...

FSL3d is the worst company i have ever dealt with, period. i have never posted a negative review against anybody before today and i usually buy a high end piece of equipment if not 2 every single month.

Basically they have screwed me over multiple times and they have wronged my associates who also use the printer. i have had such low success i ask for help. One guy, Jeremy i thin khis name was has been great but their policies are a bit skewed. they view this as a consumer product like an iPhone as opposed o an industrial or at-least commercial piece of equipment which it is, anybody who wants any relative amount of control and wants to buy teh printer and buy parts without sending back whenever you need a fix do not buy these machines. they will pay for nothing even if they admit it to be their fault which is so shocking to me. here are the wrongs in summary i have experienced, i have also been lied to directly and pseudo blackmailed or atleast scammed to a certain extent. They are legitimate but they have the mindset of apple, its our product, everything is profit, we don't care about happiness of our client base as long as money is made. Obviously in business what is fair should overcome profit, it always has and always will or peopel like myself wil speak out and i am far from the first but hopefully the last if people see this.



the first wrong:

after purchase i had horrible prints, i was told a part shipped with my machine was bad, it was a problem with all machines in my generation, they kept this private though, its the G1 machines. This is understandable, easily fixable problem, no harm right? no instead they try to charge ME for the part ($300) even after admitting fault, this has happened to others as well. they would not take responsibility for their mistake and wanted me to pay...


the second:

so i let this all go but was still a bit upset. this happened months ago and i lived with the limitations of my machine and have not fixed yet. but i decided a "super"vat might help. i paid $260 for a "super" vat that should have been given as a discount to buyers who did not have it as all companies do. instead i paid $260 for a piece of trash that consists of

$1 in sheet metal
$10 in machining costs after labor
$3 sheet of acrylic, normal acrylic
$10 or less for a 10 mil piece of PTFE coated polymer, im assuming PVC but i am still testing by testing to be sure so i can make my own and make public. on average the costs of this material are a few $ per foot, they claim custom, which it is but its already a pre existing material made by manufacturers in china with relatively low MOQs.

for this i paid $260... lets even take out the liner and assume it really is worth the $50 they charge, well acrylic and metal is worth $210 how exactly?


the third:

after ordering i waited over a week for arrival, nothing, so i check to see tracking but instead get an email asking "do you have our machine? who sold it to you?", the item did not ship, clients are waiting. i did not give a direct answer about who sold it as i thought they were asking who in the company i purchased from and i was so confused on what they meant, i just mentioned kickstarter and stated "of course i have the printer, are you serious?". I could not understand at the time what they meant by who i bought it from, i mean they are the only seller so i thought they meant was i a backer or not. but i explained delaying an order of a product offered to the public to see where i ordered form is INSANE, if yo uare restricting sales then dont make it publicly accessible. they were not asking for my type of machine, SN, nothing, just where i got it.... apply this to anything else in life, it is insane. but i now understand that they were doing this, it is very dirty and it will make sense after reading the next 2 wrongs.

This email is the paypal email, its not used for company contact, so why would i check here? why would they not call even? why do they not ship the product i ordered on a public store where my card has already been billed? either way this is a minor issue. they also sent with direct signature... i have ordered presses that cost nearly 100k and never had a direct signature required, this means the receiver of the package must be present with ID at the time of delivery, it took us 3 days and a 1.5 hour drive to get this after arriving in our area, 7 days total shipping, 10 days waiting to ship.


the fourth and fifth:

So after all this, i get the vat, go to use it.... i explain i received it and asked 1 last time why she cared where i got it? she stated "we need to know so we know what type of machine you have exactly", i say ok that is fair and finally answer teh question with more detail stating the name of the guy i have worked with after the purchase.

i also add that because i realized i needed a firmware update to use this new solid gold "super" vat i would nicely ask for the software to update the firmware for me. i get this response:

" i am sorry ,we can not help you, you purchased from a third party and you will have to pay a transfer fee before we can help you"

but they had no issue selling me a non refundable product that they knew i could not use.

at this point i lost it, i have never seen a company act like this. you offer a product to the public for public purchase and you ship to me and bill my card, a product that is NON REFUNDABLE (because it does not work) and then you blackmail me for more money before i can get the proper software to use the thing i just purchased? that is pure and simple blackmail, i have no choice but to pay this fee so that i can use the piece of garbage i just purchased.... you have to be kidding me....




I have had years of contact with FSL, was about to purchase a very high dollar scanning fiber laser marker (my third laser from them) but i will no longer do this. I have dealt with FSL for years and they have been top notch but this FSL3D division is a skid mark on the name of FSL, they are a disgrace to what that company has built and deserve to loose everything to the far superior competition.

I am not backing any horse in this race, the Pegasus is a sub par printer, great quality when the prints ocme out but i cant waste all this resin waiting and hopin gfor a great print. countless times i have printed properly iwth proper support placement and on a 100ml+ print it will have a layer not stick at the very end, within the last 1000 layers which makes the whole print 100% useless.


This company is all about keeping their hardware and software proprietary, i have had otehr wrongs done by them, atleast 3 others, 1 major that i have not listed for personal reasons but i hope you all STAY AWAY. I have money to waste fortunately, i am not upset about having to pay money when money is due, i run a business and tehse printers make me more money then i could ever spend on maitenance but i will never bend over for a company nomatter what they sell. I tried to keep this as unbiased as possible, this all happened awhile ago and i had time to cool down and look at things logically but they broke the camels back. I am posting this purely to inform, not to get my way from them, i already stated i am done doing business iwth them and i am sure the ywill change their mind but i would much rather be vocal to help others as opposed to being pacified just to allow others to be scammed by this silver spoon company. they started with a silver spoon in their mouth, they never had the trials most companies do when getting started like FSL did, they are greedy and much like every other greedy company out there they will never be #1 as they do not have the reputation to permit the level of greed they have.

be careful, i can not speak on what the best alternative is, the form 1 seems promising and support is fair and level headed, i think the technology will quickly surpass these galvo type printers and if you cant wait then just please don't go with Pegasus...

[curious aardvark]

wow printer I've never heard of - or likely to want :-)

Kudos to you writing such an intelligent and impassioned report.

[dunginhawk]

i was very seriously looking at the pegasus resin printer... gotta say, im not interested anymore.
By pissing off 1 long term customer, they just cost themselves about $3500
take care of your customers. PERIOD
I dont think companies realize that this post will cost them a TON of money, where if this post would have been "they send me that tray at a discounted rate, on time, and offered this that and the other" different it could have made them 10s of thousands.. I dont get any company that wont bend over backwards for their customers.

[EclecticDaydreamer]

Thank you for your review. Like you I am very tolerant to engineering principles as they are well understood.
On the other hand I have very little tolerance for poor customer service particularly when it is known that an engineering principle has been overlooked or ignored. Perhaps they should take a lesson from GM and imagine the cost to correct a problem before it is fielded compared to the cost they enjoy now!
It is unfortunate for those who are unbound thinkers to find themselves umbilically attached to the fear driven greed of investors for fast profits on a fresh idea.

Mission accomplished, I'll not give this company a second glance!

[chooch]

I completely agree with you! FSL3D have lied, cheated, and pretty much stolen.

However, I want to do something about it... I've started hacking the Pegasus touch. I've started fixing the mechanical issues with the machine: build plate, leveling, vat, first surface, lead screw and case.

The most important: If we can make our own firmware and software the machines will have value again and people will be able to resell them without FSL being able to do anything.

Anyone interested in sticking it to them and get to some hacking?
Any luck on making your own supervat?

[doobie]

I completely agree with you! FSL3D have lied, cheated, and pretty much stolen.

However, I want to do something about it... I've started hacking the Pegasus touch. I've started fixing the mechanical issues with the machine: build plate, leveling, vat, first surface, lead screw and case.

The most important: If we can make our own firmware and software the machines will have value again and people will be able to resell them without FSL being able to do anything.

Anyone interested in sticking it to them and get to some hacking?
Any luck on making your own supervat?

I've been working on it, I was able to download some files from the beagleboard a while back, and ran it through a password cracker and cracked a few passwords, but was never able to log in to the machine via ssh/telnet/etc. I was debating ripping out the electronics and creating my own.

For supervat, I was just looking into the MUVE "super" vat. I think it seems much better than the FSL3D one, which I never bought because I gave up on the printer a while back until I realized it's just sitting there and basically a paperweight.

[chooch]

I've been working on it, I was able to download some files from the beagleboard a while back, and ran it through a password cracker and cracked a few passwords, but was never able to log in to the machine via ssh/telnet/etc. I was debating ripping out the electronics and creating my own.

For supervat, I was just looking into the MUVE "super" vat. I think it seems much better than the FSL3D one, which I never bought because I gave up on the printer a while back until I realized it's just sitting there and basically a paperweight.

Creating new electronics would probably be the best thing to do.

I'm actually trying to get into it right this very minute, using their very own Pegasus Remote Supports Reverse SSH GUI program. :-)

If anyone wants the program, I'll share.

Also, I think I discovered why this machine has been cast aside... the Mechanical Engineer and the Retina Create Engineer don't work at FSL any more.

[dunginhawk]

being the owner of a muve3d printer I can confidently tell you the flex vat that they have created is 2nd to none. its a fantastic piece of art really. I actually just modified my 2nd vat and mounted a camera inside the vat to see the prints as it progresses brilliant

[doobie]

Creating new electronics would probably be the best thing to do.

I'm actually trying to get into it right this very minute, using their very own Pegasus Remote Supports Reverse SSH GUI program. :-)

If anyone wants the program, I'll share.

Also, I think I discovered why this machine has been cast aside... the Mechanical Engineer and the Retina Create Engineer don't work at FSL any more.

What is the Pegasus Remote? That would make sense if their ME and RCE. I've figured they were running out of money, but they seem to have big $$$ that's been coming in....but their terrible support has probably scared off many new customers. I know I would *NOT* buy a Pegasus Touch today; even if it were $100.

[doobie]

being the owner of a muve3d printer I can confidently tell you the flex vat that they have created is 2nd to none. its a fantastic piece of art really. I actually just modified my 2nd vat and mounted a camera inside the vat to see the prints as it progresses brilliant

Cool. I really wish I skipped the Pegasus and bought a Muve3d... I need to do some measurements and see if I could get the Muve3d flexvat into my pegasus.