To pick up on the recent discussion on the MKS-series of mainboards and whether they are open-source-compliant or not: They are not. What little they publish is in such a desolate state that it’s barely usable for an end user to extract any useful information out of and not does not provide a basis for further development by others (while, of course, taking what they can from the open hardware community).
- Their schematics are an incomplete joke and only available in .pdf form, no source files are provided.
- Same goes for PCB layouts, best they can do is a red/green overlaid image you can edit with paint if you wanted.
- They distribute the signed Uberclock (@Mark_Cooper1 ) driver for their own Smoothieboard-based (@Arthur_Wolf ) hardware.
Their hardware is a one-way street - Maker Base’s apparent motto: Give them nothing but take from them everything
Here’s all they publish: https://github.com/makerbase-mks
Oh Thomas, I so do like your well mannered, very polite, 3D printing rage posts. Hopefully more people hear about maker base(less).
One of many, many vendors that think “open source” means “free for us to use how we want.”
Have you seen Geeetech’s product list lately? They’re flagrant about it. They’ll start making boards from Github source that isn’t even done yet, like with RAMPS-FD.
MKS indeed isn’t trying to hide any wrongdoing.
The openly admit ( see reprap forums ) that their product is a descendant of the Smoothieboard, and that it is not Open-Source ( the obvious problem here being they violate the Smoothieboard license, and the community’s wishes ).
Their reason for not being Open-Source is that they fear other chinese cloners will copy their products.
Which is insanely ironic as even though they never provided with files sufficient for another to manufacture their boards, a few weeks only after their sold their first boards, other chinese cloners were indeed selling copies, and they ( MKS ) were warning about “bad copies” of their boards …
A few weeks is the time it takes for a cloner to get one of their boards, get it to a reverse-engineer, and produce a batch of boards … I got an approximate quote for reverse engineering one of those boards, it was about $400 …
@Arthur_Wolf curious what your thoughts are on what part of the Smoothie license they violate? If it’s a new PCB layout, no use of copyrighted logos, and they distribute an existing Smoothie binary with available sources without making any changes, it’s not clear to me what copyright they’re infringing. But I’m not intimately familiar with FR/EU copyright, nor with the exact details of what creative elements they may be using in their derivative.
@Ryan_Carlyle I wouldn’t make a legal claim that they violate the license. I mean more that they violate the spirit of how/why we shared it.
They clearly demonstrated on the reprap forums that they wouldn’t ever have been able to make the design without the Smoothieboard as a model, so as such I consider the board to be a “derivative” of the original design. But yes, because they started from a blank file ( essentially ), that’s not enough, and I can’t make a legal claim.
@Arthur_Wolf ok, thanks for clarifying. I think what they’re doing is super crappy and will never buy their products, but wasn’t sure if there was something like a silkscreen or whatnot that would infringe in the legal sense.
@Ryan_Carlyle Yeah it’d be a good thing if there was something clear-cut like that to attack. Thought they would likely just fix it and move along …
Im running an mks base board in my machine. Hella hard to setup and troubleshoot. Only reason im running it is because it was affordable.
The MKS board is a cheap working board that can replace a broken board. The board has all connections that a RAMP 1.4 has. The main advantage is that the board can handle 12V and 24V.
To quote Arthur from some previous posts “They are parasites” Could not agree more. But Arthur has not abandoned the misinformed that have purchased MKS boards, he still offers his willing support to help them with the myriad of issues they have to deal with.
Of course! you can’t blame the folks buying the board @funinthefalls .
@kenneth_rooks isn’t that exactly who we should blame? People who buy complex technical products either without caring or without checking whether the product is worth supporting?
“Caveat emptor”
I don’t mind supporting the originator of a product / project…just not at those price points. I’d love to have an original smoothie board tho. If you have the extra dough to help out fellow makers…
Pointing out that something isn’t open source as it’s claimed to be is fine and I myself welcome it. in fact, I’ll be the first to point out problems I’ve had with the mks. I do have a problem with finger pointing at those who can’t afford the good stuff or in fact choose to go this route for some other reason. Especially as an assumption of being uncaring or unknowledgeable. Comes off as a bit privileged @Ryan_Carlyle
@kenneth_rooks It’s an expensive hobby. A genuine Smoothieboard costs about the equivalent of 5-6 spools of filament. An Azteeg x5 is community-friendly and costs about 4 spools of filament. An MKS SBASE costs about 2 spools of filament. If you’re telling me you can’t afford a price difference that amounts to 2-4 spools of filament, 3D printing is the wrong hobby to get into. In the long run, consumables costs are going to vastly outweigh your controller board selection.
If you’re THAT price-sensitive, go buy a $40 RAMPS board. Super cheap printers like your average i3 knock-off kit don’t mechanically perform well enough to justify running a higher-price 32bit controller anyway.
I have zero sympathy for people who cheap out on their 3D printers and have problems, or inadvertently support ethically-challenged companies because they didn’t do the research. We all have budgets and time constraints. I seriously don’t think people should build a 3D printer if they can’t afford the price of entry, or don’t care enough to research why MKS products will cause problems. This is a high-tech hobby with time and money demands that range from “considerable” to “ludicrous” depending on how you want to pursue it. Get used to that idea or don’t participate.
To be clear, I am supportive of low-cost printer options, and there are many available that will perform fine and not piss off the community. The MKS boards are not in that camp. They’re exploitative copies of premium products, aimed specifically at under-cutting the people who did the work to make them possible. People who buy the boards regardless of that fact are either inadvertently or knowingly part of the problem.
@Ryan_Carlyle , I’ll stick with my mks just to spite u I think. Problems and all. But props to smoothieboard and it’s makers. Nice work. I also think u need to up your spool values by 2x