mrRoboto

Have had fine experience with getting paid and money tracking/reporting. Have not had an enjoyable experience with the eetime vacation/sick hours tracking program.

Strengths: Always get paid on time, no errors.

Needs to improve: EETime vacation hours tracking program really needs some work. Not intuitive at all. Difficult to get the eetime software to help you project your vacation balances in the future. There are buttons that make you think you could generate projections but the results are strange.

No problems, very high quality and consistency, but am not in love with going thru distributors.

Strengths: Actuators that last forever.

Needs to improve: Sometimes hard to locate parts on short notice, since you might have to contact several distributors. Items from Japan are really long lead.

Friendly employees who have memorized the location of everything in the store. Can get you out of a jam when you don't want to wait for overnight delivery.

Strengths: A generally wide selection and variety, and really good depth in areas such as tapered pipe fittings, tubing connections, fasteners, and tools.

Needs to improve: Not well known and weak signage makes them hard to find for the newbie.

Have had nothing but smoothness configuring and ordering parts. Catalog surprisingly free of errors, especially how big it is. Downloaded CAD models have been high quality.

Strengths: OMG Misumi where have you been all my life!
Number of parts and custimization options that boggle the mind.
Using Misumi can save you from designing and machining lots and lots of simple, functional parts. Pricing and lead time for custom options are unbeatable

Needs to improve: Some machined parts have very sharp, very square edges and corners. Would like a little debur or tumbler action.

Sales engineers and reps paid attention to my complaints and were very responsive. Ordering generally goes smoothly.

Some mechanical and pneumatic components had inconsistent quality. When the parts were made correctly, they were great. When the parts were wrong, it was pretty bad. Had this experience both in pneumatics and motion equipment. Not a whole lot of middle ground.

It seems that the US organization has got it together and will bust a move for you, but in Germany and in their factories there seem to be troubles with manufacturing quality and configuring of subassemblies.

Strengths: Sales reps / sales engineers are very responsive

Needs to improve: Inconsistent quality, and if the problem can't be resolved in the USA, response from Germany is exceptionally slow.

Not too many problems overall with the projet 3500. Material is really pricey.

Strengths: The machines that print plastic and use wax for a support material, enable extremely delicate features to be printed.

Needs to improve: Machine software is kinda buggy and parts are not as flat as desired, tend to warp. Hard to discuss technical issues with 3D Systems because they put the independent dealers between you and them.

I have run some far out designs on their Polyjet printers with success and good service. I have also been advised against running some designs that they expect not to turn out well. I appreciate the care taken in this regard.

Strengths: Really quick responses and very good advice from their project engineers.

Needs to improve: None

Have enjoyed dealing direct and have enjoyed not having to inspect parts for quality. The packaging has been good, and there have been no part number snafus.

Strengths: No need to go thru a distributor is a big plus, relatively short lead times, and innovative mechanical packaging

Needs to improve: Website a little tough to navigate