Shipping to the UK had been broken for a few days. After some debugging, I figured out that our shipping quote provider had stopped accepting decimals in the package dimensions as of 20 December — but only for destinations within the UK. Shipping a 42.0 cm long box abroad was fine, but it had to be 42 cm for the UK.

Also fixed shipping to Northern Ireland, which had been broken for two weeks (an upgrade had overwritten my old fix).

Everything works properly again.

The eShapeoko kits are back in stock (with a lead time of about three weeks). After more than a year, I have decommissioned the reservation form!

MakerSlide should be back in stock in January.

The store is closed for Christmas. You can place orders any time, though, and we’ll resume shipping on 29 or 30 December.

Enjoy the holidays!

Update

We return on the 2nd of January (unexpected change of flight dates).

Well, it’s December and MakerSlide isn’t here yet. The fabricator are telling me their saw had been broken for more than a week back in November, which wrecked their schedule. They can’t even tell me when they might start working on my order. Meanwhile, gleaming new MakerSlide sits on a rack in their warehouse, extruded and anodized but uncut — and our store is empty.

I’m doing two things to work around this: setting up an alternate supplier (long in the works, but these things take time); and re-cutting lengths with defects. I have many pieces of MakerSlide that I rejected because of a single dent or scratch. They can be cut into shorter lengths around the defect — they are otherwise perfectly good. I’m working on cutting MakerSlide for the existing eShapeoko orders, so there may not be a lot left for the store, though. I’ll keep you posted.

One can cut MakerSlide with a chop saw, but it’s hard to get a consistently straight, flat and square cut without spending a lot of money on the saw. I’d rather not do that, but I want an accurate cut with a good finish, so I’m doing it in two steps: I cut it slightly long with a half-decent chop saw, then I face it very precisely with a milling machine I built for this purpose. In true RepRap form, the MakerSlide facing machine is built with MakerSlide. I’ll post some pictures soon — right now I have rail to cut and kits to ship.

Short version: MakerSlide will be delivered to us between 16 and 20 November.

Long version: I’ve been a bit naïve. When I talked to our current supplier of MakerSlide, before I committed to them, they told me that, if they had uncut rail in stock, the turnaround time for an order would be 1–2 weeks. Now I’m told it’s actually 4–6 weeks, and it’s always been that. They were also similarly optimistic about the time it takes to extrude it (2–3 weeks — in reality 6-8 weeks, occasionally more).

It’s been a long time. The fabricator have received the MakerSlide from the extruder, and will begin cutting it this week. I think they might deliver it to us by the end of next week. All lengths will be back in stock then.

We’re out of stock of the MakerSlide carriage plates (and thus camera sliders). I’m ordering more of those too.

Just received a delivery of 750 mm and 1000 mm MakerSlide from the factory.  You’ll see that in stock in the store as I unload it (probably tomorrow night).

I have just invited everyone with a reservation for an eShapeoko kit to place their order. Sorry it took so long.

If you have not received an invitation email, please let me know (comment here, or use the contact form in the store).

For the one or two people who have been kind enough to let me know they no longer needed the machine, I apologize for sending you an invitation too (I had removed your request, but I lost that version of the file).

We’ve caught up! There are no outstanding orders.

It’s time to tidy up the packaging area and collate the eShapeoko reservations.

I stayed up late last night and packed all orders older than about a week; we’re going to finish catching up (including three eShapeoko kits ordered about six weeks ago) tonight and tomorrow night.