So as a guy who works at a microcenter, these things have been in the works for a long time. From my understanding is that eventually every store will have one but the Charlotte store is experimenting with how mechanically reliable it is.
Mechanically they're very reliable, Lowes and Home Depot and all the rest have been using the same elevator system for carpet for decades and they rarely break down.
Inventory wise....lol no this is a terrible idea. This thing is almost never going to be accurate. Maybe when RFID based inventory management becomes standard this will be a good idea.
As someone who has worked in pharmacy for a while, with this thing seeming to be essentially the same as many hospital inventory systems, yeah these things will work, but they're slow, and the inventory capability is only as good as the person removing the product, which in this case is probably not going to be great since you're counting on the general public.
What's the point? How is this cheaper or more efficient than just regular-ass shelves? I know I am going to be annoyed by this when the person in front of me spends 45 minutes browsing through all the spools on offer .
I know with our store we keep about 2/3rds of the filament in the back because we don't have enough room so when we are down to just 1 or 2 in stock I then have to hope and pray my coworkers put everything away correctly so I can find it in a reasonable time.
Space, but I guess the 'cool' factor also attracts customers.
Even if they don't buy filament, people talk about the cool computer store with the rotating shelves. Like on this reddit post for example.
It's more space efficient, the shelves can be set at the perfect height for the product so it minimizes wasted space. It can also use a lot more vertical space that would otherwise only be useful for storage. The browsing problem is a non-issue, you don't browse in the carousel, you have a catalog with samples/swatches in it and then scan the one you want to call it up.
We have a system like this for parts and component inventory in the R&D lab I work at. There is a light curtain plus additional sensors for the platters that move in and out to check the height of the items you are moving around.
Very safe to the point of being annoying.
Which is a source of danger itself! Many tragic accidents came down to safety systems that were too sensitive or otherwise bothersome to the operators and were bypassed.
Thankfully bypassing a safety system is a “Cardinal Rule Violation” at my company and is met with immediate termination. While I find the height sensor annoying, I also know it is there to protect me and the machine.
Other “Cardinals” include entering a confined space without a permit / following confined space policy, failing to lock out tag out a machine before performing maintenance, hot work without a hot work permit and removing the guarding from a machine.
They take safety seriously to the point of being OSHA VPP Certified.
As someone who works in heavy industry....
I don't think most people understand how many safety protocols and interlocks are in place to try to prevent damage to equipment and the people operating it.
I do automation and controls. A solid 25% of my programming work is trying to "operator proof" systems. At the very least.
That said....some pretty cowboy stuff still gets done. Just the nature of it I suppose
> I do automation and controls. A solid 25% of my programming work is trying to "operator proof" systems. At the very least.
As do I and I concur. Epically at the end of the project. Ready to wrap things up and forget about it, then you get a call and one robot is trying to mate with a second robot while that second robot knocks over a pallet of 60# boxes. All because an XIC was an XIO and operators pressed button A at the exact wrong time.
>That said....some pretty cowboy stuff still gets done. Just the nature of it I suppose
Yep. You cant check voltage on a powered down panel. You cant check rotation of a motor without running it.
I'm mostly in fluid process control. Refineries and chemical plants, oil production fields, that sort of thing.
Accidentally tripping the ESD system and sending a bunch of product to flare or being on site when someone blows up some very expensive piece of equipment is almost a right of passage.
I remember electrical miss-wiring a motor that drove a down hole pump. They bump tested it while it was coupled to the gear box and drove it backwards. It is not meant to run backwards. The drive shaft that ran down to the pump 300 or so meters down a 15 cm borehole parted.
Next day there was a service rig on site trying to fish out the rod to get production back up. At least $200k, gone in 5 seconds.
Just another Tuesday, really
Ate at that restaurant. Didn’t spin, was disappointed. Kids are stupid and the parents had one job. Hope they think about it every day for the rest of their lives.
No joke, when these break down, life sucks.... there's a way to manually rotate it with a hand crank... but you have to take the fairings off... big PITA...
It won't take long before items are in the wrong place when someone gets one out and puts it back in the wrong slot, or an employee comes along and tidies away that pile of boxes on the right without care as to where each one should go.
Vertical carousel systems like this are very not new, and as a result they're currently very reliable. They've been in use in high-capacity manufacturing, pharmaceutical, etc. for over 30 years at this point.
Do they break? Sure. But anything else that lets you store a reasonable amount of stuff above shoulder level is either riskier to operate and/or breaks _even more_. These are a really good, really reliable option.
Yeah 14USD is about what I think my average spool of filament on Amazon has cost me. The only outlyer I can remember is the spool of Polymaker Galaxy Purple ABS I bought for like 40ish bucks.
I've bought a lot of no name filament and haven't had much issue with most of it. Now I mostly buy stuff like Polymaker, Overture, or Inland, the latter two tend to be relabeled Polymaker. Esun is good too. I mostly avoid silk or matte plas because I've most of my issues with those. Just look out for deals I've gotten different types of Overture PLA for as low as like 11ish dollar for a spool.
Just avoid anything that's too cheap and isn't a brand name, I got some black PLA for under 10 bucks for the spool that was printing real well until I hit a spot where the filament dropped from 1.75mm diameter down to as low as 0.7mm
I've been using Elegoo brand for PLA+. It seems to be in the middle price wise and I never had a problem with it.
Geeetech for a spool of PETG and TPU-95A.
Yup. They basically killed their digital photography department and replaced it with a 3D printing one. Probably the correct business move, TBF, as much as I miss having them compete with the other digital photography stores out there.
It pains me to say it, but my interest in photography is like zero when I can get fantastic shots with my phone. My X1C on the other hand produces amazing shit.
Sure, but I have interests in both. Same way most people won't spend thousands on printers and materials, most won't spend thousands on cameras and materials. But I'm not oblivious. Photography is becoming more and more of a niche hobby, while 3D printing is becoming more and more mainstream. It makes perfect sense for a business like microcenter to adapt to this change. I just wish the adaptation had been an "addition", rather than a "replacement".
Fry's used to sell filament. It was great. But it was also the first department to be a harbinger that they were about to go under. I kept going, and it became so it was just the same sad 5 or 6 spools of filament nobody wanted, and they never got replenished.
It's not entirely clear from the video, but this design can allow for more efficient use of space, because it can extend above or below where people can reach, and it can turn a wall of the building into effectively a 2 sided aisle, by allowing more use of the space. It lets them stock more filament varieties.
Agreed. I just had a conversation about a paternoster design for gridfinity bins and was making the same point when someone chided in about shelves being simpler. Shelves are fine if you have the layout and floorspace for them. A vertical system like this is nice when you have unused space above/below and it minimizes the need for additional aisles to access rows of shelves. Plus, if you use a good inventory system with it, it can be very efficient to find what you're looking for quickly.
You seem to have missed the part about not having the room for shelves or access to them, which is the entire point of a system like this. Paternoster systems like this are timesavers as they can provide single point of access.to inventory on demand in limited spaces. Companies don't install massive systems like this for no reason. They are a proven useful solution for limited floor space applications.
I agree 100% because it takes quite a while if there's a lot of people waiting to get filament. But I do like the samples of filament that they have to scan. That part makes it easier to see how it looks printed rather than guessing.
> I agree 100% because it takes quite a while if there's a lot of people waiting to get filament.
If anything they should probably keep the most commonly sold colors out on a shelf across from it for that reason.
Saves floor space and makes it super easy to stock too
You scan a barcode and it lights up where to put it, you don’t ever need to put shit in the same spot either it just assigns it wherever
We have a few Kardex machines here that are about 3 storeys tall and sorts all our parts and makes it so much easier on stocking and taking what would have taken a few aisles
This does seem like a comical amount of over engineering to just have some boxes on a shelf haha.
My microcenter has had them on the shelf for years and seems to work just fine.
But hey if the stores got the money to burn might as well make getting filament as cool and futuristic as humanly possible 👌
It saves tons of floorspace. We bought one at my previous employer and we litterally could store the same amoutn of material in about 15% of the floorspace.
If Microcenter had 4X the variety of colors and materials i'd probably go there over ordering on Amazon a lot more. They're also in a big city with several colleges, so I bet that helps too.
The problem with broadening the selection is storage. Either you end up devoting entire aisles to filament, or you box it up and have an employee search for it when a customer wants it. Don't think the machine is going to replace conventional shelves, it's just there as an extra.
That's cool. Reminds me of carpet carousels at home improvement stores.
I'm just surprised here is al because unless they use a ton of vertical space it doesn't seem like it would be all that beneficial compared to stacking boxes. Even kustw watching this I can see at least 1/4" gaps between every package. I definitely believe you when you say it saves space but that seems like it would add up.
> This does seem like a comical amount of over engineering to just have some boxes on a shelf haha.
I mean, isn't that what can be said about everything 3d print?
Yeah, this is *"Tesla engineers would rather design a robot to hold a bucket under a leaky ceiling to catch every drop versus just going up and fixing the roof tile."* levels of over engineering.
You'd go through many shelves to find what you need, rather than scan a barcode and have it tell you the exact location in seconds?
It's not like it's a complicated or long process
I wouldn't be sorting through shelves. If I wanted red petg I'd walk to the petg filament section, find red and grab it and leave. Now I have to walk up to this machine and wonder wtf it is and if im allowed to use it, get a worker to explain to me how to use it, wait in line for the other 6 people in front of me to do the same thing, finally get my chance, see my filament isnt even in stock. Leave with a wasted 30 minutes of my life.
Or they could still do the barcode thing to light it up for you but just on shelves without the unnecessary spinning. If they were even smarter they would just sort the shelves by color so if you knew you needed a blue you'd just walk over to blue.
Looks way over engineered to me. I'm surprised a mechanical system won out, over say just a gravity fed dispenser. Something similar to, but obviously suited for filament boxes: https://plexidisplays.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/8/8/880-1860.jpg
I haven’t been back to Charlotte in like five years and I have actively avoided doing so but dammit a micro Center might be the one thing that makes me go back for a visit
Swear to god I'm gonna go bonkers. I'm a few towns over and can't make it over for the grand opening because of a bad starter in my car, and I'd get in trouble for taking the work van.
It's gonna be dangerous for me because I'm in one of the buildings in uptown too. Lunch time is gonna get expensive really quick. 🤣 Hope your able to get your car fixed soon so you can get over there to check it out.
Do it with the butt of the handle of the hammer first. See if it helps, before taking a good whack with the head (giggity).
I've seen people use the head of the hammer and crack the magnets in the starter going too aggressive.
Very cool, but with a big fancy distribution system like that you would think that they would've built inventory controls to tell you whether or not a specific filament is out of stock before it even moves.
I was talking to the manager yesterday about that. He said that the company who makes the machine stocked it for them but didn't get the inventory amounts correctly entered. He showed me an example of an out of stock fillament why scanning the sample and it gave an alert on the screen saying it was out of stock. He said that they were going to be taking everything out and redoing the inventory settings this week before the official grand opening.
God that will be so cool for the 1.5 months it works and then a complete nightmare for the rest of the time that store exists. I give that thing 1 year max before it's replaced by a simple shelf.
I've only been to the Columbus microcenter and I will say they aren't great at refilling the filaments on the shelf. Also you might see what you're looking on one shelf one time and then it's a completely different spot the next time. I've never complained. I feel lucky to be 20 minutes from a microcenter.
https://preview.redd.it/dpg9isdqj84d1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7eacceff36ea7bdca452bddff999ee2e86f543f
They have these printed samples that you can go through to see how the filament looks printed and then you take the sample up to the machine and scan it to get your spool. I like that I can see the samples so I know how the filament looks printed out but I like just being able to go up to a shelf and grab what I want.
🤣.....Thankfully the sensors a bit too sensitive to where it stops instantly even if someone is too close to it. Let alone put their hands near it while moving.
Oh those are great.... When they work right, which is about half the time. Then you have to wait for the one guy in the country who knows how to service them to show up.
Don't get me wrong this is neat but seems like a overkill solution that doesn't actually solve much of a problem. People say it saves space, but you loose space by having extra mechanisms for this to even work (which also now need to be maintained), also seems like it would just be slow and tedious after the new neat machine factor wears off. And wouldn't it be better if it just gave you the product vending machine style?
Neat. I honestly prefer how it’s done in dallas. On lots of shelves and in big piles on the floor. Makes it pretty easy to walk up and get what you want without all these extra steps.
A storage system like this, where the items revolve inside of a cabinet, is called a pater noster system and are used mostly to store archives or in technical companies that use a lot of tiny components .
It's cool, but kind of hilarious that it doesn't maintain an inventory. I also didn't see a price anywhere. If you don't know the price, it kind of invites people to pull something out, say "it's how much?" and then just stick it back anywhere.
Duck me lol, so I'ma scan a card that's definitely not gonna get lost, find out the location of the spool, walk over 10m to the left, while someone else scans a new card making the whole array move and putting my own filament out of reach?
Never seen such a dumb machine.
Honestly, if they want to come up with something, keep the sample prints and make a vending machine, we're there's one slot for the filament to come out and include a return slot, for when the person doesn't want to buy the roll after all.
I so want a microcenter near me, I think they are opening more, as they have some in new york city now which is like 6 hours from me. I think they used to be mainly west coast before so its getting closer. We really have nothing like this near me anymore, including computer parts in stores, best buy/walmart/target have minimal but it doesn't really count.
They were selling a lot of printers but the sales person there didn't know anything about 3D printers. He kept telling people that the Creality Ender 3 V2 did automatic bed leveling straight out of the box but didn't tell them that it only does automatic bed leveling if you buy the optional CR Touch. 🤦♀️ I told a few people the correct info before I left because I can't stand people being told false information.
Yea the lines were insane! I went on Friday and Saturday. Each time it took us 30-45 minutes to checkout. Shockingly the line was shorter on Saturday than it was on Friday.
I wonder if the staffers at this Microcenter zealously guard their ~~personal print~~ demo print jobs from all curious customers looking to shop in the store.
I was there earlier today. Some stuff was in the wrong place, but if you scanned something and it pulled up an empty bay, the display gave you an option to try the next location. Tbh, the biggest issue was morons trying to reach through the light curtain to look at filament WHILE THE MACHINE WAS MOVING. I had to ask several people to please stop doing that so I could get my filament and be on my way.
I had a bunch of people doing that when I was trying to get filament when I was there on Friday. I explained to them if they keep doing that nobody will be able to get filament because the machine goes into an emergency stop mode. They would just look at me like I'm stupid and say it's not a big deal and that they are just grabbing the filament they want. 🤦♀️
You guys are so lucky with Microcenter.
It's literally the perfect store for me.
We only have small businesses that sell the stuff they do and it's usually just a counter with a small display area. You can't walk around all the aisles
Are these Pantone validated or something?
Oh God no, imagine how _many more_ filaments to be Pantone validated, plus however many materials assuming it's not just "oops all PLA"
At my microcenter the filament organization makes zero sense, the employees can never find it either ("it says we have it in stock, I'm sorry I don't see it"), and it doesn't help that the boxes seem to change designs all the time (for the same exact filament).
I imagine this automated system would still rely on the workers to properly put the filament where it goes and so would end up just as bad.
Not to mention, every time I go there are always like 5 people browsing the filament isle, if they now have to wait on each other to use the rolodex machine wouldn't that actually take longer to get your filaments?
That is amazing! I have legit gone to microcenter, gotten annoyed I can't really browse filaments properly, and left. I've only ordered online "for pickup" since then.
Although, I wonder if the whole thing is protected by a continuous interrupt beam. Those rolling cages are *very* dangerous. Usually they have a key to operate and only employees have keys. If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, big hardware stores will have carpet and electrical wire on these (although they look different).
I like my way: sit in the car, place an order for pickup, drive to store, walk to pickup counter, pay, and leave. Probably faster than dealing with this, too.
So as a guy who works at a microcenter, these things have been in the works for a long time. From my understanding is that eventually every store will have one but the Charlotte store is experimenting with how mechanically reliable it is.
Mechanically they're very reliable, Lowes and Home Depot and all the rest have been using the same elevator system for carpet for decades and they rarely break down. Inventory wise....lol no this is a terrible idea. This thing is almost never going to be accurate. Maybe when RFID based inventory management becomes standard this will be a good idea.
Might be more reliable to place the boxes in on the shelf with UPCs facing outward and just use cameras to do inventory.
This works until someone slaps one in front of a different one.
As someone who has worked in pharmacy for a while, with this thing seeming to be essentially the same as many hospital inventory systems, yeah these things will work, but they're slow, and the inventory capability is only as good as the person removing the product, which in this case is probably not going to be great since you're counting on the general public.
What's the point? How is this cheaper or more efficient than just regular-ass shelves? I know I am going to be annoyed by this when the person in front of me spends 45 minutes browsing through all the spools on offer .
I know with our store we keep about 2/3rds of the filament in the back because we don't have enough room so when we are down to just 1 or 2 in stock I then have to hope and pray my coworkers put everything away correctly so I can find it in a reasonable time.
Space, but I guess the 'cool' factor also attracts customers. Even if they don't buy filament, people talk about the cool computer store with the rotating shelves. Like on this reddit post for example.
It's more space efficient, the shelves can be set at the perfect height for the product so it minimizes wasted space. It can also use a lot more vertical space that would otherwise only be useful for storage. The browsing problem is a non-issue, you don't browse in the carousel, you have a catalog with samples/swatches in it and then scan the one you want to call it up.
Why's it gotta b cheaper? U don't like cool shit? What's your problem bro
No I don't want "cool shit" when I am shopping. I want to be able to find what I need as quickly as possible.
That's gonna suck when it breaks down and someone needs filament.
Guess how they store replacement parts for these systems…
Should have made it out a printed parts
There's probably a manual mode that involves looking it up in a book and turning a crank
There is, but if I remember right, you have to pull the panel off, and we had a speed handle to spin the motor
Worked in a factory that had one of these for parts. Can confirm was big problem when it broke down
How often did that happen?
Or when some kid inevitably gets their hand caught in it.
It has light curtains that stop the machine if you reach towards the moving bits
That was exactly what I came in to ask about - "Please have a light curtain so someone doesn't ruin it for everyone else"
We have a system like this for parts and component inventory in the R&D lab I work at. There is a light curtain plus additional sensors for the platters that move in and out to check the height of the items you are moving around. Very safe to the point of being annoying.
Which is a source of danger itself! Many tragic accidents came down to safety systems that were too sensitive or otherwise bothersome to the operators and were bypassed.
Thankfully bypassing a safety system is a “Cardinal Rule Violation” at my company and is met with immediate termination. While I find the height sensor annoying, I also know it is there to protect me and the machine. Other “Cardinals” include entering a confined space without a permit / following confined space policy, failing to lock out tag out a machine before performing maintenance, hot work without a hot work permit and removing the guarding from a machine. They take safety seriously to the point of being OSHA VPP Certified.
As someone who works in heavy industry.... I don't think most people understand how many safety protocols and interlocks are in place to try to prevent damage to equipment and the people operating it. I do automation and controls. A solid 25% of my programming work is trying to "operator proof" systems. At the very least. That said....some pretty cowboy stuff still gets done. Just the nature of it I suppose
> I do automation and controls. A solid 25% of my programming work is trying to "operator proof" systems. At the very least. As do I and I concur. Epically at the end of the project. Ready to wrap things up and forget about it, then you get a call and one robot is trying to mate with a second robot while that second robot knocks over a pallet of 60# boxes. All because an XIC was an XIO and operators pressed button A at the exact wrong time. >That said....some pretty cowboy stuff still gets done. Just the nature of it I suppose Yep. You cant check voltage on a powered down panel. You cant check rotation of a motor without running it.
I'm mostly in fluid process control. Refineries and chemical plants, oil production fields, that sort of thing. Accidentally tripping the ESD system and sending a bunch of product to flare or being on site when someone blows up some very expensive piece of equipment is almost a right of passage. I remember electrical miss-wiring a motor that drove a down hole pump. They bump tested it while it was coupled to the gear box and drove it backwards. It is not meant to run backwards. The drive shaft that ran down to the pump 300 or so meters down a 15 cm borehole parted. Next day there was a service rig on site trying to fish out the rod to get production back up. At least $200k, gone in 5 seconds. Just another Tuesday, really
How much time spent making the program resistant to operators hitting the button 10 times in a row....
We had a spinning restaurant in Atlanta that a kid got his head caught in. Kid didn't make it, restaurant doesn't spin anymore.
Ate at that restaurant. Didn’t spin, was disappointed. Kids are stupid and the parents had one job. Hope they think about it every day for the rest of their lives.
That's why you hire the guy who works the back at the bowling alleys. They'll have it up and running before you can come back with a beer in hand
We have a smaller version at work that one has an optional handcrank but is geared really low so you need to turn it for a while
No joke, when these break down, life sucks.... there's a way to manually rotate it with a hand crank... but you have to take the fairings off... big PITA...
They just replace the hamster
It won't take long before items are in the wrong place when someone gets one out and puts it back in the wrong slot, or an employee comes along and tidies away that pile of boxes on the right without care as to where each one should go.
Vertical storage carousels are pretty reliable, they're used a lot in CNC part factories
Vertical carousel systems like this are very not new, and as a result they're currently very reliable. They've been in use in high-capacity manufacturing, pharmaceutical, etc. for over 30 years at this point. Do they break? Sure. But anything else that lets you store a reasonable amount of stuff above shoulder level is either riskier to operate and/or breaks _even more_. These are a really good, really reliable option.
You guys have stores that sell filament?
Microcenter is this shit for this... Inland filament is polymaker or eSun filament, and it's not very expensive. I buy petg for $20/kg and $14/kg
You get PLA for $14 at Microcenter?
I pay that much on Amazon personally.
Yeah 14USD is about what I think my average spool of filament on Amazon has cost me. The only outlyer I can remember is the spool of Polymaker Galaxy Purple ABS I bought for like 40ish bucks.
Ya a few specialty filaments cost more but mostly I stay under $20.
What brands do you recommend? Just starting out and I’d love to save some money on the filament!
I've bought a lot of no name filament and haven't had much issue with most of it. Now I mostly buy stuff like Polymaker, Overture, or Inland, the latter two tend to be relabeled Polymaker. Esun is good too. I mostly avoid silk or matte plas because I've most of my issues with those. Just look out for deals I've gotten different types of Overture PLA for as low as like 11ish dollar for a spool. Just avoid anything that's too cheap and isn't a brand name, I got some black PLA for under 10 bucks for the spool that was printing real well until I hit a spot where the filament dropped from 1.75mm diameter down to as low as 0.7mm
Thank you! This is great information
I've been using Elegoo brand for PLA+. It seems to be in the middle price wise and I never had a problem with it. Geeetech for a spool of PETG and TPU-95A.
You can save a lot by buying a filament pack of 10 at a time.
Spooless.
microcenter is like a hobby electronics and computers super store, so it has stuff for 3d printers.
Yup. They basically killed their digital photography department and replaced it with a 3D printing one. Probably the correct business move, TBF, as much as I miss having them compete with the other digital photography stores out there.
It pains me to say it, but my interest in photography is like zero when I can get fantastic shots with my phone. My X1C on the other hand produces amazing shit.
Sure, but I have interests in both. Same way most people won't spend thousands on printers and materials, most won't spend thousands on cameras and materials. But I'm not oblivious. Photography is becoming more and more of a niche hobby, while 3D printing is becoming more and more mainstream. It makes perfect sense for a business like microcenter to adapt to this change. I just wish the adaptation had been an "addition", rather than a "replacement".
that can also be said about people in photography about 3d printing. different people, different hobbies
Fry's used to sell filament. It was great. But it was also the first department to be a harbinger that they were about to go under. I kept going, and it became so it was just the same sad 5 or 6 spools of filament nobody wanted, and they never got replenished.
Man Fry's used to be cool as shit in the 90's. Hearing that name always takes me back, before the downfall.
Yeah there are two different 3d printer supply stores in the Sacramento area. Its not this fancy, though.
Ah, a kardex. We have a few of these in the warehouse at my job, for parts storage.
It's basically a Paternoster, right? up and over and down the back?
Yep. Just like the machine they use to store rolls of carpet at Home Depot/Lowes.
Was at an insurance place that had this for all their hard copies of customer documents.
I'd rather walk up to a shelf, grab the filament, and be on my way.
It's not entirely clear from the video, but this design can allow for more efficient use of space, because it can extend above or below where people can reach, and it can turn a wall of the building into effectively a 2 sided aisle, by allowing more use of the space. It lets them stock more filament varieties.
Agreed. I just had a conversation about a paternoster design for gridfinity bins and was making the same point when someone chided in about shelves being simpler. Shelves are fine if you have the layout and floorspace for them. A vertical system like this is nice when you have unused space above/below and it minimizes the need for additional aisles to access rows of shelves. Plus, if you use a good inventory system with it, it can be very efficient to find what you're looking for quickly.
There's a peternoster elevator close to why I live, I need to go ride it again because I haven't done so in years
Shelves are also cheap, require little to no maintenance, and don't break down in any meaningful way outside of being totally destroyed.
You seem to have missed the part about not having the room for shelves or access to them, which is the entire point of a system like this. Paternoster systems like this are timesavers as they can provide single point of access.to inventory on demand in limited spaces. Companies don't install massive systems like this for no reason. They are a proven useful solution for limited floor space applications.
I agree 100% because it takes quite a while if there's a lot of people waiting to get filament. But I do like the samples of filament that they have to scan. That part makes it easier to see how it looks printed rather than guessing.
They have this at my microcenter. No need to scan anything. Just look through the swatches and find the color on the shelf.
> I agree 100% because it takes quite a while if there's a lot of people waiting to get filament. If anything they should probably keep the most commonly sold colors out on a shelf across from it for that reason.
Saves floor space and makes it super easy to stock too You scan a barcode and it lights up where to put it, you don’t ever need to put shit in the same spot either it just assigns it wherever We have a few Kardex machines here that are about 3 storeys tall and sorts all our parts and makes it so much easier on stocking and taking what would have taken a few aisles
This does seem like a comical amount of over engineering to just have some boxes on a shelf haha. My microcenter has had them on the shelf for years and seems to work just fine. But hey if the stores got the money to burn might as well make getting filament as cool and futuristic as humanly possible 👌
It saves tons of floorspace. We bought one at my previous employer and we litterally could store the same amoutn of material in about 15% of the floorspace.
[удалено]
If Microcenter had 4X the variety of colors and materials i'd probably go there over ordering on Amazon a lot more. They're also in a big city with several colleges, so I bet that helps too.
The problem with broadening the selection is storage. Either you end up devoting entire aisles to filament, or you box it up and have an employee search for it when a customer wants it. Don't think the machine is going to replace conventional shelves, it's just there as an extra.
That's cool. Reminds me of carpet carousels at home improvement stores. I'm just surprised here is al because unless they use a ton of vertical space it doesn't seem like it would be all that beneficial compared to stacking boxes. Even kustw watching this I can see at least 1/4" gaps between every package. I definitely believe you when you say it saves space but that seems like it would add up.
> This does seem like a comical amount of over engineering to just have some boxes on a shelf haha. I mean, isn't that what can be said about everything 3d print?
Yeah, this is *"Tesla engineers would rather design a robot to hold a bucket under a leaky ceiling to catch every drop versus just going up and fixing the roof tile."* levels of over engineering.
You'd go through many shelves to find what you need, rather than scan a barcode and have it tell you the exact location in seconds? It's not like it's a complicated or long process
I can see this being an issue if there are a few people looking for filament.
Just wait until you hear how libraries work. It will blow your mind!
thats a terrible analogy.
I wouldn't be sorting through shelves. If I wanted red petg I'd walk to the petg filament section, find red and grab it and leave. Now I have to walk up to this machine and wonder wtf it is and if im allowed to use it, get a worker to explain to me how to use it, wait in line for the other 6 people in front of me to do the same thing, finally get my chance, see my filament isnt even in stock. Leave with a wasted 30 minutes of my life.
Or they could still do the barcode thing to light it up for you but just on shelves without the unnecessary spinning. If they were even smarter they would just sort the shelves by color so if you knew you needed a blue you'd just walk over to blue.
Looks way over engineered to me. I'm surprised a mechanical system won out, over say just a gravity fed dispenser. Something similar to, but obviously suited for filament boxes: https://plexidisplays.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/8/8/880-1860.jpg
I haven’t been back to Charlotte in like five years and I have actively avoided doing so but dammit a micro Center might be the one thing that makes me go back for a visit
Swear to god I'm gonna go bonkers. I'm a few towns over and can't make it over for the grand opening because of a bad starter in my car, and I'd get in trouble for taking the work van.
It's gonna be dangerous for me because I'm in one of the buildings in uptown too. Lunch time is gonna get expensive really quick. 🤣 Hope your able to get your car fixed soon so you can get over there to check it out.
Just 3D print a new starter bro
Have you tried hitting the starter with a hammer? Might get a few good starts with that method lol.
Do it with the butt of the handle of the hammer first. See if it helps, before taking a good whack with the head (giggity). I've seen people use the head of the hammer and crack the magnets in the starter going too aggressive.
https://preview.redd.it/jlefzd6qv84d1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8af259c437f01847c56f3275fba9931df74a041
Roll start and park on a hill. Oh wait..America. probably auto.
Yes, sadly.
Great, now I need a kardex remstar for my home office
Very cool, but with a big fancy distribution system like that you would think that they would've built inventory controls to tell you whether or not a specific filament is out of stock before it even moves.
I was talking to the manager yesterday about that. He said that the company who makes the machine stocked it for them but didn't get the inventory amounts correctly entered. He showed me an example of an out of stock fillament why scanning the sample and it gave an alert on the screen saying it was out of stock. He said that they were going to be taking everything out and redoing the inventory settings this week before the official grand opening.
God that will be so cool for the 1.5 months it works and then a complete nightmare for the rest of the time that store exists. I give that thing 1 year max before it's replaced by a simple shelf.
I agree 100%!
I've only been to the Columbus microcenter and I will say they aren't great at refilling the filaments on the shelf. Also you might see what you're looking on one shelf one time and then it's a completely different spot the next time. I've never complained. I feel lucky to be 20 minutes from a microcenter.
https://preview.redd.it/dpg9isdqj84d1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7eacceff36ea7bdca452bddff999ee2e86f543f They have these printed samples that you can go through to see how the filament looks printed and then you take the sample up to the machine and scan it to get your spool. I like that I can see the samples so I know how the filament looks printed out but I like just being able to go up to a shelf and grab what I want.
I need a booklet of those gonna be forever tho until my microcenter gets all the new shit
The Columbus location is about 20 minutes from me as well. For being the corporate home store they do lack a bit in the 3d printing area.
"oh, that color is wonderful" \*\*\*hand is cut off\*\*\*
🤣.....Thankfully the sensors a bit too sensitive to where it stops instantly even if someone is too close to it. Let alone put their hands near it while moving.
easy, just print a new hand.
Just be patient and wait for your hand to rotate back around, god people
See you at the party, Richter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLdCv0lENVw
Oh those are great.... When they work right, which is about half the time. Then you have to wait for the one guy in the country who knows how to service them to show up.
Don't get me wrong this is neat but seems like a overkill solution that doesn't actually solve much of a problem. People say it saves space, but you loose space by having extra mechanisms for this to even work (which also now need to be maintained), also seems like it would just be slow and tedious after the new neat machine factor wears off. And wouldn't it be better if it just gave you the product vending machine style?
The microcenter in ohio is literally a warehouse wtf
Neat. I honestly prefer how it’s done in dallas. On lots of shelves and in big piles on the floor. Makes it pretty easy to walk up and get what you want without all these extra steps.
We have this fucking thing for our parts inventory. It’s god awful
we need microcenters in Canada :(
Am I the only one that thought of the bath token cards from Howls Moving Castle?
A storage system like this, where the items revolve inside of a cabinet, is called a pater noster system and are used mostly to store archives or in technical companies that use a lot of tiny components .
what the hell, they installed a filament Kardex? lmao
It's cool, but kind of hilarious that it doesn't maintain an inventory. I also didn't see a price anywhere. If you don't know the price, it kind of invites people to pull something out, say "it's how much?" and then just stick it back anywhere.
This seems like a nightmare in a retail setting.
That seems unnecessary complicated?
https://preview.redd.it/3h62nqfdxe4d1.png?width=580&format=png&auto=webp&s=158b0def077cd9499158469a6d4f5ac02b700ea5 FAAAACK
I've already seen this movie. It was called Rogue One.
Rogue One did it better
This is bad ass
Duck me lol, so I'ma scan a card that's definitely not gonna get lost, find out the location of the spool, walk over 10m to the left, while someone else scans a new card making the whole array move and putting my own filament out of reach? Never seen such a dumb machine. Honestly, if they want to come up with something, keep the sample prints and make a vending machine, we're there's one slot for the filament to come out and include a return slot, for when the person doesn't want to buy the roll after all.
Omnicells are so cool, i have used them in the VA
I so want a microcenter near me, I think they are opening more, as they have some in new york city now which is like 6 hours from me. I think they used to be mainly west coast before so its getting closer. We really have nothing like this near me anymore, including computer parts in stores, best buy/walmart/target have minimal but it doesn't really count.
i thought those were disposables and i was so jealous. actually im still jealous but whatever.
Super cool. Its really hard finding filament at Microcenter without a card catalog like this lol
My MC doesn’t have this and now I’m gonna be sad. Still love MC!
Interesting. Now show us the printer sales!
They were selling a lot of printers but the sales person there didn't know anything about 3D printers. He kept telling people that the Creality Ender 3 V2 did automatic bed leveling straight out of the box but didn't tell them that it only does automatic bed leveling if you buy the optional CR Touch. 🤦♀️ I told a few people the correct info before I left because I can't stand people being told false information.
I was there yesterday. Didn’t buy anything as the line went around the building.
Yea the lines were insane! I went on Friday and Saturday. Each time it took us 30-45 minutes to checkout. Shockingly the line was shorter on Saturday than it was on Friday.
This is cooler than I expected.
Oh holy shit, I was going to go yesterday but had to postpone. This is awesome.
Damn! I sure wish we had a Microcenter close to me!
I used to feel so lucky to have a Microcenter near me but now I’m kind of jealous.
I would love to buy fillament this way if there were actually a Microcenter in CT. And properly located in CT. I'm so jealous.
Oh I didn’t know this was open yet. I’ll probably have to check this out this week.
I wonder if the staffers at this Microcenter zealously guard their ~~personal print~~ demo print jobs from all curious customers looking to shop in the store.
Kardex machines are sick
And the crazy thing is that entire contraption is 3d printed!
It's about damn time
I was there earlier today. Some stuff was in the wrong place, but if you scanned something and it pulled up an empty bay, the display gave you an option to try the next location. Tbh, the biggest issue was morons trying to reach through the light curtain to look at filament WHILE THE MACHINE WAS MOVING. I had to ask several people to please stop doing that so I could get my filament and be on my way.
I had a bunch of people doing that when I was trying to get filament when I was there on Friday. I explained to them if they keep doing that nobody will be able to get filament because the machine goes into an emergency stop mode. They would just look at me like I'm stupid and say it's not a big deal and that they are just grabbing the filament they want. 🤦♀️
I mean, this is cool and all that, but Inland is the filament that has given me the most problems.
I said I’d never fall in love again
So excited to have this in my town, can’t wait to go!
I fix Mega Mat Carousels at my job. Cool to see it used in other industries.
I am grateful there's a microcenter near me. We don't have this yet though.
I just envision some idiot putting their arm in their and getting it ripped off... I know there are safeties involved but still ekk!
Is inland any good? I was somewhat afraid to try it.
Sex
So unneccessary.
Of course they would put a microcenter there after I move away.
We use these in industrial manufacturing for chang parts
I'm so impressed
If there's one thing that I'm jealous about America is that the concept of microcenter exist
Booking a ticket to north carolina
None in Canada D:
You guys are so lucky with Microcenter. It's literally the perfect store for me. We only have small businesses that sell the stuff they do and it's usually just a counter with a small display area. You can't walk around all the aisles
I need this too.
Too bad I've had nothing but problems with my past 5 rolls of inland
Yeah its a fancy shelf 😂
Holy shit i can’t wait to go, missed opening day but here i come!
Sometimes i get jealoux of Americans, >75% of the times its because of micro center
Are these Pantone validated or something? Oh God no, imagine how _many more_ filaments to be Pantone validated, plus however many materials assuming it's not just "oops all PLA"
Looks pretty sane and organized to me.
I'ts gotta be a full time job just managing all that.
I wish we had micro center in WA.
Why can’t Microcenter exist over here
https://preview.redd.it/1ifi1ynapc4d1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1044322d3257cd4df4e8fc9cdf0e547d57110ca7
At my microcenter the filament organization makes zero sense, the employees can never find it either ("it says we have it in stock, I'm sorry I don't see it"), and it doesn't help that the boxes seem to change designs all the time (for the same exact filament). I imagine this automated system would still rely on the workers to properly put the filament where it goes and so would end up just as bad. Not to mention, every time I go there are always like 5 people browsing the filament isle, if they now have to wait on each other to use the rolodex machine wouldn't that actually take longer to get your filaments?
That's awesome! I really wanted to go when we visited Charlotte but we didn't have the time. 😢
This is honestly a great storage idea in general.
I'm so excited for Friday!!
That is amazing! I have legit gone to microcenter, gotten annoyed I can't really browse filaments properly, and left. I've only ordered online "for pickup" since then. Although, I wonder if the whole thing is protected by a continuous interrupt beam. Those rolling cages are *very* dangerous. Usually they have a key to operate and only employees have keys. If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, big hardware stores will have carpet and electrical wire on these (although they look different).
I like my way: sit in the car, place an order for pickup, drive to store, walk to pickup counter, pay, and leave. Probably faster than dealing with this, too.
Sick! I hope the St. Louis Park microcenter gets something like that
Stop ! I can only get so erect
I like the green light and two lights approaching it to grab your attention.
That is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Anyone know where to find in store filament in LA? We dont have micro centers smh
I have to show my son this
That's crazy. My Microcenter just had a long wall of shelves along with some island shelves.
That's awesome
I wish there was a Microcenter near me.
Fun fact they use this for mass file storage in hospitals..
It's so beautiful!
I want one.
This is like the first time seeing the claw in Toy Story 🥹🤣
Going to Charlotte for the first time today. I will check it out