The Voron project has sort of a neat thing where they give out serial numbers for completed builds.
Might be cool if mpcnc did as well. What do y’all think?
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That would be cool, how do you start something like that 6 1/2 years in though? Maybe the next version of one of the CNC’s? Heck maybe the printer.
New printer would be good place to start. Could design a small spot for a serial number plate that could be printed or CNC’d after. (Or maybe an optional nice aluminum engraved one sold by V1 eng)
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Time to start designing a MPFLE!
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?
Mostly printed full license engraver?
Cool. I want a single digit serial number for my printer, please! (Well, I suppose that it’s not done yet, but the printed parts are done, as well as the electronics, and I have some of the milled parts…)
I suppose it’s too late for a single digit serial number for my Zen V2.
It actually might make more sense to serialize sold kits. Serializing something that the user sources/prints themselves is only for bragging rights. Serial numbers are usually done for tracking and manufacturer support. I suppose that if you know that serial number XYZ123 was self-sourced, then sold as a used machine, if the person who buys it comes to you for support, you can definitively say that you didn’t sell those parts.
Of course this all falls down when someone (like me, for example) changes out major parts after the build is complete. I’m now running an entirely different family of firmware on my Primo, and will soon br running a whole lot of other different parts, too.
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#2
I have #3, and #4 sitting here waiting for rails and some Red.
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Ehh. I disagree about only serializing the sold kits. Sucks for those of us who didn’t buy the kit because they wanted a little customization. You could however suffix the serial numbers with v1 or something for the mpcnc’s built with the official kit.
Serial Number IMO should only be issued after proof of successful build! User has option to print their own serial plate or buy an engraved one. 1/16" copper or aluminum plate would be handsome.
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Mostly
Printed
Fiber
Laser
Engraver
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It’s all for fun. I don’t think Ryan is drowning in so many customers that he can’t track them without a serial number.
We need something that creates a global (literally) count.
Ryan could keep track of them, posting, “Welcome to the crew, you’re number 76!”. But he’s already pretty busy and I would rather him not get bogged down with that. Plus, he may make mistakes.
One of us could do it. But if many of us tried, we may end up giving out the same number twice.
Or we could have a self service serial number on a website. Sort of like take-a-number at the deli counter (is that something people outside the us recognize?). Some number might get lost or people may pick more than one. It would also need some server side counting. I’m not sure how to do that on something like github.io.
How does Voron do it?
Would it be annoying to make a giant forum thread where each post’s number was the serial number?
That sounds easy and fun. Picture of your complete build and a print of your number as proof it works?! How hard would it be to make a customizable number plate on thingiverse?
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I think you want a low barrier of entry to get the number. Maybe a post is enough to grab it, and then you can print or carve or scribe the number.
Is this too rough? It would be better with pen up. But you could draw that on the spoil board in 2 mins.
Maybe an inkscape or estlcam tutorial would be better.
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I think Voron uses both a Reddit bot AND a discord bot.
Both of those bots must be hooked up to the same database that keeps count with a map of users to serial numbers.
I haven’t looked into this forum’s code at all, but if @serialrequestbot event could send a webhook, we could easily write up a quick service to handle that. AWS lambda+dynamodb.
Probably better to keep that bot built into the forum though. Is forum code open source?
While that’s functional, it’s kinda boring. 
EVEN BETTER, This bot could respond back with not only the serial number, but the gcode as well.
That would be pretty awesome. The forum is discourse (it gets confused with discord in my head all the time). There is a plugin system and it is open source.
Well… Since I brought up serial numbers, I will be happy look into writing the plugin. I’m thinking something like this. User would post to a specific thread in the forum. They would post a picture/video with their completed build and would type this in the post:
“@serialbot -model {mpcnc|zenxy|mp3dp|lowrider}”
- Only one serial number per post.
- Database stores the date, serial number, username, email, model type in the DB table. (I’ll have to look closer into discourse plugins… but something like that)
I can’t promise the generated gcode right away… But I think it’ll be doable?
What do y’all think of this?
I bet you there is a way to store it in the forum software. I imagine there are a bunch of caveats, like what happens in a backup/restore scenario.
Pretty neat though.