My experience thus far. Late shipping times and missing+broken parts

I want to say upfront. Support has been good as always. Very fast to respond, and always right there. Everything else from start to end thus far with the hdm has been almost comicly bad. Lead time, sales, communication,missing parts, broken parts. You name it. I am posting this here publicly to draw attention to this problem.

Some backround, I am a multi year owner of a nomad 3 and active participant of this forum and the reddit hobby cnc sub. The hdm will be my third cnc. I have used support in the past for a multitude of small things, every one of them they have been fast to address my concerns. For this post I will keep it specific to the problems I have experienced with the hdm itself.

Normally I would not take to a forum to complain but I am actually very bothered to the point of dissapointment and I have not even gotten to run the machine yet. This an expensive machine. No way around it. You have 3 types of people who buy this machine. People who are in a place of life to be able to purchase this machine as a first machine and research pointed them here as this is a killer machine. Its only real competition being the printnc pro. People who already runs small buisnesses and can justify the purchase with savings from that and justification of making money back.Then there is hobby users who have saved up for a long time to be able to purchase the halo product. I fall somewhere inbetween the second and third person.

Here is the current experience I have had thus far.

Ordered on october 17th with a projected delivery within 2 weeks.

  • Emailed sales for an update on the 25th as I had gotten only a confirmed email at this point.
  • Called 4 times on different days over the week after that and got no pickup, still no email reply.
  • November 1st was suggested I email support instead by willadams, so I did and got a reply in 3 minutes saying they would email sales in illinois to try to get me an update.
  • Got an email from sales in illinois 2 days later, November 3rd (a thursday) saying my machine was scheduled to ship early next week.
  • I sent another email on monday novmeber 14th 2 weeks later asking if something happened because my machine STILL had not shipped and I was getting rather anxious as this is a very large purchase for me and the leadup to this was not inspiring confidence despite my previous good expiurences I have had.
  • Email reply on the 15th saying they are diligently working to get the machine shipped. At this point I had given up on trying to get a straight answer.
  • November 28th the machine ships. No phone call like I have read a few others received just an email from both the automated system and someone else a day after the automated email came through.
  • November 30th I get a call from R + L carriers. They pulled up with a tractor trailer that had a lift gate and used a motorized pallet jack to drop it off right in my garage. In and out in 5 minutes hassle free.

At this point I thought to myself finally its here in hand, no shipping damage. I can finally get to enjoying this thing. I do not have my power adapters yet as they arrive the day im typing this, But it did not take away from my excitment of finally having it in hand and the issues were over with, sh*t happens right? That excitment quickly dwindled as I unboxed the machine. To save the time, here is a list of what I found in the order I found them.

  • Right hand y axis thumb screw is almost fallen out.
  • One of this shipping 2x4s was not even bolted all the way down to let the injeciton molded clamp grab the frame.
  • Vfd mount is cracked from over torquing it (possibility of being bumped in shipping).
  • Vfd fan cover is cracked right off.
  • Vfd manual rpm control button is cracked almost in half.
  • Unknown plastic clip in the enclosure.
  • Aviation connector and coolant tubes on the spindle were not even hand tight.
  • All three control buttons were so loose they were rattling out.
  • Vfd enclosure is binding when opening and closing so hard it has to flex the vfd to the side to operate.
  • Balanced collet nut has machining errors on it from someone not pulling it away from the lathe correctly.
  • Power outlet on the control box is cut at an angle.
  • Main mounting plate in the control box is missing a screw.
  • Cable tie mounts in the control box are not being used ( not sure if this is by design or not but as an almost ready to run machine I expect its not).
  • Cover for the front button mounts is missing 2 screws.
  • All 4 drag chain mounting points are only using 2 screws. (I thought this might be on purpose but they all have a third hole spot with a tapped hole under it).
  • A good 30-45% of my screws and bolts were finger loose using t handle allens.
  • Almost all of the bolts to the hybrid table were not even finger tight.

I have not contacted support yet as I am waiting till I can power up my machine and verify everything is working as it should. I understand some people will see this post as being overly critical. I feel its important to share personal experience when there is this many problems. This is a 6,000$ machine when all is said and done. This is not a cheap machine. I expected more then un-answered phone calls and no replies to emails for a halo product.

Support, I know some of you are here. I thank you for your effort you guys are always fast and helpful. As for the entire illinois facility and sales department I have no comment. Thanks for reading my venting and frustrations. Below are some photos.













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Hi Rob

There is allot in here that I’d like to address, the 2 Screws per drag chain is normal, but the damage to things like the VFD is not acceptable.

I’ve asked support to keep me posted as to when your ticket comes in.

Please submit a ticket (we rely on a help scout to manage our support cases as such we can’t escalate this post to a ticket, but it will get associated).

Rest assured we will make things right.

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I had issues also when mine came but I will say C3D went out of their way to make it right. I know it’s frustrating but hang in there.

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Small update

Fresh install of carbide motion to 575 and config sent for the hdm with the spindle configuration for the hdm. Spindle receives input and changes frequency when asked to jog but does not go into run. The command is sending an N0 M3S1000. Manually sending N0 M3S9000 to get over the 8000rpm minimum still results in the vfd changing its frequency on the screen but not going into run. Holding the jog on the pendant manually does result in the spindle going into run at 20hz.

Support ticket has been sent.

M3s1000 is below the min that spindle will spin. I had this same issue with carbide motion. I use g-sender instead .

Is the spindle enable button clicked on the front?

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Going along and finding the instruction manual online in bed here, I think I have my idea of the spindle lockout backwards. Will double check this afternoon when i wake up.

Update

As it turns out I had the function of the spindle lockout confused and was trying to operate it in reverse.
I have suggested to support to include a qr code or a link address on the final inspection sheet to the manual as I did not receive one and had to go looking. This way if they dont ship a manual or it was forgotten there is still a fast and easy way to find it.
Support is replacing the damaged parts and sending the missing hardware.

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