As some folks may have noticed in the last couple days, eBay kit sales have been suspended and several listings removed. Listing watchers and past buyers have reportedly been sent a strongly worded warning message by eBay regarding what they view as a violation of their "Firearms and Accessories policy" though this message is distinctly clear of any actual definition of what they find to be in violation. To be clear, this is internal to eBay only and doesn't reflect any change in the larger project or our distribution of kits and development of the project.
-For the immediate future, prospective buyers are encouraged to contact me directly if they are looking for a complete kit. Otherwise, the FLEX was designed specifically to be built with easy to source parts; finding the parts and building out the BOM will take a couple hours and cost only about 10-20% more than the full kit, and I encourage folks to take that route.
-If people are more comfortable working within eBay and its buyer/transaction protections, the parts required to build the machine will be listed and available through our storefront within a few days, but will probably be split up between 6-10 different listings (I realize that this is an annoyance for everyone -and have already been receiving no shortage of complaints for the current version being split between four different parts- but that's just another cost of buying through eBay with it's rather limiting user policies and it doesn't currently look like we have an alternative)
-The 2.2 release is getting re-tooled slightly, and the project will be known as the "FLEX Mill" from here on out, since the Ghost Gunner bit was catching us all sorts of unwanted attention. To be distinctly developed separate from the the GGFLEX distro, documentation and releases will also only be available through my fork of the project. Users wanting DDCut compatible software and hardware should refer to the old main distro, since we're now operating with SKR1.3 and Rumba32 boards running Marlin2 and Smoothie firmware for v2.2 onward.
-This change has jumpstarted our work to get a 'Retail' kit version out and start approaching prospective retailers. The OEM working with us on the kits has agreed to prioritize these kits and work towards getting a run of around 800 kits out by early August. We're trying to avoid pre-orders and direct sales, and will instead be selling through our affiliated retailers.
Getting back to the eBay issue, it should be mentioned that they are factually (and legally) way off base, but also totally free to make this determination in the maintenance of their own website and its listings. They're purposefully keeping the wording of their violation notice nebulous because they can't quite nail down what specifically was in violation of their terms, and this is exactly as expected...
From past experience with them, there's absolutely no point in trying to work with them on resolving the issue and nailing down a concrete definition of what they find to be a violation. Instead, listings on eBay will be used from here on for individual parts and upgrades listings. As mentioned previously, an updated 'Builder Kit' that requires the purchase of more individual components distinct from the GG2 hardware clone build will probably be up within a few days.
The past 2.0/2.1 kit provided was in a DIY format and supplied without any code, material, or jigs specifically because it was supplied to build a multipurpose, generic format CNC machine. There is no legal or technical basis for the kits to have been considered in any way a violation of their policy based on one single intended use case out of many.
We will continue to post updates and stay on top of legal changes as they might come to affect our community and users, but realistically we're to the point where literally any 3D-printer or desktop CNC machine could be considered a violation of the above "Firearms and Accessories policy" in the hands of a familiar enough user, and we're only really concerned with the larger legal aspects anyways.
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