Why I’ve Gone Quiet, and What’s Really Going On

June 2, 2026

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Don’t care for excuses or drama? Me too. Skip straight to Meanwhile, in the batcave at the bottom. That’s where the “cool 3D printer shit” lives. And my glass is half full 🙂  The rest of this is the honest mess: silence, compliance, refunds, and why.

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Let me get straight to it.

First, something I don’t say enough. Most of you have been incredible. Patient, sharp, supportive, the kind of people who knew exactly what they were backing: a small shop building a serious machine at a snail’s pace. I admit it. I run slow and smooth over fast and rough, every time. Maybe that’s a fault on my end. But you understood the deal, and you’ve given me room to do this right. I won’t forget it.

There’s also a small, loud group, mostly out of Germany and Austria, who’ve decided I’m a fraud and made it their mission to prove it. I’ll get to what that’s cost everyone in a minute. But I’m not going to let the loudest voices make me forget that the majority of my customers have been the opposite of that.

Now, the silence.

I’ve been quiet for weeks. Not because I’m hiding, not because I’m gone, not because I stopped caring about the people waiting on machines. I’ve been quiet because I was advised, directly, to get Czech export-control counsel before replying to anyone. Including you.

That’s not me dodging. That’s the law. When you’re in the middle of an export-control review under EU Regulation 2021/821 and Czech export legislation, every word you put in writing becomes part of the record. So I shut up and did it right instead of running my mouth and making it worse. That’s the whole reason for the silence. I wasn’t ignoring you. I was protecting the company, and myself, by not freelancing answers while the classification was still being worked out.

I know that’s frustrating. You paid, you waited, and then I went dark. I get it. But understand the spot I was actually in. I wasn’t choosing silence, it was forced on me. The alternative, firing off “definitely fine” emails before counsel cleared them, is exactly how a founder turns a paperwork review into a real problem.

So here’s what I can tell you, plainly.

 

A hard word about the reporting

A handful of people got frustrated with delays and reported STōN-3D to various authorities and committees. One guy in Austria called the police on me. Over a late 3D printer.

I’ll say this plainly, because pretending otherwise helps no one: every report directly slows everything down. Each one generates more documentation, more inquiries, more filings, more time I spend answering officials instead of building and shipping your machine. It is the exact opposite of helping. If your goal is to get your printer faster, reporting me is the single most effective way to delay it.

I understand the lack of trust. I do. You paid money, you waited, and you don’t know me personally. That’s fair. But understanding it doesn’t make me want to spend my days writing reassurance emails. It makes me want to notarize, stamp, and ship. That’s the only thing that actually gets you your printer.

 

What happened this year

STōN-3D grew from one guy building printers into an international manufacturer. That growth dragged in a wall of legal obligations that didn’t exist before. Every time an issue surfaced, I dealt with it. Here’s the real list.

CE & Product Safety. Reviews flagged quality problems with some externally supplied wiring assemblies and crimped connections. I bought the correct tooling, rebuilt the assemblies, tightened inspection, and raised supplier requirements. Expensive and frustrating, and non-negotiable. In the Czech Republic, CE violations carry fines up to roughly €2 million, plus market withdrawal, stock seizure, and possible criminal proceedings. That’s not a risk I gamble with on your machine.

Radio Equipment Directive (RED, 2014/53/EU). Concerns came in about wireless functionality. I didn’t argue, I redesigned. The printer now has both hardware and software controls to physically disable wireless. Want an Ethernet-only machine? You can have one. Done.

VAT, Taxes & International Sales. As EU sales expanded, I built out VAT and OSS reporting. Nobody buys a printer because they’re excited about tax compliance. The tax authorities are. As the company’s jednatel I can be held personally liable for unpaid tax, so this got done.

Customs, Tariffs & Export Documentation. Turns out exporting is not “slap a label on it and wish FedEx luck.” Wrong classifications, customs reviews, returned shipments, tariff declarations, country-specific import rules, all now part of daily life. Several shipments got delayed or sent back while I corrected procedures. Every mistake cost time and money. Every one became a lesson I won’t repeat.

Export Compliance & Dual-Use Review (EU 2021/821 + Czech law). Most recently I’ve been working through export-classification and compliance questions under Regulation (EU) 2021/821 and Czech export-control law. Our printers run engineering-grade materials and sell worldwide, so classification matters and has to be done properly, by counsel, not by me guessing. That work has meant technical documentation, export and customs records, notarized documents, administrative filings, and engagement with authorities. I’m cooperating fully and following legal advice on what I can and can’t say while it’s in progress. That’s the real reason some questions are getting “I can’t comment yet” instead of a full answer. It’s not evasion, it’s process.

 

Why I don’t just ignore it and keep shipping

A few people have flat-out asked me that. Why not just send the machines and deal with the paperwork later?

Here’s why. Get export controls wrong in the EU and you’re not looking at a fine you shrug off. Czech penalties for dual-use breaches run up to 50 million CZK, roughly 2 million euro, and deliberate breaches carry prison time under the Criminal Code. That’s not a number I read past. I have four kids and a wife I’m not willing to gamble against a shipping deadline. No printer on earth is worth my family watching me get walked out in handcuffs because I cut a corner to make a customer happy this week.

CE and the rest are the same logic on a smaller scale. CE violations alone reach roughly €2 million here, plus stock seizure and market bans. I’m the company’s jednatel, which means a chunk of this lands on me personally, not behind some corporate wall.

So when authorities ask for documentation, I stop and provide it. I don’t guess, I don’t ignore it, and I don’t hope it disappears. I do the work and I do it by the book. That’s the only version of this where you get a machine AND there’s still a company standing behind it next year.

 

Compliance roadmap

Area	Requirement	What We Did
CE Compliance	Product safety and conformity	Rebuilt wiring assemblies, upgraded inspection, tightened supplier quality
RED (2014/53/EU)	Wireless / radio compliance	Added hardware RF disable + software controls
VAT & OSS	EU tax compliance	Implemented VAT and OSS reporting
Customs & Export Docs	International shipping	Fixed classifications, declarations, shipping records
Dual-Use Export Controls (EU 2021/821)	Export classification & compliance	Documentation reviews, record submissions, end-user procedures

 

Refunds, the real numbers

This is the hot topic, so let me lay it out with no spin, because you deserve the actual math.

When I started, I was hoping to clear maybe 100 or 200 euro per machine. Machines cost me 1,100 to 1,500 each to build, depending on whether you were a founder or a later pre-order. So picture 200 people, 200 euro margin if I’m being generous to myself. That was the dream on paper.

Reality went the other way. Between certifications, bad parts, re-dos, and employees who cost me training time and then no-call no-showed, the real margin wasn’t 200 euro. It was zero at best, and honestly far into the red. So when the preorder dates blew past, which is on me, around 100 people asked for refunds. Completely understandable. I missed the date, you get your money. But that refund total, roughly 110,000 to 150,000 euro, I had to cover myself. That was my nest egg. If you can even call it that.

Here’s the part that’s hard to say out loud. I ordered your parts the day you ordered your printer. So when you backed out, the money was already spent on components sitting on my bench. I only had enough insurance money to pay most of you back, not all, not instantly. I know how that sounds. I know it feeds the doubt. It makes me sick, because I care a lot about getting every one of you your money.

So here’s the truth on refunds: I do not argue disputes. Ever. If I was late, you deserve your money, full stop. The only problem is I’m slow to recover, not unwilling. I’ve personally paid back nearly 90,000 euro of it already. Some still remains. I clear 1 to 8 refunds a month, funded by side money from my old inventions. That’s literally how I’m doing it. It’s not fast, and I won’t insult you by pretending it is. But I always recover when I get hit hard. I always have. You’ll get paid.

 

Where this leaves me

I won’t pretend shipments have been flowing. They haven’t. The few that went out got returned over documentation, even paperwork that was approved beforehand. That’s the wall I’ve spent the month tearing down: getting the export and customs side locked tight so machines leave and stay gone, instead of boomeranging back at my own cost. I’m also working to bring in a manufacturing partner so we can scale past what one exhausted founder can do alone. More throughput, more testing, more boxes leaving for good.

Let me be blunt about my own position, because you deserve the truth and not a brave face. I have put my entire nest egg into this company. As I write this, my personal account balance is one dollar. Yep.  Everything I had is in these machines and this compliance work.

I’m still here. Still building. Broke, buried in paperwork, and not going anywhere. I will get there in the end.

 

Thank you

To the customers who stayed patient and reasonable: thank you, seriously. You gave me room to solve problems instead of creating new ones. You kept this company alive through some genuinely brutal stretches. I won’t forget it.

We’re still here, fuckers. Still building. Getting machines out the door for good (or at least I make that my goal every morning)

I didn’t stop. Not once. The real progress starts showing the moment machines are in your hands, and I’m getting there one at a time. Every day I’m hopeful the packages start leaving smooth and legal, and we’re closer than we’ve ever been. This year taught me to move careful and not take things on faith the way I used to. No promises. I am now much more careful about the unknowns and my promises. What else can go wrong, right? …

 

Meanwhile, in the batcave. (The cool shit)

The lawyers say shut up. The customers say speak up. So I’m doing neither. Classic.

Finishing the paperwork, keeping quiet where I’m told, and building. That last part is the only thing fully in my hands. Here’s what came out of it.

CHEAT sets nozzle temperature for what the printer is about to do. Eases down before easy stretches, climbs before hard ones, keeps infill melted while you crank the speed. You don’t think about it. The gcode just prints right.

Everyone who tries this dies on the same hill: timing. The slicer’s plan isn’t reality, and the gap between plan and what the machine actually does can run up to 13 seconds in the worst cascades. For temperature control, 13 seconds late is dead. So I stopped trusting the plan and got in front of the actual commands as they hit the heaters. Last Benchy, worst-case timing error was 53 milliseconds. Median 22. Not seconds. Milliseconds.

TEACH is the other half, and the part I’m proudest of. CHEAT predicts, TEACH checks, every print, comparing what was planned against what the machine actually delivered. Picture industrial use, same part over and over: it tells you what to tighten, watches the next run, and learns locally for your part. It can even make the change itself if you let it. You don’t hand-tune any of this. You print, it reports, you decide. Including the decision to shut the whole thing off.

One real report, straight off our hardware, below. It’s interactive: sweep to select an area, zoom in, and toggle lines on and off like raw flow or fan speed. Those are just the defaults. The layer view shows you exactly when and where each temperature change happened.

Full html, interactive. taken from the actual printer, after the print. Smokestack on the benchy is cold. Fast areas on hull and top roof are hot.