Thank You Lulzbot! Another great customer service report.

I want to give a BIG THANK YOU to the people at Lulzbot.
I bought my Kittaz just over a year ago, though, I didn’t get it up and running until mid summer. Well, at the beginning of the month, 1 day shy of the first anniversary of the purchase date, the fan in the power supply failed. I had read another thread that had mentioned that Lulzbot is now using a new vendor for their power supplies. I checked the website to see if it was available for purchase, but the new supply is not currently offered online. I decided to send an email to inquire if the new power supply was available for purchase, explaining that I was experiencing problems with the PS fan. They responded saying they were sorry to hear about my PS problem and unfortunately, the Kittaz has 30 day warranty. However, they said in this case, they would provide me with a replacement Power supply. Well, it arrived yesterday, and it looks to be a huge improvement over the previous version. I particularly like the power switch on the supply as the old version, the fan would continue to run after the switch on the controller was turned off.
Now, that’s great customer service!!

Thank you,

Scott A Ramos

I just had this same issue, but was disappointed to learn that they changed their policy earlier this year and no longer replace faulty Pengchu supplies. The sales department offered to sell me the TAZ 5 supply for $195. I ended up buying this supply from IT-Works:

https://itworks3d.com/product/lulzbot-taz-45-power-supply-450w/

Sales (I spoke with Eric) was pretty friendly, but I was upset with the service department. I talked with two different people and both of them just told me that the KITTAZ didn’t come with a warranty (it did come with a 30 day warranty, but that’s not really the point) and that I would need to talk with sales about buying a replacement. I directed them to this thread and they just told me that they didn’t know the story. Eric (sales) talked around around and found out about the policy change. I’m not sure why the service people didn’t know there was a policy about this (or if they did, why they weren’t upfront about it).

Anyway, I understand why they wouldn’t want to keep replacing these forever, but $195 seems like a lot to replace a faulty part when the replacement would have been free 6 months ago, especially since this was a known issue. I would have also been a lot less upset if I didn’t feel like the service people were blowing me off.

I’m not trying to complain, but Lulzbot has a history of outstanding customer service and I hope that sharing my experience helps keep it that way.

This is likely the power supply Lulzbot was going to sell you: https://itworks3d.com/product/lulzbot-taz-45-24vdc-500w-power-supply/ which contains a Meanwell SD-500L-24 24 volt, 500 Watt PSU. The cheapest I see one of them going for is $128 for the power supply alone. Add to that the $30 stamped metal cover https://itworks3d.com/product/lulzbot-taz-4-power-supply-housing/ , the end connector ($10) The plug socket ($5) and the wiring and sleaving ($5) and you end up around $178 not counting labor and profit. It’s a much better power supply than the one that shipped with the Kittaz. The one you did purchase is decent too, but you may find it’s a bit low if you want to add lights and accessories. Or it may be perfectly fine for your needs. The point being here that 6 months ago you would have received a kittaz PSU as a replacement, and those were not the greatest ever made by any means, which probably would have failed again anyways and annoyed you even more, and the cost of the PSU you would actually have received had you purchased it from Lulzbot is actually very reasonable with the base cost of the components factored in. A high end power supply costs more than a cheap or less wattage one.

The replacement that the OP received was actually the updated 500 W supply, not the old KITTAZ PSU. I believe most of the replacements were. I’m not arguing that the price for that supply was unreasonable (to clarify, it costs them $116 in materials, so $195 is a very reasonable retail price). I would have even been satisfied if they had sold me the new supply at cost.

Edit: By the way, the new supply actually uses a Meanwell RSP-500-24, which costs quite a bit less than the SD-500L-24 (which is a DC-DC converter, not AC-DC).