Maintenance
The Amicus 3000 has proven to be trouble free so far - I haven't had to do any maintenance tasks yet. The manual mentions something about checking the widths of the rollers if you have ball feed problems - but other than that not much is required. I'd better have another check though just in case I've missed anything!Noise
The robot is not as noisy as I thought it would be - we have a common wall with our neighbour next door and we've never had a complaint about using the robot yet! I'm not saying it's whisper quiet either, but if you have a garage or a room where you can shut the door, you shouldn't have to worry about bothering anyone else while you practice.Dual Heads
I'm not going to get into this in great detail - other than to say that by having 2 heads to feed out the balls, Butterfly claims that this completely disassociates the speed from the spin on the ball. I personally wouldn't say that this is completely true, but it's as close as you'll ever need. You can get a fast ball with very little spin, and a slow ball with a lot - what more do you want?
Feeder Height and Placement
The robot placement can be varied as shown in the photos, with holes for placing the robot to the left or right. Bear in mind this means that the ball return won't work - since the balls wont run into the bucket anymore. You'll need to put another bucket underneath the hole and manually put them back into the ball return bucket every so often.The robot height is unadjustable - which is probably the one thing about the Butterfly Amicus 3000 that really cheeses me off. How hard could it be to make an adjustable pipe that allows you to control the height of the feeder? It would really improve the ability of the robot to replicate serves and low loops. I have read that some owners have actually shortened the pipe by cutting it, but I'm not about to try that myself! (Note that this has been fixed in the Butterfly Amicus 3000 Plus, it now has an adjustable head height.)
Sidespin
In order to put sidespin on the ball, you need to rotate the ball feeder motors yourself. This will give you sidespin, but unfortunately the sidespin is then on every ball. So if you are planning to use the robot to give you a sidespin serve, then a straight topspin loop - forget it. Short of making a motorized head turner, you can't expect Butterfly to fix this either.One thing to watch is that when the ball is fired further to the left or right sides of the table, the heads put a little more sidespin on the ball, kicking it back towards the centre of the table. It's significant but not really much of a problem once you realise what is happening - I hardly even notice it anymore - I've adjusted to it over time. You'll hit a few on your fingers while you are getting used to it though!
Conclusion
All in all, I'm pretty happy with my Amicus 3000 - I've gotten good use out of it over the last year or so with no maintenance worries. It's not perfect, but it's still a great robot overall. And one day when I finally sit down and get all the advanced programs working it will be even better! Until then, the basic features do it for me just fine.Interested in purchasing a Butterfly Amicus 3000?
