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These look like very solid improvements over the MK3S+ (I personally have two MK3S+, and use them a lot), and I love their commitment to open hardware and for m

These look like very solid improvements over the MK3S+ (I personally have two MK3S+, and use them a lot), and I love their commitment to open hardware and for making upgrade kits available, but it's a bit disappointing to see still how far Prusa is behind truly next-gen printers like the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon.

treesciencebot 4y ago
Indeed. I always thought they deferred the launch of any new model after X1C in order to take the true "just works" crown back (with the hopes of it would be something like Intel/AMD feuds where the monopoly had finally came to an end and customers can finally see some real competition). But apparently it is just a classic Prusa printer with better parts but still a very very high price to usability ratio (compared to Bambu Lab P1P or X1).
- f38zf5vdt 4y ago
  It's a proprietary versus open source argument. You can build a mk4 clone for much less than the price of a Prusa-branded one, as everything is open source. The higher price tag is like a donation to open source. Prusa also makes the open source XL if you want an CoreXY model, or you could go with a Voron which is also open source.
  - treesciencebot 4y ago
    > It's a proprietary versus open source argument. You can build a mk4 clone for much less than the price of a Prusa-branded one, as everything is open source. The higher price tag is like a donation to open source. I would say the higher price tag is more like "Prusa" using its name as a quality assurance system where if you want to get something working without much hassle (since nearly every other mk4/mk3s clone that has been out there really really sucks except the ones from Prusa) you have to pay the premium. This is not to say they are necesarrily doing a bad job on open sourcing or abusing, but just a mark that "open source hardware" doesn't necessarily benefit the customer as much as "real world features".
    - freetime2 4y ago
      > since nearly every other mk4/mk3s clone that has been out there really really sucks except the ones from Prusa I have had an Ender-3 V2 for a few years and it definitely doesn’t suck. I did add a BL Touch sensor for auto-leveling, and OctoPrint for remote printing/monitoring - which are great convenience upgrades. But the printer itself is very reliable and the only maintenance I’ve needed to do is to replace a few clogged nozzles. For anyone just getting into 3D printing I would definitely recommend an inexpensive i3-style printer vs spending two to three times as much on a Prusa.
      - vanadium 4y ago
        Not to mention that to a large extent, you can spend the difference between stock unit prices making an Ender-3 v2 nearly as capable as a $799-$1,000 printer. Does it make sense? Overkill? Depends what you want to get out of the hobby. Can’t scoff at those who want to learn the fundamentals of 3D printing through the experience of modding and tuning ad nauseum because it’s _just not quite there yet_. I’m one of those Ender-3 V2 folks who can’t stop tweaking and modding and it’s been a frustratingly awesome and educational ride for the last year and some change. No regrets. I’ve gotten great prints along the way. But now, if I add a printer in the future that promises to “just work” and it doesn’t, I can diagnose/fix pretty quickly. Which I might just do.
    - eropple 4y ago
      > since nearly every other mk4/mk3s clone that has been out there really really sucks except the ones from Prusa The Sovol SV06 has been selling like gangbusters for the last six months or so, and it's excellent. And it's sub-$250. If you move a little further away from the i3 clones (and the SV06 absolutely is clone-y), that's where Elegoo--or Anycubic if you buy judiciously, or even Creality if you get it on sale--still make the argument quite difficult.
  - kramerger 4y ago
    Thats an odd analogy. Prusa loves open source and maker mentality. Just look at PrusaSlicer and Printables.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    I don’t know why this is being down voted. Prusa are trying to make an open source hardware company work and I guess this is what it looks like. There is so much noise on HN about repairability. Well here is some open hardware And it’s ”the Chinese printers have so much more features!”
    - eropple 4y ago
      Prusa absolutely builds good stuff, but their level of repairability just isn't different from most other printers--Bambu notably excepted, as they're a pretty closed system. They're all extremely commodity parts, from boards to v-wheels. I wish them well, but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price. (The Prusa XL may change this and I'm really excited to play with one.
      - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
        Bambu just proves the point. Do you think they are going to make more integrated and closed systems or start opening up? Someone has to take the hit with development. And that costs money. >but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price Has the value in terms of price to features ever really been competitive? I got the MK3 soon after it was released and even then you could get an i3 clone for much cheaper that produced similar results. The Chinese clones didn’t have 3D printed parts either. But now is the time Prusa is not price competitive?
        eropple 4y ago
        In the last year, I've bought two separate sub-$250 3D printers that I just threw on a table after connecting four screws and a couple cables and they were dead-on out of the box. Prusa's hat has been "it just works!". That's been the conceptual moat. That is the part that isn't distinctive anymore.
        postalrat 4y ago
        Most cheap tools work at least once right out of the box.
- rhinoceraptor 4y ago
  This seems like a bit of a stop-gap since the Prusa XL seems to be taking longer to get going than expected, I would hope their plan is to totally rearchitect around the Prusa XL design and scale that down to the 250mm^3 size class. They are still very good machines, but I would have a hard time recommending anyone get an i3 style printer when the advantages of CoreXY are so obvious, and particularly because the price gap between the X1C is not very big.
ferminaut 4y ago
I own two MK3s+'s. They are solid machines if you are looking to print PLA and some PETG. The stock extruder is a PITA. The MK4's redesigned nozzle/heat break & 10:1 extruder are basically a Bondtech LGX + Revo & should make for a great improvement. The MMU3 seems like a marginal improvement, you still have purge towers & large buffer boxes. Hopefully the reliability out of the box has improved. I wonder if it's too little too late for Prusa. A Voron, Ratrig, Bambu Lab printer seems like it has all these features & is CoreXY. The multi material options seem better on these options too (Enraged Rabbit Carrot Feeder, Bambu AMS). In the case of the Voron or Ratrig, you'll load Klipper instead of the tried & tested (and outdated) Marlin. In 2023, I am not sure I'd buy a MK4 at $1100 when you can get a Bambu for $100 more.
- riceart 4y ago
  Agree it’s tough. The non enthusiasts that don’t give a shit and aren’t interested in a cash outlay are in the sub $500 market. Once you break that point you’re unlikely to want to save a couple hundred bucks. I would have definitely had started with the Bambu if it were available a couple years ago. If I get tired of my MK3S I would be highly unlikely to upgrade to a Prusa.
- anamexis 4y ago
  It seems like an odd place in Prusa's own product line-up. I have a Prusa MINI+, which for $450 gets you a great printer. The print volume on the MK3 and now MK4 is just not that much better - 180x180x180 for the MINI, 250x210x220 for the MK4. If I wanted to upgrade and wanted to stick with Prusa, MK3/MK4 wouldn't come into the picture, I'd go straight to the Prusa XL.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    I have a Mini too, and I could see myself get a MK4 as the Mini has been a bit of a disappointment. The X and Y axes on mine aren't 90° and there seems to be no hardware adjustment (just a rigid printed part), no support for software adjustments either (the respective GCode is disabled in firmware), so I can't print proper rectangles, just parallelograms, and any boxes and lids I print never fit properly. I want to keep tinkering to a minimum (that's why I got a Prusa), and I can make do with goskew and preprocessing the gcode, but I found I have to repeat callibration quite often and it's a fairly annoying process and not very exact and means I can't reuse gcode files at a later date, so having a printer that doesn't have this defect would be very welcome. My Mini also likes to ram the nozzle into the build plate once in a while without any of it's safeties triggering, heating element stuck on and the Z stepper fully engaged, so I can't let it run unsupervised either, and the filament sensor is pretty hit and miss as well. I may have had bad luck with my unit (I ordered right at release), but I'm definitely looking for something more reliable and, frankly, less dangerous. The Prusa Mk4 does look like a solid hands-off machine and hopefully they didn't cut corners there like with the Mini, and hopefully customer support is also better for the more expensive ones. I don't have any use for the XL's feature set (I only print relatively small parts and not that many), but I didn't want to get a Mk3s as it's been pretty dated for a long time now. I'll wait a bit until other people have had a chance to run into any major flaws though.
LeafItAlone 4y ago
> how far Prusa is behind truly next-gen printers like the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon Can you expand on this?
- rhinoceraptor 4y ago
  The biggest disadvantage in my mind of the Prusa MK2/3/4 printers is they use the original i3 design. It's a good design, and very simple to build, maintain and program. But it limits the print speed due to the amount of mass that has to move, particularly in the Y axis. The entire bed has to move which induces vibrations at higher speeds. Newer printers (including the Prusa XL) use a CoreXY design, where the extruder is controlled in the X and Y axes by belts, which results in less mass that has to move, and allows the printer to print much, much faster. In the case of the Bambu Lab printers, it can be two to three times faster for a similar print quality.
  - eropple 4y ago
    CoreXY printers absolutely do have more stable kinematics for better acceleration, but modern open printer firmware--mostly Klipper, though you can do it with Marlin in an unsatisfying way--implements resonance compensation, aka input shaping, in a way that really improves acceleration (which matters way more than top speed for most prints). My Sovol SV06 can make a really nice-quality 3DBenchy in 37 minutes after doing my input shaping samples. That's not as fast as an X1 Carbon, but it cost a quarter as much, and I tend to think that when it comes to 3D printers that bandwidth is more valuable than latency.
  - bboygravity 4y ago
    I'll take the slower printer speed if it means I get better reliability, repeatability and repearability. Any day. I've wasted enough hours on fancy features/materials/settings that don't work. Couldn't care less about the feature of being able to print a part a few minutes/hours faster tbh.
    - postalrat 4y ago
      Years ago people were talking how delta printers were so much better, faster, cheaper, etc than bedslingers. Years later people forgot about delta printers and now its core-xy. Meanwhile bedslingers continue to just work. I could care less if you printer goes 50% faster if it fails even 5% more.
deleted 4y ago
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tcoop25 4y ago
I just canceled my X1-Carbon order. Just spend some time on the Bambu Labs subreddit and you will see a lot of frustrated owners. It is insanely loud, and it seems unreliable and buggy. I have owned a lot of printers over the years, and the only printers I, or any of my colleagues come back to are Prusa printers. They are incredibly reliable. The few times we have had issues with a part, we have been able to print a replacement. I am constantly excited by fancy new printers that all promise to be the next big thing, and stupidly keep buying them. I will take Prusa's amazing customer support, a product I know I will be able to upgrade when they release the next iteration, and the company that has the best free software as well (the Bambu is just a forked version of Prusa's slicer).
- aspett 4y ago
  Here's the thing, though: It's almost definitely a case of silent majority. The printer is pretty phenomenal and I've had excellent support from Bambu so far in New Zealand, no less.
- Filligree 4y ago
  I have a Mk3S and a Bambu X1C. The Bambu is much, much better. The Mk4 covers most of the distance, but at a price point matching the X1C, and it's only most. Speeding it up is nice, but... pressure advance depends on detailed characteristics of the filament, such as viscosity, which varies from brand to brand and color to color. The X1 has a lidar, which from experience actually does work as advertised. The Mk4 has... what? Prusament, maybe? I would not be surprised to find you can only get the advertised speed if you use Prusa's precalibrated filament. Or you can print the calibration lines and do it manually. That does work; it's a ten second eyeballing procedure, simple enough for the X1 to do full auto. But you're really supposed to do that for every startup -- characteristics change as the reel ages, which doesn't even happen evenly across the entire reel -- and nobody does that.
  - sottol 4y ago
    As far as I've seend the X1s lidar is mostly useless, it's doing fine-calibration at most based on the current filament profile and seems to be inconsistent. That's not to say that the X1 itself is - just that lidar is imho a gimick.
outworlder 4y ago
Disclaimer: I own an Ender 3, heavily modified. Prusa printers are generally rock solid and their quality control is great. For 1k, I really think we should be looking at a CoreXY machine (or, at least, something that doesn't have a bed that moves, whatever the kinematics). That's a major speed limitation, and it also causes vibrations even in lower speeds as you are moving the bed and your entire model. That's the only thing I cannot easily change in my printer, anything else, from the bed to extruders is easy to modify. Sure the MK4 has a larger build volume. But so do many other printers. The breakout extruder board is a nice thing but it is available for other printers too. I like the loadcell concept for bed leveling but I wonder how much better it is versus a simple bltouch. I really wonder who is the target demographic for this printer and why they wouldn't get other Prusa offerings instead. > I love their commitment to open hardware Prusa is relatively open with their hardware so it's indeed a massive bonus versus some proprietary Bambu Labs printer. However, they are the same company pushing for pre-sliced files which is a terrible idea. Not only they can be malicious, but they will also be specific to a given printer, which would benefit Prusa if most gcode is created for Prusa printers.
- deleted 4y ago
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- faeranne 4y ago
  > However, they are the same company pushing for pre-sliced files which is a terrible idea. Agreed, though should be noted this happens across the industry. Whoever is the current fore-runner tends to push for it. MakerBot did the same thing back when they led the pack. Thing is, the only end Prusa can get from this is encouraging use of their printers. A shady method for sure, but MakerBot wanted to push for an entirely proprietary chain, from the model file to the printer, and because they had just gone proprietary, they could make that happen. Prusa has no legal or technical weight to make that happen (and hopefully they have no intention of going that direction). So long as they keep pushing open hardware and firmware, their push for presliced is (to me) not a deal breaker. It's wrong, and they should be called out for it, but it's not gonna lead to malicious legal action.
- chubbnix 4y ago
sydd 4y ago
Is it really? I've looked at the Bambu Lab printer and while on paper it looks nice I would be very hesitant to buy it, their "advanced" features not that convincing: - IMO multi material printing has always been a buggy gimmick (mostly multi material setups are very prone to failure). - Them advertising that the printer can print "advanced" materials like PC is a gimmick too, the main issue with FDM printers is layer adhesion and no matter what material you are using its going to suck compared to injection molding. - bashing bed slingers is wrong too, they have their advantages compared to CoreXY setups (mostly simpler mechanics) IMO FDM printers have 2 main issues: 1. Unreliable due to lots of moving parts. A solid design with quality components mostly mitigates this. 2. Layer adhesion sucks limiting possible applications. Some very innovative non-planar printing could be a solution but it does not exist yet. Or could be solved by printing metal, but these devices are far from home use. Resin printers solve both issues, but bring their own (mostly that resins are very toxic stuff that you dont want in your home.) So no, this printer is in no way revolutionary (neither is the Prusa). Until both of these issues are solved home 3D printers will be mostly used to print benchies and accessories for tabletop games.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  >bashing bed slingers is wrong too, they have their advantages compared to CoreXY setups (mostly simpler mechanics) Tangent: why was moving the bed the solution over having X and Y on independent axes? I’ve always wondered. Cost and initial reliability?
  - eropple 4y ago
    Cost is part of it. If you look at bed-dropper printers (the Ender 5 or the Sovol SV05), there's just more metal involved. Metal is expensive. It's also heavy, so your shipping costs go up. It's also a simpler set of kinematics for the system to deal with. Most 3D printers have pretty dumb microprocessors (value engineering!) at their core. CoreXY printers use two steppers to execute any movement, and that requires more calculations. Delta printers use three steppers to execute any movement, even. More modern printers run Klipper, which offloads the kinematic calculations to a single-board computer, and that addresses a lot of the problems you run into. Klipper also helps with bedslinger kinematics too, though, as it has the headroom to do some forward-looking optimization. The current state of printers is pretty cool.
Symbiote 4y ago
Personally, I think buying any Chinese product when an alternative exists has become unconscionable. China's current support of Russia is an obvious issue, as well as their threats towards Taiwan and their destruction of democracy in Hong Kong. Problems with IP infringement abound, and in this case it's particularly disappointing as Prusa is committed to open source. I hope Prusa continue to innovate, but I also hope people reject Bambu Lab. Doing so is one of the few direct actions we can take against the Chinese principles that directly oppose Western values.
- MPSimmons 4y ago
  I'm totally unfamiliar with the company that makes the Bambu, but do they have ties to the CCP or is there evidence that buying this printer would further the Chinese government's efforts?
  - bb88 4y ago
    Disclaimer: I have had my personal details stolen from by China before with the OPM hack (US security clearances). I'm pretty sure they stole my fingerprints. I guess that may make me biased... It's not that they have ties to the CCP. It's the fact the CCP can order Bambu to give up their data without a warrant showing criminal activity. https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/ https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese... By bambu labs own website, they have locations in China, which means those sites are governed by Chinese law. https://bambulab.com/en/about-us https://bambulab.com/en/about-us
    - gjsman-1000 4y ago
      Little known, but according to Harvard Business Review, all Chinese companies with over 50 employees must have a dedicated CCP representative within the company. Every company with over 100 employees must have a party cell, and the leader of that cell must report to the local municipality regularly. https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-cant-innovate https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-cant-innovate Bambu Lab... how big they are isn't clear. Their LinkedIn claims they are between 201 and 500 employees. If HBR is correct, they very likely have CCP cells within their organization.
pregseahorses 4y ago
I know it is anecdotal, but I have been tinkering with 3d printers for over a decade, and Bambu Lab to everything else is like ChatGPT to Stack Overflow. It is just unbelievably reliable.

treesciencebot 4y ago

Indeed. I always thought they deferred the launch of any new model after X1C in order to take the true "just works" crown back (with the hopes of it would be something like Intel/AMD feuds where the monopoly had finally came to an end and customers can finally see some real competition). But apparently it is just a classic Prusa printer with better parts but still a very very high price to usability ratio (compared to Bambu Lab P1P or X1).

f38zf5vdt 4y ago
It's a proprietary versus open source argument. You can build a mk4 clone for much less than the price of a Prusa-branded one, as everything is open source. The higher price tag is like a donation to open source. Prusa also makes the open source XL if you want an CoreXY model, or you could go with a Voron which is also open source.
- treesciencebot 4y ago
  > It's a proprietary versus open source argument. You can build a mk4 clone for much less than the price of a Prusa-branded one, as everything is open source. The higher price tag is like a donation to open source. I would say the higher price tag is more like "Prusa" using its name as a quality assurance system where if you want to get something working without much hassle (since nearly every other mk4/mk3s clone that has been out there really really sucks except the ones from Prusa) you have to pay the premium. This is not to say they are necesarrily doing a bad job on open sourcing or abusing, but just a mark that "open source hardware" doesn't necessarily benefit the customer as much as "real world features".
  - freetime2 4y ago
    > since nearly every other mk4/mk3s clone that has been out there really really sucks except the ones from Prusa I have had an Ender-3 V2 for a few years and it definitely doesn’t suck. I did add a BL Touch sensor for auto-leveling, and OctoPrint for remote printing/monitoring - which are great convenience upgrades. But the printer itself is very reliable and the only maintenance I’ve needed to do is to replace a few clogged nozzles. For anyone just getting into 3D printing I would definitely recommend an inexpensive i3-style printer vs spending two to three times as much on a Prusa.
    - vanadium 4y ago
      Not to mention that to a large extent, you can spend the difference between stock unit prices making an Ender-3 v2 nearly as capable as a $799-$1,000 printer. Does it make sense? Overkill? Depends what you want to get out of the hobby. Can’t scoff at those who want to learn the fundamentals of 3D printing through the experience of modding and tuning ad nauseum because it’s _just not quite there yet_. I’m one of those Ender-3 V2 folks who can’t stop tweaking and modding and it’s been a frustratingly awesome and educational ride for the last year and some change. No regrets. I’ve gotten great prints along the way. But now, if I add a printer in the future that promises to “just work” and it doesn’t, I can diagnose/fix pretty quickly. Which I might just do.
  - eropple 4y ago
    > since nearly every other mk4/mk3s clone that has been out there really really sucks except the ones from Prusa The Sovol SV06 has been selling like gangbusters for the last six months or so, and it's excellent. And it's sub-$250. If you move a little further away from the i3 clones (and the SV06 absolutely is clone-y), that's where Elegoo--or Anycubic if you buy judiciously, or even Creality if you get it on sale--still make the argument quite difficult.
- kramerger 4y ago
  Thats an odd analogy. Prusa loves open source and maker mentality. Just look at PrusaSlicer and Printables.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  I don’t know why this is being down voted. Prusa are trying to make an open source hardware company work and I guess this is what it looks like. There is so much noise on HN about repairability. Well here is some open hardware And it’s ”the Chinese printers have so much more features!”
  - eropple 4y ago
    Prusa absolutely builds good stuff, but their level of repairability just isn't different from most other printers--Bambu notably excepted, as they're a pretty closed system. They're all extremely commodity parts, from boards to v-wheels. I wish them well, but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price. (The Prusa XL may change this and I'm really excited to play with one.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
      Bambu just proves the point. Do you think they are going to make more integrated and closed systems or start opening up? Someone has to take the hit with development. And that costs money. >but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price Has the value in terms of price to features ever really been competitive? I got the MK3 soon after it was released and even then you could get an i3 clone for much cheaper that produced similar results. The Chinese clones didn’t have 3D printed parts either. But now is the time Prusa is not price competitive?
      - eropple 4y ago
        In the last year, I've bought two separate sub-$250 3D printers that I just threw on a table after connecting four screws and a couple cables and they were dead-on out of the box. Prusa's hat has been "it just works!". That's been the conceptual moat. That is the part that isn't distinctive anymore.
        postalrat 4y ago
        Most cheap tools work at least once right out of the box.
rhinoceraptor 4y ago
This seems like a bit of a stop-gap since the Prusa XL seems to be taking longer to get going than expected, I would hope their plan is to totally rearchitect around the Prusa XL design and scale that down to the 250mm^3 size class. They are still very good machines, but I would have a hard time recommending anyone get an i3 style printer when the advantages of CoreXY are so obvious, and particularly because the price gap between the X1C is not very big.

ferminaut 4y ago

I own two MK3s+'s. They are solid machines if you are looking to print PLA and some PETG. The stock extruder is a PITA. The MK4's redesigned nozzle/heat break & 10:1 extruder are basically a Bondtech LGX + Revo & should make for a great improvement. The MMU3 seems like a marginal improvement, you still have purge towers & large buffer boxes. Hopefully the reliability out of the box has improved. I wonder if it's too little too late for Prusa. A Voron, Ratrig, Bambu Lab printer seems like it has all these features & is CoreXY. The multi material options seem better on these options too (Enraged Rabbit Carrot Feeder, Bambu AMS). In the case of the Voron or Ratrig, you'll load Klipper instead of the tried & tested (and outdated) Marlin. In 2023, I am not sure I'd buy a MK4 at $1100 when you can get a Bambu for $100 more.

riceart 4y ago
Agree it’s tough. The non enthusiasts that don’t give a shit and aren’t interested in a cash outlay are in the sub $500 market. Once you break that point you’re unlikely to want to save a couple hundred bucks. I would have definitely had started with the Bambu if it were available a couple years ago. If I get tired of my MK3S I would be highly unlikely to upgrade to a Prusa.
anamexis 4y ago
It seems like an odd place in Prusa's own product line-up. I have a Prusa MINI+, which for $450 gets you a great printer. The print volume on the MK3 and now MK4 is just not that much better - 180x180x180 for the MINI, 250x210x220 for the MK4. If I wanted to upgrade and wanted to stick with Prusa, MK3/MK4 wouldn't come into the picture, I'd go straight to the Prusa XL.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  I have a Mini too, and I could see myself get a MK4 as the Mini has been a bit of a disappointment. The X and Y axes on mine aren't 90° and there seems to be no hardware adjustment (just a rigid printed part), no support for software adjustments either (the respective GCode is disabled in firmware), so I can't print proper rectangles, just parallelograms, and any boxes and lids I print never fit properly. I want to keep tinkering to a minimum (that's why I got a Prusa), and I can make do with goskew and preprocessing the gcode, but I found I have to repeat callibration quite often and it's a fairly annoying process and not very exact and means I can't reuse gcode files at a later date, so having a printer that doesn't have this defect would be very welcome. My Mini also likes to ram the nozzle into the build plate once in a while without any of it's safeties triggering, heating element stuck on and the Z stepper fully engaged, so I can't let it run unsupervised either, and the filament sensor is pretty hit and miss as well. I may have had bad luck with my unit (I ordered right at release), but I'm definitely looking for something more reliable and, frankly, less dangerous. The Prusa Mk4 does look like a solid hands-off machine and hopefully they didn't cut corners there like with the Mini, and hopefully customer support is also better for the more expensive ones. I don't have any use for the XL's feature set (I only print relatively small parts and not that many), but I didn't want to get a Mk3s as it's been pretty dated for a long time now. I'll wait a bit until other people have had a chance to run into any major flaws though.

LeafItAlone 4y ago

> how far Prusa is behind truly next-gen printers like the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon Can you expand on this?

rhinoceraptor 4y ago
The biggest disadvantage in my mind of the Prusa MK2/3/4 printers is they use the original i3 design. It's a good design, and very simple to build, maintain and program. But it limits the print speed due to the amount of mass that has to move, particularly in the Y axis. The entire bed has to move which induces vibrations at higher speeds. Newer printers (including the Prusa XL) use a CoreXY design, where the extruder is controlled in the X and Y axes by belts, which results in less mass that has to move, and allows the printer to print much, much faster. In the case of the Bambu Lab printers, it can be two to three times faster for a similar print quality.
- eropple 4y ago
  CoreXY printers absolutely do have more stable kinematics for better acceleration, but modern open printer firmware--mostly Klipper, though you can do it with Marlin in an unsatisfying way--implements resonance compensation, aka input shaping, in a way that really improves acceleration (which matters way more than top speed for most prints). My Sovol SV06 can make a really nice-quality 3DBenchy in 37 minutes after doing my input shaping samples. That's not as fast as an X1 Carbon, but it cost a quarter as much, and I tend to think that when it comes to 3D printers that bandwidth is more valuable than latency.
- bboygravity 4y ago
  I'll take the slower printer speed if it means I get better reliability, repeatability and repearability. Any day. I've wasted enough hours on fancy features/materials/settings that don't work. Couldn't care less about the feature of being able to print a part a few minutes/hours faster tbh.
  - postalrat 4y ago
    Years ago people were talking how delta printers were so much better, faster, cheaper, etc than bedslingers. Years later people forgot about delta printers and now its core-xy. Meanwhile bedslingers continue to just work. I could care less if you printer goes 50% faster if it fails even 5% more.

deleted 4y ago

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tcoop25 4y ago

I just canceled my X1-Carbon order. Just spend some time on the Bambu Labs subreddit and you will see a lot of frustrated owners. It is insanely loud, and it seems unreliable and buggy. I have owned a lot of printers over the years, and the only printers I, or any of my colleagues come back to are Prusa printers. They are incredibly reliable. The few times we have had issues with a part, we have been able to print a replacement. I am constantly excited by fancy new printers that all promise to be the next big thing, and stupidly keep buying them. I will take Prusa's amazing customer support, a product I know I will be able to upgrade when they release the next iteration, and the company that has the best free software as well (the Bambu is just a forked version of Prusa's slicer).

aspett 4y ago
Here's the thing, though: It's almost definitely a case of silent majority. The printer is pretty phenomenal and I've had excellent support from Bambu so far in New Zealand, no less.
Filligree 4y ago
I have a Mk3S and a Bambu X1C. The Bambu is much, much better. The Mk4 covers most of the distance, but at a price point matching the X1C, and it's only most. Speeding it up is nice, but... pressure advance depends on detailed characteristics of the filament, such as viscosity, which varies from brand to brand and color to color. The X1 has a lidar, which from experience actually does work as advertised. The Mk4 has... what? Prusament, maybe? I would not be surprised to find you can only get the advertised speed if you use Prusa's precalibrated filament. Or you can print the calibration lines and do it manually. That does work; it's a ten second eyeballing procedure, simple enough for the X1 to do full auto. But you're really supposed to do that for every startup -- characteristics change as the reel ages, which doesn't even happen evenly across the entire reel -- and nobody does that.
- sottol 4y ago
  As far as I've seend the X1s lidar is mostly useless, it's doing fine-calibration at most based on the current filament profile and seems to be inconsistent. That's not to say that the X1 itself is - just that lidar is imho a gimick.

outworlder 4y ago

Disclaimer: I own an Ender 3, heavily modified. Prusa printers are generally rock solid and their quality control is great. For 1k, I really think we should be looking at a CoreXY machine (or, at least, something that doesn't have a bed that moves, whatever the kinematics). That's a major speed limitation, and it also causes vibrations even in lower speeds as you are moving the bed and your entire model. That's the only thing I cannot easily change in my printer, anything else, from the bed to extruders is easy to modify. Sure the MK4 has a larger build volume. But so do many other printers. The breakout extruder board is a nice thing but it is available for other printers too. I like the loadcell concept for bed leveling but I wonder how much better it is versus a simple bltouch. I really wonder who is the target demographic for this printer and why they wouldn't get other Prusa offerings instead. > I love their commitment to open hardware Prusa is relatively open with their hardware so it's indeed a massive bonus versus some proprietary Bambu Labs printer. However, they are the same company pushing for pre-sliced files which is a terrible idea. Not only they can be malicious, but they will also be specific to a given printer, which would benefit Prusa if most gcode is created for Prusa printers.

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faeranne 4y ago
> However, they are the same company pushing for pre-sliced files which is a terrible idea. Agreed, though should be noted this happens across the industry. Whoever is the current fore-runner tends to push for it. MakerBot did the same thing back when they led the pack. Thing is, the only end Prusa can get from this is encouraging use of their printers. A shady method for sure, but MakerBot wanted to push for an entirely proprietary chain, from the model file to the printer, and because they had just gone proprietary, they could make that happen. Prusa has no legal or technical weight to make that happen (and hopefully they have no intention of going that direction). So long as they keep pushing open hardware and firmware, their push for presliced is (to me) not a deal breaker. It's wrong, and they should be called out for it, but it's not gonna lead to malicious legal action.
chubbnix 4y ago

sydd 4y ago

Is it really? I've looked at the Bambu Lab printer and while on paper it looks nice I would be very hesitant to buy it, their "advanced" features not that convincing: - IMO multi material printing has always been a buggy gimmick (mostly multi material setups are very prone to failure). - Them advertising that the printer can print "advanced" materials like PC is a gimmick too, the main issue with FDM printers is layer adhesion and no matter what material you are using its going to suck compared to injection molding. - bashing bed slingers is wrong too, they have their advantages compared to CoreXY setups (mostly simpler mechanics) IMO FDM printers have 2 main issues: 1. Unreliable due to lots of moving parts. A solid design with quality components mostly mitigates this. 2. Layer adhesion sucks limiting possible applications. Some very innovative non-planar printing could be a solution but it does not exist yet. Or could be solved by printing metal, but these devices are far from home use. Resin printers solve both issues, but bring their own (mostly that resins are very toxic stuff that you dont want in your home.) So no, this printer is in no way revolutionary (neither is the Prusa). Until both of these issues are solved home 3D printers will be mostly used to print benchies and accessories for tabletop games.

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
>bashing bed slingers is wrong too, they have their advantages compared to CoreXY setups (mostly simpler mechanics) Tangent: why was moving the bed the solution over having X and Y on independent axes? I’ve always wondered. Cost and initial reliability?
- eropple 4y ago
  Cost is part of it. If you look at bed-dropper printers (the Ender 5 or the Sovol SV05), there's just more metal involved. Metal is expensive. It's also heavy, so your shipping costs go up. It's also a simpler set of kinematics for the system to deal with. Most 3D printers have pretty dumb microprocessors (value engineering!) at their core. CoreXY printers use two steppers to execute any movement, and that requires more calculations. Delta printers use three steppers to execute any movement, even. More modern printers run Klipper, which offloads the kinematic calculations to a single-board computer, and that addresses a lot of the problems you run into. Klipper also helps with bedslinger kinematics too, though, as it has the headroom to do some forward-looking optimization. The current state of printers is pretty cool.

Symbiote 4y ago

Personally, I think buying any Chinese product when an alternative exists has become unconscionable. China's current support of Russia is an obvious issue, as well as their threats towards Taiwan and their destruction of democracy in Hong Kong. Problems with IP infringement abound, and in this case it's particularly disappointing as Prusa is committed to open source. I hope Prusa continue to innovate, but I also hope people reject Bambu Lab. Doing so is one of the few direct actions we can take against the Chinese principles that directly oppose Western values.

MPSimmons 4y ago
I'm totally unfamiliar with the company that makes the Bambu, but do they have ties to the CCP or is there evidence that buying this printer would further the Chinese government's efforts?
- bb88 4y ago
  Disclaimer: I have had my personal details stolen from by China before with the OPM hack (US security clearances). I'm pretty sure they stole my fingerprints. I guess that may make me biased... It's not that they have ties to the CCP. It's the fact the CCP can order Bambu to give up their data without a warrant showing criminal activity. https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/ https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese... By bambu labs own website, they have locations in China, which means those sites are governed by Chinese law. https://bambulab.com/en/about-us https://bambulab.com/en/about-us
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Little known, but according to Harvard Business Review, all Chinese companies with over 50 employees must have a dedicated CCP representative within the company. Every company with over 100 employees must have a party cell, and the leader of that cell must report to the local municipality regularly. https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-cant-innovate https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-cant-innovate Bambu Lab... how big they are isn't clear. Their LinkedIn claims they are between 201 and 500 employees. If HBR is correct, they very likely have CCP cells within their organization.

pregseahorses 4y ago

I know it is anecdotal, but I have been tinkering with 3d printers for over a decade, and Bambu Lab to everything else is like ChatGPT to Stack Overflow. It is just unbelievably reliable.