8 ms·

Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

103 points by ingve 3y ago

nerdwaller 3y ago
I wasn't aware that Prusa is floundering and wouldn't have minded a little more development there. However it wouldn't surprise me as when I was shopping for my latest 3d printer replacement it was too easy to choose something else. For the price of the Mk4 most of the market is within the same budget (many options arguably better and more capable). This post is the Armin Ronacher take that the author here is talking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38768997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38768997
Centigonal 3y ago
Really interesting post! Sounds like Prusa made the mistake of thinking a product is a business, and that's it. I wouldn't count out Prusa, though. They've built a very strong brand, and there's still room to pivot or innovate. Even if they don't, I'm sure they can limp along at a smaller size for a while.
xrd 3y ago
I find this really fascinating as my company has several products and we've been considering for years whether open source is a better direction than what we are doing now, which is to sell closed source software to enterprises. Needless to say, this is a very different market than the one Prusa is attacking, but I've still got opinions. I find it interesting that this comes the day after Xmas. My house was already completely swamped with cheap Chinese (or similarly cheap manufacturing country) crap. Plastic toys, fire-retardant ugly Disney-esque pajamas made in Myanmar. My kids threw tantrums because they "only" got 14 presents instead of the 16 their siblings got, but almost all those toys are forgotten now a day later. I bought my daughter reproductions of prints from Anna Atkins (the first person to create a book of photography in 1843), a kit to make cyanotypes (the technique she used), and had them solve riddles to get their presents (my daughter's clue was "blue"). I bet she won't remember that. My kids are buried in junk, and it is partially my fault, but let's at least assign a little blame to relatives trying to make up for their parenting failures years ago. I say all that because I disagree with DD's assertion that the low-cost strategy at Best Buy is something that will always win and is what Prusa should have done. Sure, they probably would have earned much more by somehow offshoring to China. But, I still try to buy things consciously, and would making a bunch of cheap plastic shit from a cheap 3D printer from China be better for my life? I am skeptical.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  If all you took away is “cheap plastic from China” and that they should have gone for low cost, you haven’t paid enough attention while reading this article. It talks about building a better product and investing in the experience and ecosystem, which the chinese alternatives have done. We are about to witness the same thing happening to cars very soon.
  - sersi 3y ago
    It's been interesting seeing this happen in multiple industries. Hifi is one of them, companies like Topping, Fiio, etc.. make great products for a fraction of the cost of previously well-known Japanese or western companies and have the measurements to prove it. Robot vaccuum cleaners are the same, we went from irobot being the best to being eclipsed by companies like Roborock or Dreame (although given privacy issues, I'd get something can be rooted)
    - dralley 3y ago
      > Fiio etc.. make great products for a fraction of the cost of previously well-known Japanese or western companies and have the measurements to prove it. Ironically, most of the ADCs on the market are equalled or beat out by a $10 Apple USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle smaller than my pinkie finger, and the measurements prove it.
  - riddley 3y ago
    The trouble is, the author doesn't at any point discuss what makes the products better. They just claim they are as if initial cost is the only factor.
    - drewdevault 3y ago
      Author here. For the price tag of a Prusa Mk4 you can get a Bambu X1 Carbon 3D which is, metric for metric, a better printer -- larger volume, 16 color prints, faster printing, better resolution, pretty much all stats. Go for Creality and you can get the K1 Max at $300 less than the Mk4 (currently on sale, so more like $400 less) which is even better, again, in every spec and comes with an ecosystem that Creality has invested in to a much greater extent than Prusa.
syntaxing 3y ago
There’s a bigger issue I noticed lately that really concerns me more than situations like Prusa. I’m trying to build a Millennium Machine Milo CNC and sourcing the aluminum plates cost a pretty penny. Whereas if you were in China, you probably know someone that can machine it for you for a fraction of the cost even factoring cost of living. You can see people on YouTube making these really elaborate hobby projects like 6 DoF robot arms with parts they machined and anodized. This makes me concern about our future and what it means for future companies like Apple.
- flir 3y ago
  Funny. I look at American youtube and I worry exactly the same thing about the UK ("where have all our hobbyist engineers gone?"). The grass is always greener.
- therouwboat 3y ago
  I guess you just have to know right people, I have a machinist friend who does small jobs for his friends all the time and some people have milling machines in their garage. You can probably get machining work done very cheap in the local technical school.
Palomides 3y ago
>Imagine a Prusa where it works out of the box, you can fire up a slicer in your browser which auto-connects to your printer and prints models from a Prusa-operated model repository, paying $10 for a premium model, $1 off the top goes to Prusa, with the same saved payment details which ensure that a fresh spool of Prusa filament arrives at your front door when it auto-detects that your printer is almost out. The print you want is too big for your build volume? Click here to have it cloud printed – do you want priority shipping for that? Your hot-end is reaching the end of its life – as one of our valued business customers on our premium support contract we would be happy to send you a temporary replacement printer while yours is shipped in for service. What a nightmare. Grimly funny to see 3d printers getting pressured to take up all the 2d printer business models everyone hates (service contracts, proprietary consumables, cloud management software, etc.).
- drewdevault 3y ago
  It need not be predatory, nor need it be mandatory for users to take advantage of these features, nor need it be proprietary or non-free.
  - Palomides 3y ago
    I agree, but I think the incentives tend to push towards user hostile results. It's a small jump for the business mind to go from free cloud optional to free cloud only to paid features cloud to subscription only cloud, or selling plastic to only supporting their own plastic, and so on. Web services are so cheap and profitable that it feels like every business converges towards them now. I'd really rather buy from a company that makes money directly from selling good hardware (but certainly the hardware is useless without ongoing software development, and we're back to the original issue).
    - drewdevault 3y ago
      Mainly I think that this temptation is circumvented with strong leadership and weak investors. That big VC money is a poison, but if you don't take it then you can focus on the product without so much of the risk.
ragebol 3y ago
I wonder how Ultimaker fits into this picture. They were an early pioneer in 3D printing, had all of their stuff open source and most of it still IIRC, but pivoted from the consumer market to more business users, with a bunch of services on top. Was that the right move? Their current printers are priced out of consumer range though, which is a pity.
TimMeade 3y ago
I think this is missing a little context. I believe Prusa and to some extent the older market leader Creality were sideswiped by a better product. A group of engineers got together and formed Bambu Labs. Their printer are all less than 2 years on market and they have become the new standard for the simple fact they just work. 3d Printing historically has been "early adopter". I'm long term tech. It took me a month of configuring and tinkering and changing to get me first ender 3 to work about 3 years ago. I got a Bambu Labs P1P and it just worked. Right out of the box day 1. Beautiful multi color prints. All for less than my Ender 3 S1PRO cost. I then got the new Creality K1 Max that they meant to compete with Bambu. Now 6 months later it's still not "just works". I have upgraded the Hot End and it has ruined 4 plates do to bad firmware. I am currently waiting on new mother board to fix the current issue. Waiting for 3 weeks as it comes from china. When it does work its very nice. But I have to say that's 50% of the time. In the meantime I ordered the new Bambu A1 with the AMS Lite. Again it just works. Some issues. But in general it just works. And it's 2/3 the cost of the K1 Max. Building a great product and doing it cheaper is why everyone is getting Bambu Labs and Not Prusa and a declined Creality market. IMHO.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  That's exactly the point of the article. Chinese competitors have better, more diversified products and sell them cheaper as well while Prusa failed to diversify and to keep up: "Chinese manufacturers did all of this and more, and they’re winning. They aren’t just cheaper – they offer an outright better product. These are not cheap knock-offs"
- rjbwork 3y ago
  Yeah I got into 3d printing a few years ago to start a side business for a niche hobby, got a nicer Creality CR-10S, I think it was. Endless hours tinkering with the thing, and still could only get nice solid prints like half the time. I just don't have the patience to deal w/ stuff like that anymore as I've gotten older. I just want something that works OOTB. I think in the next few years if I get back into it I'll get one of the prosumer fully enclosed ones with an exhaust vent.
  - 3y ago
riddley 3y ago
The author starts out discussing licenses and by the fourth paragraph has jumped to the standard "I've never used a prusa, but here's why they suck" talking points and then at the end of the article even points out that the license talk has nothing to do with their assertions. > Prusa responded to this certainty by not diversifying their business model whatsoever. There has only ever been one Prusa product: their latest 3D printer model. https://blog.prusa3d.com/prusa-pro-our-industrial-product-line-at-formnext-2023_85533/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/prusa-pro-our-industrial-product-li... https://blog.prusa3d.com/printables-store_87810/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/printables-store_87810/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/printables-clubs-are-live-you-can-now-support-the-creators-you-love-on-printables_81063/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/printables-clubs-are-live-you-can-n... https://blog.prusa3d.com/trilabs-industrial-3d-printers-one-year-later-moving-expansion-and-prusa-e-shop_72326/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/trilabs-industrial-3d-printers-one-... These are just the first few pages of their blog, I could go on. > Or, you can buy an Ender 3 off Amazon right now for $180 and you’ll get better than half of the value of an Mk4 at an 85% discount. It's difficult to assume that the author is communicating in good faith when one reads something as obviously wrong as this. If you can't spot the difference between a Ender 3 and an MK4, you shouldn't be writing about 3d printers. > Prusa’s naive strategy is causing their position to fall like a rock. Are Prusa's financials available somewhere that I'm not aware of? They seem to be doing fine considering they can't make printers fast enough to keep up with demand.
- drewdevault 3y ago
  Author here. I have used Prusas, as well as many other 3D printers. I know how they are distinguished from the rest. The thing is, there really isn't much of a difference between an Ender 3 and a Mk4 that a typical consumer (that is, not an enthusiast) would understand as justifying the bigger price tag. The Mk4 is a better printer, by a long shot, but not by the same factor as the price tag. The Mk4 price completely eliminates Prusa from the entry- to mid-level market which is a big lost opportunity when new enthusiasts are learning on other brands -- and by the time they want to upgrade to a Mk4 price-point, they have much, much better options than Prusa and brand loyalty to someone else. Prusa is not the right choice at any price point anymore and has little to no market relevance left, except maybe among a certain niche of enthusiasts.
plagiarist 3y ago
One thing I learned from 3D printing is that it doesn't take a genius to assemble a working robot. I don't think closed-source software and hardware is really a moat here? It's timing belts and lead screws on a frame.
ralusek 3y ago
Watch Naomi Wu on YouTube. Look beyond her jarring aesthetic, and you’ll get to see the process of building something from idea to prototype and even production in China, specifically Shenzhen. It genuinely makes me happy that a place like that exists, but sad that there doesn’t seem to be any place like it anywhere else; certainly not in the west. If you wanted to build a 3D printer from scratch, they have what are functionally large indoor malls selling every component you could possibly need. The people at these shops all know their stuff, and the whole place is just buzzing with genuine makers. And for production it seems as though everyone knows someone with a machine shop and an injection molding setup. For all of the talk of China’s decline, I wouldn’t count someone out with a place like Shenzhen; the west has nothing like it. Silicon Valley would be so much better socketed into an agile manufacturing juggernaut like that.
- IX-103 3y ago
  Interesting. That sounds a lot like what Akihabara (in Japan) used to be before it became the over-commercialized geek-trap it is now.
- lawn 3y ago
  I checked out her channel but it seems she's been "vanished" by the government since more than half a year ago?
skybrian 3y ago
I suspect this article isn't accurate about Prusa. It's not clear that they're "floundering" (versus worried). They do have other products (resin printers, supplies like filament). There is a PrusaConnect cloud service and they recently launched a Printables website for sharing models. And probably other stuff I missed.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Their resin printers are completely uncompetitive. Their latest model dates from 2018 iirc.
- flutas 3y ago
  I don't know about floundering either, but Bambu has absolutely changed Prusa, but imo it's for the better. Prusa now has ads (spending on ads, not embedding them in their devices), and a marketing budget, and sends review printers to people.
daft_pink 3y ago
Honestly, I think Prusa is floundering for the same reason other equipment makers are floundering. People bought a ton of goods during the pandemic, because they didn't go out much and now people are going out more and the spend is returning to services, meals and entertainment, so people are spending a lot less on devices. Higher interest rates are also reducing capital investments across the world. We are just seeing the cyclical change in spending habits over time.
lawn 3y ago
> They have been struggling as of late, and came under criticism for making the firmware of their Mk4 printer non-free. One of the biggest reasons I didn't choose a Mk4 was precisely because they moved away from open source. If you're like me an values open source highly and is looking for a printer, the VORON printers are the way to go. They're DIY printers where you assemble them yourself, so they're not for you if you just want to unbox and press print, but if you want a completely open source printer (from software to hardware) then look no further. You can even get a cheaper VORON 2.4 or Trident kit for less than the Mk4, and still have some room to replace parts with! And you'll get a much more powerful printer to boot. Oh, and I avoid the Bambu labs printers because they demand an always on internet connection for you to be able to print with them. The repair-ability is also very poor.
- nullc 3y ago
  > Oh, and I avoid the Bambu labs printers because they demand an always on internet connection for you to be able to print with them. That hasn't been true for the last year. FWIW.
- MegaDeKay 3y ago
  I have a half assembled Trident on a table behind me right now. Like you, I greatly value open source. I didn't realize at the time I ordered the Trident that the Mk4 firmware was non-free, but Prusa didn't make the final cut regardless. In my mind, Prusa hasn't been showing enough innovation. The bed-slinging Mk4 coming out at the price it did against CoreXY printers like Voron and Bambu was like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Their new extruder is nice but not enough. I've been really impressed by the Voron community as well. I've found them very helpful and supportive, and the creativity here is amazing. The long list of mods is also impressive: some are incredibly useful and some are more fun than anything else. I understand that a lot of people just want a box to show up at their door that they can plug in and start printing with. Those folks should buy a Bambu. For everyone else, there's Voron.
  - mech422 3y ago
    Pretty much this ^^^. Some people just want to _use_ tools and some people want to build/hack/tinker with them. Voron and Bambu seem to cover both use cases. Annex Engineering has some cool stuff in the 'build' category as well.
pierat 3y ago
Basically, the whole argument is "If Prusa had created a closed source moat to trap customers....", and that view is an anathema to open source where Josef came from. The current line of printers are this bastardized mixture of DRM and open source: There's a piece of the PCB you have to break to "allow" loading unsigned firmware. And breaking the PCB like that makes it non-returnable. That crap's lost a lot of open source people just with that stunt alone. And now, his newest printer is closed source. Basically one of the major selling points you paid for (high quality components, open source) is now gone. Vanished. As for me, I'd rather open source printers so I can fix them when they invariably break. This closed source crap, especially combined with a "cloud slicer", is just premeditated e-waste. I've been down this road before of "buy cheap shit but cloud aware, and breaks when the company gets bored". At a larger view, I'd say it's an incompatibility between FLOSS and commercial when they're being shoehorned together into a company. I would say that FLOSS is an ethic, in which businesses demand ethics to be sold off for cash. And that's what we saw with the PCB break-off for DRM removal, and now just straight up closed source. (SSC Meditations on Moloch covers this selling of ethics and being worse off than you started)
- drewdevault 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    > Note that none of this is material to the license of the product, be it free or non-free. It’s about building a brand, developing a customer relationship, and identifying and exploiting market opportunities. Um... ok? But the product is what they are selling, and that is based on research on development, which is under a license. Other companies use this R&D, do not open it, and sell their product cheaper while having an completely opaque R&D process. > Hackers and enthusiasts who found companies like Prusa tend to imagine that the product is everything, but it’s not. Maybe 10% of the work is developing the 3D printer itself – don’t abandon the other 90% of your business. 3D printers became accessible to consumers because of a focus on open source and engineering. It is no where near mature. To call it '10%' is ridiculous. You think they should spend 90% of their effort to heavily monetize something that isn't mainstream consumer ready? So they can choke the market while it is entirely filled with hobbyists and enthusiasts, who are probably the most notoriously picky consumers in the world when it comes to hardware? > You need to deal with sales and marketing, chase down promising leads, identify and respond to risks, look for and exploit new market opportunities, and much more to be successful. What does that even mean with regards to 3D printing?
slau 3y ago
I think Prusa has had a couple of missteps of late, but they’re not in the gutter yet. On the XL: the 0.6mm makes sense with the build volume, to significantly improve print times, but seems to really not work well with the 5 toolhead models, and introduces massive amounts of zits, stringing, cross-contamination, etc. On the Mk4: at the price point, it’s maybe missing a few features to really hold up against the X1C, maybe even the X1E. Spaghetti detection (camera support), klipper, real input shaping, etc. On input shaping: Prusa bet on the wrong horse with input shaping. Adding a <2g sensor to the toolhead was the right solution, and generating default input shaping profiles based on models in the factory was not. Most Prusa customers would’ve been happy to add the part themselves. Now they’ve sunk so much development and money into this, they refuse to accept it was the wrong approach and switch gears. Klipper: Marlin is old. Sure, it’s amazing what Prusa is able to squeeze out of it, but at some point, the tech debt is just going to hold you back too much to be competitive. That happened around mid 2022 for Prusa, and yet Prusa decided to push 3 new printers on the same ancient firmware.
- commandar 3y ago
  >On the XL: the 0.6mm makes sense with the build volume, to significantly improve print times, but seems to really not work well with the 5 toolhead models, and introduces massive amounts of zits, stringing, cross-contamination, etc. More fundamentally, the XL uses an open frame design specifically because Jo wanted to prioritize being able to easily see and remove prints. The entire gantry sits on a cantilevered open frame -- that's a fundamental engineering failure that's going to mean the XL will always be slower and produce lower quality prints than closed frame designs.
  - slau 3y ago
    I didn’t know about this point. Which printer would be closed frame, so I can understand the difference? From what I’ve been able to observe, the quality of the XL is quite good for single tool head prints, however the quality really nosedives when multiple tool heads are introduced, and a bunch of people have been finding tricks to improve things (more wiping, less lifting, insane retractions, etc).
butterfi 3y ago
I just got a Qidi which appears, but I could be mistaken, to be using a licensed version of Prusas software.
chme 3y ago
A lot comes down to how people measure success. In a capitalist system, success is often measured as having the most bucks, be it deserved or undeserved, how they got them, or how many people were ripped off on the way doesn't matter. Measuring the success of open-source projects is more about how they managed to impact the world positively. How they make tasks easier, bring happiness, inspire people, build community, give people more control over their lives, or even save lives, etc. Therefore open source products don't need to compete with closed-source projects, because they have a different measurement of success. If an open-source engineer figures out a way that pays your bills, then this is even better, but not necessarily required for someone to be a successful open-source hard- or software engineer. It is a failure of the capitalistic system and broadly society if those engineers are not given the chance to continue their good work. And this is were I disagree, advocating for being more competitive, and giving up your morale rules one by one is "race to the bottom" behavior. This is why there are 1 dollar stores and tons of low quality crab for sale.
- kiba 3y ago
  You need to be profitable to remain alive as a company. I agree with you we shouldn't race to the bottom, but if there's room for Prusa to compete without compromising value, they should do that.
cmsj 3y ago
I have a lot of respect for Armin, but it's pretty clear he doesn't really understand the specifics of what he's talking about here. > people are complaining (The MK4 firmware is not Open Source) the link here is to a reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/10g6fgv/prusa_giving_up_on_its_open_source_roots/ https://www.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/10g6fgv/prusa_givi...) in which the complaint is not only not about the MK4's firmware, it's also not even about something not being open source. Specifically, that complaint is that PrusaSlicer (the software which turns a 3D model file into GCode instructions for the printer to follow - think PostScript, but for a 3D printer) is not developed as an open project. PrusaSlicer is open source, but most of the development happens internally at Prusa. It's a legitimate complaint, but not at all the complaint Armin claims it to be. For the record, the Mk4 firmware is also open source, it lives here: https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy
- kiba 3y ago
  Yeah. I checked to see if MK4 firmware is open source. It is indeed, aside from designs and graphics being CC-NC-SA, which seems to be an attempt to protect their trademarks? Now, the complaint about development is not being open is a weakness that should be fixed. I have not read evidence that Prusa does this. It does incorporates code from other projects from time to time. I would like to see Prusa lean more strongly on open development.
- cmsj 3y ago
  To provide some more commentary here. Prusa has not changed it's behaviour towards either PrusaSlicer or its printer firmwares in the time since Bambu has existed as a force in the 3D printing community, so Armin's claim that Bambu is making companies reconsider open source, is not at all substantiated. Furthermore, the Bambu A1 is clearly positioned against the Prusa Mini - they're priced the same, have the same gantry style, but the A1 comes with a multi-material system. Bambu's higher end printers (X1 Carbon, P1P, etc) are positioned against the Prusa Mk3/Mk4 in the ~$1000-1500 range. Again, Armin doesn't know the specifics of what he's talking about, so the conclusions are nonsense.
  - 3y ago
amelius 3y ago
You don't have to milk everything to the last drop. Perhaps it is just time for a new challenge for Josef Prusa and his company.
cfeduke 3y ago
From experience in the 3D printing space, it's too early to say Bambu out-Prusa'd Prusa, because there hasn't been enough time to know whether the Bambu printers will outlast a Prusa printer. The business model the author is discussing is not unlike the business model for Glowforge, and based on my wife's experience in that industry I'm not sure that business model is working out so well. I've been printing continuously on a pair of Mk3s for 4+ years, minimal maintenance. (That is, wear and tear on print plates and nozzles, and one thermistor replacement.) Maintenance is important once you venture beyond hobbyist needs. I did buy a Bambu P1S instead of a Mk4 this year when it was time to add a another printer for my wife's side gig. It's a great machine, except when it has problems. The software is bad at diagnosing the problem, and the UI gets really confused on status messages, and the software wants nothing more than to hold your hand down the wrong path to fix the problem. There's a veneer to everything Bambu that makes it look good as long as you don't look too closely. I'll see where this printer is at after 4+ years of continuous printing, but based on my present experience I'd be surprised if my P1S is still running in 2 years. (And no, its not lost on me that as a Prusa purchaser I bought from their competitor this time around.) I expect Bambu to push Prusa to compete on features - I am fine as a non-hobbyist paying a higher premium for reliability.
- sebazzz 3y ago
  Bambu P-series based on an ESP32 aren't really comparable to the A and X series running full Linux-based firmware with full color touch screen.
jacquesm 3y ago
Prusa is floundering so much that I am about to order my second printer from them.
blinding-streak 3y ago
Is Prusa floundering? The article doesn't mention their financials or anything.
sdflhasjd 3y ago
I think it's a bit premature to say Prusa is floundering. If they were a VC funded startup with billions of debt needing to grow x% YoY to prevent a catastrophic implosion I would agree. Prusa seems reasonably self sufficient though and if they stop growing or shrink I wouldn't say they've failed. I think some people forget that businesses can still continue to exist, pay their employees well, and that's success. On the other hand, Bambu still has to prove itself as sustainable in this regard and if they're selling their printers with tiny margins (or even at a loss) we've yet to see what their actual plans are, and with an ecosystem comes the potential for exploiting customers. They've already been dishonest in terms of their use of OSS. And while Bambu did "steal" some software, their hardware seems reasonably novel - I don't think they've exploited Prusa specifically, and any trouncing they've done is because Prusa sat on the MK3 a bit too long. One last thing is I think Bambu and Prusa can coexist. Prusa evolved from RepRap and combine both out of the box quality and DIY-ability, which is still a good draw for the same kind of tinkerers after a printer in the first place. In the other hand, Bambu products are the Apple/HP of printers - you dont do any tinkering even if you want and if it stops working you send it back.
- kiba 3y ago
  I would be more concerned about Prusa dying as a business than making billions in profit.
SignalM 3y ago
Sorry this article is incorrect as it gets. Bambu could have done the same thing with Cura or any other slicer program and Cura and Prusa are built on other open source projects so to say if they kept the doors closed it would have helped is not honoring all of the engineering efforts that came before the big names capitalized on it. What has actually happened is that Bambu figured out the market isn’t people that like to tinker with their 3d printer - the market is people want to print things to tinker with. They focused on their market and made a ton of small features that add up to a user experience that is nearly as simple as it can be allowing you to do something as easy as print from your phone. While Prusa finds more places to put PRUSA BY PRUSA ORIGINAL PRUSA on their machines that look like 3d printed hacker machines Bambu made their machines simple with a minimalist design that actually looks good enough to show your friends without them wondering how long you looked at the matrix to get it running.
sottol 3y ago
One problem is the inherent assymmetry. Bambu gets to trivially copy open-source innovations like automatic bed-leveling or the corexy motion system without man-years of research. Then they get to use the saved time to improve upon those designs or the user experience but don't return anything back in return (for the most part, their slicer spawned Orca due to the software OS license). But now the OS community is at a disadvantage if they introduce something novel and keep it secret as they have to spend countless hours catching up, whereas the commercial entity can in turn just easily copy the community's new innovations and is free to spend the saved time to innovate in other areas again. It would be nice if there was something like the GPL for "designs" or mechanical systems like automatic bed leveling where companies would have to open source their hardware and software implementation details in turn for using the "idea".
snom380 3y ago
The article does nothing to back up the claim in the title, that Prusa is actually floundering. Presumably if somone writes a post tomorrow about how the Hare programming language is floundering, and that ends up trending in various forums with the language dying being taken as matter of fact, then Drew would have liked whoever wrote it to have done a bit more research.
rcarmo 3y ago
I don’t really think Prusa is floundering, but I just don’t get their go-to-market strategy or technology roadmap. Klipper is now taking the low-end Chinese printer segment by storm, Vorons are a _way_ better value for money if you value maintainability (although assembly won’t be everyone’s wheelhouse), and the MK4 wasn’t really that innovative. Bambu is just catering to a different market—they just went and added dozens of little creature comforts and tweaks to their hardware and software to the point where it’s literally point and click, and even the offshoots are good. I’m in the process of switching from SuperSlicer-which caters better to non-Prusa printers-to OrcaSlicer, which is full of nice touches and productivity enhancements like multi-plate projets, and that’s a Bambu Studio clone. What I’m afraid of with Bambu is long-term maintainability of their printers. I can replace belts, gears, extruders, etc., the works for most of my printers (I just re-printed a broken X-axis assembly for my 8-year-old Prusa clone), but am really unsure I’d be able to maintain a Bambu four years down the road.

103 points by ingve 3y ago

I wasn't aware that Prusa is floundering and wouldn't have minded a little more development there. However it wouldn't surprise me as when I was shopping for my latest 3d printer replacement it was too easy to choose something else. For the price of the Mk4 most of the market is within the same budget (many options arguably better and more capable). This post is the Armin Ronacher take that the author here is talking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38768997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38768997

Centigonal 3y ago

Really interesting post! Sounds like Prusa made the mistake of thinking a product is a business, and that's it. I wouldn't count out Prusa, though. They've built a very strong brand, and there's still room to pivot or innovate. Even if they don't, I'm sure they can limp along at a smaller size for a while.

xrd 3y ago

I find this really fascinating as my company has several products and we've been considering for years whether open source is a better direction than what we are doing now, which is to sell closed source software to enterprises. Needless to say, this is a very different market than the one Prusa is attacking, but I've still got opinions. I find it interesting that this comes the day after Xmas. My house was already completely swamped with cheap Chinese (or similarly cheap manufacturing country) crap. Plastic toys, fire-retardant ugly Disney-esque pajamas made in Myanmar. My kids threw tantrums because they "only" got 14 presents instead of the 16 their siblings got, but almost all those toys are forgotten now a day later. I bought my daughter reproductions of prints from Anna Atkins (the first person to create a book of photography in 1843), a kit to make cyanotypes (the technique she used), and had them solve riddles to get their presents (my daughter's clue was "blue"). I bet she won't remember that. My kids are buried in junk, and it is partially my fault, but let's at least assign a little blame to relatives trying to make up for their parenting failures years ago. I say all that because I disagree with DD's assertion that the low-cost strategy at Best Buy is something that will always win and is what Prusa should have done. Sure, they probably would have earned much more by somehow offshoring to China. But, I still try to buy things consciously, and would making a bunch of cheap plastic shit from a cheap 3D printer from China be better for my life? I am skeptical.

ricardobeat 3y ago
If all you took away is “cheap plastic from China” and that they should have gone for low cost, you haven’t paid enough attention while reading this article. It talks about building a better product and investing in the experience and ecosystem, which the chinese alternatives have done. We are about to witness the same thing happening to cars very soon.
- sersi 3y ago
  It's been interesting seeing this happen in multiple industries. Hifi is one of them, companies like Topping, Fiio, etc.. make great products for a fraction of the cost of previously well-known Japanese or western companies and have the measurements to prove it. Robot vaccuum cleaners are the same, we went from irobot being the best to being eclipsed by companies like Roborock or Dreame (although given privacy issues, I'd get something can be rooted)
  - dralley 3y ago
    > Fiio etc.. make great products for a fraction of the cost of previously well-known Japanese or western companies and have the measurements to prove it. Ironically, most of the ADCs on the market are equalled or beat out by a $10 Apple USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle smaller than my pinkie finger, and the measurements prove it.
- riddley 3y ago
  The trouble is, the author doesn't at any point discuss what makes the products better. They just claim they are as if initial cost is the only factor.
  - drewdevault 3y ago
    Author here. For the price tag of a Prusa Mk4 you can get a Bambu X1 Carbon 3D which is, metric for metric, a better printer -- larger volume, 16 color prints, faster printing, better resolution, pretty much all stats. Go for Creality and you can get the K1 Max at $300 less than the Mk4 (currently on sale, so more like $400 less) which is even better, again, in every spec and comes with an ecosystem that Creality has invested in to a much greater extent than Prusa.

syntaxing 3y ago

There’s a bigger issue I noticed lately that really concerns me more than situations like Prusa. I’m trying to build a Millennium Machine Milo CNC and sourcing the aluminum plates cost a pretty penny. Whereas if you were in China, you probably know someone that can machine it for you for a fraction of the cost even factoring cost of living. You can see people on YouTube making these really elaborate hobby projects like 6 DoF robot arms with parts they machined and anodized. This makes me concern about our future and what it means for future companies like Apple.

flir 3y ago
Funny. I look at American youtube and I worry exactly the same thing about the UK ("where have all our hobbyist engineers gone?"). The grass is always greener.
therouwboat 3y ago
I guess you just have to know right people, I have a machinist friend who does small jobs for his friends all the time and some people have milling machines in their garage. You can probably get machining work done very cheap in the local technical school.

Palomides 3y ago

>Imagine a Prusa where it works out of the box, you can fire up a slicer in your browser which auto-connects to your printer and prints models from a Prusa-operated model repository, paying $10 for a premium model, $1 off the top goes to Prusa, with the same saved payment details which ensure that a fresh spool of Prusa filament arrives at your front door when it auto-detects that your printer is almost out. The print you want is too big for your build volume? Click here to have it cloud printed – do you want priority shipping for that? Your hot-end is reaching the end of its life – as one of our valued business customers on our premium support contract we would be happy to send you a temporary replacement printer while yours is shipped in for service. What a nightmare. Grimly funny to see 3d printers getting pressured to take up all the 2d printer business models everyone hates (service contracts, proprietary consumables, cloud management software, etc.).

drewdevault 3y ago
It need not be predatory, nor need it be mandatory for users to take advantage of these features, nor need it be proprietary or non-free.
- Palomides 3y ago
  I agree, but I think the incentives tend to push towards user hostile results. It's a small jump for the business mind to go from free cloud optional to free cloud only to paid features cloud to subscription only cloud, or selling plastic to only supporting their own plastic, and so on. Web services are so cheap and profitable that it feels like every business converges towards them now. I'd really rather buy from a company that makes money directly from selling good hardware (but certainly the hardware is useless without ongoing software development, and we're back to the original issue).
  - drewdevault 3y ago
    Mainly I think that this temptation is circumvented with strong leadership and weak investors. That big VC money is a poison, but if you don't take it then you can focus on the product without so much of the risk.

ragebol 3y ago

I wonder how Ultimaker fits into this picture. They were an early pioneer in 3D printing, had all of their stuff open source and most of it still IIRC, but pivoted from the consumer market to more business users, with a bunch of services on top. Was that the right move? Their current printers are priced out of consumer range though, which is a pity.

TimMeade 3y ago

I think this is missing a little context. I believe Prusa and to some extent the older market leader Creality were sideswiped by a better product. A group of engineers got together and formed Bambu Labs. Their printer are all less than 2 years on market and they have become the new standard for the simple fact they just work. 3d Printing historically has been "early adopter". I'm long term tech. It took me a month of configuring and tinkering and changing to get me first ender 3 to work about 3 years ago. I got a Bambu Labs P1P and it just worked. Right out of the box day 1. Beautiful multi color prints. All for less than my Ender 3 S1PRO cost. I then got the new Creality K1 Max that they meant to compete with Bambu. Now 6 months later it's still not "just works". I have upgraded the Hot End and it has ruined 4 plates do to bad firmware. I am currently waiting on new mother board to fix the current issue. Waiting for 3 weeks as it comes from china. When it does work its very nice. But I have to say that's 50% of the time. In the meantime I ordered the new Bambu A1 with the AMS Lite. Again it just works. Some issues. But in general it just works. And it's 2/3 the cost of the K1 Max. Building a great product and doing it cheaper is why everyone is getting Bambu Labs and Not Prusa and a declined Creality market. IMHO.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
That's exactly the point of the article. Chinese competitors have better, more diversified products and sell them cheaper as well while Prusa failed to diversify and to keep up: "Chinese manufacturers did all of this and more, and they’re winning. They aren’t just cheaper – they offer an outright better product. These are not cheap knock-offs"
rjbwork 3y ago
Yeah I got into 3d printing a few years ago to start a side business for a niche hobby, got a nicer Creality CR-10S, I think it was. Endless hours tinkering with the thing, and still could only get nice solid prints like half the time. I just don't have the patience to deal w/ stuff like that anymore as I've gotten older. I just want something that works OOTB. I think in the next few years if I get back into it I'll get one of the prosumer fully enclosed ones with an exhaust vent.
- 3y ago

riddley 3y ago

The author starts out discussing licenses and by the fourth paragraph has jumped to the standard "I've never used a prusa, but here's why they suck" talking points and then at the end of the article even points out that the license talk has nothing to do with their assertions. > Prusa responded to this certainty by not diversifying their business model whatsoever. There has only ever been one Prusa product: their latest 3D printer model. https://blog.prusa3d.com/prusa-pro-our-industrial-product-line-at-formnext-2023_85533/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/prusa-pro-our-industrial-product-li... https://blog.prusa3d.com/printables-store_87810/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/printables-store_87810/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/printables-clubs-are-live-you-can-now-support-the-creators-you-love-on-printables_81063/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/printables-clubs-are-live-you-can-n... https://blog.prusa3d.com/trilabs-industrial-3d-printers-one-year-later-moving-expansion-and-prusa-e-shop_72326/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/trilabs-industrial-3d-printers-one-... These are just the first few pages of their blog, I could go on. > Or, you can buy an Ender 3 off Amazon right now for $180 and you’ll get better than half of the value of an Mk4 at an 85% discount. It's difficult to assume that the author is communicating in good faith when one reads something as obviously wrong as this. If you can't spot the difference between a Ender 3 and an MK4, you shouldn't be writing about 3d printers. > Prusa’s naive strategy is causing their position to fall like a rock. Are Prusa's financials available somewhere that I'm not aware of? They seem to be doing fine considering they can't make printers fast enough to keep up with demand.

drewdevault 3y ago
Author here. I have used Prusas, as well as many other 3D printers. I know how they are distinguished from the rest. The thing is, there really isn't much of a difference between an Ender 3 and a Mk4 that a typical consumer (that is, not an enthusiast) would understand as justifying the bigger price tag. The Mk4 is a better printer, by a long shot, but not by the same factor as the price tag. The Mk4 price completely eliminates Prusa from the entry- to mid-level market which is a big lost opportunity when new enthusiasts are learning on other brands -- and by the time they want to upgrade to a Mk4 price-point, they have much, much better options than Prusa and brand loyalty to someone else. Prusa is not the right choice at any price point anymore and has little to no market relevance left, except maybe among a certain niche of enthusiasts.

plagiarist 3y ago

One thing I learned from 3D printing is that it doesn't take a genius to assemble a working robot. I don't think closed-source software and hardware is really a moat here? It's timing belts and lead screws on a frame.

ralusek 3y ago

Watch Naomi Wu on YouTube. Look beyond her jarring aesthetic, and you’ll get to see the process of building something from idea to prototype and even production in China, specifically Shenzhen. It genuinely makes me happy that a place like that exists, but sad that there doesn’t seem to be any place like it anywhere else; certainly not in the west. If you wanted to build a 3D printer from scratch, they have what are functionally large indoor malls selling every component you could possibly need. The people at these shops all know their stuff, and the whole place is just buzzing with genuine makers. And for production it seems as though everyone knows someone with a machine shop and an injection molding setup. For all of the talk of China’s decline, I wouldn’t count someone out with a place like Shenzhen; the west has nothing like it. Silicon Valley would be so much better socketed into an agile manufacturing juggernaut like that.

IX-103 3y ago
Interesting. That sounds a lot like what Akihabara (in Japan) used to be before it became the over-commercialized geek-trap it is now.
lawn 3y ago
I checked out her channel but it seems she's been "vanished" by the government since more than half a year ago?

skybrian 3y ago

I suspect this article isn't accurate about Prusa. It's not clear that they're "floundering" (versus worried). They do have other products (resin printers, supplies like filament). There is a PrusaConnect cloud service and they recently launched a Printables website for sharing models. And probably other stuff I missed.

mardifoufs 3y ago
Their resin printers are completely uncompetitive. Their latest model dates from 2018 iirc.
flutas 3y ago
I don't know about floundering either, but Bambu has absolutely changed Prusa, but imo it's for the better. Prusa now has ads (spending on ads, not embedding them in their devices), and a marketing budget, and sends review printers to people.

daft_pink 3y ago

Honestly, I think Prusa is floundering for the same reason other equipment makers are floundering. People bought a ton of goods during the pandemic, because they didn't go out much and now people are going out more and the spend is returning to services, meals and entertainment, so people are spending a lot less on devices. Higher interest rates are also reducing capital investments across the world. We are just seeing the cyclical change in spending habits over time.

lawn 3y ago

> They have been struggling as of late, and came under criticism for making the firmware of their Mk4 printer non-free. One of the biggest reasons I didn't choose a Mk4 was precisely because they moved away from open source. If you're like me an values open source highly and is looking for a printer, the VORON printers are the way to go. They're DIY printers where you assemble them yourself, so they're not for you if you just want to unbox and press print, but if you want a completely open source printer (from software to hardware) then look no further. You can even get a cheaper VORON 2.4 or Trident kit for less than the Mk4, and still have some room to replace parts with! And you'll get a much more powerful printer to boot. Oh, and I avoid the Bambu labs printers because they demand an always on internet connection for you to be able to print with them. The repair-ability is also very poor.

nullc 3y ago
> Oh, and I avoid the Bambu labs printers because they demand an always on internet connection for you to be able to print with them. That hasn't been true for the last year. FWIW.
MegaDeKay 3y ago
I have a half assembled Trident on a table behind me right now. Like you, I greatly value open source. I didn't realize at the time I ordered the Trident that the Mk4 firmware was non-free, but Prusa didn't make the final cut regardless. In my mind, Prusa hasn't been showing enough innovation. The bed-slinging Mk4 coming out at the price it did against CoreXY printers like Voron and Bambu was like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Their new extruder is nice but not enough. I've been really impressed by the Voron community as well. I've found them very helpful and supportive, and the creativity here is amazing. The long list of mods is also impressive: some are incredibly useful and some are more fun than anything else. I understand that a lot of people just want a box to show up at their door that they can plug in and start printing with. Those folks should buy a Bambu. For everyone else, there's Voron.
- mech422 3y ago
  Pretty much this ^^^. Some people just want to _use_ tools and some people want to build/hack/tinker with them. Voron and Bambu seem to cover both use cases. Annex Engineering has some cool stuff in the 'build' category as well.

pierat 3y ago

Basically, the whole argument is "If Prusa had created a closed source moat to trap customers....", and that view is an anathema to open source where Josef came from. The current line of printers are this bastardized mixture of DRM and open source: There's a piece of the PCB you have to break to "allow" loading unsigned firmware. And breaking the PCB like that makes it non-returnable. That crap's lost a lot of open source people just with that stunt alone. And now, his newest printer is closed source. Basically one of the major selling points you paid for (high quality components, open source) is now gone. Vanished. As for me, I'd rather open source printers so I can fix them when they invariably break. This closed source crap, especially combined with a "cloud slicer", is just premeditated e-waste. I've been down this road before of "buy cheap shit but cloud aware, and breaks when the company gets bored". At a larger view, I'd say it's an incompatibility between FLOSS and commercial when they're being shoehorned together into a company. I would say that FLOSS is an ethic, in which businesses demand ethics to be sold off for cash. And that's what we saw with the PCB break-off for DRM removal, and now just straight up closed source. (SSC Meditations on Moloch covers this selling of ethics and being worse off than you started)

drewdevault 3y ago
[flagged]
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  > Note that none of this is material to the license of the product, be it free or non-free. It’s about building a brand, developing a customer relationship, and identifying and exploiting market opportunities. Um... ok? But the product is what they are selling, and that is based on research on development, which is under a license. Other companies use this R&D, do not open it, and sell their product cheaper while having an completely opaque R&D process. > Hackers and enthusiasts who found companies like Prusa tend to imagine that the product is everything, but it’s not. Maybe 10% of the work is developing the 3D printer itself – don’t abandon the other 90% of your business. 3D printers became accessible to consumers because of a focus on open source and engineering. It is no where near mature. To call it '10%' is ridiculous. You think they should spend 90% of their effort to heavily monetize something that isn't mainstream consumer ready? So they can choke the market while it is entirely filled with hobbyists and enthusiasts, who are probably the most notoriously picky consumers in the world when it comes to hardware? > You need to deal with sales and marketing, chase down promising leads, identify and respond to risks, look for and exploit new market opportunities, and much more to be successful. What does that even mean with regards to 3D printing?

slau 3y ago

I think Prusa has had a couple of missteps of late, but they’re not in the gutter yet. On the XL: the 0.6mm makes sense with the build volume, to significantly improve print times, but seems to really not work well with the 5 toolhead models, and introduces massive amounts of zits, stringing, cross-contamination, etc. On the Mk4: at the price point, it’s maybe missing a few features to really hold up against the X1C, maybe even the X1E. Spaghetti detection (camera support), klipper, real input shaping, etc. On input shaping: Prusa bet on the wrong horse with input shaping. Adding a <2g sensor to the toolhead was the right solution, and generating default input shaping profiles based on models in the factory was not. Most Prusa customers would’ve been happy to add the part themselves. Now they’ve sunk so much development and money into this, they refuse to accept it was the wrong approach and switch gears. Klipper: Marlin is old. Sure, it’s amazing what Prusa is able to squeeze out of it, but at some point, the tech debt is just going to hold you back too much to be competitive. That happened around mid 2022 for Prusa, and yet Prusa decided to push 3 new printers on the same ancient firmware.

commandar 3y ago
>On the XL: the 0.6mm makes sense with the build volume, to significantly improve print times, but seems to really not work well with the 5 toolhead models, and introduces massive amounts of zits, stringing, cross-contamination, etc. More fundamentally, the XL uses an open frame design specifically because Jo wanted to prioritize being able to easily see and remove prints. The entire gantry sits on a cantilevered open frame -- that's a fundamental engineering failure that's going to mean the XL will always be slower and produce lower quality prints than closed frame designs.
- slau 3y ago
  I didn’t know about this point. Which printer would be closed frame, so I can understand the difference? From what I’ve been able to observe, the quality of the XL is quite good for single tool head prints, however the quality really nosedives when multiple tool heads are introduced, and a bunch of people have been finding tricks to improve things (more wiping, less lifting, insane retractions, etc).

butterfi 3y ago

I just got a Qidi which appears, but I could be mistaken, to be using a licensed version of Prusas software.

chme 3y ago

A lot comes down to how people measure success. In a capitalist system, success is often measured as having the most bucks, be it deserved or undeserved, how they got them, or how many people were ripped off on the way doesn't matter. Measuring the success of open-source projects is more about how they managed to impact the world positively. How they make tasks easier, bring happiness, inspire people, build community, give people more control over their lives, or even save lives, etc. Therefore open source products don't need to compete with closed-source projects, because they have a different measurement of success. If an open-source engineer figures out a way that pays your bills, then this is even better, but not necessarily required for someone to be a successful open-source hard- or software engineer. It is a failure of the capitalistic system and broadly society if those engineers are not given the chance to continue their good work. And this is were I disagree, advocating for being more competitive, and giving up your morale rules one by one is "race to the bottom" behavior. This is why there are 1 dollar stores and tons of low quality crab for sale.

kiba 3y ago
You need to be profitable to remain alive as a company. I agree with you we shouldn't race to the bottom, but if there's room for Prusa to compete without compromising value, they should do that.

cmsj 3y ago

I have a lot of respect for Armin, but it's pretty clear he doesn't really understand the specifics of what he's talking about here. > people are complaining (The MK4 firmware is not Open Source) the link here is to a reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/10g6fgv/prusa_giving_up_on_its_open_source_roots/ https://www.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/10g6fgv/prusa_givi...) in which the complaint is not only not about the MK4's firmware, it's also not even about something not being open source. Specifically, that complaint is that PrusaSlicer (the software which turns a 3D model file into GCode instructions for the printer to follow - think PostScript, but for a 3D printer) is not developed as an open project. PrusaSlicer is open source, but most of the development happens internally at Prusa. It's a legitimate complaint, but not at all the complaint Armin claims it to be. For the record, the Mk4 firmware is also open source, it lives here: https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy

kiba 3y ago
Yeah. I checked to see if MK4 firmware is open source. It is indeed, aside from designs and graphics being CC-NC-SA, which seems to be an attempt to protect their trademarks? Now, the complaint about development is not being open is a weakness that should be fixed. I have not read evidence that Prusa does this. It does incorporates code from other projects from time to time. I would like to see Prusa lean more strongly on open development.
cmsj 3y ago
To provide some more commentary here. Prusa has not changed it's behaviour towards either PrusaSlicer or its printer firmwares in the time since Bambu has existed as a force in the 3D printing community, so Armin's claim that Bambu is making companies reconsider open source, is not at all substantiated. Furthermore, the Bambu A1 is clearly positioned against the Prusa Mini - they're priced the same, have the same gantry style, but the A1 comes with a multi-material system. Bambu's higher end printers (X1 Carbon, P1P, etc) are positioned against the Prusa Mk3/Mk4 in the ~$1000-1500 range. Again, Armin doesn't know the specifics of what he's talking about, so the conclusions are nonsense.
- 3y ago

amelius 3y ago

You don't have to milk everything to the last drop. Perhaps it is just time for a new challenge for Josef Prusa and his company.

cfeduke 3y ago

From experience in the 3D printing space, it's too early to say Bambu out-Prusa'd Prusa, because there hasn't been enough time to know whether the Bambu printers will outlast a Prusa printer. The business model the author is discussing is not unlike the business model for Glowforge, and based on my wife's experience in that industry I'm not sure that business model is working out so well. I've been printing continuously on a pair of Mk3s for 4+ years, minimal maintenance. (That is, wear and tear on print plates and nozzles, and one thermistor replacement.) Maintenance is important once you venture beyond hobbyist needs. I did buy a Bambu P1S instead of a Mk4 this year when it was time to add a another printer for my wife's side gig. It's a great machine, except when it has problems. The software is bad at diagnosing the problem, and the UI gets really confused on status messages, and the software wants nothing more than to hold your hand down the wrong path to fix the problem. There's a veneer to everything Bambu that makes it look good as long as you don't look too closely. I'll see where this printer is at after 4+ years of continuous printing, but based on my present experience I'd be surprised if my P1S is still running in 2 years. (And no, its not lost on me that as a Prusa purchaser I bought from their competitor this time around.) I expect Bambu to push Prusa to compete on features - I am fine as a non-hobbyist paying a higher premium for reliability.

sebazzz 3y ago
Bambu P-series based on an ESP32 aren't really comparable to the A and X series running full Linux-based firmware with full color touch screen.

jacquesm 3y ago

Prusa is floundering so much that I am about to order my second printer from them.

blinding-streak 3y ago

Is Prusa floundering? The article doesn't mention their financials or anything.

sdflhasjd 3y ago

I think it's a bit premature to say Prusa is floundering. If they were a VC funded startup with billions of debt needing to grow x% YoY to prevent a catastrophic implosion I would agree. Prusa seems reasonably self sufficient though and if they stop growing or shrink I wouldn't say they've failed. I think some people forget that businesses can still continue to exist, pay their employees well, and that's success. On the other hand, Bambu still has to prove itself as sustainable in this regard and if they're selling their printers with tiny margins (or even at a loss) we've yet to see what their actual plans are, and with an ecosystem comes the potential for exploiting customers. They've already been dishonest in terms of their use of OSS. And while Bambu did "steal" some software, their hardware seems reasonably novel - I don't think they've exploited Prusa specifically, and any trouncing they've done is because Prusa sat on the MK3 a bit too long. One last thing is I think Bambu and Prusa can coexist. Prusa evolved from RepRap and combine both out of the box quality and DIY-ability, which is still a good draw for the same kind of tinkerers after a printer in the first place. In the other hand, Bambu products are the Apple/HP of printers - you dont do any tinkering even if you want and if it stops working you send it back.

kiba 3y ago
I would be more concerned about Prusa dying as a business than making billions in profit.

SignalM 3y ago

Sorry this article is incorrect as it gets. Bambu could have done the same thing with Cura or any other slicer program and Cura and Prusa are built on other open source projects so to say if they kept the doors closed it would have helped is not honoring all of the engineering efforts that came before the big names capitalized on it. What has actually happened is that Bambu figured out the market isn’t people that like to tinker with their 3d printer - the market is people want to print things to tinker with. They focused on their market and made a ton of small features that add up to a user experience that is nearly as simple as it can be allowing you to do something as easy as print from your phone. While Prusa finds more places to put PRUSA BY PRUSA ORIGINAL PRUSA on their machines that look like 3d printed hacker machines Bambu made their machines simple with a minimalist design that actually looks good enough to show your friends without them wondering how long you looked at the matrix to get it running.

sottol 3y ago

One problem is the inherent assymmetry. Bambu gets to trivially copy open-source innovations like automatic bed-leveling or the corexy motion system without man-years of research. Then they get to use the saved time to improve upon those designs or the user experience but don't return anything back in return (for the most part, their slicer spawned Orca due to the software OS license). But now the OS community is at a disadvantage if they introduce something novel and keep it secret as they have to spend countless hours catching up, whereas the commercial entity can in turn just easily copy the community's new innovations and is free to spend the saved time to innovate in other areas again. It would be nice if there was something like the GPL for "designs" or mechanical systems like automatic bed leveling where companies would have to open source their hardware and software implementation details in turn for using the "idea".

snom380 3y ago

The article does nothing to back up the claim in the title, that Prusa is actually floundering. Presumably if somone writes a post tomorrow about how the Hare programming language is floundering, and that ends up trending in various forums with the language dying being taken as matter of fact, then Drew would have liked whoever wrote it to have done a bit more research.

rcarmo 3y ago

I don’t really think Prusa is floundering, but I just don’t get their go-to-market strategy or technology roadmap. Klipper is now taking the low-end Chinese printer segment by storm, Vorons are a _way_ better value for money if you value maintainability (although assembly won’t be everyone’s wheelhouse), and the MK4 wasn’t really that innovative. Bambu is just catering to a different market—they just went and added dozens of little creature comforts and tweaks to their hardware and software to the point where it’s literally point and click, and even the offshoots are good. I’m in the process of switching from SuperSlicer-which caters better to non-Prusa printers-to OrcaSlicer, which is full of nice touches and productivity enhancements like multi-plate projets, and that’s a Bambu Studio clone. What I’m afraid of with Bambu is long-term maintainability of their printers. I can replace belts, gears, extruders, etc., the works for most of my printers (I just re-printed a broken X-axis assembly for my 8-year-old Prusa clone), but am really unsure I’d be able to maintain a Bambu four years down the road.