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With Core One, Prusa's Open Source Hardware Dream Dies
- daft_pink 2y agoBambu obviously killed it.
- longtimelistnr 2y agoI follow 3d printing pretty close but can't claim to be an expert. With that said, I truly thought they served different consumer segments with the only overlap being those who bought a Prusa pre-assembled beleving it to be a one stop shop machine. Bambu is a black box from China for an end user with little knowledge or care of maintaining a machine themselves (down to printing replacement parts)
- bmitc 2y agoBambu Labs' quality and feature set is much, much higher and larger than Prusa's, and the price is right. Prusa bet on people wanting to continually fiddle with their 3D printer, but that segment is already niche and likely dying off.
- kiba 2y agoMost fiddling these days have to do with the printing surface being unclean. I also experienced issues with my X1C too. But the most common problem is the surface is unclean(on both printers), and my soap to water formulation not being quite dialed in.
- Miraste 2y agoWhat printing surface are you using? I use a PEI sheet that I clean with straight isopropyl alcohol, and I almost never have issues.
- kiba 2y agoPEI smooth and textured. Isopropyl alcohol works until it doesn't. That is why it is recommended that you use warm water with soap. I suspect the ratio of water to soap isn't dialed in quite right in my case, but I haven't bother to fix it just yet. Either that, or don't touch the surface with your bare hands.
- Miraste 2y agoI can only speak anecdotally, but I've been using this sheet for ~4 years while only cleaning it with 90+% IPA, and I haven't seen any loss of adhesion. I expect to replace it due to scratches before I have any problems with the cleaning method.
- gerdesj 2y agoI always use IPA to clean the bed too. I have once used glue for a very thin print with lots of intricate holes in it.
- wisenull 2y agoI think the problems arise from using glue on it. If I only print PLA without glue, one wipe with IPA and it's clean. Glue on the other hand, it really sticks and you need water and soap.
- mlyle 2y agoThe experience I have on MK4 and X1C are similar, as far as reliability, etc. There's different annoyances for each; if you calibrate each time X1C is slower to get going. X1C is faster overall on bigger jobs. X1C has weird wifi error-out issues more often. MK4 gets a bit more gunk on the nozzle. X1C wastes more filament. X1C had some issues with retracting filament at first that I printed someone else's bracket design to fix, while MK4 just worked. X1C quality seems slightly better with PLA; MK4 does a slightly better job with PETG. When wear makes major maintenance necessary, it's going to be easier on MK4.
- girvo 2y ago> the only overlap being those who bought a Prusa pre-assembled beleving it to be a one stop shop machine Thats a surprisingly large segment of the market, though.
- longtimelistnr 2y agoYes I agree, I suppose my point was as soon as Bambu went mainstream that entire Prusa appeal was killed
- Kirby64 2y agoPrior to Bambu, prusa was as close as you could get to “put it together and it’s ready to print” including printer profiles and such. Bambu did this cheaper and better, and much faster, so basically took that entire market from Prusa. For anyone that wants a printer that “just works”, there’s little reason to choose Prusa over Bambu at this point.
- kiba 2y agoPrusa grew up with the market. Their printers sold very well, that I had to wait for quite awhile for my (MK4) kit to get delivered.
- daft_pink 2y agoI bought my Prusa before Bambu became popular, and honestly I always see Prusa’s in school's and libraries and feel their main market in the United States is in that higher end role of something that is just fairly reliable and used where organizations want to provide 3d printing where a lot of different users are going to use them. But I regularly see Bambu winning the reviews and awards these days, and I’m not sure if I would have been aware of Prusa if I were in the market today. I really would love a multi-tool change core x y, but it’s soooo expensive.
- kiba 2y agoBambu didn't killed its open source dream. Prusa did.
- ShakataGaNai 2y agoThere are too many cheap clones. Too much stealing of the open source work. This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't. I don't buy Prusa because they are OSH, I buy them because they are great printers. They are an open platform, if not open source. Which is good enough for my needs. If these changes they are making will allow Prusa to keep producing world class devices at reasonable prices, then more power to them. And yes, I know some people hate Prusa or have had major issues. But they do a lot to move 3D printing forward, rising tide lifts all boats and all that jazz. We want all respectable and reputable 3D printer companies to succeed - because then everyone wins.
- delichon 2y ago> keep producing world class devices at reasonable prices At the current price points can you really recommend a Core One over an X1 to someone with a tight budget? Without resorting to arguments about open platforms and the big picture?
- kiba 2y agoI took a look at the price. They're almost comparable if X1/AMS combo wasn't (always?) on sale.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Kirby64 2y agoThe better comparison is a Core One vs a P1S/P1P. You can almost buy two P1 printers for the price of a Core One.
- bangaladore 2y agoDisagree. The better comparison is Core One vs X1E. As frankly the main selling point of the X1E is Active Chamber Heating. With your logic you can also say you can just get 2 P1S printers instead of an X1C, but an X1C is still sells just fine.
- awestroke 2y agoGetting a bambu soon. Happy I didn't go for Prusa, as the open source aspect was the only advantage
- Avamander 2y agoGoing for a Bambu if you valued the open-source aspect? There are a few comparisons here I won't make about how silly that sounds to me.
- Novosell 2y agoThey clearly valued some other things higher, even if they also valued the open source aspect. There's no dissonance or contradiction in that. I went the same route they did, despite also putting some value in the open source aspect.
- awestroke 2y agoAs I clearly stated, the open source aspect was the only advantage they had over Bambu. And now that advantage is gone, which means Bambu holds all of the advantages instead of all advantages except one
- serf 2y agoI tried to stick to Prusa stuff through the release of Bambu products in order to support the notion of a group that can give-take within the OSH concept -- now they offer zero value comparably. The Bambu products are better if you're willing to buy into proprietary stuff and you're not willing to put the leg-work into building something proper-open like a railcore. Really sucks, but the writing has been on the walls for some time -- it has been harder and harder to find source/designs/models/etc regarding Prusa machines since the MK3 period.
- antirez 2y agoFor people in the 3D printing space, the most important points so far are not the fact printers are designed on open source hardware, but: 1. That they are easy to fix. This is still the case with Prusa, and that's a good thing, together with their great support. 2. That replacement parts are relatively cheap. This has been an issue with Prusa: open hardware helps very little if you need to pay an unreasonable amount of money to get a nozzle and heatbreaker or so. Bambulab parts are much cheaper, even if the printer is completely closed. 3. The OSS nature & hackability of software: that, yes, mattered a lot, and Bambulab, Prusa itself, and many other companies benefitted from reliable and powerful open source software to drive 3D printers (slicers, firmware). This had the effect of accelerating the field. A bigger danger than closed hardware is patents. Also in the field of 3D printing the feeling is that the small incentive to innovate (Prusa was really stagnating before Bambulab) was also a result of providing the same value instantaneously to all the competitors. I believe in open source as an accelerator of society. I also like open hardware. However both open source and open hardware can fail in certain setups, and in this case it is better to move away.
- skybrian 2y agoDoesn't the Core One share a lot of common parts and accessories with the Mk4? An upgrade kit is promised.
- esskay 2y agoIt's mainly things like rods and motors from the looks of it. The electronic kits used to be the most expensive parts when building your own printer so makes sense to reuse these and just pay for the frame. It's a smart move on their part thats for sure.
- solarkraft 2y agoRemember that Mr. Prusa himself has an open source logo tattooed on his arm. This must hurt him as much as it hurts us. I see myself as a huge proponent of open source ideals, but the company needs to make money, so I understand this move. It feels less bait-and-switch-y than the relicensing of other prominent foss products.
- kiba 2y agoI am skeptical of Mr. Prusa's reasoning for not being open source. I am not doubting the sincerity of his belief, but I think he's wrong. The Chinese are very good at cloning. Releasing the design doesn't change this, as they don't need the PCB layout because they already have their own PCBs and have lot of people who can design electronics. In any case, there are hardly any secret sauces on a Prusa. Rather, Bambu doesn't even need to copy and are seen as surpassing Prusa in some respects(true or not). He mentioned about keeping things secret to prevent supply chain competition. I wish I knew more about this issue, so I can't confirm or refute it, but it seems dubious to me as well. Anyway, open source is only as good as how you use it or develop it. Prusa seems to be for the most part a closed shop, so they don't benefit from community development and seem to have Not Invented Here syndrome and allergic to using community developed solutions, except for software. For the majority of people, the open source label signifies that you are much less likely to get scammed or get taken advantages of companies or individuals. That's probably the most important thing. Anyway, I don't run an open hardware company, so take it with a grain of salt.
- Jaecen 2y agoI don't understand why Prusa thinks keeping their designs proprietary addresses the "unfair competition" problem they seem to be concerned about. Anyone wanting to release a printer can use freely available designs, like those from Voron. The openness of the Prusa Core ONE is not what would allow a competitor to enter the market "unfairly" with a competitive product. Maybe it would make sense if they were bringing some new innovations to the market, but for a catch-up product like the Core ONE restricting access feels like slighting your customers for no gain.
- esskay 2y agoThey're on a bit of a streak of very poor business decisions really. They did the same with the XL, they've been caught lying in marketing materials (the Mini for example was advertised as having power loss recovery at launch, which changed to coming soon, and eventually when they realised it wasn't possible was dropped entirely, about 2 years later). On top of that there's the incredibly slow response to Bambu and the other Corexy options overshadowing them, and the stream of lies from Josef Prusa regarding Bambu labs (e.g his tweets claiming they stole code and violated the MIT license, which he's since removed from Twitter but thankfully was backed up in several reddit discussions as well as archive.org). I've got a lot of respect for Prusa and what they've achived but they really do seem to be fumbling pretty hard. The Core One will certainly get them back in the right direction but things like cheaping out and not including a camera when its already a worse product than the one they're trying to compete with feels like an incredibly stupid decision. It's such a cheap part to include, for some sort of comparison a Raspberry Pi Zero camera is £14 on Pimoroni and thats a consumer price. Even if it was costing Prusa £10 per camera, thats absolutely nothing.
- wakawaka28 2y agoThis is a terrible mistake. People see Prusa as a premium brand mainly because of its long history in open source. You can buy a similar Creality printer for like $200 from Amazon vs Prusa's $800 or whatever shipped from Europe already. Barring any overwhelming breakthrough, other brands have them beat on price and performance. Hopefully they at least keep middle of the road models as open-source for those who really value that. I anticipate that the open-source printers will outsell the closed-source ones, unless they conceal the fact that they are now closed source. By the way Prusa, if you don't want to help the competition, maybe don't let Prusa Slicer slice for other printers. But that cat is out of the bag, and it's also probably a marketing tool at this point.
- kiba 2y agoPrusaslicer and forks all benefit from the sharing of codes. Prusaslicer even copied code from Cura.
- jmartin2683 2y agoIt’s just another Bambu clone anyway