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Prusa is awesome, but they won’t be able to compete on price with China. They are doing the right thing by producing in Hungary with their own people, but that's bad for their business. They also need to update the look of their printer; the current design is outdated. Creality, with the K1 and V3 fast printers for $300, will outcompete Prusa and Bambu-just wait. People haven’t fully realized how fast the new Creality printers are and how well they work. No, you don't need to tinker with the K1 anymore. Prusa needs a new, modern case, along with features like lights and a camera. In Canada, an assembled Prusa costs $1,999 CAD, while the P1S with AMS is $1,079 and the X1 without AMS is $1,500. Nobody with common sense will buy a Prusa in Canada at those prices.
The one thing Prusa still will hang on to over nearly every other major printer company is their EU manufacturing. It doesn't matter to most people, but it does for some. Personally I appreciate seeing Prusa stay true to its roots and move even more of its manufacturing to the Czech Republic. Its not enough to be the sole reason I would choose Prusa, but it is good to see.
Totally agree... Prusa is a company that matches my own personal ethical/moral standards. They don't churn out crap, they maintain clear upgrade paths and serviceability over long periods of time. My Mk4 will still be running for ages even if they do go out of business thanks to (almost) everything being open source. Bambu are taking the Apple approach which means servicing your own machine is a nightmare and you can only buy parts from them. I think Bambu will light a fire under Prusa and we are going to see some speedy core x/y machines in the near future (they already exist but are tied to Prusas print farm tech which is aimed at large businesses, it won't be hard for them to make them consumer friendly).
@@andy_warb My XL was crap, so I can't agree with your statement "they don't churn out crap." I was a HUGE Prusa fan before the XL, but they rushed it out to try and compete with Bambu in the multicolor market. I told so many people over the years "it just works" when talking about Prusa. But before I sold my XL my wife made a sticker for it that said "it just WONT work" lol. I really wanted to love the XL, but it was the most unreliable printer that I had used in years.
The problem is they spent almost 5 years ***ing around llamas, barely improving their stuff meanwhile the competitors are absolutely incapable of innovating and just copy the leader. If a timeline when Bambu didn't show up, year is 2030 and the Prusa Mini still hasn't got power panic
@@andy_warb Prusa has done like apple, not innovating. There are plenty other opensource machines that absolutely DESTROYS prusas machines, VzBoT, Annex and Voron just to name a few.
Multicolor isn’t the main use case for the multi head system I believe. I work in prototyping and research and this printer would be extremely useful for multi-material type parts. For example, we print in one material for the part and we print the supports in dissolvable material.
Exactly. People who want to make multi-coloured decorative items would be much better served by a printer that could colour filament as it goes (ex., by mixing pigments into white filament, or by making a pass with an inkjet head after each layer). And that would probably have a lot more mass appeal than a printer that's 50% faster. Multi-head printers are mainly for combining different materials.
Also work in a business with rapid prototyping. What type of Print would need 5 different materials? I could see it using 3 at most. Something like PET-G + TPU for a gasket and PVA dissolvable supports.
@@RFC3514 Totally agree. Multi-head is the future (over switching filaments). When you compare this Prusa to, say, an Ultimaker that clocks in at around $7,000, the price doesn't look as bad, but Prusa must get the price down somehow, maybe a model closer to their basic core xy model with the option for multihead use.
Here is what I want to see from prusia: a smaller xl, fully enclosed, heated chamber, air filtration, dual head (either tool swapping or fixed) that's it. Can still cost more than others but at least I get the same features.
they should do 2 tool heads each connected to its own "ams" type system so while one is printing the other can be purging and getting ready to go and drastically reduce swap time and if each ams can hold 4 or 5 colors than you essentially have a 10 color print so the benefits of the mutli tool head with the benefits of 2 ams systems. And they would need to have their slicer be able to tell you which colors go in each slot for optimal efficiency based on your sliced print. even if that means you have the same common color in both ams's.
I agree, but I think it should be 3 heads rather than 2. An IDEX can do 2, so this would give it a USP over an IDEX. 3 heads would allow you, for example, to do 2 material, plus support material. IMHO there's not a lot of point in a 2 head toolchanger, as an IDEX can swap heads way quicker than a toolchanger, with way less complexity
@@EddyStyl3sOMG, I had the exact same idea 2 days ago! An Index pinter with 2 toolheads and 2 "AMS" systems is the best of both worlds. Fast and efficient printing at dual color, capable of multi material (PLA + TPU for example) and it can print fast multi color for more than 2 colors.
i think the XL can be a gamechanger if they implement software that allows for different size nozzles to print one and the same object. Infill and supports will be done with a 0.8mm nozzle, low detail areas on the outside will also be done in 0.8 or 0.6 mm and the high detail areas will be done with 0.4 or even 0.2 mm, possibly even going down to 0.1mm layer hight to ensure great details while the infill etc. gets added at 0.3mm every third layer or maybe even 0.6mm every sixth layer. This would result in huge prints with incredible details, like when printed with a 0.2mm nozzle alone, but in a fraction of the time. Might be a big gamechanger for professionals who are selling detailed prints. Also They might be able to add different types of tools that could pick up and insert magnets or similar items into the prints allowing a kind of automatic assembly of mechanical parts into the printed object. The possibilities are quite limitless if you start to think about it.
Sounds like that happened recently, I just don't understand why Prusa takes so long to release stuff. Like the MMU for the Mk4 just recently released. And we still don't have an enclosure.
@@KNDlifeacademy From what I know Ratrig needs more tinkering and knowledge than Prusa kits for example but they have a good reputation, basically Voron but with official kits. The 500mm versions apparently have some issues due to material flex & heat expansion.
Same material different nozzles... i do think the idea is worth testing but i think if it works, it's sort of a sign that things need to be improved elsewhere. Because for the most part, you can just span the gamut from 0.4mm to 0.8mm or sometimes even more on just the 0.4mm nozzle simply by varying extrusion width. By all reason mixer-inserts (CHT like), longer heaters, more filament grip area in extruder, etc can just increase material throughput vs. backpressure of a small nozzle. I suppose if you had a part that had to look perfect with 0.4mm nozzle on the outside but was also large enough that it can have inner walls etc mad with 1.2mm, but then you have the problem that that large nozzle is going to be more prone to leak and blob so it would just mar your otherwise beautiful print.
Yes. Or make it easy to add one or two extra heads to a stock single head setup. That really would be killer. The swappable head thing really could be Prusa's innovation and calling card, it really is superior. I'm thinking of a P1S made by Prusa and with swappable heads you could add in up to like maybe five or six. Wow. However at this rate Bambu may actually beat them to it. Which would be a shame
Until they make a printer enclosed with a heated chamber I wouldn't consider it. If you are doing ABS / Nylon / CF mixes and want it to look good Bambu printers rock. I was looking at the XL because I need the size but it's not enclosed and to expensive for what it is.
I think the first problem with the XL is that it has been widely accepted as a Bambu AMS competitor, when I think it is more accurate to compare it to something like the E3D toolchanger. The toolchanger was a similar price to the XL, and it could that price because there was nothing else with the same capability. That said, the E3D Toolchanger was also just a motion system, not a ready to use printer.
Well - The problem is that the XL, while it is a great idea, has some problems. First of all is the market. While the "standard" Prusa was rather expensive, it still appealed to the "home" market. It was just affordable enough, to say that reliability justified the price. That's still the case, but it's far less relevant. Other printers like the Bambulab printers took a big chunk out of the market share. The XL is maybe a great machine, but it also has a great high price. The Bambulab X1 Carbon is slower, spills a lot of material, and is not capable of printing mixed printing materials. However - It has one huge big advantage. It is just at the right side of the border of being affordable for the "home" market. The Prusa XL is way out of league in this respect. Most people that are just capable (and justify for themselves) to afford a Bambulab X1, are not capable to afford a XL, and thus are not tempted to buy one. Do not underestimate the size of that "home" market. It's the segment where majority of the models from Prusa where sold, and the biggest source of income. Other manufactures have eaten away that most profitable market. That far cheaper A1 series printers from Bambulab have taken a big chomp out of that market. By the way - I am no Bambulab lover, but facts are facts... And then of course the XL had some big problems. Problems you should not expect from printers at this price point. That was very damaging for the image of the Prusa printer line without any doubt. Prusa always stood for quality and reliability. Sadly that image now is damaged...
That's just technical minutiae. It is for all intents and purposes a Bambu X1 Carbon competitor. Even prusa fanboys who claim the tool changer can be used for lasercutting and CNC will never use it for those purposes and are just using it for multi-color, sometimes multi-material prints.
@@paranoidpanzerpenguin5262Yeah - The problem with that is that the XL could be a Bambulab X1 Carbon competitor, but it's far to overpriced to actually be that. Most people with a average income (the majority of buyers) can afford a X1 Carbon if they put some some effort in it. The XL? Nope - Far too expensive for that group. And that group is by far the biggest 3D printer buyers group. You can buy 2 X1 Carbon machines with 4 color change units for the price of one XL, and then even have enough money left to compensate for years and years of spilled filament. And I am not even speaking about the cheaper P1S machines here that even have a enclosure for that price... As said - I am not a Bambulab fanboy (I use them as an example here), but I really wonder what market is targeted by the XL. If it is the professional market, then you have competitors that are maybe somewhat higher priced, but have the advantage of on-site maintenance and more. If it's targeted at the average consumer market.... Well see the remarks above...
@@paranoidpanzerpenguin5262 I think you are underestimating what you can do with multi material and that if the bambu can't do that its not even close to being a competitor. If ya don't design yourself, and only print PLA I would recommend Bambu. But as soon as you design parts yourself, the freedom of multi material is soo much worth it! I don't think people realize yet how good support is with incompatible materials. I've had some seasoned 3D printers ask me how I was able to make parts that look so good on all sides XD. I uploaded a small vid of my very first try on a big part (that would not even fit on a Bambu btw) ruclips.net/video/ZPMs6VDKU08/видео.html This test still had the wrong top support patern, Changing it to linear will make bottom and top look almost the same and it becomes hard to tell what orientation the part was printed.
@@AcEkrystalI am not sure you understand that the M in AMS is material. I have multiple materials loaded on my AMS and that is exactly what I use it for, I don't print multi color I print multi material.
Definitely forgot to mention the best thing about this printer, it’s the fact you can print tpu with pla supports with a petg body, something you litterally couldn’t do with a x1c
@Jwmbike14 I tried Geetech tpu spec 95A in the AMS, and it absolutely jammed up. Didn't even make it to the extruder, and i had to dismount the ams to pull it from the tubes. The Filament itself prints like a charm from the external spool holder. So I don't recommend even trying that.
I believe Prusa is doing a slow, but steady pivot to a B2B model, which would show why they are lagging in the consumer market. Businesses with privacy concerns don't like Bambu spyware sending their gcode, and a european company is something that will offer better support than a chinese one. You can see it with their Prusa Lab videos, they're all highlights of how they are making big moves in the B2B space, replacing what Ultimaker used to be, but catching up at the consumer/prosumer market much more slowly.
I have one printer from a dutch company that went into B2B... and so it left me as a consumer stranded. They occasionally send me newsletters, but it's not for me any more.
@@ZURAD the dutch company got more expensive and made bigger printers. They had been in a sturdy frame with a fixed bed (on a z axis) before and after their transition. But well, when they decide to move away from me with their product lineup, I'm off. That's how it is.
When doing an R&D project, I want my designs to stay in our office, especially NOT on a Chinese server. We had a Chinese company that we were working with but they causally leaked it out-going oops. And then the project died. Keep your data safe.
If Prusa brought out a fully enclosed tool changer with active chamber heating and linear motors, I would throw my money at them way faster than Josef could catch it.
The XL is already very pricey. If they add all those extra's, how many people you think can afford such a machine? Even a real enthusiast has problems justifying a expensive XL, and people from the "home market" (the biggest source of income for Prusa, like it or not) are already driven away to the cheaper printers like the X1 Carbon. Such a printer with such a price point could appeal to the professional market, but there are already very high quality professional printers available in that segment. While I get the appeal, I think it would be a bad move for Prusa to price themselves out of their most profitable market segment (if that's not already the case to be honest).
@@jclosed2516 True, but there is a market segment for things like that. I'd probably pay around 5000 Euros for something like that, and I know that I am not the only one. :)
You want all these features including linear motors at budget pricing? Are you for real? Linear motors are yet to catch on in main stream products, and you want one for a budget price…?? you are unlikely to buy even if the above mentioned features were offered in a budget pricing (that you expect)….i have handled such ‘customers’ in the trade..
You have forgotten an important point: When it comes to multi-material prints, it makes a big difference whether the material comes from one hot end or from different ones. If it comes from one hot end, layer adhesions in the Z-plane of the material change are much worse (even if a lot of purging is done). This does not happen with a printer like the Prusa XL or IDEX printers. This has an enormous influence on the strength of a component. This means that the target group is not so small, but is aimed at all people who want to print multi-materials and have certain strength requirements.
In a printer mainly built for PLA use being open framed why would it matter haha "I have the toughest PLA print" isn't worth buying a $3500 printer IMHO. Until they close that monster up and heat it for decent materials I don't see the purpose.
You exactly describe a TINY niche application. From all 3d printers in the world not even 0,001% are regularly used to print multi material. Its super niche.
@@m4ko288 i disagree i work with industrial printers and all of them use multilateral for supports and I thing that's where prusa are looking in terms of customers since 4k for a printer is quite cheep in comparison to industrial printers.
@@m4ko288 I never got the allure of AMS, MMUs and whatnot. If you are part of the main demographic that uses these machines often, than part strength is what is important and you will likely just use a single-material with at most maybe a single colour change for text/indicators at the top/bottom. If you are interested in figurines then painting resin prints makes way more sense than using a FDM. And for silly stuff there are a lot of things that just print the old-fashioned way with parts that slot into each-other. Look at any maker that uses 3D-Printers often including those with YT channels and you will find none of them actually using these kinds of systems in their projects. Just single-material prints. Genuine need for Multi-Material seems reserved for when you need to mix properties within the context of Engineering (advanced niche use) OR need a machine that can do a job where numerous parts are manufactured with some having a different material. Like the time cost of it swapping nozzles is acceptable for being able to set & forget a single massive job.
@@Foxhood If you dont understand the MASSIVE advantages of an ams ... then you might not be the smartest cookie in the jar. 1. It will automatically swap to a new spool if one slot goes empty if you want to. 2. Having 4 colors / 4 different materials always loaded saves a lot of time and hassle. 3. You NEVER have to heat up the nozzle to remove the filament - its always automatically unloaded. 4. Swapping out a filament in the AMS takes 5 seconds. Its MUCH faster and more convenient then traditional printers. Handling the printer goes from "caveman mode" to "welcome to the future". MUCH easier and faster handling. Multi material and multi color are only the icing on the cake. The actual AWESOMENESS is in how you handle the printer and the filament. NEVER AGAIN do you have to worry "will that roll have enough material on it?" and NEVER AGAIN will you have to fiddle around with the printer just to swap out a roll. And you can have 4 / 8 / 12 / 16 rolls loaded - kept in the humidity controlled AMS - thats SO convenient. I rarely do big color prints. I mostly just print coasters / labels / etc where there are only very few color swaps. With almost no waste at all. White plant labels with colorful text for tomatoes / carrots / etc were the last of such prints. They look awesome - and it didnt even add 1% of waste and print time. I would NEVER EVER buy another 3d fdm printer without an AMS.
There is a guy making a print head that uses pellets rather than filament. Recycling would just be grinding up the poop from the bambu and printing it with the printer you have that head on. Can't remember the guy's RUclips channel but he just put out a new video. If he does a Kickstarter once he has it ironed out I'd get one for my mk3 and recycle the poop with that. Pellets is what plastic is before turned into filament so it's 25% of the price, which is the main advantage, not recycling.
There are off the shelf filament extruders, put most are expensive and don't make sense unless you are printing a lot. There are also quite a few DIY ones, but obviously those have their own issues.
@@fivepointeightnate I was on a very similar roll of success… and then, I wasn’t and it took Bambu more than three weeks to even answer the support ticket. It got worse from there.
@@fivepointeightnate I got a MK4 end of last year. 1700+ hours and no filament jam so far. I believe both printers are almost equally reliable. The difference is, one is a closed system from China, the other is a more open one from the EU. Bambu is out crushing the competitors with certainly good products, but an aggressive price structure. I opted to keep Prusa alive for what they've done in the past and not give it to China, but it was a hard decision knowing what I could get for less money.
Agreed! I waited 2 weeks for an answer from bambu. But i know it's just growing up issues as they have been too successful and support is good when they finally react to a ticket.
I really want Prusa to win. The company has customer support beyond any other company that I have dealt with. Their open source philosophy has pushed 3D printing forward and benefited the whole community.
I can't see them winning simply because of how the market has changed... Prusa was King when the competition was only Ender / Creality doing a race towards the bottom with their terrible machines and ppl were willing to put up with the concept of having to build your own - slightly more sophisticated - 3D Printer at the cost of literally costing a *_LOT_* more money *_AND_* your time ( *_OR_* even *_MORE_* money for a prebuilt ). BambuLabs have changed the game with essentially producing a Machine having only Upsides ( faster printing, Enclosure, MultiColor capability, Design, et... ), and *_NONE_* of the downsides of either Prusa ( needs to be assembled to be "affordable", absolute maintenance nightmare, closed system ), Ender or Creality ( unreliable, requiring UserMods to shine ) at either a comparable *_OR_* better Price. What did Creality & Ender do? Produce apparently decent BambuLab copies like they always do at cheaper prices? Prusa? Ship a mess of a 3'500.- Toolchanger, a Joke of a MK4 "Upgrade" ( even more closed down due to new Tool Head ) and a just announced 9'500.- targeted towards Industrial use Printer.
@@warprints7381 Sadly, they can't release things like the nextruder becuase every Chinese company will copy it and there will be less of a reason to buy a Prusa. They open source as much as they can.
I worked for a University around the turn of the century, and they got so many of those AOL CDs for students every year - and gave them out to literally anyone who walked by. But by the time AOL was history around 2000ish, there were still so many boxes of CDs left. So we gave them to the student assistants that helped professors with technology & they made CD wallpaper for the student assistant office. They even made some CD chandeliers. I wish I still had photos, it was really creative.
Im a HUGE Prusa fan and have a MK4 with a Prusa Enclosure, so I say this with all the love in the world: *They need to get it together* I was a bit concerned about the MK4 being a bedslinger, but the real world results are still great. I knew that the software was a bit behind when I got it and expected them to play catch-up but it hasnt really happened as fast as I would have liked. I have faith that it will, but the XL seems like the main focus right now. The machine is lacking a whole lot of features that come standard on significantly less expensive machines, from cameras to enclosures to even just basic lights. With IS, the speed is fine though. However, the competition DOES have some issues too. I work with some NDA projects, so I cant go with Bambu in good conscience. Reliability can be a concern with other brands, etc. Bambu shook up the industry, which is fantastic imo, but while a lot of other brands are pushing out some machines with amazing features at amazing prices (like the early bird price on the QIDI Q1 Pro) it feels like I overpaid for my MK4. I still dont regret it and I dont really mind paying *more*, but there is a huge gap there that is only going to get wider. I see potential in the MK4 beyond what it is now, which is still a stellar machine as it is, but a lot of times it feels like I am part of a beta test when Im trying to do things like get octoprint to work or just add lighting to the workspace without paying extra for some kit.
I have an MK4 with the Prusa enclosure, I bought it fully assembled. The orbiter worked like a charm right out of the box. I know I was paying more, but this was my first printer and I wanted it to be success. And success it has been for me. We print only functional parts for our industrial products. I think the printer should pay for itself by this years end
Where I work I use the Prusa mini and Bambu Carbon with the AMS. The Bambu is fast and precise and the AMS takes some of the worry off of running out of filament half way through a large print. It's ability to handle higher temps and or more exotic filaments is fantastic. The Prusa mini is smaller, slower, quieter and generally reliable. Plus you don't normally need a glue stick for most prints. What I feel should be stressed more then it is , is the fact that the Prusa being open source means you don't have to worry about what you already OWN and paid for suddenly being put behind a subscription pay wall. The Bambu on the other hand has all the elements already in place for that to happen. When your machine is purposely made to favor having an internet connection over anything else says alot to me. The Bambu is nice but I will always look on it with an eye of suspicion expecting for that to happen. Too many other companies have done just that with their products.
I definitely understand the concern, but, to be fair, Bambu has made efforts to address it. It is now possible to root the X1 (well, it is still beta, but it is coming) and install an alternative, open source software on it. This was made with Bambu Labs who made the option available in their software so you do not have to hack it to jailbreak it. Before that, they updated their software to allow the printers to run without communication with their servers, and released the parts of their slicer that had to be open when they were called upon by the community for using Prusa slicer code and not releasing it. I do not try to paint Bambu Labs as benevolent, but I think they understand that openness is important to the 3D print community and helps their business. If they understand that it is in their interest, there's a good chance that they will continue in that direction. Likewise, if Josef Prusa gets tired of this gig and decides to go build personal flying saucers or some other invention, the company, or any private equity firm that will have taken it over, may change its policies and decide that openness is no longer in their interest. Nothing is future proof.
@@jacquesgilbert2774 ask how happy the owners of the Microsoft Zune are with their device. Oh, you cant.. Because Microsoft pulled the plug on Zune, and that bricked all the devices. Anythong that works only as long as the servers are knline has a finite end date. The day they sell less than costs of servers upkeep, your device gets bricked. The Prusa Mk4 you buy now will work until no more parts on the market, not the day they stop making parts.
Theey didnt have a choice. Either they agreed to the Jailbreak and looked good at the eyes of the few RUclipsrs that were strongarming them, or they didn't agree and looked bad to everyone. Choose your poison. They released a blocking Firmware update same week that said it loud and clear, they don't want to be jailbroken. @@jacquesgilbert2774
@@Jansetsfirelol so how is the XL outdated? I'ts coreXY with input shaping and wifi just like bambu. If the Xl is outdated then so is everything bambu lab.
@@LilApe It's ''outdated'' in the sense that it's a CoreXY machine with fairly slow print speed, poorly functioning Input Shaping without the needed sensors, no camera for monitoring, a clunky user interface and no sort of chamber to enable printing of materials like ABS or Nylon.
@@NorwayVFXlmao the XL literally prints just as fast as anything bambu lab when using single color and its like 10x faster when using multi color. You can add a camera to the XL and its prints ABS and nylon just fine without a chamber. You bambu bots are hilarious.
2:04 well that's not entirely accurate, before Bambu if you wanted something that just worked and kept working... You got a MK3. Prusa got well known because of the push they gave to the industry, and then got big because they had the "it just works" printers. Personally I really wish they atay relevant because I haate the idea of the iphone approach. Closed and unfixable if not through the vendor, and you're at their mercy when it comes to software. Thankfully bambu is just starting to get at least a tiny bit away from that. They build incredible printers otherwise.
loving my p1s with ams. not just the printer but the whole eco-system from buying spare parts if need to filament to prints that are actually useful to print. This was my first ever 3d printer and i have to admit the experience was flawless so far !
So having 5 print heads is just stupid, yea it’s quicker than filament changes but there’s so much more that can go wrong. At this point prusa is overpriced trash. Old tech and high prices.
Fantastic breakdown. I love the heck out of my single tool head Prusa XL but it is really dang hard to recommend with other printer options that are out there for a fraction of the price.
Considering their products are still selling quite well, with the Mk4 being their most sold printer - I'd say they're more like Android than Blackberry. Quirky, not necessarily the most up to date, but still gets the job done and doesn't get in the way of what you want to do.
not that I am really up on all the latest, but a good point. The blackberry was way more lame than color touch screens with swipes. Even the ender 3 will still print things. To me I really really don't like how slow these printers are. There needs to be some breakthough technology to speed them up dramatically without the loss of quality. If you can do a 5 hour print in 10 minutes. Something like printers could use pellets instead of filament, have 100 print heads super high density that drip plastic and 100 times faster. Or something like that. I saw a backpack printer that printed upside down, so maybe print the top and bottom in parallel and fuse them at the end ..automatically, so now 100x2 times faster..
@@RhinoAg Hardly. Prusa has a core XY machine with faster and less wasteful color printing than Bambu (Prusa XL), and the Mk4 is Prusa's best selling machine, so they are not in dire straits like Blackberry was. The analogy falls flat.
5:50 Prusa XL is the only printer that can combine regular hard filaments etc with TPU AND soluble/breakaway support in the same print. Since AMS can't do TPU and IDEX printers can only hold 2 filaments. But the lack of enclosure kind of negates this advantage, since non-enclosed printers can't be serious engineering printers.
For me, easy of use is the number one attribute, followed by quality. I recently bought a Bambu Labs A1 and I love all the care and thought which was put into the user experience. From the ease of assembly to the extensive preset in the slicer and the auto calibration and sensors which warn me I have done something stupid, the A1 does not require me to be a technical person. I feel for the casual user this is what is needed to claim market share with the casual user.
I dont own a prusa but own a P1P and i really want prusa to still succeed. Some of my favorite 3D printer videos are the ones where creators or prusa themselves show off their factory.
Changing the the test from benchy to something useful like maybe bearings or anything mechanical could also provide more valuable data on printers. its definitely something to think about
The benchy is not just a standard and a reference, it's also a combination of challenges for an FDM printer. Torture toaster is a greater challenge, but still a toy and a waste of filament. I think we're ready for a new benchy, but it will have to be fast, small and very challenging.
There's a reason why the 3D Benchy is the standard for printer testing. If you go to their website, there's a very comprehensive explanation as to which portion of their model tests.
I have chosen a prusa mini and even an SL1 for my printer adventure. My main reason is the company: it is not a chinese one. Supporting an EU company comes with higher prices, for the higher wages. But I know that I also pay for the support and the inventions the company makes. With their open source approach, every chinesium company can benefit from prusas inventions. So far Im happy with my two printers. Theya serve me well. And i will also get a mk4 someday in the future : )
Prusa just announced the CORE One with an upgrade path from MK4S with the added bonus of no China spyware on the printer or the “Handy” 😂 app. Pivot - Check!
Equating Bambu to the iPhone is actually a good analogy. Being closed source, they are less customizable, and you are at the whims of the company who creates it for support and upgrades. In 5 years, when the machines start falling apart due to poor construction or cut corners, the only recompense will be to buy a new one. When a user wants to upgrade, they buy an entirely new printer and ditch the old. Sure, Prusa has a high base cost of entry. But, you can upgrade from machine to machine as the technology advances at a reduced rate. Every piece of a Prusa machine is user replaceable, and given time most end up with alternatives on the market that you can alter as needed. And let's face it, when a company is capable of remotely triggering a wave of the printers remotely by accident, that should raise concerns both about your data safety and the segmentation built into Bambu's core systems. I wouldn't be surprised if, within five years, Bambu has lost LAN printing or USB printing, in favor of only using their cloud services. Or, if you want to print that way, you have to buy a special adapter. Headphone jacks, anyone? Yes, Bambu is hitting the scene hard and fast. But it is still so new that it is hard to know what the future looks like in terms of reliability and maintenance. My hope is that this new disruption pushes Prusa towards more innovations, including an MK4 sized CoreXY. Or better support for TPU and other materials in the MMU. In the end, it comes down to preference, but I feel like the old man who would rather drive a beat up old truck that he knows how to replace every part in, and can find them easily, rather than a Tesla just because it is new and shiny.
I am convinced that Bambu is still burning investor money, trying to drive competition out of business. It's a type of company that will embrace planned obsolescence and probably already has, we just have to wait for the due date. Luckily Prusa's back in the game with Core One and I'll always be sticking with the company that lets you upgrade machines instead of forcing you to throw them away.
Been in the 3D printing business since 2011 starting with the Ultimaker original. Over time I grew less and less interested in the printers and more just interested in the output and dreamed of a hands-off experience. Last year I bought the Bambu P1S for my work and it's a total game changer. I can't overstate how happy I am with it, just push the button and collect your parts later, never had a fail.
It is a niche application, but what a niche indeed. I could see large print farms having ONE of these in the corner for those types of prints while the "regular" printers do 99% of the work. On the other hand it is an interesting look into what is possible, and what may become available at a lower cost in just a few years. What we need is the "Brother Laserprinter" of 3D printing. Cheap, easy to refill without proprietary ink (looking at you HP), and reliable. No bells, no whistles, just something that can sit for months then belt out a few parts when needed.
Well, I have a 70 machine printfarm with all machines active around %80 of the time. If a machine utilization drops below %60 you start to lose money on that machine. Thats why we sold our SLA printers. (Also they create a huge labor cost). So you cant have a machine to just stand in the corner and have a print one a week if you are lucky.
Too late and too expensive. A P1S is less than half the price. Yes, Prusa support is far superior, but, I've managed to resolve issues with both my Prusa and Bambu printers by myself. Unfortunately for Prusa I think the comparison is probably correct i.e. I used to have a Blackberry.....
Prusa has a reputation for quality. I built a mk3 kit, and have been very satisfied with it. Bought a mk4 kit, and haven't built it yet, but very much looking forward to it, and will likely buy whatever they release next in the ~$1k price range. They are in the rare space between science experiment and excellent product, and I really appreciate that about them.
I personally own a 5 head XL and I agree with nearly everything in this video. Definitely not a first printer, but if your existing prints do need the very specific tasks only an XL can service, then its your only option. Not just small multi color prints though, multi material like PETG supports or water soluble on PLA parts for perfect interface were my 2 reasons. The bed size is nice as well where I can print 16 of my main widgets, vs only 4-6 on standard size printers. There are still quirks like we 100% need multiple purge towers so PETG and PLA dont need to be on the same one (works for some prints but its not reliable enough for production), but otherwise I think prusa still succeeded with this since its a whole new and revolutionary design that no one on the market can compete with yet, and its reliable enough to be used for production. I hope the XL is the direction prusa takes as well since the MK4 makes no sense to me, strong fast core XYs that can be cheaper if they are smaller, and since most people only need 1 head then that as well. The XL is the first gen, and we dont know if its going to be a blackberry storm (their bad touch screen phone for the zoomers) or a Samsung Galaxy S.
As an mechincal engineer you should recommend it to everyone who wants the top mechanical design for highest precision and quality. The mk4 and xl has an extruder design which is miles ahead of any other printer on the market. They have a large gear single extruder design with the pushing force of a dual gear extruder. Who is interested in high consistent extruder should look up the work of miragec or mihaidesign. If you think about their conclusion the mechincal solution is the prusa extruder design! On top of it they can measure the extruding force. Which gives the possibility from hardware side to closed loop control the extruding pressure, ideal temperature calibration for each filament and so on(just my ideas what they could do with it). By the way owning a p1p, sovol, creality and no prusa at all.
Sorry, I think this is a bad take. Bambulabs killed community innovation & tech love by using proprietary software & hardware making it a stable and good machine yes, but not tinkerfriendly. 3D Printing still evolved and is being driven by open-source community efforts, Bambulabs companified 3d printing in a way. its not now about can the user fix it or adapt to their will but more of a the user will have no issues but may not touch the internal workings. Prusa's machine is quite literally still that, a modifiable, fast and precise! also its still special, it allows for material changes a bambu MMU wouldn't be able to handle like flexables or high temp materials
Small print farm owner (30 printers). The main advantage of the XL is it can print things that are just not printable or that would take an insane amounts of time on other MMU printers. the combination of size and multiple toolheads, is what makes us the only ones in our area providing specific kinds of parts. For instance, prints in the range of 30-40cm that requires extensive contact/soluble supports and takes 24h on the XL are just not possible for our competitors, and with this kind of orders, the printer pays for itself in a matter of weeks
xl is the clear winner when you want multi color speed... how does it do on abs and CF and enclosure required printing? oh, hmm.. perhaps a more even pro/con list that doesn't have 3 thumbs on one side might be more fair. ;-) I mean.. I understand the desire for clickbait, but you could also be an adult about it and just do an honest comparison which ends up with 'two different printers for two different purposes'.. but highlighting what each would be good for.
I first thought this was a clickbait title but after watching the video it is accurate. I think prusa should take the voron/ratrig design for a new line that competes directly with Bambu just to show bambu's offerings are not that "new" and there are others like them . take some to of their market share away. the voron/ratrig design already exists , it will easily competes with bambu. They just have to sell it premade and assembled or as a kit. They don't have to invest much and they can keep doing what they are doing with the i3 and xl
Every printer manufacturer is going to have to follow the game into linear-rails core-XY designs territory .. OK so I picked the wrong time to start with a bedslinger 😅
The MK4 is Prusa’s best selling printer to date, CoreXY is kind of a pain, long term bed slingers are simpler designs that are easier to maintain and easier to remote support. Support is a large part of Prusa’s offering, I suspect it would take a lot for them to shift from this design.
The XL is a Voron-style (CoreXY) printer. They literally did what you are saying they should do. What they missed on IMO is no enclosure and of course, the cost.
creality and qiddi have printers in the range of performance and cost as bambu. so, there's competition there already. it's an interesting suggestion to follow the pack vs R&D and innovation. is innovation hard? sure. but that's how you get the 5 print heads, vs the plug and play bambu with 4 color prints for $500. I'd like to see a desktop version of the resin core x-y that printed a 6 foot person in a few hours. stronger prints, some loss of detail, but a foot per hour? that's a breakthrough for desktop, no question about it.
Couldn't agree more. I've been looking for my next fast bed slinger and I was cross shopping the Prusa MK4, Bambu A1, and Creality's newest ender 3 v3. All of them can do a sub 20 minute benchy, run klipper with input shaping, and have auto-bed leveing. But only 1 of those costs over $1000...
@@crymp2057Mine lasted about a month,with maybe 50 Hours actual print time, then blobbed itself so badly,that it bent the entire tool head apart.. refunded and got an X1C now ^^
@@Kezenmacher Yeah from the Reddit forums it seems that most common issue is layer adhesion resulting in parts coming loose and lodging themselves inside the tool assembly. I fixed all my adhesion issues with a simple brim.
Prusa might be pivoting, or at least branching out to, B2B with their Automated Farm System. That uses smaller coreXY printers that can maybe be adapted to consumer market. They also have the Prusa Pro.
Honest questions: what does a "pivot" look like exactly in your mind? Is it just the release of a comparable machine to the X1 or are you suggesting you see a fundamental flaw in business strategy? Competing on price alone is basically impossible with the sheer scale of manufacturing capability China has. So where would you recommend Prusa focus on providing the value needed to make up the difference?
For a mk4, if you want it to be remotely comparable to a X1C with AM'S, you need to assembled the printer (or pay more), assembly the mmu3s, attach the mmu3s, assemble the enclosure, take up more desk space, buy a third party camera solution, manually inspect your first layers, wait long for the prints, convince people it's not some weird rube goldberg machine. The there are Prusa internal issues. People like to say China has cheap labour but its not that much cheaper than Czech labour. The real problem is Bambulab uses tons of automation and Prusa has ridiculous amounts of manila assembly necessary, to the point that it still even makes sense for them to sell kits for their no longer open source printers. They basically rely on cult of personality.
HONEST Review. This makes my #3rd PRUSA Printer purchase in 5 years. After waiting since Nov 21, 2021.. I finally received my August 22, 2024 full factory assembled Prusa XL 5 Tool head printer yesterday. I carefully took my time to properly follow all instructions to assemble and set up my printer to make sure the assembly was executed perfectly. All tests and All calibrations passed and were successfully completed the very 1st attempt. All showed green check marks and heated properly for all 5 heads. All filaments we’re also loaded 1st try to all 5 heads and extruded PLA in all five heads successfully the first attempt. My first test print was also perfect and flawless. I could not have been happier, and I was glad I took the extra time to make sure it was perfect. My second attempt was to print the PLA, PLA, Flex wrist CT scan model that comes on the flash drive with the printer, but my # 2 head suddenly gave an error message on the screen and the printer shut off and rebooted. The same error message appeared after booting that the thermistor or heat resistor wire has a problem and may be damaged? How, This was just a few minutes after all 5 heads had just heated and passed calibration tests and extruded PLA seamlessly. How is this possible? Nothing touched the printer. I stayed up trying to troubleshoot last night for two hours and spent another hour and a half this morning and an hour just now with support agents attempting to figure out how this went from functioning perfect and passing test to failing without the printer ever being touched, to an error? I spoke with 2 Prusa customer support agents who are unable to understand how to help me and make this right. This is very frustrating after 5 hours of careful assembly, I've lost 4-5 more hours trouble shooting the defective #2 Nextruder after it had just heated up and passed calibration. I asked PRUSA for help and support and tried to explain as friendly as possible that I can't waste any more time on this. I sent pictures and asked to please help me and make this right so I don't lose any more of my time on my brand new $5000 printer. Prusa's solution WAS NOT to overnight me 1 fully assembled Nextruder Replacement with a little store credit or to include a couple extra boxes of filament for the troubles I've had and loss of time on a brand new factory assembled unit, but instead they asked me to carry the burden and do all the work to spend another 2-3 hours 60 steps, disassembling the defective Nextruder, along with another perfectly working Nextruder and swap parts and reassemble to narrow down which part component is defective. And if that does not work, they want me to move on the dissembling both Nextruders again and swapping the next parts to check which adds another 2-3 hours. Keep in mind, I paid $500 extra for FULL factory assembled unit so I did not have to deal with issues or worry about each individual part or waste time making it look as clean as they can from the factory. I don't want to have the burden of not routing all wires and tucking lines back as perfect as they did because I am not as good as they are. Plus I'd have to recalibrate everything again afterwards. I'm a loyal Prusa customer for over 5 years, buy their Prusament filamnet regularly and have convinced my friends and others to purchase Prusa. Is their support satisfactory ? I feel this is not right and unacceptable. Am I off here to expect Prusa to replace the defective Nextruder with a new fully assembled unit like I originally paid for? It's business. I have to support my customers this way in my business, or I'll lose customers to my competitors who also offer this type of support. I'll remove this review once PRUSA steps up to the plate and takes ownership to make this right. Does this seem fair to deal with on a brand-new factory assembled unit or should PRUSA do the right thing here?
As a Prusa owner, I completely agree. The XL took so long to develop, and is so over-engineered, that the rest of the industry passed them by. Multilateral and multicolor is the future, but not sure the XL will be the way.
Then what will be the way? For true multi material, you need different toolheads. Otherwise, it will just not work properly and cause problems. The XL is perfect if you need to prototype with living edges, seals, etc. There is no other machine that can do what this machine is capable of.
@@nukularpictures The XL doesn't even have an enclosure, materials used for engineer prototyping require an enclosure. There are more machines coming out that will be able to do multi-material, and there are some innovative designs. Some are nozzle switching, some are multiple nozzles on same tool head. Heck, if you want high end, Vorons have them if you are hobbyist. The XL is just over engineered, won't be modifiable, and is really pricey for what it is. Last I saw it still can't even print well with anything other than 0.4 nozzle, which they didn't include in the first release.
@@tempname8263 There is no definitive best method yet, but it's definitely not an MMU/AMS which has way too much waste. I think multiple tools is the answer, like a CNC, but I don't think the best option exists yet.
I have 14 MK3.5's and I'm really debating if I should spend $500 a piece to upgrade them to MK4's or should I just buy all Bambulabs A1's for $550... and free shipping!!! that part of the equation is not working for Prusa.
Bambu's proprietary systems are why I don't want to have anything to do with their stuff. They really are the iPhone of 3D printing and I mean that in the worst way.
Except that they are, relatively speaking, less expensive and outperform most everything else as opposed to Apple which charges more than everyone else. Yeah, I can see why no one would want that...
@@Patrik38cz This sounds so much like Apple vs Microsoft. To quote Bill Gates "It doesn't matter". What matters is the end result. Of all the printers I've seen the Bambu is the closest to being an appliance which is what is needed for mainstream appeal.
The biggest advantage of the multi tool vs purge material change is that some plastics DO NOT PLAY WELL TOGETHER! If you run HIPS then purge with PETG then none of your PETG layers will bond. So forget using HIPS as a soluble support with PETG. There are many other bad combinations. However use multi head and you can use HIPS supports that do not bond to PETG. No need for soluble supports unless needed as supports are removed clean, even with 0mm space. Another advantage is using different nozzle diameters of the same material. I like 0.4mm nozzle with 0.007 layer height for high detail and tight tolerances on the perimeter while 0.7mm nozzle with 0.3mm layer height for infill on the same print. This gives the best quality vs speed possible. Most of my prints are for functional parts so multi material without worrying about contamination ruining a build is worth the extra $$$. I bought the Prusa XL with all 5 tools for this purpose. Also with Prusa's open source code and tool changing I can Hack my own tools and build any number of tools like milling auto insert tools. Multi tool heads is the beginning of the merge between 3D printing CNC. Most CNC milling and lathe tools have auto tool changing, Prusa is on the bleeding edge once again. There is no end to how far this will go.
I love the channel. Would have never bought a P1S if it wasn't for your recommendation. It has rekindle my passion for printing and helped our businesses make many discontinued or non existent parts. Thank you!
For many years, I was waiting for an amazing 3D printer, that will make 3d pritning super easy! So I followed Prusa and other similar brands in their pursuit of making better 3d printers with open source mentality. However, if you are not a 3d printing geek - Your really don't want to waist your time on unnecessary coding, filet setup or calibartions... So when I saw the new Iphone of 3d printers - Bambulab X1C, I immidiately bought it and I have loved it ever since. The thing is, people (especially creatives), want to just bring their own ideas to life! Nobody wants to read forums, code or becom a professor at 3D printing. So this is the reason, why Bambulab is so great - It just gives you a fancy and brautiful machines, that does most of the work for you! Bambulab is the future :)
As someone who uses Windows and Android, I was very much after the Apple experience when it comes to 3D printing for the business, so in 2017, I went for the Ultimaker 3, it served me very well and was an entirely press and play experience up until this year despite nearly no maintenance. Fast forward many years, the Bambu Lab is looking like something that does that job better, at 1/3 the cost, with more than 3x the features.
Great perspectives, but more importantly I have to say that your video production quality is incredible, the cuts and b- roll keep what would otherwise be a single shot monologue super engaging!! 😎😎
As a machinist, the tool changer on the XL is on par with the CNC machines I normally would work with in subtractive manufacturing and I appreciate that. My main beef with 3D printing is that it tries to be too different than CNC subtractive manufacturing. This type of tool changer is a step in the right direction because the tried and true mechanisms and methods of CNC machining have been respected.
I was into 3d printing 6 years ago and am looking to get into it again. I remember looking at Prusa but it was just A) too expensive and B) too expensive especially for something you had to put together yourself. I like 3d printing...I don't like spending an entire day trying to figure out what random thing on my printer isn't working right. I've already ordered a new bambu and I'm looking forward to a MUCH easier experience. I like designing stuff and printing it...not researching machine failures.
So, here's my perspective. I got a P1S for Christmas. I've had resin printers for years, dating back to the first Photon, but I held off on FDM until a bambulabs came along and there's one, very specific reason. I didn't want to be an FDM printing hobbyist. I wanted to be a hobbyist that used an FDM printer. The P1S had a very short learning curve and worked, with very little adjustment, right out of the box. It'll work with nearly any material you put in it, it has the enclosure, and it's relatively inexpensive. From an outside perspective, I see no reason to buy a mk4 when the A1 exists, let alone the P1.
I see many below commenting on Prusa's quality and that they need to stick to their roots. Roots are not agile nor innovative. Lastly Pruse and many other 3d printer companies are missing the entire point of the Bambu ecosystem. The majority of the people out there that want and are interested in 3d printing don't give two ####'s about the machine being open source or want to tinker with it, they just want it to work. I don't care if you can 3d print replacement parts. If my one printer is down i have to buy the part anyhow. This negates that majority of the advantage Prusa has. So if Prusa wants to remain relevant, they need to create an ecosystem and printer that supersedes the P1P and A1 otherwise they are just another blackberry type of company.
Spot on, they need to take the Apple approach of “It just works”. Just like I’m glad I don’t have to compile drivers in Linux anymore to get stuff working. I’m all for owning an innovative Czech 🇨🇿 printer that just works.
Upgraded my MK3 to a MK4 3 months ago and have been printing almost nonstop since then. It is so much faster that I never feel the need to use a 0.6 nozzle anymore. The force touch calibration makes switching print sheets totally seamless. I love my Prusa and don’t see the need to switch, I think they will be around for quite a while yet.
hate to break it to you but the mk4 is the exact same speed as your mk3. motion speed is just a determinant for resolution at a given flow rate, and both mk3/mk4 hotends are the same max flow rate. the only difference is the mk4 will ring at a different accel than the mk3 , slightly higher (because of the change to stiffer 10 mil rods and introduction of input shaping) and that ringing will be somewhat mitigated at the tradeoff of smoothing your parts. that .6 nozzle reduced nozzle pressure which slightly increased your max flow rate. your old setup was actualy faster you just didnt use settings that took advantage of the overhead. input shaping doesnt make your printer faster, it reduces ringing by smoothing the part surface detail away because it smooths the motion system moves by correcting them to a control target with the intent of reducing vibration. your flow rate/time relative to the amount of toolpath moves is what determines how fast your print completes, not how fast it moves. your lack of knowledge in the space is being exploited cuz you absolutely can tune up a mk3 faster it had (clearly) a ton of untapped headroom in default profiles, they were very conservative. i used to print 1kg a day of petg on my mk3 in 2020 and my parts were not a low quality ringing mess. look up the muppet labs page paradox of speed for a primer on this stuff. soon as you get educated on this, you'll understand why the arms race underlying all the other things going on everywhere other than prusa is in hotend flow rate. (basicaly every other printer on the market rn is like 2x or more the flow rate prusa is using). this is not super dissimilar to when they refused to convert the sl1 from an sla printer to an msla printer when everyone else could flash whole layers at a time and they could only make the laser spot trace faster and completely missed the market shift. im not sayign its a bad printer or you shouldnt enjoy it, im just saying here's an explanation why you're wrong about your perceptions of speed and how this stuff works.
Your 3D printing content is easily a step above everything else out there. Such a smart and sophisticated take. I am also a Prusa fan, but I'm about to purchase my first Bambu machine.
I ordered a 2 head XL when it was first advertised. After waiting a long time it still wasn't delivered. I got a Bambu Lab carbon. It's a little small, but works great for the majority of my projects. I still love the features of the XL, but I would only need them for a very few projects. In addition, the early users reported issues that indicate it still wasn't ready for release. The Bambu Lab printer functions as a real upgrade to my trusty Prusa MK 3S that I upgraded over the years.
Prusa is everything i want from a 3D printer company. One of the reasons i like their printers is their open source approach. And their popularity kinda guarantees replacement part availability for, i guess decades. Another reason i chose them over others is their localized manufacturing and sourcing of parts and all the rnd work they do and make available to us. And last, but not least, their reliability. I have never run into weird problems with my Mini or Mk3S, which i can not say about Crealitys, Anycubics, or Elegoos printers.
I think the only thing the Bambu has going for it is speed and cost. With them you move production to China, give up privacy, lose the ability to repair, and kill innovation with proprietary technology. Bambu took open source tech, adds proprietary tech to give it an edge, and sells it for cheap with Chinese labor. Once they have that large market share the open-source innovation they built on will end, and you will be stuck with a $100M company that doesn't care about its users and will crank out the same thing year after year. They will truly be like iPhones in that they are nearly impossible to repair, competition killing, overpriced disposable products, made for consumption instead of practical use. Those fun trinkets that you mock are exactly what Bambus are made to crank out, at blazing speeds, to appease childishly impatient consumers who want their toy right now. Bambu marks the end of the golden era of 3D printing innovation.
I hard disagree. The golden era of 3D printing innovation ended even without Bambu. Innovation with FDM 3d printing is drastically slowing down, we're reaching the limits of what is possible with single filament printing, with hardly anything else needing to be improved on other than multicolor, and multicolor/material innovation can really only go so far. Printing at even faster speeds reduces layer adhesion so there's no point, we already can run at extremely high accelerations, pressure advance is basically perfected, dimensional accuracy is the best that FDM can allow. All this is already open source technology, the only way forward for innovation now is if a person or company invests the time and money to compile all these technologies into an appliance that an average consumer can use with a push of a button. That's what the X1C is, it's not for tinkerers or innovators, it's designed so the average consumer can just use it without having to think about it. It's not marketed to "childishly inpatient customers," it's marketed to people that want a product that just works, and it does even more so than the Mk3. The innovation of the X1C is about making 3D printers a feasible mainstream appliance anyone can use. It also isn't impossible to repair. The only downside to its repairability is the fact that parts are proprietary so you have to buy them from Bambu, but when you're designing an appliance for mass production it's impossible to avoid the need for proprietary parts. 3D printer parts are naturally replaceable, and most calibrations are filament specific so Bambu can't just use anti repair practices like Apple or use serialized parts. It won't be long for 3rd party replacements to be developed. As far as Chinese manufacturing goes, the Ender 3 is a Chinese product, and that was widely respected in the open source community as the printer that introduced affordable 3D printing to everyone. Why is the X1C any different? In regards to your concerns about privacy, you don't need to use their cloud services if you don't want to, you can use an SD card old fashioned style.
I had an Ender 5 and upgraded to a MK4 and would love an XL. I hope Prusa doesn't fall off I think their customer support and how they support all their old versions to upgrade is amazing. They can never go away from the bed slinger, but I do hope they are working on a new design to shake up the 3D printing community again in the future.
Like a few people have said I think you only focus on one use case you can get out of this printer while in reality you have many possible future options. They essentially made the perfect printer but it's very expensive at the moment. I do have XL currently and it's my favorite printer by far
Excellent observations. I would have a quibble somewhat about 'appliance level printing'. In my experience that level of usage arrived 5 years ago with the FLSun QQ-S Pro. Yes it did require me to assemble the unit. However it was no harder than well known Xmas bicycle exercise every parent knows. Mounted the probe, auto leveled the unit and it functioned flawlessly. And here we are, the only things I have done to the device is a hardened nozzle, upgraded the PTFE tube, a mod to the spool holder, and auto level every hundred prints or so. Good enough that I now have two, the QQ-S and the newer VS400. Its engineering that just works.
well... how many 3d printers for mainstream are developed and manufactured in Europe or in USA? Directly? Prusa does not have just RnD in Europe, they have also production in middle of Europe, directly in capital city.
I had printers for years. Used weekly sometimes daily. It was always a chore. Then I got my bambo A1mini and yes it’s a bit small but 90% of the time its enough. And it made designing and printing equally fun.
I have 2 larger printers and got an A1 Mini and you’re right, it’s a fun little machine. Most of what I print fits on it so it’s running much of the time. And it just works, beautifully. The dynamic flow calibration is genius.
All Prusa needed to do in 2021 was to release a Voron kit. But instead they announced the XL, which would have been a great printer in 2021. But it came out in 2023. After the Bambu X1C. Most of Prusa’s improvements in the last years were on Prusa Slicher. Which also benefited their competitors.
give me one toolhead with4 filaments loaded at the same time -> 4 hotends, i will even just take 2 IF they provide an option like the ams to load and unload new filaments. the only thing really holding the ams back are the 90 seconds of time to change the filament
Great video, but I missed a mention of Prusa's AFS (Automated Farm System) which targets the B2B market. In that product, they integrate a smaller CoreXY printer model.
1) I don't like the Benchy model either. 2) I get the AOL reference 3) My MK3S+ has sat idle since I got the X1C in mid November 2023. It has a In3DSpace light bar on it, and makes a nice night light in the basement, so I leave it turned on.
@@chucktesta7192 It is. I bought the MK3S+ in November of 2020, and it's been a workhorse. I wanted something faster and with a MMU or AMS. The X1C was $1513.35 with a couple spare bits, included shipping. The MK4 is $1099, an enclosure is $349, the MMU3 is $299, so we're at $1697. And at the time the input shaping code wasn't ready for the MK4.
Agreed. Bambu Lab is a prime example of why competition is important. Without Bambu Lab, we'd still be printing slow, but thanks to them, pretty much every manufacturer was suddenly able to release high speed printers. Prusa used to be an industry standard, but they either got lazy, too comfortable, or just couldn't be innovative enough anymore. That said, the principle of the XL is probably gonna be the next big thing. People like to do multicolored prints more and more, and multi-material prints are growing in popularity too, so reducing material waste is a very important step here.
Without bambu lab?? Dude at the time bambu lab was announced and their kickstarter. There were already hyper speed printers announced and released at the same time. Like the ankermake M5 and the FLSUN V400. Bambu lab weren't the 1st to make fast printers. Not even close. Speed printers have been round for years with voron kids and the like. Bambu shills are so clueless.
@@LilApe Learn more about 3D printing. Look at the acceleration, the speed is just for advertising. 500mms on 5k acc ? It's completely nonsense. Bambu is 600mms on 20k acc, completely different.
'd like to buy a Prusa. People say their 3D printers are the Corollas of the industry in that they last forever. Shop Nation asks what can Prusa can do to stay competitive. Lets not dance around this! Simply offer the printers at competitive prices (Corolla prices) for their ready to go printers and the kits. I'm not talking 10% cheaper. They need to hit the 20-30% discount range. Also, the cost difference between the fully built printer and the kit version is ridiculous...close that gap by 50%
@@Spoonuk666 Their nextruder is innovative. Their segmented heat bed is innovative as is their load cell nozzle. All this is on the XL. Things they did 1st.
Big thing that I want to see here is like other commenters mentioned -- dissolving support made a priority which makes the filament production companies key. Otherwise, and particularly for @Shop Nation here is that this would actually do multimaterial with different materials like TPU for impact resistance and nylon for strength. That could open up some interesting stuff for things like the miter saw dust collection systems -- TPU for the hose connection or TPU for a flex in a spot to make blade removal easier or ABS to smooth the inside easily for improved flow. There's lots of possibilities there that other printers literally can't do, but the community needs designs specifically for that.
To me the biggest benefit I’ve seen in Prusa over other printers is the upgrade ability. I bought mk3 and over the time that I owned it they updated it to work better and better, through software through easily replaceable 3-D printed parts that they give you the files for through very cheap replaceable sensors. I now have mk3s. Their mission seems don’t throw the baby out with a bathwater which in a world where everybody complains how everything is disposable prusa has strived to keep things updatable. Is the bambu lab printer like and iPhone where they want you to throw it out and get a new one every few years? Or do they have cheap upgrade parts.
Prusa innovates but, its frustratingly slow. The XL isnt a disrupter with this price tag. They need to focus their resorces on creating a low cost, competitive, corexy printer.
The innovation is not given by the price tag, it would be a desservice to have a low cost machine when theres a lot of low cost machines that are low cost because os material quality or bad customer support, if your looking for that it would be advisable to look into the offerings of the competition and not try to pull the quality down to reach market price.
@@JonaDVargas cost doesn't always go hand in hand with quality. Scaling up, supporting less printers, and using better manufacturing techniques can bring cost down. I have several prusas. They are great, but lack features for the price.
@@IvanJoel the problem is that in order to achieve that they would have to produce in China or Vietnam to really compete but they had their parts, developed by them, copied that way and sold by third parties on china and from china.
Great video! My MK3S+ was my 1st printer. Still a great machine. I wanted multicolor without having to stand there and wait. The A1 just came out so I jumped on it. Needless to say, the Prusa doesn't get used much anymore. And not because I'm just doing multi color, because I'm not. The A1 is fast and just easy to use. My Prusa took 10+ hrs to assemble, A1...... 30 mins. Sad to say, my next printer will probably be an X1 or P1. Prusa needs to step up their game. Cost for ease of use, assembly, enclosure....... No brainer folks.
I would only add a minor observation. Anyone who lacks the patience/skill to assemble a 3D printer these days probably will not 'survive' the experience. Much of the industry has come a long way from the days of the erector set self made machine.
You are right about several things,they’re behind in some areas yes but when you’re funded by the Chinese government, huge shock, you can build amazing machines. I built a farm in the last month and chose to stick with Prusa and bought four MK4’s with enclosures. Primary reasoning was I know the core design and can maintain them. I do not like the idea of breaking down a Bambu to change a rod or bearing which is inevitable. You can call them “consumer” machines all you want but when was the last time you changed a bearing in your HP Laserjet? They are not a consumer “appliance” and never will be IMO. I’ll get a Bambu at some point to compare but I won’t be moving away from Prusa as I buy in to the ethos behind the printers
I remember that shortly after release of MK3, Prusa made a survey what would be most important features people would like to see in next machines. There were various options to choose, like printing speed, connectivity, enclosure, ability to print flexibles with ease, and exactly - a toolchanging mechanism. Vast amount of people voted for that toolchanging, as it probably was seen most fancy (but without consideration if it actually would be useful on day to day basis) and cool. So Prusa followed the request, when meanwhile people find and oriented toward speed printing. Which was quickly picked up by Chinese companies to spit out faster and faster (in theory) machines with the rate of fire of an machine gun. Prusa with their "limitation" of making and producing everything what was possible within costly EU, was on lost position from the start. Especially that when people drooled on speedboat race breaking new and new records, they were developing completely different kind of machine.
That was not smart. Steve Jobs quoted Henry Ford about market research. You the maker need to know your customer's needs better than just asking what they want.
As one "of a certain age" who chose an X1C over a Prusa Mk. 3 in Dec. '22, can totally relate to your Blackberry reference. (Still have a Blackberry or two hiding in a drawer somewhere.) You nailed it.
I am old enough to get that reference; I actually liked the floppies better because I would re-use them 😂 You make some very good points Sir, great video
I won't buy a Bamboo printer for the same reason I wouldn't buy a iPhone, freedom. I don't want some company thousands of miles away making decisions for something I supposedly own. The XL is also a true multi-material machine, where the Bamboo AMS is just a multi-color machine. Since the X1 and other share a nozzle, if you have materials that require different printing temperatures, you have to wait for the nozzle to heat up and cool down every material change.
The thing with Bambu Labs Printers are that they also look good and fit in an normal office room, the prusa machines with the orange and stuff screams "nerd" all over it.
I was researching many 3d printer brands to determine which to get, and to me Bambu makes a much more compelling value proposition. You get so much more, and have to do less, for less money.
Actually we still miss support for multinozzlediameter in Prusa Slicer. It would be quite nice to use different nozzles, not only different materials. Also the MMU3 should be supported. So you can use multiple colours with classic filament change, but also different materials - changing to another extruder - or different nozzle sizes. This way the affordable 2 head version would be much more interesting.
My simple reason as to why its the next black berry is because its now absurdly expensive compared to its competitors such as the new Bambu Lab A1. Bambu dropped their A1 to $250-$300 while the PRUSA Mini+ is still at $400-$450. Obviously I’m looking at the A1 more than the mini.
I had another cheap enclosed printer and every time you wanted to print you would have to tune the print first. In 3 years of using it I have very few print parts to show for it. I brought a Bambu less than a year ago. It has change my life. I use it all the time and my 14 year old son has got excited about it and I'm now booking time with him to print my stuff. By far the Bambu X1C is the best decision I have ever made, it just works, no fucking around. Just knock out your design in Fusion and a few minuets later you have a beautiful ABS part. I don't even bother printing PLA anymore. I have no interest in making toys, I'm only interested in making engineering parts. ABS is ok for the vast majority of what we make but to be able to print PC-CF or Nylon if I want is fantastic. I put a heavy blanket over when printing high temp materials. Chamber gets to about 65c and everything prints perfectly. I have dialed in large ABS prints with no warping and they are just far better to machine and work with after. To see my son designing parts for his Airsoft gun and this weekend he quickly knocked out a part for his mum to decorate cakes very efficiently is all I ever wanted. We also have a CNC mill so he is now learning how to use that. As a dad I could not be happier.
Why would you want the XL for multicolour? The benefit of having multiple toolheads is multi-material. On that front, the XL is pretty much the only one of its kind, for better and for worse. Better, because it is great that there is a company out there exploring new frontiers. Worse, because it is definitely a first gen product that demands months works from the user just to get started with multi-materials. I am hoping that more competitions will come to this front. The last thing we want is for things to stuck with the XL for the next 5+ years.
Multicolor would be a huge boost to my current little 3D print shop. I can do it right now but it is only me manually changing colors and then it is only at a simple level color change. To be able to make my parts and have edges highlighted or surface designs would be something no one else is doing. I am all for print heads for multi color.
There's the Jubilee, E3D toolchanger, and Proforge 4 that all 4+ toolheads that compete with the XL. Those can be bought as kits or assembled, there are also voron toolchanger options.
@@popscorn66 But isn't the multi-toolheads be a bit over the top for multi colour? It is more expensive. And, the added complexity definitely reduce reliability. Personally, I am design a tool-changer for the Voron platform; with multi-material in mind. if I ever needed multi colour; then, I will consider filament switching options like the ERF or Chameleon, to be installed on one of the toolhead.
@@thomasletlow3292 Good shout. I totally forgot about those alternatives. Although, as one of the designer who is working the the Voron Toolchanger, I have to make a note here that: they are all still in development, as options for components like the docks and electrical panels are being explore, and the documentation is scattered.
No mentions to different nozzle sizes. That would be cool. Having fine details along with faster printing by layer thickness in one build. Or like having two different machines in one box.
I have both, Prusa is a work horse, always as been. They are build to last. If it wasn't the case, your own print far would not be filled with Prusa. My X1C, I am counting the days the linear bearings and carbon rods fall apart. Bending a hot end is a little to easy. And the AMS is a nice to have. But generates a ton of waste. Also Prusa offers an multi-material option that you failed to mention for Mk2-3 and 4.
I think if prusa managed to reduce the mk4 price to like ~500$, it would more competitive. The thing is they always use premium components all around and its not really feasible. 3D printing parts in such a large scale is not really practical either. Plus they didnt really design it around being easy to assemble. At their scale they could easily injection mold the parts to reduce cost, and make it easier to assemble. They are kinda stuck in a situation where they are known for open source and repairable printers but the new market is heading somewhere else and they cant really change what they are known for.
actually they are using injection molding in some of parts, they only use 3D printed parts when they see fit. I think the biggest issue is their testing procedure, it takes them 4 hrs to assemble MK4 (12hrs to assemble XL) and test print and then disassemble (according to their video) but they decided to test every components and assemble it to test. As you said, they should optimise the assemble procedure on design level, but also push the quality from their parts providers instead of testing every components. Or even compensate the fault rate by providing spare parts to customers. They are definitely over sampling which is way too labour intense.
premium components? prusa? absolutely NOT. They self-3d-print many parts. Injection molded parts would be cheaper, more precise AND stronger. The display is ATROCIOUS. The rods are super basic. The motors are off the shelve stuff too. There is absolutely nothing premium about a MK4 in terms of materials or parts ... That is also why Prusa - unline Bamboo - needs to assemble, then test, then disassemble all printers. That is SUPER expensive - but shows how high their part failure rate is if they have to constantly test everything.
@@m4ko288 bro what. Bambu likely tests every single part too… most non shit companies will too. They don’t assemble and de assemble, they have test jigs for everytjjgn. The motors on the mk4 are from ldo which are known to make high quality motors. The hotend is manufactured by e3d. The rods and bearings are Musmi and belts are gates. All high end name brands. That’s what I mean by high quality. Bambu doesn’t use any name brand stuff. Printer parts doesn’t mean it’s bad at all either.
>>Why Prusa is the next Blackberry It's not, f. off. You may contine buying chinise stuff, made highly likely with a forced labour use. I'll choose the machine made in EU any time, especially now when they announced CORE 1.
The points brought up are exactly what I am wrestling with myself. I really want the XL, but other printers have much more technology already built in, while the XL feels like the only significant innovations are the head changer and segmented heated bed. Most of the larger, faster printers from the likes of Creality, Quidi, Bambu and others now come enclosed, with air filtration (which is important in my situation), and features like cameras and LIDAR for first-layer monitoring... all of which the XL lacks, which is incredibly disappointing. Besides the swappable print head feature, it feels very much like the same old stuff. I really would like the multi-material option, but am having to weigh that against the other features that it sadly lacks... let alone the dramatic price difference. I'm struggling to justify spending that much on the XL
Prusa delivers on the philosophy and ethics I wish more companies had, but I simply can't afford their products and do not want the drawbacks their products have.. Bambu does not match my ethics, but does deliver really good products that I can afford. It is a dilemma.
I've been printing more and more with mine and have realized that the best use case is to have just 2 print heads. I've been thinking in buying more XLs but just with one tool head, and grab one off my 5-head one and transplant it over. Would end up with 4x printers with 2 tool heads. (4x quite expensive open format printers though) Spool join.... check Bi-colour..... check (i don't do much colour at all) Multimaterial... check-ish Dedicated support material... check-ish With 2 tool heads you get a lot of capabilities that doesn't really justify 5, unless you really are printing a lot of multi-coloured prints. One of the reasons for getting the 5 for me was to have several materials pre loaded so I save a bit of prep-time, but also to potentially have the ability of having multi nozzle sizes, which is apparently a big one, but hasn't been done yet...
Thanks for watching! What do you think?
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Prusa is awesome, but they won’t be able to compete on price with China. They are doing the right thing by producing in Hungary with their own people, but that's bad for their business. They also need to update the look of their printer; the current design is outdated. Creality, with the K1 and V3 fast printers for $300, will outcompete Prusa and Bambu-just wait. People haven’t fully realized how fast the new Creality printers are and how well they work. No, you don't need to tinker with the K1 anymore. Prusa needs a new, modern case, along with features like lights and a camera. In Canada, an assembled Prusa costs $1,999 CAD, while the P1S with AMS is $1,079 and the X1 without AMS is $1,500. Nobody with common sense will buy a Prusa in Canada at those prices.
Shut your shill mouth no one can afford and old slow 8 thousand dollar machine. Faster than anything you are kidding yourself.
The one thing Prusa still will hang on to over nearly every other major printer company is their EU manufacturing. It doesn't matter to most people, but it does for some. Personally I appreciate seeing Prusa stay true to its roots and move even more of its manufacturing to the Czech Republic. Its not enough to be the sole reason I would choose Prusa, but it is good to see.
Totally agree... Prusa is a company that matches my own personal ethical/moral standards. They don't churn out crap, they maintain clear upgrade paths and serviceability over long periods of time. My Mk4 will still be running for ages even if they do go out of business thanks to (almost) everything being open source. Bambu are taking the Apple approach which means servicing your own machine is a nightmare and you can only buy parts from them. I think Bambu will light a fire under Prusa and we are going to see some speedy core x/y machines in the near future (they already exist but are tied to Prusas print farm tech which is aimed at large businesses, it won't be hard for them to make them consumer friendly).
@@andy_warb My XL was crap, so I can't agree with your statement "they don't churn out crap." I was a HUGE Prusa fan before the XL, but they rushed it out to try and compete with Bambu in the multicolor market. I told so many people over the years "it just works" when talking about Prusa. But before I sold my XL my wife made a sticker for it that said "it just WONT work" lol. I really wanted to love the XL, but it was the most unreliable printer that I had used in years.
The problem is they spent almost 5 years ***ing around llamas, barely improving their stuff meanwhile the competitors are absolutely incapable of innovating and just copy the leader. If a timeline when Bambu didn't show up, year is 2030 and the Prusa Mini still hasn't got power panic
@@andy_warb Prusa has done like apple, not innovating.
There are plenty other opensource machines that absolutely DESTROYS prusas machines, VzBoT, Annex and Voron just to name a few.
This too will become a disadvantage as europe continues to increase labor and energy costs.
Multicolor isn’t the main use case for the multi head system I believe. I work in prototyping and research and this printer would be extremely useful for multi-material type parts. For example, we print in one material for the part and we print the supports in dissolvable material.
Exactly. People who want to make multi-coloured decorative items would be much better served by a printer that could colour filament as it goes (ex., by mixing pigments into white filament, or by making a pass with an inkjet head after each layer). And that would probably have a lot more mass appeal than a printer that's 50% faster.
Multi-head printers are mainly for combining different materials.
“Would be useful”. Didn’t buy one?
Also work in a business with rapid prototyping. What type of Print would need 5 different materials? I could see it using 3 at most. Something like PET-G + TPU for a gasket and PVA dissolvable supports.
@@andyt1313 4k for that makes it infeasible. Something can be useful as a product, but prohibitive due to other factors, such as cost.
@@RFC3514 Totally agree. Multi-head is the future (over switching filaments). When you compare this Prusa to, say, an Ultimaker that clocks in at around $7,000, the price doesn't look as bad, but Prusa must get the price down somehow, maybe a model closer to their basic core xy model with the option for multihead use.
Here is what I want to see from prusia: a smaller xl, fully enclosed, heated chamber, air filtration, dual head (either tool swapping or fixed) that's it. Can still cost more than others but at least I get the same features.
they should do 2 tool heads each connected to its own "ams" type system so while one is printing the other can be purging and getting ready to go and drastically reduce swap time and if each ams can hold 4 or 5 colors than you essentially have a 10 color print so the benefits of the mutli tool head with the benefits of 2 ams systems. And they would need to have their slicer be able to tell you which colors go in each slot for optimal efficiency based on your sliced print. even if that means you have the same common color in both ams's.
I agree, but I think it should be 3 heads rather than 2. An IDEX can do 2, so this would give it a USP over an IDEX. 3 heads would allow you, for example, to do 2 material, plus support material. IMHO there's not a lot of point in a 2 head toolchanger, as an IDEX can swap heads way quicker than a toolchanger, with way less complexity
@@EddyStyl3sYou still have an enormous amount of waste.
@@EddyStyl3s I was thinking the same thing. color changes don't need to add more time.
@@EddyStyl3sOMG, I had the exact same idea 2 days ago! An Index pinter with 2 toolheads and 2 "AMS" systems is the best of both worlds. Fast and efficient printing at dual color, capable of multi material (PLA + TPU for example) and it can print fast multi color for more than 2 colors.
i think the XL can be a gamechanger if they implement software that allows for different size nozzles to print one and the same object. Infill and supports will be done with a 0.8mm nozzle, low detail areas on the outside will also be done in 0.8 or 0.6 mm and the high detail areas will be done with 0.4 or even 0.2 mm, possibly even going down to 0.1mm layer hight to ensure great details while the infill etc. gets added at 0.3mm every third layer or maybe even 0.6mm every sixth layer. This would result in huge prints with incredible details, like when printed with a 0.2mm nozzle alone, but in a fraction of the time. Might be a big gamechanger for professionals who are selling detailed prints. Also They might be able to add different types of tools that could pick up and insert magnets or similar items into the prints allowing a kind of automatic assembly of mechanical parts into the printed object. The possibilities are quite limitless if you start to think about it.
if anyone could help with their opinion:
- where would you place the RatRig 3d printer? interested to know how it ranks between the rest of the brands
Sounds like that happened recently, I just don't understand why Prusa takes so long to release stuff. Like the MMU for the Mk4 just recently released. And we still don't have an enclosure.
@@KNDlifeacademy From what I know Ratrig needs more tinkering and knowledge than Prusa kits for example but they have a good reputation, basically Voron but with official kits. The 500mm versions apparently have some issues due to material flex & heat expansion.
@@krollmond7544 They only just released an enclosure for the Mini, let's hope their enclosure designers don't take another multi-year break now.
Same material different nozzles... i do think the idea is worth testing but i think if it works, it's sort of a sign that things need to be improved elsewhere. Because for the most part, you can just span the gamut from 0.4mm to 0.8mm or sometimes even more on just the 0.4mm nozzle simply by varying extrusion width. By all reason mixer-inserts (CHT like), longer heaters, more filament grip area in extruder, etc can just increase material throughput vs. backpressure of a small nozzle.
I suppose if you had a part that had to look perfect with 0.4mm nozzle on the outside but was also large enough that it can have inner walls etc mad with 1.2mm, but then you have the problem that that large nozzle is going to be more prone to leak and blob so it would just mar your otherwise beautiful print.
Smaller XL with 3 heads: 2 for different colours and 1 for dissolvable support for exemple.
Yes. Or make it easy to add one or two extra heads to a stock single head setup. That really would be killer. The swappable head thing really could be Prusa's innovation and calling card, it really is superior. I'm thinking of a P1S made by Prusa and with swappable heads you could add in up to like maybe five or six. Wow. However at this rate Bambu may actually beat them to it. Which would be a shame
Until they make a printer enclosed with a heated chamber I wouldn't consider it. If you are doing ABS / Nylon / CF mixes and want it to look good Bambu printers rock. I was looking at the XL because I need the size but it's not enclosed and to expensive for what it is.
I think the first problem with the XL is that it has been widely accepted as a Bambu AMS competitor, when I think it is more accurate to compare it to something like the E3D toolchanger. The toolchanger was a similar price to the XL, and it could that price because there was nothing else with the same capability. That said, the E3D Toolchanger was also just a motion system, not a ready to use printer.
Well - The problem is that the XL, while it is a great idea, has some problems.
First of all is the market. While the "standard" Prusa was rather expensive, it still appealed to the "home" market. It was just affordable enough, to say that reliability justified the price. That's still the case, but it's far less relevant. Other printers like the Bambulab printers took a big chunk out of the market share.
The XL is maybe a great machine, but it also has a great high price. The Bambulab X1 Carbon is slower, spills a lot of material, and is not capable of printing mixed printing materials. However - It has one huge big advantage. It is just at the right side of the border of being affordable for the "home" market. The Prusa XL is way out of league in this respect. Most people that are just capable (and justify for themselves) to afford a Bambulab X1, are not capable to afford a XL, and thus are not tempted to buy one.
Do not underestimate the size of that "home" market. It's the segment where majority of the models from Prusa where sold, and the biggest source of income. Other manufactures have eaten away that most profitable market. That far cheaper A1 series printers from Bambulab have taken a big chomp out of that market. By the way - I am no Bambulab lover, but facts are facts...
And then of course the XL had some big problems. Problems you should not expect from printers at this price point. That was very damaging for the image of the Prusa printer line without any doubt. Prusa always stood for quality and reliability. Sadly that image now is damaged...
That's just technical minutiae. It is for all intents and purposes a Bambu X1 Carbon competitor. Even prusa fanboys who claim the tool changer can be used for lasercutting and CNC will never use it for those purposes and are just using it for multi-color, sometimes multi-material prints.
@@paranoidpanzerpenguin5262Yeah - The problem with that is that the XL could be a Bambulab X1 Carbon competitor, but it's far to overpriced to actually be that. Most people with a average income (the majority of buyers) can afford a X1 Carbon if they put some some effort in it. The XL? Nope - Far too expensive for that group. And that group is by far the biggest 3D printer buyers group. You can buy 2 X1 Carbon machines with 4 color change units for the price of one XL, and then even have enough money left to compensate for years and years of spilled filament. And I am not even speaking about the cheaper P1S machines here that even have a enclosure for that price...
As said - I am not a Bambulab fanboy (I use them as an example here), but I really wonder what market is targeted by the XL. If it is the professional market, then you have competitors that are maybe somewhat higher priced, but have the advantage of on-site maintenance and more. If it's targeted at the average consumer market.... Well see the remarks above...
@@paranoidpanzerpenguin5262 I think you are underestimating what you can do with multi material and that if the bambu can't do that its not even close to being a competitor. If ya don't design yourself, and only print PLA I would recommend Bambu. But as soon as you design parts yourself, the freedom of multi material is soo much worth it! I don't think people realize yet how good support is with incompatible materials. I've had some seasoned 3D printers ask me how I was able to make parts that look so good on all sides XD.
I uploaded a small vid of my very first try on a big part (that would not even fit on a Bambu btw) ruclips.net/video/ZPMs6VDKU08/видео.html
This test still had the wrong top support patern, Changing it to linear will make bottom and top look almost the same and it becomes hard to tell what orientation the part was printed.
@@AcEkrystalI am not sure you understand that the M in AMS is material. I have multiple materials loaded on my AMS and that is exactly what I use it for, I don't print multi color I print multi material.
Definitely forgot to mention the best thing about this printer, it’s the fact you can print tpu with pla supports with a petg body, something you litterally couldn’t do with a x1c
Yeah, like a .01% use case.
You actually can, it's just not recommended to run TPU in the AMS, I personally have - just can't be crazy soft.
@Jwmbike14 I tried Geetech tpu spec 95A in the AMS, and it absolutely jammed up. Didn't even make it to the extruder, and i had to dismount the ams to pull it from the tubes. The Filament itself prints like a charm from the external spool holder. So I don't recommend even trying that.
@@smps_enthusiast5391 Have you tried "high speed tpu"? I had a lot of success with it when I had a bowden setup.
@@smps_enthusiast5391Nor do best practices from Bambu recommend using TPU in an AMS
I believe Prusa is doing a slow, but steady pivot to a B2B model, which would show why they are lagging in the consumer market. Businesses with privacy concerns don't like Bambu spyware sending their gcode, and a european company is something that will offer better support than a chinese one.
You can see it with their Prusa Lab videos, they're all highlights of how they are making big moves in the B2B space, replacing what Ultimaker used to be, but catching up at the consumer/prosumer market much more slowly.
Literally you just described blackberry and their descent to a T.
I have one printer from a dutch company that went into B2B... and so it left me as a consumer stranded. They occasionally send me newsletters, but it's not for me any more.
Moving from consumer to B2B is a downgrade. You need to be much better to compete on the consumer market
@@ZURAD the dutch company got more expensive and made bigger printers. They had been in a sturdy frame with a fixed bed (on a z axis) before and after their transition.
But well, when they decide to move away from me with their product lineup, I'm off. That's how it is.
When doing an R&D project, I want my designs to stay in our office, especially NOT on a Chinese server. We had a Chinese company that we were working with but they causally leaked it out-going oops. And then the project died. Keep your data safe.
If Prusa brought out a fully enclosed tool changer with active chamber heating and linear motors, I would throw my money at them way faster than Josef could catch it.
The XL is already very pricey. If they add all those extra's, how many people you think can afford such a machine? Even a real enthusiast has problems justifying a expensive XL, and people from the "home market" (the biggest source of income for Prusa, like it or not) are already driven away to the cheaper printers like the X1 Carbon.
Such a printer with such a price point could appeal to the professional market, but there are already very high quality professional printers available in that segment. While I get the appeal, I think it would be a bad move for Prusa to price themselves out of their most profitable market segment (if that's not already the case to be honest).
Voron 2.4 and the Tridex offer those functions for over a year now
@@jclosed2516 True, but there is a market segment for things like that. I'd probably pay around 5000 Euros for something like that, and I know that I am not the only one. :)
the proforge 4 exists, its just a smaller company with worse software, a competent person can work around that
You want all these features including linear motors at budget pricing? Are you for real? Linear motors are yet to catch on in main stream products, and you want one for a budget price…??
you are unlikely to buy even if the above mentioned features were offered in a budget pricing (that you expect)….i have handled such ‘customers’ in the trade..
You have forgotten an important point:
When it comes to multi-material prints, it makes a big difference whether the material comes from one hot end or from different ones. If it comes from one hot end, layer adhesions in the Z-plane of the material change are much worse (even if a lot of purging is done).
This does not happen with a printer like the Prusa XL or IDEX printers. This has an enormous influence on the strength of a component.
This means that the target group is not so small, but is aimed at all people who want to print multi-materials and have certain strength requirements.
In a printer mainly built for PLA use being open framed why would it matter haha "I have the toughest PLA print" isn't worth buying a $3500 printer IMHO. Until they close that monster up and heat it for decent materials I don't see the purpose.
You exactly describe a TINY niche application. From all 3d printers in the world not even 0,001% are regularly used to print multi material. Its super niche.
@@m4ko288 i disagree i work with industrial printers and all of them use multilateral for supports and I thing that's where prusa are looking in terms of customers since 4k for a printer is quite cheep in comparison to industrial printers.
@@m4ko288 I never got the allure of AMS, MMUs and whatnot. If you are part of the main demographic that uses these machines often, than part strength is what is important and you will likely just use a single-material with at most maybe a single colour change for text/indicators at the top/bottom. If you are interested in figurines then painting resin prints makes way more sense than using a FDM. And for silly stuff there are a lot of things that just print the old-fashioned way with parts that slot into each-other.
Look at any maker that uses 3D-Printers often including those with YT channels and you will find none of them actually using these kinds of systems in their projects. Just single-material prints.
Genuine need for Multi-Material seems reserved for when you need to mix properties within the context of Engineering (advanced niche use) OR need a machine that can do a job where numerous parts are manufactured with some having a different material. Like the time cost of it swapping nozzles is acceptable for being able to set & forget a single massive job.
@@Foxhood If you dont understand the MASSIVE advantages of an ams ... then you might not be the smartest cookie in the jar.
1. It will automatically swap to a new spool if one slot goes empty if you want to.
2. Having 4 colors / 4 different materials always loaded saves a lot of time and hassle.
3. You NEVER have to heat up the nozzle to remove the filament - its always automatically unloaded.
4. Swapping out a filament in the AMS takes 5 seconds. Its MUCH faster and more convenient then traditional printers.
Handling the printer goes from "caveman mode" to "welcome to the future". MUCH easier and faster handling.
Multi material and multi color are only the icing on the cake. The actual AWESOMENESS is in how you handle the printer and the filament. NEVER AGAIN do you have to worry "will that roll have enough material on it?" and NEVER AGAIN will you have to fiddle around with the printer just to swap out a roll. And you can have 4 / 8 / 12 / 16 rolls loaded - kept in the humidity controlled AMS - thats SO convenient.
I rarely do big color prints. I mostly just print coasters / labels / etc where there are only very few color swaps. With almost no waste at all. White plant labels with colorful text for tomatoes / carrots / etc were the last of such prints. They look awesome - and it didnt even add 1% of waste and print time.
I would NEVER EVER buy another 3d fdm printer without an AMS.
Still waiting for a company to come out with a way to reuse all the wasted filament without having to build my own version.
There is a guy making a print head that uses pellets rather than filament. Recycling would just be grinding up the poop from the bambu and printing it with the printer you have that head on. Can't remember the guy's RUclips channel but he just put out a new video. If he does a Kickstarter once he has it ironed out I'd get one for my mk3 and recycle the poop with that. Pellets is what plastic is before turned into filament so it's 25% of the price, which is the main advantage, not recycling.
@@exodous02you must mean Greenboy3D
@@pinkpanther8427 yeah, that's him. I just didn't have time to look up his name, my shift at work was about to start when I posted that comment
CNC Kitchen made a filament recycler. The Artme3D video. Haven't watched but he always has good content
There are off the shelf filament extruders, put most are expensive and don't make sense unless you are printing a lot. There are also quite a few DIY ones, but obviously those have their own issues.
The Bambu experience is absolutely amazing… until you need product support. Once that happens, you will remember why you loved Prusa so much.
I love my P1s. 200+ hours and only one filament jam so far. The printer is amazing!
@@fivepointeightnate I was on a very similar roll of success… and then, I wasn’t and it took Bambu more than three weeks to even answer the support ticket. It got worse from there.
@@fivepointeightnate I got a MK4 end of last year. 1700+ hours and no filament jam so far. I believe both printers are almost equally reliable. The difference is, one is a closed system from China, the other is a more open one from the EU. Bambu is out crushing the competitors with certainly good products, but an aggressive price structure. I opted to keep Prusa alive for what they've done in the past and not give it to China, but it was a hard decision knowing what I could get for less money.
Jap bambu’s support is atrocious…
Agreed! I waited 2 weeks for an answer from bambu. But i know it's just growing up issues as they have been too successful and support is good when they finally react to a ticket.
I really want Prusa to win. The company has customer support beyond any other company that I have dealt with. Their open source philosophy has pushed 3D printing forward and benefited the whole community.
I can't see them winning simply because of how the market has changed... Prusa was King when the competition was only Ender / Creality doing a race towards the bottom with their terrible machines and ppl were willing to put up with the concept of having to build your own - slightly more sophisticated - 3D Printer at the cost of literally costing a *_LOT_* more money *_AND_* your time ( *_OR_* even *_MORE_* money for a prebuilt ).
BambuLabs have changed the game with essentially producing a Machine having only Upsides ( faster printing, Enclosure, MultiColor capability, Design, et... ), and *_NONE_* of the downsides of either Prusa ( needs to be assembled to be "affordable", absolute maintenance nightmare, closed system ), Ender or Creality ( unreliable, requiring UserMods to shine ) at either a comparable *_OR_* better Price.
What did Creality & Ender do? Produce apparently decent BambuLab copies like they always do at cheaper prices?
Prusa? Ship a mess of a 3'500.- Toolchanger, a Joke of a MK4 "Upgrade" ( even more closed down due to new Tool Head ) and a just announced 9'500.- targeted towards Industrial use Printer.
Their open-source philosophy is a thing of the past.
I don't know of them releasing the resources to build a Mk.4 or XL independently at home.
@@warprints7381 Sadly, they can't release things like the nextruder becuase every Chinese company will copy it and there will be less of a reason to buy a Prusa. They open source as much as they can.
I worked for a University around the turn of the century, and they got so many of those AOL CDs for students every year - and gave them out to literally anyone who walked by. But by the time AOL was history around 2000ish, there were still so many boxes of CDs left. So we gave them to the student assistants that helped professors with technology & they made CD wallpaper for the student assistant office. They even made some CD chandeliers. I wish I still had photos, it was really creative.
Im a HUGE Prusa fan and have a MK4 with a Prusa Enclosure, so I say this with all the love in the world:
*They need to get it together*
I was a bit concerned about the MK4 being a bedslinger, but the real world results are still great. I knew that the software was a bit behind when I got it and expected them to play catch-up but it hasnt really happened as fast as I would have liked. I have faith that it will, but the XL seems like the main focus right now.
The machine is lacking a whole lot of features that come standard on significantly less expensive machines, from cameras to enclosures to even just basic lights. With IS, the speed is fine though.
However, the competition DOES have some issues too. I work with some NDA projects, so I cant go with Bambu in good conscience. Reliability can be a concern with other brands, etc. Bambu shook up the industry, which is fantastic imo, but while a lot of other brands are pushing out some machines with amazing features at amazing prices (like the early bird price on the QIDI Q1 Pro) it feels like I overpaid for my MK4.
I still dont regret it and I dont really mind paying *more*, but there is a huge gap there that is only going to get wider.
I see potential in the MK4 beyond what it is now, which is still a stellar machine as it is, but a lot of times it feels like I am part of a beta test when Im trying to do things like get octoprint to work or just add lighting to the workspace without paying extra for some kit.
I have an MK4 with the Prusa enclosure, I bought it fully assembled. The orbiter worked like a charm right out of the box. I know I was paying more, but this was my first printer and I wanted it to be success. And success it has been for me. We print only functional parts for our industrial products. I think the printer should pay for itself by this years end
Where I work I use the Prusa mini and Bambu Carbon with the AMS. The Bambu is fast and precise and the AMS takes some of the worry off of running out of filament half way through a large print. It's ability to handle higher temps and or more exotic filaments is fantastic. The Prusa mini is smaller, slower, quieter and generally reliable. Plus you don't normally need a glue stick for most prints. What I feel should be stressed more then it is , is the fact that the Prusa being open source means you don't have to worry about what you already OWN and paid for suddenly being put behind a subscription pay wall. The Bambu on the other hand has all the elements already in place for that to happen. When your machine is purposely made to favor having an internet connection over anything else says alot to me. The Bambu is nice but I will always look on it with an eye of suspicion expecting for that to happen. Too many other companies have done just that with their products.
All stuff I buy, I want to own. And work without being connected to the interwebs.
Especially of those Interwebs servers are in China.
I definitely understand the concern, but, to be fair, Bambu has made efforts to address it. It is now possible to root the X1 (well, it is still beta, but it is coming) and install an alternative, open source software on it. This was made with Bambu Labs who made the option available in their software so you do not have to hack it to jailbreak it. Before that, they updated their software to allow the printers to run without communication with their servers, and released the parts of their slicer that had to be open when they were called upon by the community for using Prusa slicer code and not releasing it.
I do not try to paint Bambu Labs as benevolent, but I think they understand that openness is important to the 3D print community and helps their business. If they understand that it is in their interest, there's a good chance that they will continue in that direction. Likewise, if Josef Prusa gets tired of this gig and decides to go build personal flying saucers or some other invention, the company, or any private equity firm that will have taken it over, may change its policies and decide that openness is no longer in their interest. Nothing is future proof.
@@jacquesgilbert2774 ask how happy the owners of the Microsoft Zune are with their device.
Oh, you cant.. Because Microsoft pulled the plug on Zune, and that bricked all the devices.
Anythong that works only as long as the servers are knline has a finite end date. The day they sell less than costs of servers upkeep, your device gets bricked.
The Prusa Mk4 you buy now will work until no more parts on the market, not the day they stop making parts.
@@jacquesgilbert2774 Couldn't agree more
Theey didnt have a choice. Either they agreed to the Jailbreak and looked good at the eyes of the few RUclipsrs that were strongarming them, or they didn't agree and looked bad to everyone. Choose your poison. They released a blocking Firmware update same week that said it loud and clear, they don't want to be jailbroken. @@jacquesgilbert2774
The XL was not a response to Bambuu. Prusa announced it before Bambuu launched their X1 campaign.
Yeah it's silly youtubers don't brush up on the facts. Bambu wasn't even a trademarked name yet when the XL was announced.
But instead of reacting to a new competitor Prusa just choose to double down on a product that is basically outdated and overpriced at release.
@@Jansetsfirelol so how is the XL outdated? I'ts coreXY with input shaping and wifi just like bambu. If the Xl is outdated then so is everything bambu lab.
@@LilApe It's ''outdated'' in the sense that it's a CoreXY machine with fairly slow print speed, poorly functioning Input Shaping without the needed sensors, no camera for monitoring, a clunky user interface and no sort of chamber to enable printing of materials like ABS or Nylon.
@@NorwayVFXlmao the XL literally prints just as fast as anything bambu lab when using single color and its like 10x faster when using multi color. You can add a camera to the XL and its prints ABS and nylon just fine without a chamber. You bambu bots are hilarious.
2:04 well that's not entirely accurate, before Bambu if you wanted something that just worked and kept working... You got a MK3. Prusa got well known because of the push they gave to the industry, and then got big because they had the "it just works" printers.
Personally I really wish they atay relevant because I haate the idea of the iphone approach. Closed and unfixable if not through the vendor, and you're at their mercy when it comes to software. Thankfully bambu is just starting to get at least a tiny bit away from that. They build incredible printers otherwise.
loving my p1s with ams. not just the printer but the whole eco-system from buying spare parts if need to filament to prints that are actually useful to print. This was my first ever 3d printer and i have to admit the experience was flawless so far !
I changed my ringtone to the modem dial-up sound and I either get a WTF look or a giggle.
So having 5 print heads is just stupid, yea it’s quicker than filament changes but there’s so much more that can go wrong. At this point prusa is overpriced trash. Old tech and high prices.
Nice! Hardly any-baudy understands that anymore. 😆
Most ppl are too young to even know what that is anymore.
@@bobp3738 Or the sound of an old teletype machine.
What's a ringtone?
Fantastic breakdown. I love the heck out of my single tool head Prusa XL but it is really dang hard to recommend with other printer options that are out there for a fraction of the price.
Considering their products are still selling quite well, with the Mk4 being their most sold printer - I'd say they're more like Android than Blackberry. Quirky, not necessarily the most up to date, but still gets the job done and doesn't get in the way of what you want to do.
and the possibility to be flexible... Good comparison.
not that I am really up on all the latest, but a good point. The blackberry was way more lame than color touch screens with swipes. Even the ender 3 will still print things.
To me I really really don't like how slow these printers are. There needs to be some breakthough technology to speed them up dramatically without the loss of quality.
If you can do a 5 hour print in 10 minutes. Something like printers could use pellets instead of filament, have 100 print heads super high density that drip plastic and 100 times faster. Or something like that. I saw a backpack printer that printed upside down, so maybe print the top and bottom in parallel and fuse them at the end ..automatically,
so now 100x2 times faster..
a blackberry got the job done as well. In fact I’d say the Prusa is farther behind than the blackberry was the iPhone.
@@RhinoAg Hardly. Prusa has a core XY machine with faster and less wasteful color printing than Bambu (Prusa XL), and the Mk4 is Prusa's best selling machine, so they are not in dire straits like Blackberry was. The analogy falls flat.
Android is used by many brands. So no, your comparison is not valid.
5:50 Prusa XL is the only printer that can combine regular hard filaments etc with TPU AND soluble/breakaway support in the same print. Since AMS can't do TPU and IDEX printers can only hold 2 filaments. But the lack of enclosure kind of negates this advantage, since non-enclosed printers can't be serious engineering printers.
You can do soluble / breakaway support material in the AMS.
Edit.
Oh right you meant with TPU in the mix, nevermind
For me, easy of use is the number one attribute, followed by quality. I recently bought a Bambu Labs A1 and I love all the care and thought which was put into the user experience. From the ease of assembly to the extensive preset in the slicer and the auto calibration and sensors which warn me I have done something stupid, the A1 does not require me to be a technical person. I feel for the casual user this is what is needed to claim market share with the casual user.
I dont own a prusa but own a P1P and i really want prusa to still succeed. Some of my favorite 3D printer videos are the ones where creators or prusa themselves show off their factory.
Changing the the test from benchy to something useful like maybe bearings or anything mechanical could also provide more valuable data on printers. its definitely something to think about
The benchy is not just a standard and a reference, it's also a combination of challenges for an FDM printer. Torture toaster is a greater challenge, but still a toy and a waste of filament. I think we're ready for a new benchy, but it will have to be fast, small and very challenging.
There's a reason why the 3D Benchy is the standard for printer testing. If you go to their website, there's a very comprehensive explanation as to which portion of their model tests.
3D printed bearings aren't really useful either though. You'd just buy metal bearings and insert them into your model.
@@Croz89 The only 3D printed bearings to be considered are nylon ones without moving parts.
I'm looking forward to hear your thoughts on the new Prusa Core One - to me it seems like exactly the way you'd hoped they'd go.
I have chosen a prusa mini and even an SL1 for my printer adventure.
My main reason is the company: it is not a chinese one.
Supporting an EU company comes with higher prices, for the higher wages.
But I know that I also pay for the support and the inventions the company makes.
With their open source approach, every chinesium company can benefit from prusas inventions.
So far Im happy with my two printers. Theya serve me well. And i will also get a mk4 someday in the future : )
Prusa just announced the CORE One with an upgrade path from MK4S with the added bonus of no China spyware on the printer or the “Handy” 😂 app.
Pivot - Check!
Equating Bambu to the iPhone is actually a good analogy. Being closed source, they are less customizable, and you are at the whims of the company who creates it for support and upgrades. In 5 years, when the machines start falling apart due to poor construction or cut corners, the only recompense will be to buy a new one. When a user wants to upgrade, they buy an entirely new printer and ditch the old.
Sure, Prusa has a high base cost of entry. But, you can upgrade from machine to machine as the technology advances at a reduced rate. Every piece of a Prusa machine is user replaceable, and given time most end up with alternatives on the market that you can alter as needed.
And let's face it, when a company is capable of remotely triggering a wave of the printers remotely by accident, that should raise concerns both about your data safety and the segmentation built into Bambu's core systems. I wouldn't be surprised if, within five years, Bambu has lost LAN printing or USB printing, in favor of only using their cloud services. Or, if you want to print that way, you have to buy a special adapter. Headphone jacks, anyone?
Yes, Bambu is hitting the scene hard and fast. But it is still so new that it is hard to know what the future looks like in terms of reliability and maintenance. My hope is that this new disruption pushes Prusa towards more innovations, including an MK4 sized CoreXY. Or better support for TPU and other materials in the MMU.
In the end, it comes down to preference, but I feel like the old man who would rather drive a beat up old truck that he knows how to replace every part in, and can find them easily, rather than a Tesla just because it is new and shiny.
I am convinced that Bambu is still burning investor money, trying to drive competition out of business. It's a type of company that will embrace planned obsolescence and probably already has, we just have to wait for the due date. Luckily Prusa's back in the game with Core One and I'll always be sticking with the company that lets you upgrade machines instead of forcing you to throw them away.
Been in the 3D printing business since 2011 starting with the Ultimaker original. Over time I grew less and less interested in the printers and more just interested in the output and dreamed of a hands-off experience. Last year I bought the Bambu P1S for my work and it's a total game changer. I can't overstate how happy I am with it, just push the button and collect your parts later, never had a fail.
It is a niche application, but what a niche indeed. I could see large print farms having ONE of these in the corner for those types of prints while the "regular" printers do 99% of the work. On the other hand it is an interesting look into what is possible, and what may become available at a lower cost in just a few years. What we need is the "Brother Laserprinter" of 3D printing. Cheap, easy to refill without proprietary ink (looking at you HP), and reliable. No bells, no whistles, just something that can sit for months then belt out a few parts when needed.
That’s kind of been what Prusa was for years…just not the cheap part
Well, I have a 70 machine printfarm with all machines active around %80 of the time. If a machine utilization drops below %60 you start to lose money on that machine. Thats why we sold our SLA printers. (Also they create a huge labor cost). So you cant have a machine to just stand in the corner and have a print one a week if you are lucky.
You see the new Core One? I think Prusa heard you loud and clear
Too late and too expensive. A P1S is less than half the price. Yes, Prusa support is far superior, but, I've managed to resolve issues with both my Prusa and Bambu printers by myself. Unfortunately for Prusa I think the comparison is probably correct i.e. I used to have a Blackberry.....
Prusa has a reputation for quality. I built a mk3 kit, and have been very satisfied with it. Bought a mk4 kit, and haven't built it yet, but very much looking forward to it, and will likely buy whatever they release next in the ~$1k price range. They are in the rare space between science experiment and excellent product, and I really appreciate that about them.
I personally own a 5 head XL and I agree with nearly everything in this video. Definitely not a first printer, but if your existing prints do need the very specific tasks only an XL can service, then its your only option. Not just small multi color prints though, multi material like PETG supports or water soluble on PLA parts for perfect interface were my 2 reasons. The bed size is nice as well where I can print 16 of my main widgets, vs only 4-6 on standard size printers.
There are still quirks like we 100% need multiple purge towers so PETG and PLA dont need to be on the same one (works for some prints but its not reliable enough for production), but otherwise I think prusa still succeeded with this since its a whole new and revolutionary design that no one on the market can compete with yet, and its reliable enough to be used for production.
I hope the XL is the direction prusa takes as well since the MK4 makes no sense to me, strong fast core XYs that can be cheaper if they are smaller, and since most people only need 1 head then that as well. The XL is the first gen, and we dont know if its going to be a blackberry storm (their bad touch screen phone for the zoomers) or a Samsung Galaxy S.
As an mechincal engineer you should recommend it to everyone who wants the top mechanical design for highest precision and quality. The mk4 and xl has an extruder design which is miles ahead of any other printer on the market. They have a large gear single extruder design with the pushing force of a dual gear extruder. Who is interested in high consistent extruder should look up the work of miragec or mihaidesign. If you think about their conclusion the mechincal solution is the prusa extruder design!
On top of it they can measure the extruding force. Which gives the possibility from hardware side to closed loop control the extruding pressure, ideal temperature calibration for each filament and so on(just my ideas what they could do with it).
By the way owning a p1p, sovol, creality and no prusa at all.
Sorry, I think this is a bad take. Bambulabs killed community innovation & tech love by using proprietary software & hardware making it a stable and good machine yes, but not tinkerfriendly.
3D Printing still evolved and is being driven by open-source community efforts, Bambulabs companified 3d printing in a way.
its not now about can the user fix it or adapt to their will but more of a the user will have no issues but may not touch the internal workings.
Prusa's machine is quite literally still that, a modifiable, fast and precise!
also its still special, it allows for material changes a bambu MMU wouldn't be able to handle like flexables or high temp materials
Small print farm owner (30 printers). The main advantage of the XL is it can print things that are just not printable or that would take an insane amounts of time on other MMU printers. the combination of size and multiple toolheads, is what makes us the only ones in our area providing specific kinds of parts. For instance, prints in the range of 30-40cm that requires extensive contact/soluble supports and takes 24h on the XL are just not possible for our competitors, and with this kind of orders, the printer pays for itself in a matter of weeks
xl is the clear winner when you want multi color speed... how does it do on abs and CF and enclosure required printing? oh, hmm.. perhaps a more even pro/con list that doesn't have 3 thumbs on one side might be more fair. ;-) I mean.. I understand the desire for clickbait, but you could also be an adult about it and just do an honest comparison which ends up with 'two different printers for two different purposes'.. but highlighting what each would be good for.
I first thought this was a clickbait title but after watching the video it is accurate. I think prusa should take the voron/ratrig design for a new line that competes directly with Bambu just to show bambu's offerings are not that "new" and there are others like them . take some to of their market share away. the voron/ratrig design already exists , it will easily competes with bambu. They just have to sell it premade and assembled or as a kit. They don't have to invest much and they can keep doing what they are doing with the i3 and xl
i mean bambulab used voron in the development of X1, they even credited them
Every printer manufacturer is going to have to follow the game into linear-rails core-XY designs territory .. OK so I picked the wrong time to start with a bedslinger 😅
The MK4 is Prusa’s best selling printer to date, CoreXY is kind of a pain, long term bed slingers are simpler designs that are easier to maintain and easier to remote support. Support is a large part of Prusa’s offering, I suspect it would take a lot for them to shift from this design.
The XL is a Voron-style (CoreXY) printer. They literally did what you are saying they should do. What they missed on IMO is no enclosure and of course, the cost.
creality and qiddi have printers in the range of performance and cost as bambu. so, there's competition there already.
it's an interesting suggestion to follow the pack vs R&D and innovation. is innovation hard? sure. but that's how you get the 5 print heads, vs the plug and play bambu with 4 color prints for $500. I'd like to see a desktop version of the resin core x-y that printed a 6 foot person in a few hours. stronger prints, some loss of detail, but a foot per hour? that's a breakthrough for desktop, no question about it.
Couldn't agree more. I've been looking for my next fast bed slinger and I was cross shopping the Prusa MK4, Bambu A1, and Creality's newest ender 3 v3. All of them can do a sub 20 minute benchy, run klipper with input shaping, and have auto-bed leveing. But only 1 of those costs over $1000...
Not all about speed, that Ender in that group is the odd duck that will break very soon
Bambu A1 goes back on sale in April, and as an owner, it has been one of the best printers ever!
@@ShopNation hehehe my Ender 3 v3 KE survived 3 month so far but I still have a feeling of playing Russian roulette whenever I turn it on :D
@@crymp2057Mine lasted about a month,with maybe 50 Hours actual print time, then blobbed itself so badly,that it bent the entire tool head apart.. refunded and got an X1C now ^^
@@Kezenmacher Yeah from the Reddit forums it seems that most common issue is layer adhesion resulting in parts coming loose and lodging themselves inside the tool assembly. I fixed all my adhesion issues with a simple brim.
Prusa might be pivoting, or at least branching out to, B2B with their Automated Farm System. That uses smaller coreXY printers that can maybe be adapted to consumer market. They also have the Prusa Pro.
Honest questions: what does a "pivot" look like exactly in your mind? Is it just the release of a comparable machine to the X1 or are you suggesting you see a fundamental flaw in business strategy? Competing on price alone is basically impossible with the sheer scale of manufacturing capability China has. So where would you recommend Prusa focus on providing the value needed to make up the difference?
For a mk4, if you want it to be remotely comparable to a X1C with AM'S, you need to assembled the printer (or pay more), assembly the mmu3s, attach the mmu3s, assemble the enclosure, take up more desk space, buy a third party camera solution, manually inspect your first layers, wait long for the prints, convince people it's not some weird rube goldberg machine.
The there are Prusa internal issues.
People like to say China has cheap labour but its not that much cheaper than Czech labour.
The real problem is Bambulab uses tons of automation and Prusa has ridiculous amounts of manila assembly necessary, to the point that it still even makes sense for them to sell kits for their no longer open source printers.
They basically rely on cult of personality.
HONEST Review. This makes my #3rd PRUSA Printer purchase in 5 years. After waiting since Nov 21, 2021.. I finally received my August 22, 2024 full factory assembled Prusa XL 5 Tool head printer yesterday. I carefully took my time to properly follow all instructions to assemble and set up my printer to make sure the assembly was executed perfectly. All tests and All calibrations passed and were successfully completed the very 1st attempt. All showed green check marks and heated properly for all 5 heads. All filaments we’re also loaded 1st try to all 5 heads and extruded PLA in all five heads successfully the first attempt. My first test print was also perfect and flawless. I could not have been happier, and I was glad I took the extra time to make sure it was perfect. My second attempt was to print the PLA, PLA, Flex wrist CT scan model that comes on the flash drive with the printer, but my # 2 head suddenly gave an error message on the screen and the printer shut off and rebooted. The same error message appeared after booting that the thermistor or heat resistor wire has a problem and may be damaged? How, This was just a few minutes after all 5 heads had just heated and passed calibration tests and extruded PLA seamlessly. How is this possible? Nothing touched the printer. I stayed up trying to troubleshoot last night for two hours and spent another hour and a half this morning and an hour just now with support agents attempting to figure out how this went from functioning perfect and passing test to failing without the printer ever being touched, to an error? I spoke with 2 Prusa customer support agents who are unable to understand how to help me and make this right. This is very frustrating after 5 hours of careful assembly, I've lost 4-5 more hours trouble shooting the defective #2 Nextruder after it had just heated up and passed calibration. I asked PRUSA for help and support and tried to explain as friendly as possible that I can't waste any more time on this. I sent pictures and asked to please help me and make this right so I don't lose any more of my time on my brand new $5000 printer. Prusa's solution WAS NOT to overnight me 1 fully assembled Nextruder Replacement with a little store credit or to include a couple extra boxes of filament for the troubles I've had and loss of time on a brand new factory assembled unit, but instead they asked me to carry the burden and do all the work to spend another 2-3 hours 60 steps, disassembling the defective Nextruder, along with another perfectly working Nextruder and swap parts and reassemble to narrow down which part component is defective. And if that does not work, they want me to move on the dissembling both Nextruders again and swapping the next parts to check which adds another 2-3 hours. Keep in mind, I paid $500 extra for FULL factory assembled unit so I did not have to deal with issues or worry about each individual part or waste time making it look as clean as they can from the factory. I don't want to have the burden of not routing all wires and tucking lines back as perfect as they did because I am not as good as they are. Plus I'd have to recalibrate everything again afterwards. I'm a loyal Prusa customer for over 5 years, buy their Prusament filamnet regularly and have convinced my friends and others to purchase Prusa. Is their support satisfactory ? I feel this is not right and unacceptable. Am I off here to expect Prusa to replace the defective Nextruder with a new fully assembled unit like I originally paid for? It's business. I have to support my customers this way in my business, or I'll lose customers to my competitors who also offer this type of support. I'll remove this review once PRUSA steps up to the plate and takes ownership to make this right. Does this seem fair to deal with on a brand-new factory assembled unit or should PRUSA do the right thing here?
As a Prusa owner, I completely agree. The XL took so long to develop, and is so over-engineered, that the rest of the industry passed them by. Multilateral and multicolor is the future, but not sure the XL will be the way.
I think it's a bit related to Joseph's personality. That allowed him to thrive in the maker community but it fares poorly in the mass market.
Then what will be the way? For true multi material, you need different toolheads. Otherwise, it will just not work properly and cause problems.
The XL is perfect if you need to prototype with living edges, seals, etc. There is no other machine that can do what this machine is capable of.
Yea, what is the correct approach?
@@nukularpictures The XL doesn't even have an enclosure, materials used for engineer prototyping require an enclosure.
There are more machines coming out that will be able to do multi-material, and there are some innovative designs. Some are nozzle switching, some are multiple nozzles on same tool head. Heck, if you want high end, Vorons have them if you are hobbyist.
The XL is just over engineered, won't be modifiable, and is really pricey for what it is. Last I saw it still can't even print well with anything other than 0.4 nozzle, which they didn't include in the first release.
@@tempname8263 There is no definitive best method yet, but it's definitely not an MMU/AMS which has way too much waste. I think multiple tools is the answer, like a CNC, but I don't think the best option exists yet.
I have 14 MK3.5's and I'm really debating if I should spend $500 a piece to upgrade them to MK4's or should I just buy all Bambulabs A1's for $550... and free shipping!!! that part of the equation is not working for Prusa.
In the same boat. 14 mk3s and wondering if upgrades make sense right now.
@@ASmithStudios what are you doing with 14x 3D printers???
@@andrzejczarnota3661 they are used in academia
Bambu's proprietary systems are why I don't want to have anything to do with their stuff. They really are the iPhone of 3D printing and I mean that in the worst way.
Unfortunally most people don't care.
@TheGiuse45 yeah they just want cheap and easy printers
Except that they are, relatively speaking, less expensive and outperform most everything else as opposed to Apple which charges more than everyone else. Yeah, I can see why no one would want that...
Aren't their "proprietary" systems built on Průša's open source SW? genuinely asking
@@Patrik38cz This sounds so much like Apple vs Microsoft. To quote Bill Gates "It doesn't matter". What matters is the end result. Of all the printers I've seen the Bambu is the closest to being an appliance which is what is needed for mainstream appeal.
The biggest advantage of the multi tool vs purge material change is that some plastics DO NOT PLAY WELL TOGETHER! If you run HIPS then purge with PETG then none of your PETG layers will bond. So forget using HIPS as a soluble support with PETG. There are many other bad combinations. However use multi head and you can use HIPS supports that do not bond to PETG. No need for soluble supports unless needed as supports are removed clean, even with 0mm space. Another advantage is using different nozzle diameters of the same material. I like 0.4mm nozzle with 0.007 layer height for high detail and tight tolerances on the perimeter while 0.7mm nozzle with 0.3mm layer height for infill on the same print. This gives the best quality vs speed possible. Most of my prints are for functional parts so multi material without worrying about contamination ruining a build is worth the extra $$$. I bought the Prusa XL with all 5 tools for this purpose. Also with Prusa's open source code and tool changing I can Hack my own tools and build any number of tools like milling auto insert tools. Multi tool heads is the beginning of the merge between 3D printing CNC. Most CNC milling and lathe tools have auto tool changing, Prusa is on the bleeding edge once again. There is no end to how far this will go.
I love the channel. Would have never bought a P1S if it wasn't for your recommendation. It has rekindle my passion for printing and helped our businesses make many discontinued or non existent parts. Thank you!
For many years, I was waiting for an amazing 3D printer, that will make 3d pritning super easy! So I followed Prusa and other similar brands in their pursuit of making better 3d printers with open source mentality. However, if you are not a 3d printing geek - Your really don't want to waist your time on unnecessary coding, filet setup or calibartions... So when I saw the new Iphone of 3d printers - Bambulab X1C, I immidiately bought it and I have loved it ever since. The thing is, people (especially creatives), want to just bring their own ideas to life! Nobody wants to read forums, code or becom a professor at 3D printing. So this is the reason, why Bambulab is so great - It just gives you a fancy and brautiful machines, that does most of the work for you! Bambulab is the future :)
A Prusa is the exact same way, and they have been like that for the last eight years.
As someone who uses Windows and Android, I was very much after the Apple experience when it comes to 3D printing for the business, so in 2017, I went for the Ultimaker 3, it served me very well and was an entirely press and play experience up until this year despite nearly no maintenance. Fast forward many years, the Bambu Lab is looking like something that does that job better, at 1/3 the cost, with more than 3x the features.
Which is way more than what we can say for iPhone.
Great perspectives, but more importantly I have to say that your video production quality is incredible, the cuts and b- roll keep what would otherwise be a single shot monologue super engaging!! 😎😎
As a machinist, the tool changer on the XL is on par with the CNC machines I normally would work with in subtractive manufacturing and I appreciate that. My main beef with 3D printing is that it tries to be too different than CNC subtractive manufacturing. This type of tool changer is a step in the right direction because the tried and true mechanisms and methods of CNC machining have been respected.
I was into 3d printing 6 years ago and am looking to get into it again. I remember looking at Prusa but it was just A) too expensive and B) too expensive especially for something you had to put together yourself. I like 3d printing...I don't like spending an entire day trying to figure out what random thing on my printer isn't working right. I've already ordered a new bambu and I'm looking forward to a MUCH easier experience. I like designing stuff and printing it...not researching machine failures.
So, here's my perspective. I got a P1S for Christmas. I've had resin printers for years, dating back to the first Photon, but I held off on FDM until a bambulabs came along and there's one, very specific reason. I didn't want to be an FDM printing hobbyist. I wanted to be a hobbyist that used an FDM printer. The P1S had a very short learning curve and worked, with very little adjustment, right out of the box. It'll work with nearly any material you put in it, it has the enclosure, and it's relatively inexpensive. From an outside perspective, I see no reason to buy a mk4 when the A1 exists, let alone the P1.
The A1 will kill the MK4
I see many below commenting on Prusa's quality and that they need to stick to their roots. Roots are not agile nor innovative. Lastly Pruse and many other 3d printer companies are missing the entire point of the Bambu ecosystem. The majority of the people out there that want and are interested in 3d printing don't give two ####'s about the machine being open source or want to tinker with it, they just want it to work. I don't care if you can 3d print replacement parts. If my one printer is down i have to buy the part anyhow. This negates that majority of the advantage Prusa has.
So if Prusa wants to remain relevant, they need to create an ecosystem and printer that supersedes the P1P and A1 otherwise they are just another blackberry type of company.
Spot on, they need to take the Apple approach of “It just works”. Just like I’m glad I don’t have to compile drivers in Linux anymore to get stuff working. I’m all for owning an innovative Czech 🇨🇿 printer that just works.
Upgraded my MK3 to a
MK4 3 months ago and have been printing almost nonstop since then. It is so much faster that I never feel the need to use a 0.6 nozzle anymore. The force touch calibration makes switching print sheets totally seamless. I love my Prusa and don’t see the need to switch, I think they will be around for quite a while yet.
What in the world would you print that would actually be usable and reliable. I don't understand what's so good about 3d printing.
hate to break it to you but the mk4 is the exact same speed as your mk3. motion speed is just a determinant for resolution at a given flow rate, and both mk3/mk4 hotends are the same max flow rate. the only difference is the mk4 will ring at a different accel than the mk3 , slightly higher (because of the change to stiffer 10 mil rods and introduction of input shaping) and that ringing will be somewhat mitigated at the tradeoff of smoothing your parts. that .6 nozzle reduced nozzle pressure which slightly increased your max flow rate. your old setup was actualy faster you just didnt use settings that took advantage of the overhead. input shaping doesnt make your printer faster, it reduces ringing by smoothing the part surface detail away because it smooths the motion system moves by correcting them to a control target with the intent of reducing vibration. your flow rate/time relative to the amount of toolpath moves is what determines how fast your print completes, not how fast it moves. your lack of knowledge in the space is being exploited cuz you absolutely can tune up a mk3 faster it had (clearly) a ton of untapped headroom in default profiles, they were very conservative. i used to print 1kg a day of petg on my mk3 in 2020 and my parts were not a low quality ringing mess. look up the muppet labs page paradox of speed for a primer on this stuff. soon as you get educated on this, you'll understand why the arms race underlying all the other things going on everywhere other than prusa is in hotend flow rate. (basicaly every other printer on the market rn is like 2x or more the flow rate prusa is using). this is not super dissimilar to when they refused to convert the sl1 from an sla printer to an msla printer when everyone else could flash whole layers at a time and they could only make the laser spot trace faster and completely missed the market shift. im not sayign its a bad printer or you shouldnt enjoy it, im just saying here's an explanation why you're wrong about your perceptions of speed and how this stuff works.
Your 3D printing content is easily a step above everything else out there. Such a smart and sophisticated take. I am also a Prusa fan, but I'm about to purchase my first Bambu machine.
I ordered a 2 head XL when it was first advertised. After waiting a long time it still wasn't delivered. I got a Bambu Lab carbon. It's a little small, but works great for the majority of my projects. I still love the features of the XL, but I would only need them for a very few projects. In addition, the early users reported issues that indicate it still wasn't ready for release. The Bambu Lab printer functions as a real upgrade to my trusty Prusa MK 3S that I upgraded over the years.
Prusa is everything i want from a 3D printer company. One of the reasons i like their printers is their open source approach. And their popularity kinda guarantees replacement part availability for, i guess decades. Another reason i chose them over others is their localized manufacturing and sourcing of parts and all the rnd work they do and make available to us. And last, but not least, their reliability. I have never run into weird problems with my Mini or Mk3S, which i can not say about Crealitys, Anycubics, or Elegoos printers.
They haven't really been open source for a while.
I think the only thing the Bambu has going for it is speed and cost. With them you move production to China, give up privacy, lose the ability to repair, and kill innovation with proprietary technology. Bambu took open source tech, adds proprietary tech to give it an edge, and sells it for cheap with Chinese labor. Once they have that large market share the open-source innovation they built on will end, and you will be stuck with a $100M company that doesn't care about its users and will crank out the same thing year after year. They will truly be like iPhones in that they are nearly impossible to repair, competition killing, overpriced disposable products, made for consumption instead of practical use. Those fun trinkets that you mock are exactly what Bambus are made to crank out, at blazing speeds, to appease childishly impatient consumers who want their toy right now. Bambu marks the end of the golden era of 3D printing innovation.
I hard disagree. The golden era of 3D printing innovation ended even without Bambu. Innovation with FDM 3d printing is drastically slowing down, we're reaching the limits of what is possible with single filament printing, with hardly anything else needing to be improved on other than multicolor, and multicolor/material innovation can really only go so far. Printing at even faster speeds reduces layer adhesion so there's no point, we already can run at extremely high accelerations, pressure advance is basically perfected, dimensional accuracy is the best that FDM can allow. All this is already open source technology, the only way forward for innovation now is if a person or company invests the time and money to compile all these technologies into an appliance that an average consumer can use with a push of a button. That's what the X1C is, it's not for tinkerers or innovators, it's designed so the average consumer can just use it without having to think about it. It's not marketed to "childishly inpatient customers," it's marketed to people that want a product that just works, and it does even more so than the Mk3. The innovation of the X1C is about making 3D printers a feasible mainstream appliance anyone can use.
It also isn't impossible to repair. The only downside to its repairability is the fact that parts are proprietary so you have to buy them from Bambu, but when you're designing an appliance for mass production it's impossible to avoid the need for proprietary parts. 3D printer parts are naturally replaceable, and most calibrations are filament specific so Bambu can't just use anti repair practices like Apple or use serialized parts. It won't be long for 3rd party replacements to be developed. As far as Chinese manufacturing goes, the Ender 3 is a Chinese product, and that was widely respected in the open source community as the printer that introduced affordable 3D printing to everyone. Why is the X1C any different? In regards to your concerns about privacy, you don't need to use their cloud services if you don't want to, you can use an SD card old fashioned style.
@@ThatOneStopSign I thought Prusa provided the models for users to print their own parts?
@@ThatOneStopSign Don't try and pretend like a Bambu can work without the app. You can't update it without using the internet.
I had an Ender 5 and upgraded to a MK4 and would love an XL. I hope Prusa doesn't fall off I think their customer support and how they support all their old versions to upgrade is amazing. They can never go away from the bed slinger, but I do hope they are working on a new design to shake up the 3D printing community again in the future.
Like a few people have said I think you only focus on one use case you can get out of this printer while in reality you have many possible future options. They essentially made the perfect printer but it's very expensive at the moment. I do have XL currently and it's my favorite printer by far
Excellent observations. I would have a quibble somewhat about 'appliance level printing'. In my experience that level of usage arrived 5 years ago with the FLSun QQ-S Pro. Yes it did require me to assemble the unit. However it was no harder than well known Xmas bicycle exercise every parent knows. Mounted the probe, auto leveled the unit and it functioned flawlessly. And here we are, the only things I have done to the device is a hardened nozzle, upgraded the PTFE tube, a mod to the spool holder, and auto level every hundred prints or so. Good enough that I now have two, the QQ-S and the newer VS400.
Its engineering that just works.
well... how many 3d printers for mainstream are developed and manufactured in Europe or in USA? Directly? Prusa does not have just RnD in Europe, they have also production in middle of Europe, directly in capital city.
Agreed! And it’s a huge tip of the hat to them for doing it that way
What do I care about Europe? I want something affordable that works well. Where it’s made is not as important as how well it’s made.
@@radish6691And what is wrong with XL? I see it ok.
I had printers for years. Used weekly sometimes daily. It was always a chore. Then I got my bambo A1mini and yes it’s a bit small but 90% of the time its enough. And it made designing and printing equally fun.
I have 2 larger printers and got an A1 Mini and you’re right, it’s a fun little machine. Most of what I print fits on it so it’s running much of the time. And it just works, beautifully. The dynamic flow calibration is genius.
All Prusa needed to do in 2021 was to release a Voron kit. But instead they announced the XL, which would have been a great printer in 2021. But it came out in 2023. After the Bambu X1C.
Most of Prusa’s improvements in the last years were on Prusa Slicher. Which also benefited their competitors.
give me one toolhead with4 filaments loaded at the same time -> 4 hotends,
i will even just take 2 IF they provide an option like the ams to load and unload new filaments.
the only thing really holding the ams back are the 90 seconds of time to change the filament
Great video, but I missed a mention of Prusa's AFS (Automated Farm System) which targets the B2B market. In that product, they integrate a smaller CoreXY printer model.
1) I don't like the Benchy model either.
2) I get the AOL reference
3) My MK3S+ has sat idle since I got the X1C in mid November 2023. It has a In3DSpace light bar on it, and makes a nice night light in the basement, so I leave it turned on.
Isnt MK3S+ like half the price of X1C? :D Great comparison...
@@chucktesta7192 It is. I bought the MK3S+ in November of 2020, and it's been a workhorse. I wanted something faster and with a MMU or AMS. The X1C was $1513.35 with a couple spare bits, included shipping. The MK4 is $1099, an enclosure is $349, the MMU3 is $299, so we're at $1697. And at the time the input shaping code wasn't ready for the MK4.
Just did the MK3.5 upgrade on my MK3S+. It's like a whole new machine.
@@chucktesta7192 the a1 series are also better than the MK3S+. For half the price of them
Agreed. Bambu Lab is a prime example of why competition is important. Without Bambu Lab, we'd still be printing slow, but thanks to them, pretty much every manufacturer was suddenly able to release high speed printers.
Prusa used to be an industry standard, but they either got lazy, too comfortable, or just couldn't be innovative enough anymore.
That said, the principle of the XL is probably gonna be the next big thing. People like to do multicolored prints more and more, and multi-material prints are growing in popularity too, so reducing material waste is a very important step here.
if anyone could help with their opinion:
- where would you place the RatRig 3d printer? interested to know how it ranks between the rest of the brands
Without bambu lab?? Dude at the time bambu lab was announced and their kickstarter. There were already hyper speed printers announced and released at the same time. Like the ankermake M5 and the FLSUN V400. Bambu lab weren't the 1st to make fast printers. Not even close. Speed printers have been round for years with voron kids and the like. Bambu shills are so clueless.
@@LilApe You call Ankermake M5 hyperspeed?
That made me laugh so hard =))
@@WINTFOX you think 500mm/sec isn't fast? lol the x1c was only advertised at 600/mm
@@LilApe Learn more about 3D printing. Look at the acceleration, the speed is just for advertising. 500mms on 5k acc ? It's completely nonsense. Bambu is 600mms on 20k acc, completely different.
Prusa needs to innovate to stay competitive, it's that simple.
'd like to buy a Prusa. People say their 3D printers are the Corollas of the industry in that they last forever. Shop Nation asks what can Prusa can do to stay competitive. Lets not dance around this! Simply offer the printers at competitive prices (Corolla prices) for their ready to go printers and the kits. I'm not talking 10% cheaper. They need to hit the 20-30% discount range. Also, the cost difference between the fully built printer and the kit version is ridiculous...close that gap by 50%
They do innovate. Every single printer on the market today uses innovations created by prusa.
I totally agree. A heated chamber is so simple and they still haven't included it with a $3500 printer.... Bad move
@@LilApe There is absolutely no denying that BUT how long was that? The BlackBerry reference is spot on in this video.
@@Spoonuk666 Their nextruder is innovative. Their segmented heat bed is innovative as is their load cell nozzle. All this is on the XL. Things they did 1st.
Big thing that I want to see here is like other commenters mentioned -- dissolving support made a priority which makes the filament production companies key. Otherwise, and particularly for @Shop Nation here is that this would actually do multimaterial with different materials like TPU for impact resistance and nylon for strength. That could open up some interesting stuff for things like the miter saw dust collection systems -- TPU for the hose connection or TPU for a flex in a spot to make blade removal easier or ABS to smooth the inside easily for improved flow. There's lots of possibilities there that other printers literally can't do, but the community needs designs specifically for that.
To me the biggest benefit I’ve seen in Prusa over other printers is the upgrade ability. I bought mk3 and over the time that I owned it they updated it to work better and better, through software through easily replaceable 3-D printed parts that they give you the files for through very cheap replaceable sensors. I now have mk3s. Their mission seems don’t throw the baby out with a bathwater which in a world where everybody complains how everything is disposable prusa has strived to keep things updatable. Is the bambu lab printer like and iPhone where they want you to throw it out and get a new one every few years? Or do they have cheap upgrade parts.
Prusa innovates but, its frustratingly slow. The XL isnt a disrupter with this price tag. They need to focus their resorces on creating a low cost, competitive, corexy printer.
The innovation is not given by the price tag, it would be a desservice to have a low cost machine when theres a lot of low cost machines that are low cost because os material quality or bad customer support, if your looking for that it would be advisable to look into the offerings of the competition and not try to pull the quality down to reach market price.
@@JonaDVargas cost doesn't always go hand in hand with quality. Scaling up, supporting less printers, and using better manufacturing techniques can bring cost down. I have several prusas. They are great, but lack features for the price.
@@IvanJoel the problem is that in order to achieve that they would have to produce in China or Vietnam to really compete but they had their parts, developed by them, copied that way and sold by third parties on china and from china.
Great video! My MK3S+ was my 1st printer. Still a great machine. I wanted multicolor without having to stand there and wait. The A1 just came out so I jumped on it. Needless to say, the Prusa doesn't get used much anymore. And not because I'm just doing multi color, because I'm not. The A1 is fast and just easy to use. My Prusa took 10+ hrs to assemble, A1...... 30 mins. Sad to say, my next printer will probably be an X1 or P1. Prusa needs to step up their game. Cost for ease of use, assembly, enclosure....... No brainer folks.
I would only add a minor observation. Anyone who lacks the patience/skill to assemble a 3D printer these days probably will not 'survive' the experience. Much of the industry has come a long way from the days of the erector set self made machine.
You are right about several things,they’re behind in some areas yes but when you’re funded by the Chinese government, huge shock, you can build amazing machines.
I built a farm in the last month and chose to stick with Prusa and bought four MK4’s with enclosures. Primary reasoning was I know the core design and can maintain them. I do not like the idea of breaking down a Bambu to change a rod or bearing which is inevitable. You can call them “consumer” machines all you want but when was the last time you changed a bearing in your HP Laserjet? They are not a consumer “appliance” and never will be IMO.
I’ll get a Bambu at some point to compare but I won’t be moving away from Prusa as I buy in to the ethos behind the printers
I remember that shortly after release of MK3, Prusa made a survey what would be most important features people would like to see in next machines. There were various options to choose, like printing speed, connectivity, enclosure, ability to print flexibles with ease, and exactly - a toolchanging mechanism. Vast amount of people voted for that toolchanging, as it probably was seen most fancy (but without consideration if it actually would be useful on day to day basis) and cool. So Prusa followed the request, when meanwhile people find and oriented toward speed printing. Which was quickly picked up by Chinese companies to spit out faster and faster (in theory) machines with the rate of fire of an machine gun. Prusa with their "limitation" of making and producing everything what was possible within costly EU, was on lost position from the start. Especially that when people drooled on speedboat race breaking new and new records, they were developing completely different kind of machine.
That was not smart. Steve Jobs quoted Henry Ford about market research. You the maker need to know your customer's needs better than just asking what they want.
As one "of a certain age" who chose an X1C over a Prusa Mk. 3 in Dec. '22, can totally relate to your Blackberry reference. (Still have a Blackberry or two hiding in a drawer somewhere.) You nailed it.
I am old enough to get that reference; I actually liked the floppies better because I would re-use them 😂 You make some very good points Sir, great video
I liked the floppies too. I found one and took a picture only to find out I couldn't post it here.
Somewhere in this house is a shoe box that is choc-a-bloc full of AOL "coasters". Loved the reference.
I won't buy a Bamboo printer for the same reason I wouldn't buy a iPhone, freedom. I don't want some company thousands of miles away making decisions for something I supposedly own. The XL is also a true multi-material machine, where the Bamboo AMS is just a multi-color machine. Since the X1 and other share a nozzle, if you have materials that require different printing temperatures, you have to wait for the nozzle to heat up and cool down every material change.
The thing with Bambu Labs Printers are that they also look good and fit in an normal office room, the prusa machines with the orange and stuff screams "nerd" all over it.
I was researching many 3d printer brands to determine which to get, and to me Bambu makes a much more compelling value proposition. You get so much more, and have to do less, for less money.
Actually we still miss support for multinozzlediameter in Prusa Slicer. It would be quite nice to use different nozzles, not only different materials.
Also the MMU3 should be supported. So you can use multiple colours with classic filament change, but also different materials - changing to another extruder - or different nozzle sizes.
This way the affordable 2 head version would be much more interesting.
My simple reason as to why its the next black berry is because its now absurdly expensive compared to its competitors such as the new Bambu Lab A1.
Bambu dropped their A1 to $250-$300 while the PRUSA Mini+ is still at $400-$450. Obviously I’m looking at the A1 more than the mini.
I had another cheap enclosed printer and every time you wanted to print you would have to tune the print first. In 3 years of using it I have very few print parts to show for it. I brought a Bambu less than a year ago. It has change my life. I use it all the time and my 14 year old son has got excited about it and I'm now booking time with him to print my stuff. By far the Bambu X1C is the best decision I have ever made, it just works, no fucking around. Just knock out your design in Fusion and a few minuets later you have a beautiful ABS part. I don't even bother printing PLA anymore. I have no interest in making toys, I'm only interested in making engineering parts. ABS is ok for the vast majority of what we make but to be able to print PC-CF or Nylon if I want is fantastic. I put a heavy blanket over when printing high temp materials. Chamber gets to about 65c and everything prints perfectly. I have dialed in large ABS prints with no warping and they are just far better to machine and work with after. To see my son designing parts for his Airsoft gun and this weekend he quickly knocked out a part for his mum to decorate cakes very efficiently is all I ever wanted. We also have a CNC mill so he is now learning how to use that. As a dad I could not be happier.
Why would you want the XL for multicolour?
The benefit of having multiple toolheads is multi-material. On that front, the XL is pretty much the only one of its kind, for better and for worse. Better, because it is great that there is a company out there exploring new frontiers. Worse, because it is definitely a first gen product that demands months works from the user just to get started with multi-materials.
I am hoping that more competitions will come to this front. The last thing we want is for things to stuck with the XL for the next 5+ years.
Multicolor would be a huge boost to my current little 3D print shop. I can do it right now but it is only me manually changing colors and then it is only at a simple level color change. To be able to make my parts and have edges highlighted or surface designs would be something no one else is doing. I am all for print heads for multi color.
There's the Jubilee, E3D toolchanger, and Proforge 4 that all 4+ toolheads that compete with the XL. Those can be bought as kits or assembled, there are also voron toolchanger options.
@@popscorn66 But isn't the multi-toolheads be a bit over the top for multi colour? It is more expensive. And, the added complexity definitely reduce reliability.
Personally, I am design a tool-changer for the Voron platform; with multi-material in mind. if I ever needed multi colour; then, I will consider filament switching options like the ERF or Chameleon, to be installed on one of the toolhead.
@@thomasletlow3292 good shout, those alternatives totally slipped my mind.
@@thomasletlow3292 Good shout. I totally forgot about those alternatives.
Although, as one of the designer who is working the the Voron Toolchanger, I have to make a note here that: they are all still in development, as options for components like the docks and electrical panels are being explore, and the documentation is scattered.
No mentions to different nozzle sizes. That would be cool. Having fine details along with faster printing by layer thickness in one build. Or like having two different machines in one box.
I have both, Prusa is a work horse, always as been. They are build to last. If it wasn't the case, your own print far would not be filled with Prusa.
My X1C, I am counting the days the linear bearings and carbon rods fall apart.
Bending a hot end is a little to easy. And the AMS is a nice to have. But generates a ton of waste.
Also Prusa offers an multi-material option that you failed to mention for Mk2-3 and 4.
I think if prusa managed to reduce the mk4 price to like ~500$, it would more competitive. The thing is they always use premium components all around and its not really feasible. 3D printing parts in such a large scale is not really practical either. Plus they didnt really design it around being easy to assemble. At their scale they could easily injection mold the parts to reduce cost, and make it easier to assemble. They are kinda stuck in a situation where they are known for open source and repairable printers but the new market is heading somewhere else and they cant really change what they are known for.
actually they are using injection molding in some of parts, they only use 3D printed parts when they see fit.
I think the biggest issue is their testing procedure, it takes them 4 hrs to assemble MK4 (12hrs to assemble XL) and test print and then disassemble (according to their video) but they decided to test every components and assemble it to test. As you said, they should optimise the assemble procedure on design level, but also push the quality from their parts providers instead of testing every components. Or even compensate the fault rate by providing spare parts to customers. They are definitely over sampling which is way too labour intense.
premium components? prusa? absolutely NOT. They self-3d-print many parts. Injection molded parts would be cheaper, more precise AND stronger. The display is ATROCIOUS. The rods are super basic. The motors are off the shelve stuff too.
There is absolutely nothing premium about a MK4 in terms of materials or parts ...
That is also why Prusa - unline Bamboo - needs to assemble, then test, then disassemble all printers. That is SUPER expensive - but shows how high their part failure rate is if they have to constantly test everything.
@@m4ko288 bro what. Bambu likely tests every single part too… most non shit companies will too. They don’t assemble and de assemble, they have test jigs for everytjjgn. The motors on the mk4 are from ldo which are known to make high quality motors. The hotend is manufactured by e3d. The rods and bearings are Musmi and belts are gates. All high end name brands. That’s what I mean by high quality. Bambu doesn’t use any name brand stuff.
Printer parts doesn’t mean it’s bad at all either.
Sooo, you like the One? :D
>>Why Prusa is the next Blackberry
It's not, f. off.
You may contine buying chinise stuff, made highly likely with a forced labour use.
I'll choose the machine made in EU any time, especially now when they announced CORE 1.
Fuck yeah!
The points brought up are exactly what I am wrestling with myself. I really want the XL, but other printers have much more technology already built in, while the XL feels like the only significant innovations are the head changer and segmented heated bed. Most of the larger, faster printers from the likes of Creality, Quidi, Bambu and others now come enclosed, with air filtration (which is important in my situation), and features like cameras and LIDAR for first-layer monitoring... all of which the XL lacks, which is incredibly disappointing. Besides the swappable print head feature, it feels very much like the same old stuff. I really would like the multi-material option, but am having to weigh that against the other features that it sadly lacks... let alone the dramatic price difference. I'm struggling to justify spending that much on the XL
Great video. As a previous Prusa owner who now prints with an X1C I completely agree with you. And yes I get the AOL reference.
Prusa delivers on the philosophy and ethics I wish more companies had, but I simply can't afford their products and do not want the drawbacks their products have..
Bambu does not match my ethics, but does deliver really good products that I can afford. It is a dilemma.
In what universe with their constant misleading marketing, fake open source and drama stirring?
this video did not age well
Explain...
@@julianmaieraldi3368 the Prusa core 1 just dropped, basically the prusa version of the X1 Carbon
I was on the fence and ended up with the Bambu p1s. And it’s insane it’s amazing is all I can say
I've been printing more and more with mine and have realized that the best use case is to have just 2 print heads.
I've been thinking in buying more XLs but just with one tool head, and grab one off my 5-head one and transplant it over.
Would end up with 4x printers with 2 tool heads. (4x quite expensive open format printers though)
Spool join.... check
Bi-colour..... check (i don't do much colour at all)
Multimaterial... check-ish
Dedicated support material... check-ish
With 2 tool heads you get a lot of capabilities that doesn't really justify 5, unless you really are printing a lot of multi-coloured prints.
One of the reasons for getting the 5 for me was to have several materials pre loaded so I save a bit of prep-time, but also to potentially have the ability of having multi nozzle sizes, which is apparently a big one, but hasn't been done yet...