Original Prusa MK4
prusa3d.comReally nice to see steady incremental improvements to an already solid platform! It's small stuff like no longer having to manually Z-Adjust, and having the print-head connected via easy to undo/replace connectors, that seem like small things but are huge time- and nerve-savers when it comes to actually running these things in production.
Crazy to see how far Prusa has come with his stuff, I still remember sitting and laughing in a hacker-space with him a couple years ago. He is one of the few people that actually stuck to the open-source rep-rap philosophy even after success (fun fact: he has a tattoo of the open hardware logos to remember his roots).
They also just published a blog post[0] discussing the hardware equivalent of SSPL if I get it correctly.
0: https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-prin...
Prusa really needs a PR department.
Getting your lunch absolutely eaten by some kickstarter printer in near silence, announcing the first few minutes of pre-orders for your already delayed printer will take months, near zero build up to the launch of the MK4...
And they won't even let the win from that just sizzle a bit, they need to take all that heat and dump it into the murky depths of Open Source Licensing.
It's a really, really bad look for them recently in my opinion.
The Prusa XL has been over a year and a half late. We had to preorder it, plunk down $200 as a deposit... and wait as they redesigned it over and over and blamed part shortages. Now, out of nowhere, "MK4 - Buy Now! No Preorder!"
They added a button to convert your XL preorder to an MK4 order with priority.
So they're alienating people plonking down $1,000 for a printer by letting people from an unrelated queue jump in front of them...
And then shaking the faith of people who already waited this long for the XL. It starts to scream "we won't even be able to make enough XLs and would much rather you just forget about that".
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Edit: Wow and actually something I didn't even realize, when the MK4 page first went up, there was no lead time...
So that's going to be another awfully sticky situation if enough XL owners actually take them up on that offer. Suddenly new buyers who were told no lead time will end up being bumped further and further back, since there aren't two queues: Printers ship by order date, and XL owners will all have order dates before new buyers.
Perhaps they set aside some percentage of XL preorders worth of MK4s that are ready to ship. As long as they overestimate that number vs reality, they can ship to the MK4 first order and XL conversions first, then start shipping to those that purchased with Lead Time stated. And if they over estimate the conversions, (almost) nobody with a Lead Time is going to complain about getting it early.
Based on their wording I had already assumed that wasn't the case, but here's some some confirmation: https://www.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/1266bzi/mk4_delive...
> So if you ordered the 4 know that those swapping their XL orders have bumped all those that ordered quickly. I was scheduled for delivery next week and now its June.
Placate people you already disappointed for a year by disappointing a new cohort of users. Some companies just do not know how to let themselves win.
https://twitter.com/josefprusa/status/1641433855461818368
Doesn’t seem to really be caused by switchover orders, but bad systems in place. And this product does seem to be pretty popular already.
Hmm, I thought it was illegal in the EU to advertise a shipping date and then change it after the customer has already paid.
Apparently, they are searching for one if you’re interested haha https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=1dc58167c527ddb8
Several of those suggestions would violate the OSHW definition, a definition that was endorsed by Prusa himself: https://freedomdefined.org/OSHW
Thinking about it a bit more, I think Prusa is simply struggling to maintain a foot hold in the industry and remain open source. All the complaints are about the printers. But Prusa does more than just printers.
Prusa forked Slic3r into PrusaSlicer and continuously deliver great improvements and still keep it open source. If you go to the PrusaSlicer page, their github link is right there. And they support Windows, Linux and MacOS. They also attribute Alessandro on the website and the launch screen. The Prusa github also seems to have all their projects and software.
Bambu Labs forks PrusaSlicer and the github link is no where on their site and they only support Windows and MacOS On a piece of software that already had Linux support and the only acknowledge it's a fork on the github. Fortunately the github is still the 2nd link in google. But they aren't really committed to releasing their work if they won't even link to it. And their github has like 2 projects.
Prusa created printables.com to clean up the mess that is thingiverse. Creality created Creality Cloud and then just steals your models even after Naomi Wu advised them not to do that. Prusa runs competitions, has prizes.
Prusa seems to want to keep things open source, try and create a community. But like most open hardware, it's expensive relative to the competition.
As an Apple user, I completely understand the need to not mess about. But I also like to use opensource where possible. Especially for things I want to tinker with. So it's really surprising to me that what seems to be the majority of the hobbyist 3D printer community, a community that tinkers by definition, wants more closed, less repairable hardware. And more propriety software. They just want the cheapest appliance they can get for the money. I think this is what broke my brain. We started open, and could remain that way. But we'd rather not.
It's hard to fight against the might of cheap Chinese manufacturing. I hope Prusa works out a good strategy to survive before we end up in a situation where all the 3D printers requires Windows or MacOS and a login to some cloud service that I don't want.
> It's hard to fight against the might of cheap Chinese manufacturing.
This has increasingly been a problem, repeatedly. Cheap overseas manufacturers see open-source projects as free money. They are basically legally immune for what they do, can easily outcompete the original designers and project, the plans are free and cheap to modify, what's not to love? And so it's happening to not just hardware but also software, with Android being borrowed into "HarmonyOS" and so on...
I believe people should be free to choose whatever license they think fits their project best, and tend to trust their judgement and goodwill.
That said, I think strongly copyleft licenses even in commercial hardware are underappreciated. Arduino is the great example: sure, it has got tons of clones. But that's kind of the point: that other people make it, and get more people using it (Arduino themselves focused on quality of their in-house produced, and also goodwill of customers). If you have it open source, people can actually copy and modify and improve it, that's the spirit -- although I'd agree it may be tough to secure enough funding from first party product sales to sustain development of the project. In that case, I'd suggest looking for a stable stream of sponsorships/donations, through platforms like patreon or liberapay. And of course, if you're a user, make sure to donate!
These look like very solid improvements over the MK3S+ (I personally have two MK3S+, and use them a lot), and I love their commitment to open hardware and for making upgrade kits available, but it's a bit disappointing to see still how far Prusa is behind truly next-gen printers like the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon.
Personally, I think buying any Chinese product when an alternative exists has become unconscionable.
China's current support of Russia is an obvious issue, as well as their threats towards Taiwan and their destruction of democracy in Hong Kong.
Problems with IP infringement abound, and in this case it's particularly disappointing as Prusa is committed to open source.
I hope Prusa continue to innovate, but I also hope people reject Bambu Lab. Doing so is one of the few direct actions we can take against the Chinese principles that directly oppose Western values.
You're still supporting China with a Prusa purchase.
The power supplies are built by Delta Electronics, the bearings and rods are (usually) Chinese supplied, the fans flip between China and misc SE Asia suppliers (Noctua) , the steppers are from China (LDO)... the list probably goes on.
You could make an FDM printer with exclusively American (or otherwise) parts, but the price tag is going to be astronomical.
I generally don't look that far into a purchase, as it's often difficult to find the information.
With Prusa, the majority of the profit is made in Czechia. The research, design, assembly and some of the manufacture is done there. I support China much less than with a purchase from a Chinese company.
Note Delta Electronics is a Taiwanese company with manufacturing in several countries including China. Noctua is an Austrian-Taiwanese company with manufacturing in Taiwan and China. LDO is Chinese, but this makes my point — how do you know those are the steppers Prusa uses? It's not written on their site.
I would like to see clear labelling on products showing their origin, perhaps including the origin of any component until the cost is <5% of the total, or something like that. Include the PSU, but don't bother about the capacitors or power cord.
> how do you know those are the steppers Prusa uses? It's not written on their site.
It's an open secret that all stepper motors in all premium 3D Printer kits are LDO. Prusa, Voron, RatRig, it's all LDO. LDO also does white-label branding, so the motors say "Prusa Research" on them even though they are otherwise indistinguishable. This is not the first time Prusa does white-label branding - the "SuperPINDA" is actually developed and sold to anyone who wants it by Pepperl+Fuchs (a German company).
While Prusas definitely contain Chinese parts, if your goal is to avoid buying Chinese then buying a product with a diversified supply chain is certainly preferable to buying a product that is 100% from China.
Also Delta Electronics is a Taiwanese company[1]
good luck avoiding the components, materials, and packaging everyone uses that are made in china.
including the stuff made in india, malaysia, thailand, japan, singapore, indonesia, germany, usa, canada, and mexico.
i say if you want to fight for democracy, pick up a rifle and join the marines, or go work for lockheed or raytheon. our military could always use more smart people.
That's ridiculous..
There's a huge difference between supporting a product fully developed, designed and marketed from China, with Chinese companies taking all of the margins -- versus a product with various sub-components with razor thin margins supplied from China.
China is desperate to climb up from low-value, low-margin contract manufacturing to higher end work. Their rising wage levels and demographic shift demands it.
The rest of the world needs to put its foot down and say "No, you can keep taking low end contracts if you want, but if you want to move up the chain you have to grow up and act like a mature industrialized country. If you're not going to let foreign companies operate and compete on fair terms in your country, don't expect us to let your companies compete freely in our countries."
Manufacturing is already slowly moving out of China due to rising labor costs and automation. If we stop buying stuff fully owned, designed and marketed from China, the pressure will keep increasing for China to get its act together.
I mean, otherwise we might as well giving up on designing and marketing anything in the west. China will have a crazy advantage if they get to play by completely different and unfair rules, ignoring our IP laws, getting subsidized shipping on everything (since they're a "developing" country), getting to ignore quality control because returns are hopeless, getting to flood Amazon with low-quality products with fake reviews, while working from the place where all this stuff is manufactured anyway.
maybe you should try to stop buying cheap crap in general instead of getting angry at shady internet marketers on the other side of the planet.
you're not going to stop china's economic rise without military intervention. the world is a big place with lots of markets. join the military and be on the front lines of the coming cold war where you can do some real good.
https://www.marines.com/become-a-marine/process-to-join.html
I'm totally unfamiliar with the company that makes the Bambu, but do they have ties to the CCP or is there evidence that buying this printer would further the Chinese government's efforts?
Disclaimer: I have had my personal details stolen from by China before with the OPM hack (US security clearances). I'm pretty sure they stole my fingerprints. I guess that may make me biased...
It's not that they have ties to the CCP. It's the fact the CCP can order Bambu to give up their data without a warrant showing criminal activity.
https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese...
By bambu labs own website, they have locations in China, which means those sites are governed by Chinese law.
Little known, but according to Harvard Business Review, all Chinese companies with over 50 employees must have a dedicated CCP representative within the company. Every company with over 100 employees must have a party cell, and the leader of that cell must report to the local municipality regularly.
https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-cant-innovate
Bambu Lab... how big they are isn't clear. Their LinkedIn claims they are between 201 and 500 employees. If HBR is correct, they very likely have CCP cells within their organization.
Taxes paid by Chinese businesses and residents further the goals of the Chinese government.
I just canceled my X1-Carbon order. Just spend some time on the Bambu Labs subreddit and you will see a lot of frustrated owners. It is insanely loud, and it seems unreliable and buggy.
I have owned a lot of printers over the years, and the only printers I, or any of my colleagues come back to are Prusa printers. They are incredibly reliable. The few times we have had issues with a part, we have been able to print a replacement. I am constantly excited by fancy new printers that all promise to be the next big thing, and stupidly keep buying them.
I will take Prusa's amazing customer support, a product I know I will be able to upgrade when they release the next iteration, and the company that has the best free software as well (the Bambu is just a forked version of Prusa's slicer).
> Just spend some time on the Bambu Labs subreddit and you will see a lot of frustrated owners.
I have had mine (w/ four total AMS units) for two months now and have over 500hrs of printing so far w/ minimal failed prints. I often print in sport and/or ludicrous too. I own eight other 3D printers of various major brands (including Prusa) and it’s by far and away the best I’ve ever owned. Easily comparable to printers 2-3x more expensive imho.
> It is insanely loud, and it seems unreliable and buggy.
Even with the door open to the room mine is in, I never hear it. Sure, if you’re within 5ft of it, it is a bit loud, but not terribly so, especially if you reduce fan speeds (they have conservative defaults). If you are someone who wants to sleep next to your printer farm, maybe not a good fit, but for any normal person the noise isn’t a concern imho.
> I just canceled my X1-Carbon order.
Your loss! I’m doing the reverse, thinking about buying another one.
> Your loss!
This reminds me of an attitude I see in some of these hobby communities. The idea that someone who is happy with a different product is somehow wrong or losing. People are highly invested and identified with their choices. Why not just be ok with choices other people make, even if we disagree with them?
> The idea that someone who is happy with a different product is somehow wrong or losing.
Actually, it wasn’t really that I thought they were wrong/losing, it was more a response to the virtue signaling on GP. Nobody cares they canceled their order because they read some words from random people on the internet. Honestly, nobody should care I’m happy with my purchase either! :)
Yeah, I'm not trying to peg the attitude on you either. I've just seen that in 3d printing (and many other topics) threads, and you reminded me.
Yeah, mea culpa for falling into the trap of ambiguity there. Agree it’s too prevalent and should’ve done better to distance myself from that toxicity.
Always been that way. Ask any Atari ST user about Amiga and vice versa.
What's that little box for? A foot warmer?
You mean the Atari ST right?
Lamborghini v Ferrari, Beatles v Rolling Stones, Chanel v Dior, Dems v GOP, Apple v Samsung, C++ v Java, ...
No matter the context, polarization will always happen, and is sometimes fueled on purpose to turn opinionated users into religiously hooked fans.
...and BTW, Amiga crushes the ST any day:^)
Bit of a tangent, but I like both Beatles and Rolling Stones a lot. I consider them pretty different and which one I prefer changes with my mood.
The problem is going to be what happens when the <thing> needs to be serviced, whether it be a car, boat, lamp, or 3d printer. I'm glad that your experience is good -- as the way it should be with most consumer equipment.
But this comes down to basic dogfooding. Prusa dogfoods their stuff. Bambu AFAICT doesn't. Are any of the parts on the Bambu 3D printed or is everything metal and injection molded with plastic? Serious failures are going to happen at the 1/2/3 year mark.
I really don't know that answer for bambu. I do know the answer for Prusa.
I also know because Prusa open sources their designs, E3D had a platform to sell their REVO nozzles.
Just curious, while I’ve ordered various 3D printed parts, I’ve not bought a 3D printer.
What do you use 9 3D printers for?
> What do you use 9 3D printers for?
I’m probably going to start pairing that back, in fairness, and sell off 3 or 4 Creality printers in the near future. The reason they were useful is they were decently reliable and “good enough” and the multiples of the same were to run jobs in parallel. With the massive speed up from the Bambu Lab X1 and the better likelihood of a consistent print experience, I don’t need to have as many parallel prototyping runs. The other remaining printers have characteristics that make them worth keeping (huge print beds, different tech as in SLA resin, or simply sentimental value).
I own 4 printers and looking at adding a 5th. I got my first 3d printer in 2015 because I needed to make things for my quadcopter. That morphed to making things for everyone in my quadcopter racing club. Then it became souvenirs and collectibles for conferences I attend.
My biggest issue is the speed of which my printers print. As printers are getting faster, I won't need as many.
How easy is it to repair?
I own replacement parts for every expendable and/or non-warrantied part. I’ve test replaced a bunch to prove it works (engineer mindset, you don’t have a backup unless you know it works).
> (engineer mindset, you don’t have a backup unless you know it works)
I appreciate this. I have seen though, particularly in the used car parts market, where parts are often unobtanium. Would the X1 Carbon be better with 4040 aluminum extrusion or their custom sheet metal bent parts?
The Mk4 still has the large metal frame. I wish they would move that to 4040 or some other available, easy to source material.
> Would the X1 Carbon be better with 4040 aluminum extrusion or their custom sheet metal bent parts?
Maybe, maybe not, but is that something you ever have needed to replace? I've had 3D printers for around 10ish years now and even with multiple moves with careless movers I've never once had an issue where I needed to replace a frame component. Extruders, Gears, PTFE Tubes, Hotends, belts, wires, motherboards, PSUs, fans, etc yes, but frame? nope. I even had a Creality CR-6 SE which endured a rollover camper accident which was a total loss for RV and pull vehicle and the printer survived without a hitch and still prints great (happy to share a photo in private to illustrate how bad that accident really was, reach out if interested).
The only two parts listed above in the things I've replaced which I don't have spare parts for are the motherboard and the PSU with X1 Carbon. I'm confident that I could get a replacement PSU if they went out of business, but probably not on the motherboard currently. They have sold enough at this point though that I'm guessing someone would step up and create an alternative part.
Parts for it are available from the manufacturer for decent prices. I've looked at some of the repair guides and they seem decently detailed.
I guess to some point, my qualms with Bambu are that they haven't been around long enough...
But at what point, I asked myself, how long does a 3d printer company need to be around before I'll buy from them.
My answer is 3 years for myself. Others might have a different opinion. Further, if they dogfooded their own printers, I would have a change of opinion.
I don't think it takes 3 years. But the Mk4 has 1M hours in Prusa's print farm for Prusa to iterate on.
the other thing is that as a general rule, I don't buy the first model of <thing> when it comes out. I'll wait until v2 or v3 of thing.
With that said, I'm certainly looking forward to what the Bambu labs carbon x1 v3 looks like.
I have a Mk3S and a Bambu X1C. The Bambu is much, much better.
The Mk4 covers most of the distance, but at a price point matching the X1C, and it's only most. Speeding it up is nice, but... pressure advance depends on detailed characteristics of the filament, such as viscosity, which varies from brand to brand and color to color.
The X1 has a lidar, which from experience actually does work as advertised. The Mk4 has... what? Prusament, maybe? I would not be surprised to find you can only get the advertised speed if you use Prusa's precalibrated filament.
Or you can print the calibration lines and do it manually. That does work; it's a ten second eyeballing procedure, simple enough for the X1 to do full auto. But you're really supposed to do that for every startup -- characteristics change as the reel ages, which doesn't even happen evenly across the entire reel -- and nobody does that.
As far as I've seend the X1s lidar is mostly useless, it's doing fine-calibration at most based on the current filament profile and seems to be inconsistent.
That's not to say that the X1 itself is - just that lidar is imho a gimick.
I've done a great deal of printing, both with the lidar enabled and disabled.
For PLA it doesn't make a big difference. But when you're printing polycarbonate or PETG, the quality difference is dramatic. Perhaps you have a defective unit?
I also assumed the lidar is a complete placebo having owned the P1P and seeing how well it prints with PLA plus looking at available lidar sensors and their accuracy but maybe it does work? Would love to get a teardown on what components it uses but couldn't find anything online some months ago.
You don't need it if you print slowly, and you don't need it for reliable old PLA. If I squint, I think I can see a difference, but it's marginal.
Thing is, the X1C isn't really for printing PLA. If you only want to do that, you'd get a V400 or a Voron. When I print PC Blend, though, it's... the difference is glaring. This isn't something that needs a lot of testing; with the lidar off, the corners look like semicircles.
Also monotonic top/bottom layers don't fill the full surface, because they have corners on both ends. About like you'd expect, and the difference isn't visible from the outside; external perimeters are always printed slowly anyway.
Vorons are pretty terrible at PLA, not enough cooling and enclosure. They're great Abs printers though and PC blend.
Good to know. The one Voron I've seen in real life didn't have an enclosure; I take it that isn't standard?
The X1 also prints ABS perfectly. I should remember to make a Nevermore filter one of these days, so I can take advantage...
Why are you comparing lidar and pressure advance? They arent related. Also, I thought the Bambu printers had pa in their firmware as well?
Both the X1 Carbon and the Prusa Mk4 support pressure advance, but the X1 Carbon can automatically calibrate pressure advance using the LIDAR sensor. It prints a bunch of lines at various rates of speed and acceleration, then measures the actual printed line width to calculate a PA value. With the Prusa, you need to manually calibrate PA for each filament.
I own and operate two Bambu X1C with AMS for my prototyping business. They're excellent printers. Since I received them, I have practically stopped using all other printers. They are gamechangers, printing twice or three times as fast, in dramatically higher quality, in engineering materials. Second hand experience from the forum is not giving you the full picture.
> Just spend some time on the Bambu Labs subreddit and you will see a lot of frustrated owners.
In my experience this is true of basically all very niche brand subreddits. People go to those subreddits to complain and/or get help. It isn't a representative sample. The people who are completely happy with their Bambu Labs machines have little incentive to spend time on a 14k user subreddit when they can go instead participant in a 1.7m user subreddit like /r/3DPrinting.
I have two MK3S and I have to say I love them. They're simple, they work well, and I can repair basically any part on it using their documentation. The new model adds mostly refinements for people who want to do production printing.
I have both an MK3S and an X1C and the MK3S has basically been unplugged since the X1C came. I love the Prusa and I would not hesitate to recommend it, but the X1C is a generational improvement in 3d printing.
I really have no idea what you’re talking about with regard to it being loud, and I’ve had pretty much zero failed prints (at least not attributable to the printer).
Here's the thing, though: It's almost definitely a case of silent majority. The printer is pretty phenomenal and I've had excellent support from Bambu so far in New Zealand, no less.
My sample size of 1: I've been using my X1 for over 3 months and in that time printed about 60-70kg of various filaments: PLA, ASA, PETG. Printer worked out of the box, required no adjustment either at start or after. The only tinkering, if you even can call it that, I've done so far was adjusting nozzle temp by 5C for one specific brand of PETG and capping print speed for silk pla (if you print it too fast it's no longer "silky"). Everything else just prints on default profiles.
If you are printing with enclosure doors closed printer noise is acceptable - I wouldn't sleep in the same room, but I can work (including taking video calls) with printer running 2.5-3m from me. Carbon filter seems to be working nicely too - my air quality monitor isn't picking much VOOCs or fine particulate.
tl;dr; I've had fewer problems with X1 than with any other printer I owned, including laser and inkjet ones.
Yeah. I looked at the X1 Carbon longingly and knew that with so many software features developed in such a short time, it was going to be a bug fest. That's just how software engineering is.
The Prusa i3 family may feel a little outdated, but what it lacks in cool marketing features it makes up for in amazing reliability. The thing works every single time I try to print something. The CPU not being able to address 4GB of RAM doesn't really limit what you can print, though the community sure loves to talk about it.
I am very tempted to buy the upgrade kit, but honestly, I'm not sure it's worth it. My filament doesn't jam, I don't use filaments the infrared detector can't see, I'm not in a hurry (so don't need input shaping), and my Z is dialed in. The MK3 is a great printer even in a world where the MK4 exists! I'm waiting for the Prusa XL to start shipping so I can print larger models.
You’ll find people frustrated with Prusa too. There was a whole discord dedicated to trying to fix all issues.
People act like having the power supply die, bed probe not being reliable, not having x axis tensioner are all normal. Just print out a bunch of parts from some randoms to fix.
Also Prusas software are forks too so weird thing to call out bambu for.
What power supply would you suggest Prusa use instead of what they are using? Is Bambu using something better?
Bambu slicer is a fork of Prusa's slicer. Prusa's slicer is a fork of Slic3r. Although perfectly fine it is notable that both Prusa and Bambu make 3d printers while the Slic3r project was just making a slicer.
AFAIK the newer Delta power supplies (black case) are fine. The older mystery meat power supplies (silver case) don't have a good reputation, but they're easy enough to replace with a Meanwell or the newer Delta unit.
> Also Prusas software are forks too so weird thing to call out bambu for.
They've been developing and supporting those forks in house for years, giving back to the community. I don't know about Bambu, but typically other Chinese companies don't really do that.
Maybe I’m lucky, as are the hundreds other Prusa MK3S owners I see on the various forums, but the problems you mention seem to be rare.
I also cancelled my X1C and am now part-way through a VzBot kit :) Didn't want something I couldn't repair/upgrade, even though the VzBot is for me quite a complicated build!
That was a mistake. I own both an i3 MK3 and an X1C. The Prusa printer has been sitting unused for months now. Bambu Lab really got many things right.
I can only suggest to go with the Snapmaker. Only made good experience with it and it can also do laser engravings and CNC milling (simple stuff).
Disclaimer: I own an Ender 3, heavily modified.
Prusa printers are generally rock solid and their quality control is great.
For 1k, I really think we should be looking at a CoreXY machine (or, at least, something that doesn't have a bed that moves, whatever the kinematics). That's a major speed limitation, and it also causes vibrations even in lower speeds as you are moving the bed and your entire model. That's the only thing I cannot easily change in my printer, anything else, from the bed to extruders is easy to modify.
Sure the MK4 has a larger build volume. But so do many other printers.
The breakout extruder board is a nice thing but it is available for other printers too.
I like the loadcell concept for bed leveling but I wonder how much better it is versus a simple bltouch.
I really wonder who is the target demographic for this printer and why they wouldn't get other Prusa offerings instead.
> I love their commitment to open hardware
Prusa is relatively open with their hardware so it's indeed a massive bonus versus some proprietary Bambu Labs printer. However, they are the same company pushing for pre-sliced files which is a terrible idea. Not only they can be malicious, but they will also be specific to a given printer, which would benefit Prusa if most gcode is created for Prusa printers.
> However, they are the same company pushing for pre-sliced files which is a terrible idea.
Agreed, though should be noted this happens across the industry. Whoever is the current fore-runner tends to push for it. MakerBot did the same thing back when they led the pack. Thing is, the only end Prusa can get from this is encouraging use of their printers. A shady method for sure, but MakerBot wanted to push for an entirely proprietary chain, from the model file to the printer, and because they had just gone proprietary, they could make that happen. Prusa has no legal or technical weight to make that happen (and hopefully they have no intention of going that direction). So long as they keep pushing open hardware and firmware, their push for presliced is (to me) not a deal breaker. It's wrong, and they should be called out for it, but it's not gonna lead to malicious legal action.
The load cell is amazing BTW. I have one on the creality CR6MAX, prusa has talked about it being sensitive enough to actually do 3d scanning of low-profile objects with it. I doubt they will implement that into the slicer but I don't doubt they can actually print that flat orange perfect first layer with it.
I agree that sharing Gcode should end as well, I understand how they thought that might be a good idea given how daunting prusaslicer is for non-techies but that wasn't a good solution.
Although Corexy is clearly a more rigid form factor I wonder if the input shaping advancements will make that bed slinging i3 seem much faster than we are expecting.
I own two MK3s+'s. They are solid machines if you are looking to print PLA and some PETG. The stock extruder is a PITA. The MK4's redesigned nozzle/heat break & 10:1 extruder are basically a Bondtech LGX + Revo & should make for a great improvement.
The MMU3 seems like a marginal improvement, you still have purge towers & large buffer boxes. Hopefully the reliability out of the box has improved.
I wonder if it's too little too late for Prusa. A Voron, Ratrig, Bambu Lab printer seems like it has all these features & is CoreXY. The multi material options seem better on these options too (Enraged Rabbit Carrot Feeder, Bambu AMS).
In the case of the Voron or Ratrig, you'll load Klipper instead of the tried & tested (and outdated) Marlin.
In 2023, I am not sure I'd buy a MK4 at $1100 when you can get a Bambu for $100 more.
I think as 3D printer enthusiasts, we focus on structure and features. The thing that I think of when I think of Prusa is reliability. For most people the most important thing about a 3D printer is that it prints. It doesn’t matter if it’s corexy or uses a Bowden tube, or the board is 32bit. And while those technologies ostensibly provide a better experience, it doesn’t really matter (for most) so long as you get thing thing you wanted to print.
For me, Bambu is too proprietary, Voron is too self-built, Ender is too unpredictable.
By current printer is self built and it works sometimes. My next printer is a Prusa.
I'm not sure about too little, too late. All the different brands are the flavor of the month ARM SBCs vs raspberry pi -- Prusa may lag in features, but at least I've heard of them, they have a community, and they're not going to disappear tomorrow like something off ali baba.
Voron and Ratrig are not going to "disappear tomorrow".
Bambu--I'm less sanguine about them, to be fair.
The Prusa XL looks tremendous and I'm very interested, but a $1100 bedslinger had better literally make you breakfast to warrant it over a $250 SV06 or Neptune 3 Pro, and the MK4 does not.
Voron? Apparently that takes about 30 hours of build time, that's definitely not my kind of project. I want to use the printer. Bambulabs? Looks very interesting, but it's as proprietary as it gets. With Prusa it's clear what I'm getting into.
I want to upgrade from my Prusa Mini and can't justify the cost for the XL, so the Mk4 seems like a decent choice. I'm sure people building and modding their own printers and flashing firmwares might have other favorites, but that's simply not what I buy 3d printers for.
I'm in the same situation. I've been using a Prusa Mini for two years and it's a really awesome machine. I've made some tweaks along the way but I get consistent, high-quality prints in a reliable machine. I never have trouble with prints failing to stick or filament sticking or any of that stuff. I'm in the market for a bigger print bed at the moment and I want to stick with Prusa but the XL is too expensive and the MK4 seems like it might not be quite big enough for my needs. I'm looking at the Elegoo Neptune range (they have some seriously big printers that are cheaper than the Prusa Mini!). I have serious doubts about the quality though at that point... it's just too damn cheap for the size.
I'd argue that Prusa still has value over both Voron and Bambu Lab, though that value is dependent on the user. Voron still requires significant self-assembly, as you can't buy it as a prebuilt (far as I know), and doesn't have a company directly sponsoring it (that may be a plus for some). Bambu, on the other hand, is well built, but highly proprietary, and can absolutely rug pull without warning. This puts Prusa at a perfect position for makers/tinkers/hackers. The ability to continue to self improve if one wants, without needing to if one is too busy. I'm personally not a fan of Prusa Connect, as I like having all my systems run under software I've vetted, and right now that's still OctoPrint. But the thing is, I can still absolutely get OctoPrint running on the Prusa Connect hardware. It requires some tinkering, but that's in my control. Voron requires I build everything from scratch, and Bambu requires I use only their firmware/connection app. I've got so many things already linked with OctoPrint that moving systems simply wouldn't function. I'd have to completely reset all my automation.
As for Ratrig, that might be a healthy competition, though I've never looked into the quality of parts there. I know I've sat an Ender next to my Prusa and found the price vs quality to match surprisingly well, so Prusa's not the only game, but for something I can control, while still having a company to lean on when I want to, Prusa's got a good thing going.
Agree it’s tough. The non enthusiasts that don’t give a shit and aren’t interested in a cash outlay are in the sub $500 market. Once you break that point you’re unlikely to want to save a couple hundred bucks. I would have definitely had started with the Bambu if it were available a couple years ago. If I get tired of my MK3S I would be highly unlikely to upgrade to a Prusa.
It seems like an odd place in Prusa's own product line-up.
I have a Prusa MINI+, which for $450 gets you a great printer. The print volume on the MK3 and now MK4 is just not that much better - 180x180x180 for the MINI, 250x210x220 for the MK4.
If I wanted to upgrade and wanted to stick with Prusa, MK3/MK4 wouldn't come into the picture, I'd go straight to the Prusa XL.
I have a Mini too, and I could see myself get a MK4 as the Mini has been a bit of a disappointment. The X and Y axes on mine aren't 90° and there seems to be no hardware adjustment (just a rigid printed part), no support for software adjustments either (the respective GCode is disabled in firmware), so I can't print proper rectangles, just parallelograms, and any boxes and lids I print never fit properly. I want to keep tinkering to a minimum (that's why I got a Prusa), and I can make do with goskew and preprocessing the gcode, but I found I have to repeat callibration quite often and it's a fairly annoying process and not very exact and means I can't reuse gcode files at a later date, so having a printer that doesn't have this defect would be very welcome.
My Mini also likes to ram the nozzle into the build plate once in a while without any of it's safeties triggering, heating element stuck on and the Z stepper fully engaged, so I can't let it run unsupervised either, and the filament sensor is pretty hit and miss as well. I may have had bad luck with my unit (I ordered right at release), but I'm definitely looking for something more reliable and, frankly, less dangerous.
The Prusa Mk4 does look like a solid hands-off machine and hopefully they didn't cut corners there like with the Mini, and hopefully customer support is also better for the more expensive ones. I don't have any use for the XL's feature set (I only print relatively small parts and not that many), but I didn't want to get a Mk3s as it's been pretty dated for a long time now. I'll wait a bit until other people have had a chance to run into any major flaws though.
Very happy early Prusa Mini owner. I do remember some difficulty when assembling it, which lead to non-square axes. After an hour or so I eventually got right, so you might want to try redoing the tower assembly.
I don't have a filament sensor (I also print mainly small parts, so rare to hit the end of a spool), and haven't had any problems with heating elements, z steppers or nozzle crashes. I did experience the extruder clicking due to shrinking PTFE in the hot end, but I've ordered the E3D Revo mini hot end which will prevent that problem ever happening again.
I had clogging problems on mine - three or four different fixes to sort it out, and the thing that finally nailed it was replacing the PTFE hotend lining with Capricorn. It's been fire-and-forget since then.
Is it really? I've looked at the Bambu Lab printer and while on paper it looks nice I would be very hesitant to buy it, their "advanced" features not that convincing:
- IMO multi material printing has always been a buggy gimmick (mostly multi material setups are very prone to failure).
- Them advertising that the printer can print "advanced" materials like PC is a gimmick too, the main issue with FDM printers is layer adhesion and no matter what material you are using its going to suck compared to injection molding.
- bashing bed slingers is wrong too, they have their advantages compared to CoreXY setups (mostly simpler mechanics)
IMO FDM printers have 2 main issues:
1. Unreliable due to lots of moving parts. A solid design with quality components mostly mitigates this.
2. Layer adhesion sucks limiting possible applications. Some very innovative non-planar printing could be a solution but it does not exist yet. Or could be solved by printing metal, but these devices are far from home use.
Resin printers solve both issues, but bring their own (mostly that resins are very toxic stuff that you dont want in your home.)
So no, this printer is in no way revolutionary (neither is the Prusa). Until both of these issues are solved home 3D printers will be mostly used to print benchies and accessories for tabletop games.
> - IMO multi material printing has always been a buggy gimmick (mostly multi material setups are very prone to failure).
Agreed, with the asterisk that this applies more to multi-feeders (Prusa's MMU, Bambu's AMS) rather than IDEX. Which is where Prusa's going with the XL, and I'm excited about it.
> - Them advertising that the printer can print "advanced" materials like PC is a gimmick too, the main issue with FDM printers is layer adhesion and no matter what material you are using its going to suck compared to injection molding.
Flag on the play: sweeping generalization, ten yard penalty, repeat second down.
PC printing is really handy for intrinsically bespoke things like tools in the wood shop. I don't need an injection-molded run of them--but nobody's selling things I can buy that address problems in the way I want to.
> - bashing bed slingers is wrong too, they have their advantages compared to CoreXY setups (mostly simpler mechanics)
This is an effectively solved problem with modern motion system controls. CoreXY on Marlin might be a mess, but CoreXY on Klipper is clean. Aside from cost of development and manufacture, I don't understand developing new bedslingers except for cost...and the MK4 costs $1100.
> PC printing is really handy for intrinsically bespoke things like tools in the wood shop.
Can you name some examples? As a hobbyist woodworker I've used my 3D printer to print router templates where PLA was fine enough for the task.
> Aside from cost of development and manufacture, I don't understand developing new bedslingers
Another reason is that bedslingers are good enough for most users. If you dont try to print 30cm high columns with 300mm/s a simple bedslinger will do. I've printed my best minis with a slightly modded Ender 3 and I have a pretty high end CoreXY printer. I could tune the CoreXY one too to be on par with quality but for such stuff bedslinger vs CoreXY doesnt matter
> Can you name some examples? As a hobbyist woodworker I've used my 3D printer to print router templates where PLA was fine enough for the task.
I'm currently using PC to build friction-fit dust collection gear. PLA and PETG are great in a lot of cases but if you want to use bayonets to ensure a solid connective fit (whether they're themselves plastic or something like socket-cap screws), PLA and PETG both wear much too quickly.
>bashing bed slingers is wrong too, they have their advantages compared to CoreXY setups (mostly simpler mechanics)
Tangent: why was moving the bed the solution over having X and Y on independent axes? I’ve always wondered. Cost and initial reliability?
Cost is part of it. If you look at bed-dropper printers (the Ender 5 or the Sovol SV05), there's just more metal involved. Metal is expensive. It's also heavy, so your shipping costs go up.
It's also a simpler set of kinematics for the system to deal with. Most 3D printers have pretty dumb microprocessors (value engineering!) at their core. CoreXY printers use two steppers to execute any movement, and that requires more calculations. Delta printers use three steppers to execute any movement, even.
More modern printers run Klipper, which offloads the kinematic calculations to a single-board computer, and that addresses a lot of the problems you run into. Klipper also helps with bedslinger kinematics too, though, as it has the headroom to do some forward-looking optimization. The current state of printers is pretty cool.
Being able to print pc isn't a gimmick. They point this out because it's one of the hardest filaments to print. PC isn't used a ton by hobbyists but it is extremely popular in industry.
Indeed. I always thought they deferred the launch of any new model after X1C in order to take the true "just works" crown back (with the hopes of it would be something like Intel/AMD feuds where the monopoly had finally came to an end and customers can finally see some real competition). But apparently it is just a classic Prusa printer with better parts but still a very very high price to usability ratio (compared to Bambu Lab P1P or X1).
It's a proprietary versus open source argument. You can build a mk4 clone for much less than the price of a Prusa-branded one, as everything is open source. The higher price tag is like a donation to open source.
Prusa also makes the open source XL if you want an CoreXY model, or you could go with a Voron which is also open source.
> It's a proprietary versus open source argument. You can build a mk4 clone for much less than the price of a Prusa-branded one, as everything is open source. The higher price tag is like a donation to open source.
I would say the higher price tag is more like "Prusa" using its name as a quality assurance system where if you want to get something working without much hassle (since nearly every other mk4/mk3s clone that has been out there really really sucks except the ones from Prusa) you have to pay the premium.
This is not to say they are necesarrily doing a bad job on open sourcing or abusing, but just a mark that "open source hardware" doesn't necessarily benefit the customer as much as "real world features".
> since nearly every other mk4/mk3s clone that has been out there really really sucks except the ones from Prusa
I have had an Ender-3 V2 for a few years and it definitely doesn’t suck. I did add a BL Touch sensor for auto-leveling, and OctoPrint for remote printing/monitoring - which are great convenience upgrades. But the printer itself is very reliable and the only maintenance I’ve needed to do is to replace a few clogged nozzles.
For anyone just getting into 3D printing I would definitely recommend an inexpensive i3-style printer vs spending two to three times as much on a Prusa.
Not to mention that to a large extent, you can spend the difference between stock unit prices making an Ender-3 v2 nearly as capable as a $799-$1,000 printer. Does it make sense? Overkill? Depends what you want to get out of the hobby. Can’t scoff at those who want to learn the fundamentals of 3D printing through the experience of modding and tuning ad nauseum because it’s _just not quite there yet_. I’m one of those Ender-3 V2 folks who can’t stop tweaking and modding and it’s been a frustratingly awesome and educational ride for the last year and some change. No regrets. I’ve gotten great prints along the way. But now, if I add a printer in the future that promises to “just work” and it doesn’t, I can diagnose/fix pretty quickly. Which I might just do.
> since nearly every other mk4/mk3s clone that has been out there really really sucks except the ones from Prusa
The Sovol SV06 has been selling like gangbusters for the last six months or so, and it's excellent. And it's sub-$250.
If you move a little further away from the i3 clones (and the SV06 absolutely is clone-y), that's where Elegoo--or Anycubic if you buy judiciously, or even Creality if you get it on sale--still make the argument quite difficult.
I don’t know why this is being down voted. Prusa are trying to make an open source hardware company work and I guess this is what it looks like.
There is so much noise on HN about repairability. Well here is some open hardware And it’s ”the Chinese printers have so much more features!”
Prusa absolutely builds good stuff, but their level of repairability just isn't different from most other printers--Bambu notably excepted, as they're a pretty closed system. They're all extremely commodity parts, from boards to v-wheels.
I wish them well, but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price. (The Prusa XL may change this and I'm really excited to play with one.
Bambu just proves the point. Do you think they are going to make more integrated and closed systems or start opening up?
Someone has to take the hit with development. And that costs money.
>but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price
Has the value in terms of price to features ever really been competitive? I got the MK3 soon after it was released and even then you could get an i3 clone for much cheaper that produced similar results. The Chinese clones didn’t have 3D printed parts either.
But now is the time Prusa is not price competitive?
In the last year, I've bought two separate sub-$250 3D printers that I just threw on a table after connecting four screws and a couple cables and they were dead-on out of the box.
Prusa's hat has been "it just works!". That's been the conceptual moat. That is the part that isn't distinctive anymore.
Most cheap tools work at least once right out of the box.
I've had both of mine for six and three months, respectively.
They're inexpensive. But they're not cheap. That's a problem for selling $1100 bedslingers.
> Prusa are trying to make an open source hardware company work and I guess this is what it looks like.
https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-prin... sure sounds like they no longer intend to be an "open source hardware company".
For example:
> Parts that can be considered consumables (e.g., thermistors, heater blocks, fans, printing plates, etc.) can be manufactured and sold commercially after the verification by the licensor based on the presentation of samples.
That is very much against the concept of open source.
My experience with repairability on Prusa is pretty awful, lots of $1 parts that need to be airmailed from Czechia for $50. At least the Chinese stuff is easily available.
If you're in the US, printed solid is basically prusa's US arm now and carry a majority of their parts.
Their prices are higher than prusa. It's cheaper to buy direct. The savings on shipping isn't enough to offset the cost.
Prusa is pretty open about this. They purchased ps so they could get government contracts in the US. It wasn't about improving retail costs for the average consumer.
Thats an odd analogy.
Prusa loves open source and maker mentality. Just look at PrusaSlicer and Printables.
This seems like a bit of a stop-gap since the Prusa XL seems to be taking longer to get going than expected, I would hope their plan is to totally rearchitect around the Prusa XL design and scale that down to the 250mm^3 size class.
They are still very good machines, but I would have a hard time recommending anyone get an i3 style printer when the advantages of CoreXY are so obvious, and particularly because the price gap between the X1C is not very big.
> how far Prusa is behind truly next-gen printers like the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon
Can you expand on this?
The biggest disadvantage in my mind of the Prusa MK2/3/4 printers is they use the original i3 design. It's a good design, and very simple to build, maintain and program. But it limits the print speed due to the amount of mass that has to move, particularly in the Y axis. The entire bed has to move which induces vibrations at higher speeds.
Newer printers (including the Prusa XL) use a CoreXY design, where the extruder is controlled in the X and Y axes by belts, which results in less mass that has to move, and allows the printer to print much, much faster. In the case of the Bambu Lab printers, it can be two to three times faster for a similar print quality.
CoreXY printers absolutely do have more stable kinematics for better acceleration, but modern open printer firmware--mostly Klipper, though you can do it with Marlin in an unsatisfying way--implements resonance compensation, aka input shaping, in a way that really improves acceleration (which matters way more than top speed for most prints).
My Sovol SV06 can make a really nice-quality 3DBenchy in 37 minutes after doing my input shaping samples. That's not as fast as an X1 Carbon, but it cost a quarter as much, and I tend to think that when it comes to 3D printers that bandwidth is more valuable than latency.
I'll take the slower printer speed if it means I get better reliability, repeatability and repearability. Any day.
I've wasted enough hours on fancy features/materials/settings that don't work. Couldn't care less about the feature of being able to print a part a few minutes/hours faster tbh.
Years ago people were talking how delta printers were so much better, faster, cheaper, etc than bedslingers. Years later people forgot about delta printers and now its core-xy. Meanwhile bedslingers continue to just work.
I could care less if you printer goes 50% faster if it fails even 5% more.
Heck, I'm still using my ancient Rostock Max, and it works just fine for my needs. It's such a stable platform that I haven't had to re-zero the bed in months. Once it's up to temp, it's in spec. My only wish-I-had was the ability to use a wider variety of filament, but the bowden tube is just too long for any of the specialty mixes. No issues at all with PLA, though!
The printer is on par with dirt cheap Chinese competitors like Sovol.
I know it is anecdotal, but I have been tinkering with 3d printers for over a decade, and Bambu Lab to everything else is like ChatGPT to Stack Overflow. It is just unbelievably reliable.
I've been always a huge fan of Prusa and always wanted one (just haven't for various reasons, not so much financial related). But this feels too little too late. Bambulabs is absolutely eating the market and I would be sweating if I were Prusa Research. It sucks since Bambulabs is using their slicer and a lot of Prusa's technology as a foundation. But most of the people I know have decided to skip waiting for the XL or MK4 and jumped for the X1C instead. No joke, the past purchases in the past 4 months or so from my circle of friends and peers have all been the P1P or X1C.
Edit: Also, its 799 for the kit you can't buy now compared to 699 for the P1P that you can buy today and literally prints out of the box.
>It sucks since Bambulabs is using their slicer and a lot of Prusa's technology as a foundation.
Prusa's slicer is just a fork of Slic3r so I'd say that's fair play. Prusa just aggressively brands opensource stuff.
> Prusa just aggressively brands opensource stuff.
I mean, they fork it, develop it further, and give it back to the community. That's entirely within the spirit of open source!
"Aggressively branding open-source stuff" would be like Chinese Alibaba sellers ripping off open hardware or Amazon redistributing PostgreSQL as an AWS SaaS offering.
I figured someone would take issue with that, I guess my problem is they don't do a great job of attribution.
It's the first point under Features.
> Free and open-source
> PrusaSlicer is based on Slic3r by Alessandro Ranellucci. Thanks to the strong community and a team of developers in Prusa Research we can continually add new features. Follow the development on our GitHub.
Thanks, I was spelling it wrong in my search.
It's literally on the loading screen.
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/56096557/107885845...
It's not just a fork with rebranding though. The development done on top of slic3r are genuinely huge. And you can use this fork for any printer too (and plenty of people do).
It's nice to pay for actually open development.
Having messed with 3D printers since before the iPhone came out, I can confidently say My MK3 is the best printer I've owned in terms of value. I can only imagine that they've improved upon this story with the MK4.
I'm relatively new compared with you, but I've also found my MK3S+ to be super solid and output high quality stuff. I previously had a da Vinci Pro, and my best metaphor is that using the MK3S+ is like writing with a new pencil vs. one full of broken lead.
So I would really like to get into 3D printing, but I struggle with discomfort over the health implications. I live in a small rented apartment and can't easily work out space or, much more importantly, external venilation. Yes, I've looked into PLA vs. ABS, I've looked into enclosures with carbon/HEPA filters, etc., but I still don't want to have it in my living space without a vent to the outdoors.
Here's the best I can come up with: A well-insulated enclosure with a filter ... on the balcony, with internal heating and PID temp control. Maybe some thing for humidity control as well. Thoughts? Any good off-the-shelf enclosure products that would fit an Ender S1 Pro or a Prusa MK3/4?
Box around the printer with a vent/fan blowing outside. It'll be negative pressure in the box, so everything should just vent out. Even if you can just crack a window and get the airflow going out the window... you can push a flexible tube far out onto your balcony...
This is the best way. Inline duct fan and a flex hose running out of your window (you can print an adapter/connector to fit perfectly). It works very well even if your enclosure is not airtight (and it shouldn't be when printing PLA since you want a constant stream of air getting inside for cooling) - just let negative pressure do its thing.
It may seem super silly or I'm just somehow dumb, but the "run a hose to your balcony" is the difficult part for me. That means having a door open for 10+ hours at a time, which is a climate control challenge for the room.
That's why I figured: Why not put the entire enclosure on the balcony, and then heat-humidity control the inside of it? Sure, more complex system and higher power draw, ... but maybe there's whole kits for this? Like, for keeping a 3D printer in a windy shed?
6" wide piece of cardboard that is floor to ceiling of the balcony door. Put it on the side where the door locks. Cut a hole near the bottom of it and stick the flexible tubing through it. Now you can shut the door and hold the cardboard in, while still maintaining the climate control.
You can use something thicker than cardboard like the plastic version of cardboard... google: 'Corrugated Plastic Polycarbonate Acrylic Sheets'.
I was also thinking that you can even extend a pole out your balcony and attach the tube to that. This way, the air makes it far enough out that it won't even blow back.
I appreciate this, the challenge is that the wife won't let me get away with that level of jank (the balcony door opens into the living room) ... :-)
In the next life I'll get a house and build it around the 3D printer.
You can do it non-jank. I just realized there are products for this (mostly around portable AC exhaust vents). Google 'sliding door vent kit'.
https://www.amazon.com/sliding-door-vent-kit/s?k=sliding+doo...
> In the next life I'll get a house and build it around the 3D printer.
Or just 3d print a new wife? (joking)
That does look not-so-bad, but ... unfortunately we also don't have a sliding door. Nor sliding windows. Germany goes for those mechanically complicated multi-direction tilt/swing hinges instead. They're super mental (and metal), and break my aspirations.
I know, I'm not an easy customer.
> Or just 3d print a new wife? (joking)
I've seen too many terrible Benchys in reviews to fall for this one!
Some balcony doors aren't sliding but instead swing open, so that makes it more difficult as well.
> Why not put the entire enclosure on the balcony, and then heat-humidity control the inside of it?
How flammable is the insulation on your balcony? If you DIY it, then the danger of burning down your house might be bigger than the health risks of occasionally printing PLA in the living room.
Another option could be a used incubator, but an incubator big enough for a printer will probably cost more than the printer...
Kind of depends on ventilation setup in your house, some houses/condos are built to draw air through windows and out through fans with high static pressures, in which case trying to vent out don't work that well.
I tried it with SLA printer and it just filled the room with resin stinks for days. It really depends...
My FDM printer is not stinky enough to cause a big problem (might be still unhealthy though).
But i recently got a resin printer and that thing lives in the bathroom now beside the washing machine. It has build in ventilation through a coal filter but the stench is just awful.
In a pinch Bathrooms are not the worst place for printers because they have ventilation and are not in use most of the day.
Just don't store your filament in the same room since it might get wet from the showers steam.
Although this might have a very low WAF, so check with your better half if applicable :)
>But i recently got a resin printer and that thing lives in the bathroom now beside the washing machine. It has build in ventilation through a coal filter but the stench is just awful.
It's also worth noting that the smell varies considerably between different kinds of resin. having a dedicated space is optimal, but with the right materials it's farily manageable, especially if you're not planning to run it 24/7.
I use water washable resin because it is super convenient. It is supposedly not that bad smell wise. But I find it still unbearable.
The printer is used to print the occasional tabletop model and stuff if it where in use all day I would try to get a better solution
If you can shell out a little more, you might be able to print a Nevermore filter[1] and use activated carbon to filter VOCs, provided your printer is enclosed.
You could also buy a Bambu Labs P1P, which is fully enclosed, or build a Voron. There's also the Creality Sermoon V1, but with chinese printers you always have to replace / upgrade the parts, so they're really not that cheap in the long run.
Just a note that the P1P does not come fully enclosed. You need to either print your own sides or buy them from someone. I don't think Bambu Lab even sells them, and even then they are just side panels and don't include the front. The Bambu Lab X1 Carbon comes fully enclosed, however. It is one of the main reasons that I am considering just going for the X1 Carbon. If the P1P had a fully enclosed option, I would go for it.
Thanks for the correction, I wrote that post off the top of my head. I definitely meant the X1, that's the printer I had in mind.
And anyway, if you're printing PLA you shouldn't do it in a completely closed enclosure, the temperature would be too high (or so I've read). Even the Sermoon V1 has cutouts for a small vent at the back. Even the Vorons aren't fully enclosed, although there's the Box-Zero[1] addon that does fully enclose the printer.
I worried about the same thing, and decided to print only PLA and PETG and print without enclosure. The printer is in the living room, and I just close the doors to the bedrooms and open the windows in the morning to let fresh air in.
I think it's questionable how much those tiny filters help anyway. If you print a lot, you would have to constantly swap filters, if you don't print a lot, it doesn't really make that much of a difference.
When I want to print ABS, I go to a Makerspace and use their Ultimaker.
If you are OK with a 180mm build space, grab a Prusa Mini. Very quiet, fits in a cupboard, just works.
For me, ventilation isn't required for PLA. The smell is minimal and not unpleasant, and I often print (in a cupboard) while working two metres away.
I would be as concerned about the health implications of the sound. The constant background noise adds to the baseline stress level of the environment, and it's difficult not to intersect printing and sleep schedules.
So I recently moved mine from the middle my medium sized house to the far end from the bedroom, behind a door. And even with that I'm considering enclosing it in a cabinet, to reduce the noise on that side of the house too. Yet the model I have is not particularly loud.
The Mk3S (so presumably the Mk4) has a silent mode, which cuts down the noise significantly. I have mine on a 5cm×25×25cm paving slab which also helps avoid vibrations.
With a closed door between my bedroom and the printer at night, it's no problem.
You may be able to get by with a regular air filtration system. Not sure where you are, but I have a Rabbit Air[0] that is very good at removing smells has multi-layer filtration.
Also, buying good quality filament is important. You want stuff that isn't made in China.
Prusa does have an official enclosure but I'm not sure of its MK4 compatibility. https://www.prusa3d.com/product/original-prusa-enclosure-3/
It is compatible:
> MK4 is fully compatible with the Original Prusa Enclosure.
Creality has this $60 enclosure that seems to do the job. I learned that the entire voron project is against separate heaters, they recommend to leave the heated bed on for an hour instead.
I put the printer on a study Ikea wheeled table, and put it in the bathroom when I use it. The ventilating fan in the bathroom is sufficient.
How about using a printing service instead?
Replaced all 25 MKS3+ machines with 15 Bambu P1Ps and 5 Bambu X1C's about 2 months ago. Sold the last Mks3+ yesterday.
They Print 3 Times faster than the MKS3+ with same or better quality in some prints. 24/7 printing almost with zero issues in my print farm. BVery easy to send jobs to it from the Bambu slicer based on the Prusa slicer which is open source and enhanced to make complicated print jobs spread across multiple virtual print beds a beautiful thing!
At this point i see ZERO reason to consider a MK4. Bambu hit this out of the ball park and into the neighbouring city as far as I am concerned.
Prusa mentions in their articles about how China slowly appropriated solar panel designs, beat domestic companies on cost, and now all solar panels are made in China. And that, they hope, they can avoid this for 3D Printers in particular because Chinese companies do not have a good track record for following open-source licenses promptly.
However, I see all this and think, man... Prusa, you were 2 years too late on the XL and the MK4. And it's going to hurt the Prusa marketshare immensely.
You created an account just to say you aren't going to buy something?
On top of that, they are throwing shade at a machine that's not even on the guest list, totally swerving into the wild world of off-topic shenanigans!
> At this point i see ZERO reason to consider a MK4
Prusas are user serviceable with lots of spare parts available. Bambus are far from that and if there's a problem with the design (e.g. ghosting) you're out of luck for as long as it takes them to fix it.
I don't have a Prusa (I have a VzBot). Just saying there's far from zero reasons.
https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-prin... highly recommend to read this first
It'll be interesting to watch the Aurora Tech review when it comes out. Curious to see how she likes it.
Yep. We enjoy her reviews a lot.
The only reviewer worth watching IMO.
Would someone explain what is notable about this? I'm not familiar enough with the 3D printer space to know what new features and capabilities are developing.
Most of the listed features are incremental updates over the previous model; the MK3. However, as someone who's been using 3D printers for about 3 years, I'd say the biggest improvement here is the automatic first layer calibration.
Until recently (most notably until the Bamboo Labs Carbon X1) you had to spend time setting up your printer to get a good first layer. This would involve changing the distance between the nozzle that lays out the melted plastic and the bed on which the model is printed. Because this distance varies not just between different units of the same printer, but also has to change based on what material (PLA, PETG, etc) you're printing with, it needed some knowledge to set correctly.
While that process did get much simpler (with most of it being automated), it still involved some tweaking on the part of the user. That's a problem for people who are new 3D printing. It meant that you couldn't start printing immediately after unboxing your printer. It also meant that you had to spend considerable time (a few hours at least in my case) figuring out what a "good first layer" means, and then tweaking your printer to print the first layer well.
With this update, you can now start printing immediately after unboxing your printer (after some minor assembly), which is a huge thing for people who are new to 3D printing.
When I got my first printer a few years ago, I remember having to spend a couple of hours initially learning how to do this calibration, and I didn't get great results until a few more weeks of learning and tweaking.
Note that this is from the perspective of a hobbyist. People using 3D printers on a commercial scale might find the other improvements to be a big thing for their use case.
That's a great explanation. Thank you!
Its more just a brand thing, Prusa was one of the early big names in (hobbyist) 3d printing scene. I don't think this printer coming from any other brand would have reached the front page
This is the truth. Prusa used to be in front of the line a couple of years ago, but since then they've dropped the ball and other manufacturers have caught up. And with much better open-source alternatives like Voron printers, very few people are ready to shell out money for Prusa printers. Plus, there's a big fanboy community around this brand, a lot of which might just be genuine shills (maybe not here on HN, but they do exist on reddit).
It’s the one FDM 3D printer worth buying that is being cloned and copied with so-so results by Chinese companies.
Unlike Ender etc., Prusa is the true “just works” FDM printer
I do recommend Prusa to new 3D printing hobbyists because there are a lot of quality of initial experience features on them.
That acknowledged, my (lightly modded) Ender3s, a Flashforge Creator clone, and an SKTank kit-built printer all also “just work” and, other than capability differences, use the same machine settings in slicer/same gcode thanks to Klipper macros (to the point that I’ll often start a print on them in the basement without ever going down there and checking that the first layer looks okay). I’d say I’m well above 97% for prints work without any fuss.
New electronics (AVR upgraded to STM32)
Lighter, stronger, faster extruder
Easier to swap/maintain hotend
Faster and more automated bed leveling
Better stepper motors
I have a Prusa MK2 clone that I recently revived with Klipper firmware, a cheapo Kingroon MK3S Pro that I bought to tweak a bit, and have been looking at getting a Bambu Labs or building a Voron - and either of those seems like a better investment than the MK4 if you can build and tweak the printer yourself.
But the key thing is that the Bambu (and other upcoming Core XY printers) are aimed at the non-modding market and seem to be a much better deal overall, so I'm not sure what Prusa is going for here other than leveraging brand traction...
I think they appeal to a different crowd.
I built a Prusa kit, and enjoyed building it, and enjoy printing with it. I consider it a bit of a hobby product, and wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't interested in learning anything about 3d printing. It works great, but you have to take an interest in it.
For the person who just wants a consumer product, I suspect the Bambu might be the best option.
Better deal by some measures, but definitely not part quality. Far from it. My equally-priced VzBot kit has much better quality components in every area right down to the screws.
That said, if I put a price on my time I think the X1C would be 1/10th the cost :D
How is the Bambu a better deal? All I'm seeing is a $1500 printer. Is there some other model?
Even the more expensive models are (arguably) better than the prusa due to being core xy
From outsider perspective (fdm) 3d printers plateaued relatively quickly; while the speed improvement is undoubtedly nice for heavy users, even at 3x speed I don't know if it is really transformative. Meanwhile the print quality hasn't changed really that much afaik? Of course being more reliable and less fiddly are certainly good improvements but I don't see them being transformative or making 3d printing conquer new areas.
The main FDM 3D printer patents expired at around the time the first iphone came out. I've been involved with them since those early days. If you ask me, the pace of improvement in usability, quality, reliability, and functionality of 3D printers has been as good if not better than smartphones. And it continues today. These upgrades in first-layer sensing and nozzle exchanges are a bigger relative improvement than the incremental increase in smartphone camera resolution. And the ecosystem of filament suppliers, G-code slicers, and 3D models available for download for people who don't want to do their own CAD has also grown.
Reliability is a huge, huge deal. Back in 2009 we were dealing with constant nozzle jams, delamination from the print bed, print errors, drifting, ooze, extruder slip, and all sorts of other problems. You had to keep a constant eye on the printer, and manually tweak the G-code generation parameters to get good results. It's come a long way and still going.
One of the things you can do with higher speeds is use a smaller nozzle, which translates directly to higher visual quality.
There’s also constant improvements to the algorithms; what can be printed in the first place. To name one, it used to be that anything above a 25 degree overhang would cause problems…
These days 60 degrees isn’t too bad, and there are experimental algorithms that can handle 90. Support algorithms have also improved dramatically lately, so we’re pretty close to the point where any and all geometries will just work.
If you are designing something, being able to rapidly iterate is great. The difference is 4-5 prints a working day vs 1-2 prints a day.
The speed is far more important than immediately obvious. To be able to iterate on the scale of minutes and hours and not hours and days is a game-changer. Imagine how productive a programmer would be if their compiler used to take 1.5 hours every time they saved something and it now took 10 minutes.
This is so true. My iteration time for printed parts has gone down from 4 hours to 1 hour with the faster speeds. At first, I couldn’t iterate fast enough to keep up. I can pump out a few revisions in a day or play with several concepts in little time. It’s a great time to be get into 3d printing.
> Meanwhile the print quality hasn't changed really that much afaik?
Several of the features in the MK4 are for quality (but also help speed). For example, VFA steppers are purely for quality improvement.
Nice - but it's been over a year and a half since preorders for the Prusa XL began and it still has not shipped!!!
It is clear now that people who preordered the Prusa XL had availability sacrificed for the MK4. It just sucks if you've been waiting more than 18 months for that, only for the MK4 to get day-one availability before your long-awaited preorder.
They are drowning in cash but only hiring cheap, mediocre engineers. When they manage to hire enthusiasts, they either burn them out or leave them to their own devices without unifying vision or structure - as long as the owners like them. The culture is pure nepotism.
Also, people who manufacture the printers are paid peanuts and are managed super strictly.
Also, XL was announced because they were "feeling like they were not releasing for too long". Not because they felt inspired. Then they literally slept on it for a year.
Don't expect anything special from them.
Source: know people inside and from the relevant social circle.
Do you have any insight into why Josef Prusa's name and face is plastered over every square inch of everything they produce?
I don't think that's quite correct, according to Prusa, the XL has started shipping to customers two weeks ago, though presumably still in low numbers: https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-prin...
I'm not super happy about the wait myself, but the XL is a considerably more complex beast, and I'd rather see them getting it right than sacrificing quality to meeting some self imposed deadline.
The MK4 will consistently deliver a perfect smooth first layer
I've lost count of the number of times I've been promised this.
My cheap ender 3 v2 with a glass bed makes perfectly smooth first layers.
I'll have to take a look at this. I have been wanting to get my first printer and am willing to spend more to get one that I don't ever have to fuss around with, as I just want to use the printer and not work on it. I was heavily considering the MK3S+, but I had talked myself into going with a Bambu Lab printer, either the P1P or X1 Carbon: https://bambulab.com/en. So this new offering from Prusa deserves a look, but I think I am still leaning towards the Bambu Lab products. They have a lot of features.
X1 owner here. Previously owned the mk3s+. Bambu is your best choice today and really a quantum leap in terms of performance. you will still need to occasionally fuss with things, mostly in terms of optimal slicer settings, but I still get the odd physical failure that requires intervention e.g. filament snapping in the guide tube, object seperating from the sheet misprint, etc.
The AMS has been wonderful for me: no longer manually swapping out filaments, and cool tricks like automatically laying down a layer of easily-removed support filament between model and support structure.
I've been thinking about making a DIY record lathe.
If anybody here is big into DIY 3D printer hacking, do you see any big blockers with using a 1-D Prusa system to host a record cutting head?
I've owned an MK3 since 2018, since then some defects have started to appear (the LCD has a contrast blob at the center, and I cracked the X-axis stepper bracket), but nothing that prevents the printer doing its occasional job.
I print mostly functional parts (home repairs & improvement, prototypes), and while I could have printed a fix for the broken part, the prospect of taking the whole thing apart (as well as for an upgrade to an S+) doesn't appeal to me.
It would be wise to print a new part while you can, just in case the cracked part fails completely at some point.
I've been thinking about getting a Prusa 3D printer for a long time, but now I'm leaning towards a Bambu Lab X1-Carbon Combo 3D printer. It looks really cool and seems like a more professional tool. Has anyone tried both? What would you recommend?
EDIT: I read some of the other comments in this thread and did some more research. Found some Reddit posts as well. I think I'll definitely go with the Bambu Lab printer.
Core xy motion system is hands down a faster setup. Also has a smaller footprint for the same printable area. And enclosed means you can do asa and Abs and nylons as a normal think.
No matter what, make sure it’s in a room with an air filter and active ventilation. Safety matters.
There’s a lot of really cool open source printer designs too, and having an abs/asa capable machine really makes a lot more cool prjects possible.
I got the x1cc and I’ve been really happy so far. My biggest problem was accidentally printing pla as asa and I still managed to make ok but weird prints
I don't own either (I have an Anycubic Vyper) but the two are not at all in the same category. The Bambu totally outclasses the Prusa printers, but the price is also a lot higher.
It's actually not. The MK4 competes with Bambu P1P which is cheaper, and the X1 Carbon Combo should be compared to a MK4 with an enclosure and a MMU3 and then Bambu comes out on top again.
Not quite on topic, but I wanted to start 3D printing for a long time, but it feels there’s a huge gap from where I am (0 knowledge of 3D modeling and obviously 0 experience with printing) and where I want to get (design some custom parts that would make my life easier, e.g. a custom support for my Magic Trackpad that integrates with my keyboard).
Does anyone have a good recommendation to go “from zero to hero”?
> a good recommendation to go “from zero to hero”
Below is pretty much how I did it:
Step 1:
Buy an Ender 3. It's cheap and there are tons of upgrades out there. Start printing stuff from Printables/Thingiverse in order to understand how slicing and printing works. Learn the jargon by researching issues you run into (don't just ask on forums, search for yourself).
Step 2:
Find some upgrades for the printer through Youtube, Reddit and the likes. Buy (or print) them and upgrade your printer. Run into issues, fix them and start understanding how the entire thing works.
Step 3:
Print this [0] model and watch this [1] video on how it was designed. It shows really well what constraints you're working with when designing for 3D printing and how to work around them. Then, start designing your own prints in whatever CAD software you want to learn. I started with Fusion 360, but anything is fine, probably.
To add a few things:
- Start your journey with PLA, and small prints. PLA is the easiest/least fussy material to print because it doesn't tend to string, or warp/shrink/lift off the bed like PETG/ABS. Nothing's worse than having a large print fail (usually boils down to slicer settings, hence the need to get familiar with your printer via smaller prints first).
- PrusaSlicer is, IMO, one of the best slicer options out there... works for virtually all printers and it's free/open source: https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/releases
- TPU filament is AMAZING to have for functional 3d prints... but you need a direct drive extruder to be able to print it reliably. If you can afford it, shoot for an Ender with a direct drive extruder e.g. the S1 or S1 Pro.
- Other stuff: Use Mainsail on a Raspberry Pi or similar for remote control/monitoring from any browser or phone (alternative: Creality Sonic Pad), Klipper firmware for GOING FAST (pressure advance setting), print mods/upgrades for your own printer (e.g. webcam mount, tool holders, parts cooling fan ducts, etc)
Is Mainsail better than Octoprint? I haven't heard of it before.
IMO, yes. I used octoprint for 3+ years before switching to Mainsail a month or two ago. Seems more polished, and haven't had as many problems with updates/slow updates as I did with OctoPrint. Probably won't go back.
For primarily functional parts like that I'd recommend the Prusa Mini. That's exactly the position I was in a few years ago, and to be honest I just jumped in, Fusion360 (for example) is pretty accessible if you have an engineering mindset at least. Clough42 has some great design through to printing videos on YouTube. I think I'd seen some of those, and then had a go at designing something I wanted, (which was easy enough and looked good 'on paper') and then ordered my Mini.
I'm just learning too, but wanted to throw in that for an HN audience, OpenSCAD may be intuitive for modeling. You basically write up models in a simple declarative programming language. I found this easier to get started with than more GUI based tools.
I’m interested which GUI CAD tools you tried? I don’t use it myself but I find Fusion 360 magnitudes more intuitive and capable than OpenSCAD, which I really tried to like!
I was initially interested in FLOSS tooling, so one that i tried and also wanted to like was freecad.
Haven't tried fusion 360 yet. Would stress again that I'm a noob.
Makes sense - my experience is that FreeCAD is just brutally unintuitive to learn and use. (And this despite now being pretty competent with other parametric CAD packages.)
I get the FLOSS preference, but this is an area which sadly lags far behind. If you're really keen to learn CAD, maybe give F360 or OnShape a go? I suspect you'll see a huge difference...
I met someone building a similar trackpad! He's using a 3D printer to create the housing. https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/113rfhm/...
/r/3DPrinting has a comprehensive guide to getting started with 3D Printing: https://www.reddit.com/r/3DPrinting/wiki/gettingstarted/
The designing and iterating of physical components is a learned skill, just like designing and iterating on software becomes easier with experiences. Best way to learn is to just get started, and have tons of fun!
Awesome! As a side note, mounting the trackpad to my keyboard (at work I glued L brackets to a MS Natural keyboard, and plastered the keypad over) worked wonders for my RSI. I’m going to design a holder for my Matias Ergo Pro, eventually.
3D modelling is the big learning curve, but obviously independent of owning a 3D printer. Running a printer (assuming you get a reliable model) is straightforward in comparison.
Having tried most of the options there are, I’d recommend downloading Fusion 360 and following a few of the many online tutorials. While the free version is a little restricted, it’s a high-quality parametric 3D CAD package, and to my mind is superior to everything else at a hobbyist price point. It’s also faaaaaaar more approachable (IMO) and/or fully-featured than other free options such as OpenSCAD or FreeCAD.
A few weeks of following tutorials and trying to make your own simple models should see you to a level where you can judge whether it’s the right hobby for you, and therefore whether it’s worth investing in a printer.
Zero to hero... no not really. The printing part isn't that hard to pick up. The designing complex models with complex tools is a real mother. Youtube is a good place to start with tools like Fusion 360.
I think FreeCAD or equivalent is the best place to start. See if you can find some sketching and parametric modeling tutorials in FreeCAD and follow them, then design your part. FreeCAD because it's free, open source basis and parametric.
I hope it's not against any rules... it's not as far as I know of, so I plugged your comment into ChatGPT:
Sure, I'd be happy to help you get started with 3D printing! I'll break it down into a few steps, from learning the basics of 3D modeling to printing your first custom part.
Learn the basics of 3D modeling:
To start, it's important to get familiar with 3D modeling software. Two popular free options are Tinkercad and Blender.
Tinkercad (Beginner-friendly): Tinkercad is a browser-based, user-friendly CAD software that helps you create 3D models easily. It's perfect for beginners. Tinkercad tutorial: https://www.tinkercad.com/learn/designs
Blender (Advanced): Blender is an open-source 3D modeling software with a steeper learning curve but offers more advanced features. Blender tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa1F2ddGya_-UvuAqHAks...
Understand 3D printing basics: Learn about 3D printing technologies, materials, and the process. This will help you make better decisions when designing your parts.
3D Printing basics: https://www.3dhubs.com/guides/3d-printing/
Choose a 3D printer:
When you're ready to buy a 3D printer, consider factors like build volume, material compatibility, and price. A few popular entry-level 3D printers include:
Creality Ender 3: https://www.creality.com/goods-detail/ender-3-3d-printer Prusa i3 MK3S: https://www.prusa3d.com/original-prusa-i3-mk3s
Learn to prepare models for printing:
Once you've designed your 3D model, you'll need to prepare it for printing using slicer software. This software converts your model into instructions for the 3D printer. Popular slicer software includes:
Ultimaker Cura: https://ultimaker.com/software/ultimaker-cura PrusaSlicer: https://www.prusa3d.com/prusaslicer/
Print your first project:
Start with something simple to familiarize yourself with the 3D printing process. Then, move on to more complex projects like your custom Magic Trackpad support.
Join online communities:
Participate in online forums and communities to get advice, feedback, and inspiration. A few popular 3D printing communities include:
r/3Dprinting subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/ Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/
Follow these steps, practice regularly, and you'll be well on your way to becoming a 3D printing hero. Good luck!
This is good advice. Tinkercad is hardly more difficult than Microsoft Paint and can be easy enough to start doing some basic DIY modeling in an afternoon.
I don't think it is. It starts with the design phase, which is arguably the hardest part, especially if you have no clue how printers work. It's much easier to just start printing pre-made stuff and then learn how to design your own, also taking inspiration from the stuff you've already printed.
Agreed. I'd also argue that Blender is a poor suggestion compared to OnShape or Fusion360, which better suited for this type of design.
Could someone explain to me what you get from paying more for a 3D printer like this one instead of a "basic" model?
I have a Ender 3 V2 with self-leveling bed (without self-leveling it's not that great) and I use it a lot, enough to justify buying a better $1k+ printer but it's not clear what I get from spending that much money on it.
Is it printing speed, better materials, or something else entirely?
Reliability and speed.
An Ender 3 will produce good prints if it's well tuned, but there are a lot of quirks to the design (mostly as a result of cost-cutting) that can cause problems out of the box and will cause problems over time. Prusa printers are far from perfect, but they're trusted by a lot of print farm operators to run 24/7 with very little attention.
Modern CoreXY printers like the Bambu Lab or Voron machines are crazy fast compared to an Ender 3, without any real compromise in print quality or reliability. That isn't necessarily a big deal for hobbyists, but it's very useful when you're iterating on a design. For users who care about print speed, the issue is generally latency rather than throughput.
In 2023: not a ton. Maybe some better repeatability. You're likely to have fewer out-of-the-box problems; they spend a lot on quality control.
If you're just interested in the hobby, the Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro is, for my money, a fantastic entrypoint that you can get for under $250. (I own the larger version, the Plus, which has a bigger bed and turns the fans off when not printing; it's sub-$350.)
There's also the Sovol SV06 (and its larger Plus variant) in the same ballpark, though they're having some significant QC problems these days. It's also in the $200-$250 range. I have one of these too and it's pretty nice, but I have a first-run one before the QC problems started to rear up.
The Prusa stuff is absolutely better made than the Sovol stuff--though the Elegoo stuff is remarkably high-quality, especially for the price--but frankly it is emphatically not four times better. The delta shrinks further if (and in this crowd, maybe when) you install the Klipper firmware to replace the stock Marlin stuff; Prusa's custom Marlin builds are better than the competition, but Klipper beats it all hollow, and the performance benefits of Klipper on the SV06 and the Neptune 3 Pro/Plus are huge when it comes to faster acceleration and thus faster printing.
What QC issues have there been so far? The YouTune reviews have been positive so curious to find out more before I decide to buy or not.
I'm not an expert but I do own an MK3S+, from what I can tell:
- OOTB ready-to-print is a big one. There's a bit of a learning curve to calibrating everything on the MK3S+. It took me a few days to get mine dialed in and I'm not one of those people that's looking for perfect prints, I just needed it to mostly work. - Touch-screen + wifi + remote printing saves on setup: no SD card needed. I added an OctoPi to mine to achieve similar but that takes some tinkering and the OctoPi performance is spotty. - They're claiming a 70% decrease in print times
For that price tag I would add a couple of hundred dollars and go with the SnapMaker 2. The nice thing is, that it is capable to do also laser engravings and simple CNC milling. Only made good experience so far.
Everything I've read about the snapmaker suggests it's a "jack of all trades" and not really great at anything.
Never really read anything about it online. However we are using it at our company and are quite happy with it. The thing is running 24/7 and the printing results are really good after a first calibration. Just sharing my experience...
There’s also various upgrade kits from the 3 to 3.5, 3.9 and 4.
Here is the full kit https://www.prusa3d.com/product/original-prusa-i3-mk3-s-to-m...
Sadly at $579 that is almost the price of a full printer at $799.
May as well buy the full printer and sell the old one :(
The 3.5 upgrade looks compelling at 250 for the input shaping and pressure advance. Native Wi-Fi is a mild bonus if you already have an octopi setup. For the others, I agree. That’s a good chunk of the way to the price of a brand new P1P, which comes assembled.
Words come to mind when I think of using Prusas I have used: Reliable, Plug and Play, Workhorse, Industrial, Application
Every other 3D printer I have used: Calibration, Settings, Filament, Buggy, Spaghetti, Error.
Doubt this will be much of an improvement, there is little to improve upon with the MK3S+.
I wonder what their design decision was to continue with the bed sling design. CoreXY has hit the inflection point as the standard of next gen fdm printers. Still going to upgrade to mk4 instead of getting the xl though
Original Prusa MK4 kit Out-of-stock :(
I have a MK3S+ with MMU2S, bear clone upgrade, a head upgrade, Octoprint with 2 cameras, a temperature regulation chamber, and filament dryers.
The kit is not yet in stock, the longer blog post said it would be available in about two weeks.
Has anyone figured out remote slicing?
I’d love to just click print on a thingiverse page and have my printer start going.
You can get kinda close to that with OctoPrint running on a RaspberryPi. You'll still have to slice it manually, but you can upload the gcode and start the print from another browser tab.
If you have OctoPrint, you can make it even easier by setting up remote printing directly from PrusaSlicer, so you can upload and print with a single click. This is how I have my mini setup and it works well.
https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/prusaslicer/guide-config-pru...
Options have existed for awhile, but unless you have the specific slicing profile in mind (which is NOT the same for every file; some might need supports... some you might not care about quality, etc), it's not going to be one-size-fits-all.
As others have mentioned, the closet is using something like PrusaSlicer and using 'Upload and start print'. You do the slicing manually, then you just press a button and it uploads the gcode and starts printing.
There are so many variables which one might want to tweak depending on their specific use case that it seems a bit difficult to boil it down to one-click.
Especially with slicers still introducing all sorts of improvements which might need tuning of their own to adapt to older designs.
3dprinteros has an online slicer. So, assuming you are happy with the default profile and the printer is online, you can go "Upload stl" -> "next" -> "next" -> "next" -> "print".
The 70% print time reduction seems like a game changer. Any way to do this with the MK3S?
It says high speed printing will come in a firmware update... Have they released remote printing support for the Prusa mini yet?
The update with wifi support for Prusa mini was released ~3-4 months ago. Or are you referring to something else?
The Prusa mini has an ethernet port, so people assumed that you could hook it up to your LAN and print over the network.
As far as I can tell, that doesn't work yet, and the Prusa website [1] says:
> Full control of your printer will be added in future releases
Edit: It looks like remote printing was released in a Firmware update in Nov 2022 [2] and the documentation website wasn't updated yet.
[1]: https://help.prusa3d.com/article/prusa-connect-local-mini_13...
[2]: https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy/releases
These are nice and I have MK3 as well. However, I am doing most of my prints on HP MJF these days. It’s so much better and the cost is very reasonable. FDMs are good toys that require love. A lot of it (which can be good and bad).
I too would rather print on a hundred thousand dollar plus printer than a one thousand dollar one.
I still use Prusas for my robotics work because I can print multiple parts in a work day and iterate quickly. Either you are ordering parts and have to wait days for them to arrive, or your budget is very different from mine.
I did work at Google X and have a few MJF parts still from their in house machine. They are nice, but they are in a totally different league. My MJF benchy sits next to my Prusa MK3s at home.
>FDMs are good toys that require love. A lot of it (which can be good and bad).
Eh, that's not really the case any more. If you spend a sensible amount of money on a properly built machine, it's pretty close to fire-and-forget. Features like automatic bed levelling, PEI build plates, runout sensors, reliable direct-drive extruders and spaghetti detection have removed most of the annoyances in FDM printing.
I was a long-time FDM sceptic, but the technology has reached a level of maturity where it fills a useful niche. FDM machines are an increasingly common sight in machine shops, tool rooms and MRO facilities; in an environment that's staffed by people who are familiar with CAD/CAM, they can produce a useful subset of parts with an almost trivial level of cost and effort.
Unless your employer is extremely generous, you probably don't have an MJF or SLS machine that's just sitting idle in case you need a widget in a hurry. FDM thrives in the niche traditionally occupied by hand tools and that sloppy old Bridgeport - workholding one-offs, kludgy parts to keep a machine running until the field tech arrives, parts you only need in order to make other parts. An FDM printer is the mechanical embodiment of the phrase "close enough for government work".
Are you referring to a $250,000 HP MJF printer, or is there something else?
I have one of the first Prusas... and it sucks. It sucked from the very fist day. Faulty components. Material would not stick to the table. Warping. Miserable experience. It has been collecting dust ever since.
Yeah, old printers suck. I got my first printer in 2011. It sucked. New Prusas are fantastic printers and have been for a while.
> I have one of the first Prusas
I've had two Prusa mk3s for a few years now and they've been excellent. No problems at all, and now Prusa is my default recommendation. I'd run batch jobs on them for days for "customers" without concern.
At my work we have a Prusa mk3 as well as a $20k Markforged Mark2 printer, which can add carbon fibres for stiffness and strength. The Prusa is about as good when we don't need those features, similar speed and the slicer is actually better.
Times have changed. Never had an issue with MK3, compared to Ender impressions.
Can anyone compare FLSUN V400 to this one? I'm looking, and that seems to be awesome.
why is this better than ender 3 ?
God damn it - I just bought a MK3...
The announcement article says people who bought a Mk3S within the last month will receive a voucher for $150 or $200 which could be put towards the upgrade kit (or, I assume, filament etc).
https://blog.prusa3d.com/announcing-original-prusa-mk4_76585...
Thanks for the heads up!
why cant you just use ender 3 ?
Prusa printers were great many years ago. in 2023 I'd recommend buying any cheap Chinese brand. I bought an i3 MK3S+ and it almost made me lose my love for 3d printing, the machine is clearly stuck in the past, you don't even have remote printing out of the box, you face as many issues as you would with a cheap 3d printer, but you have to pay over $1k USD and wait months to get one.
Is this satire? I have a Prusa mini, and for a 3D printer it’s as close to “it just works” as you can get. My friend got an Ender3 and has spent countless hours modding it, replacing parts etc and he still can’t print PETG reliably while I print in any of the “normal” materials without worry at all. The stories I hear about cheap Chinese printers are like my friend with his Ender, just dialed up to 11.
I agree with this. Unless you love tinkering and modding, and don't mind spending more in the long run, a Prusa is pretty much the gold standard for reliability/consistency. I bought cheap, with the understanding that I'd be spending the money over time and maybe have a better machine in the end, but it hasn't really worked out that way. The cheap printers get costly pretty quickly. I've learned a lot, but it's all been by necessity while troubleshooting various issues that I wouldn't have had with a better printer. If you want to print, get a good printer. If you want to tinker with stepper motors firmware, extruders, hot ends, bed leveling sensors, etc, then something cheap might be a better intro. Going cheap got me started, but it was a much steeper learning curve, included a lot of frustration along the way, and was ultimately more costly.
That’s the opposite of my experience with i3/Mini compared to the Enders of the world. Cheap printers => eternal fix/mod hell, Prusa => still “just works.”
If you don’t care to become a part-time 3D printer tech, and value your time more than a few hundred dollars vs. dozens of hours spent trying to get it right, buy Prusa and get printing.
I have an Ender 3 that just worked. I one-clicked it on Amazon, it arrived later that day, I unboxed it, put it together, then started a 16 hour PETG print that was ready the next morning. That printer has since printed something almost every day for the past year without issue.
I have another Ender 3 that I upgraded. It has a Bigtreetech SKR Mini with a full color touch screen, a bed leveling sensor, and a Micro Swiss direct drive extruder. It just works as well, and probably doesn't benefit a ton from the fancy extruder or touch screen since I tend to use a web UI.
I also have a Prusa MK3S+. It performs equally well to the Enders.
For what I paid for the Prusa, I could have a 5+ Enders with upgraded 32bit controllers running Klipper. Or a lot of rolls of filament.
Come to think of it, I haven't even used the Prusa in over a month because one of its steppers or that stepper motor driver is failing, skipping steps or just going rogue. I haven't bothered looking into it yet because the Enders are easily keeping up with whatever I need printed.
I honestly think that when you buy a Prusa, you're buying the brand, and supporting a company who's founder helped shaped the industry we all benefit from. At least that's what I tell myself to justify the huge (by comparison) price difference.
Isn't Prusa one of the few open-source companies/printers? I thought they were expensive because they used high-quality parts.
super weird since it just worked for me, unlike creatility stuff