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Comment by teruakohatu | Hacker News Reader

Not really asleep at the wheel. More like they invented the wheel, produced the open source slicer (a fork of the original slicer but vastly improved), which was then used by Bambu who could manufacture a printer for less in China rather than in the EU.

Prusa themselves run 600 printers. They are commercial grade. If I was using a printer for commercial design or prototyping I would go with Prusa. Not only because I would prefer my designs were not sent overseas by an always cloud connected printer.

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I ThouYS may have a point. It seems to me that Prusa were tempted to go after the prosumer/pro market and invested a lot of time and engineering horsepower into higher spec machines (Prusa XL, HT90) and resin printers (SL1S).

A lot of 3D printer companies have tried to go this route. It is not a strategy that tends to succeed.

I don't know their sales numbers, but I would be willing to bet that the ROI on those printers is nowhere near their bread-and-butter, high volume, mass market models.

I think their priority should have been to build something like the Core One (a P1S killer) rather than these expensive and risky forays into pro/prosumer land. The Core one is, realistically speaking, at least 24 months late to market. This was avoidable.

Everyone who operates a 3D printing farm, and who isn't a complete muppet, knows that closed down products like those of Bambu Labs are risky. Both because some 3D printer manufacturers kind of have a history of being dickish, and because the big boys are coming after Bambu labs with their patent lawsuits and whatnot. There are clear risks in dealing with companies like Bambu.

Dealing with Prusa involves significantly less risk. This reduced risk has value. You can charge a bit more for Prusa products due to the reputation of the company.

Most people I know who own 3D printers would rather have done business with Prusa. But Prusa only had the MK4 on offer and were burning cash on, let's be frank, irrelevant vanity projects.

Yes, Prusa were very much asleep at the wheel. Or at least, they had some strategic lapses in judgement. Let's hope they understand their customer base better now. I'd be happy to be a bit patient with them if it means we can get something that performs like Bambu printers, but from Prusa.

I'll even be willing to pay perhaps as much as 20% more just because I trust Prusa more than Bambu.

Thing is even with the core one finally releasing...its not a compelling product.

It costs more than the P1S - which lets fact it, thats what it should be compared to, not the X1C as the Core one doesn't have the stronger nozzle, nor any features that would make it a 'pro' level product.

They also still dont have an answer to the AMS, which is a big selling point for the Bambu's. The MMU3 may be better than the previous one but its just like putting lipstick on a pig - it's a mess, with tubes all over the place, spools dotted around, and then you've got to constantly babysit it and tune it.

Side by side the P1S with an AMS is still significantly cheaper and from a marketing perspective a much more visually pleasing offering.

Also worth mentioning that whilst the core one is about to come out, the MMU isnt actually even supported yet, and theres no timeline for when it will be.

Prusa are so far behind at this point and really shouldn't be. Chances are the core one is going to come out and just like the XL and MK4 will be extremely buggy for a good 6 months. How people still accept this is bonkers.

> not the X1C as the Core one doesn't have the stronger nozzle

Swapping nozzles makes the machine worth double?

Not at all, you're paying for a bunch of other differences on the X1, none of which the core one has, hence why its more comparable to the p1s but priced as if its comparable to the x1c. The spec sheets don't lie, it's a p1s competitor.

It would be interesting to know how many people buy printers with AMS or other multi-material capability. How big of a selling point is it really?

All we've really got to go by is Twitter and Reddit, and I rarely see a photo of a Bambu printer without an AMS on top of it or to the side. With it being cheaper to buy an A1 Mini, A1, or P1 WITH an AMS than a base model Prusa MK4 it's not surprising they've been so popular.

It's what makes me completely baffled how much Prusa have fumbled the Core One release. It should've had an enclosed AMS style product to go along side it. The MMU is utter junk in comparison to the AMS, god knows why they are still burrying their head in the sand over this.

I think it depends a bit on what markets we're talking about. Multi-material capability is mostly something I see hobbyists use. I rarely see it in an industrial setting.

And before people say that Prusa and Bambu printers are for the home market: sure. But I have seen consumer grade 3D printers in a lot of different industries. Prusa, Bambu lab and RatRig are the most common consumer grade printers I tend to see in industrial companies. (I don't think RatRigs are that common, but in a few companies that do mechanical design and they need larger volumes I've seen them being used)

Consumer grade FDM printers are cheap to buy, very cheap to run, reliable and produce decent quality prints. Also, they are far, far better than the FDM printers that you used to be able to get from the likes of Stratasys. For the price of one of the more upscale industrial machines you can buy a sizeable print farm of FDM printers.

When you do a lot of rough prototyping it is better to have a lot of cheap printers than just one advanced printer. Having lots of printers means more people can make more prototypes per day. And it reduces the need for buying more of the expensive printers and then have people have to wait for their turn.

This is why it would be interesting to know the sales figures for multi-material systems. I think the professional market might be less visible online, but they certainly buy a lot of printers.

Was quite important for me, screws hassle in switching spools.

> which was then used by Bambu who could manufacture a printer for less in China rather than in the EU.

I'm not at all convinced that Prusa's main issue is the cost. Yes, cost is a huge part of it, but the other one is also just usability. When the X1C launched and later the A1, there was a huge difference in usability between what Prusa and Bambu had. Prusa is catching up and that is good. But they will have to do more on that front still, and the higher cost is less of a concern. It becomes a problem when the more expensive printer is worse too.

I got my first 3d printer, an MK3S+ a year ago. Pretty late in its lifecycle, but I wanted to spend more time printing than fixing issues.

And it definitely worked! I got the kit and built it within 10h or so (very enjoyable time actually, like building LEGO as a kid) and have printed lots of stuff ever since. During that entire year I only had a clogged extruder one time and had to take that apart a bit. Any other issues I've had were either due to bad filaments or my own errors (not taking long overhangs or low adhesion seriously while slicing).

And all this time I have been using it completely offline with OctoPrint on an RPi.

I sold a mk3s because I could never get it to work to my satisfaction. I tried for weeks, trying everything I could find on the internet, using filament supplied by Prusa.

Eventually the print head crashed into a failed print overnight, fusing nearly the entire head inside a ball of PLA filament that formed after the printer happily carried on shoving out molten plastic.

I didn't have another 3d printer to print the replacement parts. I was so frustrated with it at that point I just got rid of it.

Until I can treat a 3d printer like a Brother laser printer (forget about it for 9 months at a time and then have it work perfectly when I need it with zero maintenance), I don't think I'll invest in another one.

You just described Bambu printers with your last paragraph. They just work.

Wow, so the actual content is also sent to the cloud? Not just authentication/metadata? Massive overreach. Imagine a inkjet/laser printer company sending every page you printed to their servers? (actually I wouldn't be surprised if HP does this already)

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