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Comment by conorbergin | Hacker News Reader

If you are a hobbyist or small business in desktop manufacturing you are basically forced to buy Chinese products.

I have never owned a Prusa, but I have owned several Creality and Bambu Labs printers, because I could get the same utility at half the cost. The same goes for soldering irons, linear actuators, oscillscopes, etc. I still buy European hand tools (Knipex, Wera, etc) because I know they won't break in a year, so they are good value in the long run.

Often the choice is whether to buy a used, last generation tool of eBay, or a brand new next-gen tool from China. The choice depends on how flawed the Chinese implementation is and the gap in utility between the generations.

The main problem with Chinese products is the lack of accountability. The same product will be sold under multiple brands, or by dropshippers, and you have no idea who actually made it, there are some strong Chinese brands that buck this trend, i.e. Bambu Labs. When you buy western tools you are buying peace of mind, something I can't currently afford.

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Prusa makes their products locally, the spare part situation is good, the company runs an open Makerspace in their basement, helps host conferences and has done a lot for Open Hardware in general. They also have offered consistent upgrade paths for old machines for a long time and the repairability in general is good. You can also talk to them. These things matter for purchase decisions. Same logic as per your Knipex and Wera example.

I actually have a Bambu Labs at home for occasional use but I would not consider anything but Prusas for a general-use desktop FDM printer in basically any more serious setting. This has been the situation for many years now (over the last 12 years or so, I've had to make a few purchase decisions for batches of 5-15 FDM printers as well as different single specialty ones).

I want so much to like Prusa ... but the Bambu printer at my local makerspace costs half as much and is better in every way than the MK3S+ sitting in my basement. I'm fully aware that this is the result of shrewdness on the part of the Chinese, plus incompetence in the West, and it's so frustrating.

I don't even care much about cost, but the Bambu Lab printers are simply better. I have been selling my Prusas (MK3S+ and XL), because they are just too much of a hassle. Prusa has fallen behind in R&D, the Bambu Lab printers work better, are more automated, have more nicely engineered features (having to babysit my XL and wipe the dripping filament off the print heads was such a disappointment).

And yes, I have had to fix both brands. The repairability of the Prusa is largely a myth, you still need to order replacement parts from Prusa, just as with other brands.

I wish Prusa would catch up with their R&D.

It cannot be overstated how critical good defaults and “just works” are for any kind of mass-market product.

Knobs and toggles to allow enthusiasts to dial in everything perfectly aren’t a bad thing. You don’t need make your product a featureless orb. That said, users shouldn’t need to tinker around with any of them to get up and running or for basic use.

This is where Bambu excels. More involved printers are simply not interesting for many people outside of the 3D printing sphere, even if they’d become enthusiasts after buying a printer. They need a “gateway drug” of a printer that’s dead simple to use and get good results out of to even consider buying one. After that they might go down the rabbithole and seek out more technical options, but jumping straight to tinkerville is just too far of a leap for most.

I got into 3D printing a year ago and decided on the Bambu. I started with a P1P to see if I'd like it, got an AMS, got an enclosure in the span of about 9 months. Would I have saved money if I got all of that at once? Of course. But I didn't know if I'd like 3D printing. The P1P worked so well and so easily, it was a "gateway" and did suck me in.

Case in point, the AMS. The Bambu system is so clean. It sits on top of the printer even if you don't have an enclosure. The Prusa system requires you to lay the spools out on runners on the table, taking up a ton of desk space.

Prusa is good enough for me. I owned both Bambu and Prusa latest generation printers. Both products got their shares of downtime so from my perspective either are pretty interchangable.

It’s not better in every way. For long term reliability and ability to repair and upgrade, Prusa is far superior.

If your hobby is 3d printERS sure (and more power to you), but for many people (me included) the hobby is 3d printING

The point is not that Prusas need constant repair. The point is that they are reliable workhorses and repairable and usually also long-term-upgradeable.

But you get better results from the Bambu. I care about the product of the manufacturing more than I care about the tools.

That depends on what you’re doing. For many things Prusa printers produce higher quality prints.

> For many things Prusa printers produce higher quality prints.

I have yet to have this happen, despite a lot of trying. The Bambu just works and the results are better. The Prusa requires constant recalibration and tuning, and still produces an inferior looking product. I'd love to be proven wrong here.

It's probably the case that somebody with a ton of experience can squeeze better results out of a Prusa ... but that kind of proves my point.

My Prusa just always works. I spend virtually zero time doing maintenance or any kind of tuning.

If you’re spending that much time fiddling with it, sounds like you either have much a much better eye for print quality than I do or you got a dud.

It makes a big difference if you're painting the prints - things that look okay out of the printer will turn into a disaster once paint brings out all the details.

People are getting great quality out of the Bambus now - basically a slight tier below Resin, without any of the health issues that require PPE.

https://youtu.be/R8fuNDTQJCY?t=725

(Old video, state of the art has advanced since. Also, the issue with his other printer turned out to be a simple maintenance item (dirty pulley) the video maker skipped over in Bambu's basic troubleshooting guide.)

If you want to print warhammer miniatures or similar the Prusa core 1 is equivalent to a Bambu X1. And it’s the same price.

We are a version behind and the Mk4 is supposed to be better. I think that would be a fairer comparison to the Bambu?

I’m currently working on an upgrade to 3.5, which should at least give me better speed.

You’re 2 essentially 2 versions behind. The Core One is basically equivalent to the X1C and it’s the same price. $300 cheaper if you buy the kit instead of the assembled version.

Cool, but that's not why people buy things. I don't buy a bike for the pleasure of getting to repair it when I inevitably eat shit on a gravel road.

While you're busy ordering parts for your Prusa and taking it apart, people just buy another A1 or P1P for basically nothing. While you're spending 5 hours trying to stabilise your printing plate and ensuring your nozzle isn't vomiting out super melted <weird filament you got>, the bambulabs go haha printing goes brrr thanks for feeding me shale oil it'll work great. If you're 3d printing enough that your printer breaks, you are 100% making enough money to just eat the costs of another printer.

Are you confusing Prusa with older Enders? If you buy assembled, they just work like any other modern printer. In fact they're known for long-term reliability. If there's any detraction, it's on the basis of printing speed, price, and availability, but not on fragility.

Prusa isn't like that. It just works. I've been printing years without any issue or repair.

You don't care how expensive and complicated it is to repair and maintain your mountain bike (especially if you plan to eat gravel a lot)? And your take on machines is that you better throw away a bunch of working 3D printers and replace them instead of upgrading the old ones and adding new ones as needed? Hope you have a lot of money to burn in your personal and business life. ;)

> You don't care how expensive and complicated it is to repair and maintain your mountain bike (especially if you plan to eat gravel a lot)?

I have 3 bicycles at the moment and use one as my main way of buying groceries.

My ideal bicycle ownership experience is: I change the brake fluid every few years, I spray the chain whenever I remember to, I change tires and brake pads when they wear out, and I never, ever have to do any other maintenance.

I don't care about the bicycle itself, I care about what the bicycle lets me do.

What's your point? As you basically yourself, there is a need for a bit of maintenance on machinery because it's not really possible to design that away completely. That is, unsurprisingly, the case with bikes, Prusas, Bambus and pretty much all other machines.

Another user made the point: maybe you care about 3D printERS. The vast majority of people care about the printed end result, and buying more printers in the case of massive failure (which is already rare) makes more sense. If you're 3D printing for fun at home, a Bambu will basically never break.

Spending 3 days tracking down the parts for a Prusa, taking it apart, fixing it, realising some settings have gone to shit, fixing it? I hope you have a lot of time to burn in your personal and business life :)

As mentioned in my parent comment, I've made purchase decisions for FDM desktop printers since before Prusa (as a company and product) was around and I've been responsible for 3D printers from a lot of different manufacturers over the years. I'm not attached to any particular company or anything like that.

If I needed more "quality" (in the sense of less visible layer lines) than what comes out of a modern Bambu, Prusa (or some other modern FDM printers), I would use another manufacturing process instead of FDM printing. And no idea where you are in the world but I'm in Europe where I can get Prusa parts from different vendors very quickly and reliably and most of them (including Prusa themselves) have processes in place for B2B and public sector transactions which can be important for professional life as well.

Again: I'm not saying that Bambu printers are not very good in many ways. As I said in my parent comment: I have one. Doesn't change my other points.

Okay, but that is a complete misrepresentation of Prusa machines. You can buy a Prusa today and it'll spit out prints like any other modern printer. And this has been the case for a long time now. Only a small minority of people actually tinker with their machines. It seem like you're attacking a complete projection.

But why are you using the MK3S+ as a comparison point, instead of an MK4/S or Core One?

Because I, unlike many people here apparently, possess a finite quantity of money.

Yeah but you’re comparing the cost to a current gen Prusa and the performance to a last gen Prusa.

You need to pick one generation to compare both.

he was comparing what he had. If you sent him the latest prusa printer, i bet he will compare it for you.

> want so much to like Prusa ... but the Bambu printer at my local makerspace costs half as much and is better in every way than the MK3S+ sitting in my basement. I'm fully aware that this is the result of shrewdness on the part of the Chinese, plus incompetence in the West, and it's so frustrating.

Then maybe don’t phrase it like this. And also acknowledge that it’s a nonsense comparison. People that don’t know Prusa model numbers will just assume the OP is talking about comparable products.

“I really want to like Macs, but the new Lenovo I got for work is better and costs half as much as the 5 year old Mac I have in my basement. Why is the west so incompetent?”

Let me clarify. I paid $325 for a used MK3S+ and that seems to be the going rate. The printers at the Makerspace are A1 and A1 minis. The former cost $399 or less on sale, and the latter definitely under $300 always. So yes, the comparison seems fair.

1. You said the Bambu costs half as much when it actually costs more. $399 vs $325

2. I wouldn’t pay more than $200 for a MK3S+ because it’s now 4 generations out of date. Used markets are often overpriced for rapidly advancing technology because most sellers are basing their pricing on what they paid originally not what the item is worth today.

Many times it’s just not worth the hassle for people to sell for what they are actually going to get, so you see a ton of overpriced items just sitting there not selling.

But also I do care about ease of use. I imagine that someone who wants to run their printer for many thousands of hours or who is going to do a lot of tinkering might pay more for a used Prusa than I would.

If we’re talking new comparable printers out today. The Core One and the X1C. They have very similar print quality. The Prusa is $50 cheaper, and the Prusa has many additional benefits.

Chinese government subsidies aside, mass produced 3D printers are always going to enjoy the economies of scale that are difficult to replicate with kits. Prusa printers are awesome pieces of engineering, but sometimes you can just get equally good results for a fraction of the price, in a much more user-friendly "plug and play" fashion, once you have a million of them rolling out of a factory instead of 10,000 kits full of 3D printed parts.

If you ever need to fix a Bambu printer, your opinion may change.

I can't speak for the enclosed models but the A1's self-diagnosis feature and troubleshooting wiki make most repairs and maintenance pretty easy.

I thought I could fix AMS mainboard by re-soldering connectors, so reached out to support and they helped me find which connectors I needed to buy. Unfortunately, there was more damage, that could be fixed by re-soldering them, so I simply replaced the mainboard and it was easy.

I get the feeling that it is not actually the tech involved in the printers that distinguishes Bambu from Prusa, I think it's more about the supply chain and the distribution network. If I go to Prusa right now to order a core one printer from the US it tells me this: Estimated lead time 1–2 weeks

That means it's not even going to ship, from Europe, until then... And guess what? The shipping can range anywhere from 60$ to 300$ depending on the printer... Bambu has warehouses on US soil where they maintain stock of frequently purchased items and their printers/parts can be at my door in a matter of days with shipping ranging from 20$ to 100$ for their largest printer. It seems small but when you run a business that is reliant on 3d printers - these things matter. I think Prusa just honestly needs to focus on their distribution chain.

Like I really have considered Prusa printers for my business many times, but they either have had crazy lead times/shipping times or the prices out the door just don't make sense.

You could also buy from PrintedSolid, which is a US company that Prusa bought. Looks like they have a free shipping deal, but the lead time is similar for the Core One. Maybe when they catch up with demand, they’ll keep it in stock in the US? I don’t see a lead time for the Mk4.

https://www.printedsolid.com/collections/3d-printers

I tried to buy a Prusa. Even after I paid them they couldn’t tell me when the order would ship or be delivered.

Instead they pointed me at some webpage with a lead time table? Pretty sure the table also changed/slipped over the eight days I waited for them to get their act together.

If someone from Prusa is reading this: I don’t want to hear about your internal manufacturing lead times. Especially if they’re going to slip. Commit to a ship date you know you can meet and deliver.

When I found out that Prusa had absolutely no clue what the ship date would be, I cancelled my order and went with Bambu.

Chinese stuff these days has pulled far ahead of the Harbor Freight reputation of my youth. I can't remember the last time I've seen a proper "Engrish" instruction manual, most of the things are well designed and well built. Meanwhile, the "good old American brands" seem to just be selling out for cheaper and better profit margin products, so you'll be ending up with Chinese stuff anyways, which is sometimes worse than the actual Chinese brands.

The Chinese stuff is now more often than not better. You cannot be the world's manufacturer for 30 years and not get good at making stuff.

I always think it is amusing that some people make the mistake of thinking that the Chinese can only make cheap crap(forgetting all their cell phones and apple laptops come from there).

The American market only wants to buy cheap crap so that is what is made and sent. Usually though the skills involved in making something cut-rate are just as applicable to making something top notch.

American manufacturing skills have atrophied as it has moved to a service economy while as you say the Chinese have been boosting manufacturing for 30 years.

I was thinking a snarky thought reading another comment in the chain: "DJI and Anker aren't Chinese brands, because they're good and they have brand reputation".

"Chinese" in my ape brain is Harbor Freight junk, or cheap houseware from Amazon with names like "KRLFOCGY".

Honestly, even harbor freight has some pretty good tools these days. They do have disposable level crap, but even one level above that is quite serviceable.

One thing I've noticed and have also seen on Project Farm YT tool reviews is that Harbor Freight tiers tend to be by country: lowest end is often from mainland China but the next higher tier is from Taiwan.

Some of their icon tools literally beat snap-on

I honestly believe Harbor Freight toolboxes are the best value on the market

I think it makes more sense to separate "cheap" from "crap". US/EU never valued East Asian labor at equal value. Rather than complaining, East Asia just "let them have it" and it wrecked industrial base for both in the long run.

I mean, it doesn't make sense that typical guidance units for missiles are more expensive than DJI drones. Everyone thinks Chinese products got a little more expensive lately, so they must have quit doing cheap part of cheap and crap, and it's just my gut feeling, but, I would be not so sure about that.

Maybe America needs a planned economy and minority ”re-education” camps to boost production.

Or maybe just better accounting for the total lifecycle and disposal of products. If a company had to pay a bond to cover the long term impact of their shit products I bet we'd see higher quality goods.

Good news everyone!

It's very common to have multiple chinese brands competing against each other, throwing out better products every year... with western companies maybe having one or two products.

See something like Roomba vs. Xiaomi/Roborock/Deebot/Ecovacs/etc.

This is a real example how western IP stagnates western economy and it's making it not competitive - the IP law makes it easy for incumbents to kill of iteration and competition.

It shouldn't be a surprise to people that quality isn't there if you buy a nameless thing at the cheapest possible price, regardless of where it's made.

On the other hand, China has major brands in many markets. DJI drones, Anker chargers and cords, Lenovo computers, Polestar cars. TCL TVs and Haier appliances (which I believe also owns the GE consumer brand) are also very common. Roborock vacuums seem to be considered a better value than Roomba now.

It's an interesting counterpoint to the old cliche about paying for brands. Clearly buying on price alone is foolish, as is not considering the reputation of the maker of a product.

It's the exact same thing that happened with Japanese cars. Believe it or not, Japanese autos used to be considered cheap junk in the 70s and early 80s.

Same thing with Germany in the 19th century: "inferior copies of English designs". Those who don't know history will be forced to repeat past mistakes.

I've recently been putting together a large aquarium build for the first time in ~15 years, and it's really shocking how good and how cheap the Chinese stuff is now. Of particular note is lighting, where the price/W on non-Chinese equipment is 4-10x the Chinese equivalent.

> a proper "Engrish" instruction manual

At what point do the instruction manuals stop catering to Engrish and start focusing on 汉字?

Recently I've bought a Xiaomi beard trimmer on AliExpress and its box and manual are 100% in Chinese. Google Translate took care of it.

Why did I buy a Xiaomi beard trimmer on AliExpress? It looks like all western brands decided to keep using NiMH batteries on their designs, and I really don't like my trimmers dying in the middle of a cut and me, now with a half-shaved beard, having to wait 12 hours for it to recharge. Xiaomi did something very revolutionary: used a Li-Ion battery.

Interesting. I never cared about what my Japanese beard trimmer uses as battery, because whenever it dies on me (which is long after prominently lighting a red LED), it works instantly fine connected to the wall to let me finish my cut, and can take however long it wants to recharge after that ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

You see, some Philips MBA decided to pinch 0.0001 pennies and forgo installing a red LED to warn the user the battery is drained, and a diode to allow it to run from the wall.

Happy to give some profit to their competitor.

I quite honestly fear this day. (But for other reasons, eg we might have to go to china for top conferences, universities, jobs, etc.).

It's already here. All the best cheap microcontrollers have datasheets written purely in Chinese. Most Westerners don't use them because the datasheets are written purely in Chinese, and therefore, Western products with cheap microcontrollers use inferior ones.

I myself have been preparing for that day, learning simplified Mandarin and trying to expose myself to Chinese online presence. :)

I'm not sure that China will ever "overtake" the US in global technology mindshare, but they are getting closer, and if that ever properly happens, I'm quite ready, and if not, at least I get a whole new language out of it and a better understanding of a huge culture that felt a lot more out of reach before.

For context, I'm from Russia, so maybe it's easier for me to trade one foreign hegemony for another than for many others..

> I'm not sure that China will ever "overtake" the US in global technology mindshare

Is that adequately measured from the English side of the internet? I honestly don't know. I don't participate in Chinese technology communities online and have zero basis to measure any amount of tech mindshare that it has. I do know that a number of English based tech forums are entirely dependent on a select few microcontrollers for their builds. Surely on the Chinese side of things there are discussions going on about who is building the next cheapest microcontrollers and how they achieve it?

I do know that absolutely nothing that we have in the "West" can compare to what hardware hackers can accomplish in Shenzhen thanks to the overwhelming amount of electronics knowledge and availability in the area. I have to wonder how much of that mindshare "we" actually have.

I came across this[1] recently. It compares a Harbor Freight Icon ratchet ($70) to a Snap-On ratchet ($195). They are essentially using the same design and same parts. The Snap-On replacement part kit fits inside an Icon ratchet. Oh and the Icon is performs better than the Snap-On for a fraction of the price. The Gearwrench ratchet ($45) was even more impressive as it's only slightly worse than either of the others and not necessarily in ways most people will ever experience.

Some brands of cheap tools are getting really fucking good. There's still a lot of garbage out there though.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBItmykqu0I

Forced I don't know... But of course the financial incentives are very strong, as in many categories the Chinese brands have remarkable and sometimes astonishing value-for-money. But for a small business, the cost of these tools might be quite low relative to manpower anyway, so paying 2x might not be a big deal. We got 8 Prusa machines at our local hackerspace, and 10 at previous startup lab I was at.

I have Creality Ender3 v3 and Prusa mk4s and they are not the same, you can get them to produce same quality, but ender requires more tinkering and I have had more failed prints.

Creality software is awful, you get no firmware updates for a year and then you get 4 on same day, like do they even test before release? Slicer is also buggy and default settings seem to be max everything, so its loud and fast and has print quality issues.

When I was building the prusa kit, I kept thinking that this is how you should make a product, the machine feels well thought out and documentation is great. Of course prusa is 3x the cost of ender.

Bambu is who's winning this space and largely took 3d printing from a hobby for its own sake to "it's another tool in your shop".

My bambu was FAR cheaper than a comparable prusa, and I took it out of the box, put filament in it, and it started producing effectively perfect prints immediately.

I just got a Creality K1 Max and I'm over the moon with it. Granted, my only frame of reference was a Prusa i3 knockoff kit I bought almost 10 years ago, upgraded with 3d printed parts, replaced the power supply with one from an old server, and added dual extruders. Basically If I wanted to use it, I'd have to tinker for hours to get a print started, and printing anything too large would almost definitely fail, or warp off the bed.

I've done multiple prints on the K1 Max where I started it, went to bed, and it was there, finished for me in the morning.

Since I'm familiar with the process, I just jumped straight to using OrcaSlicer and never touched creality's software. It definitely feels like Chinese hardware is progressing much quicker than their software.

I need an enclosed design and wanted to go coreXY, and Prusa's offering in that category was out of my budget, but they seem like a fabulous company.

Hobbyists aren’t forced to buy anything.. I blame youtube for turning hobbies into an exercise at buying stuff. Affiliate links are one of the few ways to make money online and the reason why the majority of videos in the hobby space seem to be gear reviews. Yet as a hobbyist chances are you won’t practice enough to outgrow your tools anyway, and neither do you have the economic incentives of business owners.

Youtube may have exasperated the situation, but gear obsession in hobbies certainly predates even the internet, much less youtube. It seems kind of natural, mastering your tools takes time and maybe talent. Buying them just takes money.

I remember the original Dawn of the Dead poking fun at it when they raid the gun store in the mall:

Peter: Ain't it a crime.

Stephen: What?

Peter: The only person who could miss with this gun is the sucker with the bread to buy it.

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