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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

> my eyes are on Prusa should I want another printer any time soon for any reason.

Have Prusa finally fixed their engineering? Prusa basically sitting inert on the engineering front is what allowed Bambu to leapfrog them.

Bambu made real engineering improvements: linear slides, servomotor for feed, accelerometer tuning, etc. Has Prusa finally decided to compete again? A lot of us are willing to give a company more money for being open source, but the basic product can't be too significantly inferior.

It looks like there is at least one linear slide on the Prusa Core One+ so that's a start...

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Bambu won with relentless free giveaways to every YouTuber on the planet, cheap prices, and a consumer friendly looking design.

I don’t think they earned it.

I suspect there is a huge number of people out there who bought them who don’t even know what else exists. They saw a YouTuber advertise one on a video making something and decided to buy that.

Prusa is equally guilty there, I think. Every time I see a Youtuber receiving multiple free Prusa printers, while I continue to save and delay on the high price of getting one myself, I curse them a bit more.

In the last two years I could easily count on one hand the number of Prusas I’ve seen given out. Yeah, it happens. Bambu is straight up sending them to everyone breathing. 3D printer people? Given Bambu. Tinkerers? Bambu. Lego channels? Yeah seriously Bambu. Way outside the traditional maker channels.

I’m not saying no one should give out free printers. But Bambu is carpet bombing YouTube, and they require the videos be turned into Bambu ads to do it. Having to show it multiple times, talk about its great features multiple times, etc. i’ve never seen the script but I’ve seen enough videos have conspicuously similar elements promoting the printer to know it must a condition.

The videos I’ve seen where people get a free XL mention that fact, maybe one other, but that’s about it. It’s not hammered on like Bambu seems to want.

I think you’re trying to rewrite history. The Bambu printers were really, really good for their price point when they came out. It wasn’t looks or giveaways. The printers were seriously much better hardware than what Prusa had at the time.

I was recommending Prusa to everyone who inquired about 3D printers for many years before Bambu launched, so I’m not unfamiliar with the market.

Trying to criticize Bambu for sending a lot of printers to YouTubers is ironic when Prusa has always done the same thing.

> I don’t think they earned it.

1) The people around me who bought a Bambu P1S or P2S weren't swayed by marketing. Some of them even owned Prusa machines. They bought those Bambu printers because they had products they needed printed, and the Bambu got it done while the Prusa failed prints and made them dork around with things.

2) The A1 minis are cheap and look good to consumers; they also work remarkably reliably. Prusa doesn't have anything even remotely in the same class. That is squarely the fault of Prusa.

3) A lot of people who don't know any better can go to Best Buy and buy a Bambu in stock, off the shelf, with a return policy. Again, the fault lies squarely with Prusa.

4) The Bambu printers had fundamentally better components like linear slides and servo motors, for example. Again, fault to Prusa.

Prusa got caught with their pants down and refused to adjust for far too long. Bambu did genuine engineering while Prusa rested on its laurels.

1) Some of them, yes. But also marketing.

3) is marketing and access to capital that Prusa don't have. 4) Prusa is of similar quality in my experience, or both machines have their problems for different reasons. I would need to run a scientific experiment.

There is no argument in which Bambu succeed solely on technical merit alone. Bambu can outspend Prusa due to access to venture capital funding and state support. That is a structural advantage that cannot be easily overcome.

Plus they have a massive labor cost advantage and a government heavily interested in pushing their players into all markets for dominance.

3) you could buy ender 3s for $99 at a Microcenter long before Bambu Labs was around.

Before I bought my first 3D printer from Bambu Labs I spent years researching various printers and every year before Bambu Labs I thought 3D printing was a joke with the sole exception being the Voron 3D printer.

Are you sure you know what's out there? Do you know Mosaic's Pallete 3 Pro or their Array industrial 3D printer?

> Have Prusa finally fixed their engineering? Prusa basically sitting inert on the engineering front is what allowed Bambu to leapfrog them.

This was the time when Prusa produced the MK3... printers. The MK4S was already a huge step forward: in my opinion - privacy topics aside - already better than Bambu's offerings for some applications (even though these applications were possibly not the ones that the masses care(d) about).

The Core One+ and the Core One L that were released after that are really good printers. Also the Prusa XL is a great printer for what it has been designed for if you give it some maintenance love (note however that the Prusa XL was from a time when less people wanted to print filaments that strongly profit from a heated chamber, so the Prusa XL was - in opposite to the Core One and Core One L - not designed with a focus on this).

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