I have enjoyed my Ender 3v2 but my extruder and hot end are acting up and I am ready for a more reliable printer. I like the simplicity of Bambu but it seems to come at the cost of customization. Prusa seems to be more open and extendable, but at the cost of increased complexity. What would you recommend?
I bought Prusa.
I hope to be able to still use the machine in 10 years.
I’m much less confident that BambuLabs machines will be able to do that, than Prusas. This is because of multiple reasons:
There are design decisions of Bambu that I do not trust (bushings on the x-axis on p1 and x1 machines), which track with the decisions of DJI which I didn’t like and where many of Bambus people came from.
I much prefer to support a comparatively independent european maker than a chinese-bank backed one.
I do trust Prusa much more to offer long-term support than Bambu
I prefer to support Open Source, and I do think Bambu is still violating licenses (which imho should not be supported/accepted)
I do not like Bambus AMS design. Their reliability costs quite a lot of filament.
But Bambu has Prusa beat on price for similar performance. By a significant margin.
And to further your question, I’m not sure Bambus Printers have that much more “simplicity” in use than Prusas. Especially if you buy pre-built. Both are rather plug and play.
In short: I fear / believe that Bambu is exactly the kind of company that ruins products. Underbid your competition, cut costs at the customers expense. Why provide updates to your old products when you make a new gen? Why use a part that lasts longer than the required period for repairs? etc.
The fact that they started regular sales this year (I Believe before was pre-order?! would have to check) and already have 3 different platforms out (X, P and A) is quite a lot of fragmentation. Maybe they designed for that from the start, but… we’ll see. AMS and AMS lite also seem quite different.
They may even be the worst kind, that underbids the competition and takes development costs as losses to destroy the competition until you are an effective monopoly, at which point you can fuck everything up way more (increase prices, cut quality / development etc)
In Fairness, they may also not be. They may also have excellent long-term reliability and support. Maybe in 5 years P1 and X1 still get feature updates. Maybe the design decisions turn out to be outstanding.
All great points. I am selling my Mk3 and just got a Mk4. The speed on the Mk4 is amazing. Build quality is definitely better on the Mk4 from the Mk3.
The bamboo is pretty full of thin plastic parts that you can’t print to replace (something I did a few times with my Mk3). The not flat bed thing is weird and tells me they have a manufacturing issue that they worked around in software instead of truly fixing. I really hate the IP theft issue, so that is a deal breaker for me. Ultimately, the printer seems like a decent product but I also don’t trust that it will last a decade.
The only thing I think the Mk4 is missing is a camera / octoprint support, but I can live without those.
The only thing I think the Mk4 is missing is a camera / octoprint support, but I can live without those.
Firmware 5.1 enabled octoprint support.
Not as far as they’d like, but it works. From memory what is missing is some support when Local and Octoprint mix (i.e. when you print locally, octoprint can’t stop the print. Bit annoying but far from a dealbreaker imho)
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I bought Prusa.
I hope to be able to still use the machine in 10 years.
I’m much less confident that BambuLabs machines will be able to do that, than Prusas. This is because of multiple reasons:
But Bambu has Prusa beat on price for similar performance. By a significant margin.
And to further your question, I’m not sure Bambus Printers have that much more “simplicity” in use than Prusas. Especially if you buy pre-built. Both are rather plug and play.
In short: I fear / believe that Bambu is exactly the kind of company that ruins products. Underbid your competition, cut costs at the customers expense. Why provide updates to your old products when you make a new gen? Why use a part that lasts longer than the required period for repairs? etc.
The fact that they started regular sales this year (I Believe before was pre-order?! would have to check) and already have 3 different platforms out (X, P and A) is quite a lot of fragmentation. Maybe they designed for that from the start, but… we’ll see. AMS and AMS lite also seem quite different.
They may even be the worst kind, that underbids the competition and takes development costs as losses to destroy the competition until you are an effective monopoly, at which point you can fuck everything up way more (increase prices, cut quality / development etc)
In Fairness, they may also not be. They may also have excellent long-term reliability and support. Maybe in 5 years P1 and X1 still get feature updates. Maybe the design decisions turn out to be outstanding.
I’ve had my mk1 kit for nine years. I expect I’ll get another nine out of it before it goes to college.
All great points. I am selling my Mk3 and just got a Mk4. The speed on the Mk4 is amazing. Build quality is definitely better on the Mk4 from the Mk3.
The bamboo is pretty full of thin plastic parts that you can’t print to replace (something I did a few times with my Mk3). The not flat bed thing is weird and tells me they have a manufacturing issue that they worked around in software instead of truly fixing. I really hate the IP theft issue, so that is a deal breaker for me. Ultimately, the printer seems like a decent product but I also don’t trust that it will last a decade.
The only thing I think the Mk4 is missing is a camera / octoprint support, but I can live without those.
Firmware 5.1 enabled octoprint support.
Not as far as they’d like, but it works. From memory what is missing is some support when Local and Octoprint mix (i.e. when you print locally, octoprint can’t stop the print. Bit annoying but far from a dealbreaker imho)
Thanks for the correction!