There are too many cheap clones. Too much stealing of the open source work. This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't.
I don't buy Prusa because they are OSH, I buy them because they are great printers. They are an open platform, if not open source. Which is good enough for my needs. If these changes they are making will allow Prusa to keep producing world class devices at reasonable prices, then more power to them.
And yes, I know some people hate Prusa or have had major issues. But they do a lot to move 3D printing forward, rising tide lifts all boats and all that jazz. We want all respectable and reputable 3D printer companies to succeed - because then everyone wins.
diggan 1 hours ago [-]
> Too much stealing of the open source work
How do you steal Open Source? Can Pruse no longer use it themselves or something? Sounds wrong calling "companies creating products from other projects" stealing when the intention from the beginning is that others can freely use the created project for whatever.
> This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't
Isn't those examples that Open Source builds great software? Companies trying to wrestle control of projects after making them Open Source doesn't mean what's already there didn't have a great impact.
mschuster91 1 hours ago [-]
> How do you steal Open Source? Can Pruse no longer use it themselves or something? Sounds wrong calling "companies creating products from other projects" stealing when the intention from the beginning is that others can freely use the created project for whatever.
Thing is, the fundamentals of Open Source have changed over the last decades - and the assumptions people made Back Then no longer hold. Let me expand a bit:
Back in the late 80s and 90s, up until the early '00s a lot of popular open source software was developed by academic institutions or with scientific grants. For them, it didn't matter - the money way paid for anyway and sharing source code fits with the ideals of science. In some projects it's very clear that they have an academic history - my to-go example is OpenStack, the myriads of knobs it has absorbed over the years all come from universities wishing to integrate whatever leftover hardware they had.
But ever since academic funding all but dried up, life has gotten difficult. We got a few rockstar projects that manage to survive independently (cURL), godknowshow (OpenSSL), with consulting services (sqlite with their commercial comprehensive test suite, mysql, mariadb, psql), on corporate contributions (Linux kernel, ReactJS/Facebook), on donations (everything in the FOSS graveyard better known as Apache) or, like Prusa, on hardware they sell. The general idea behind many projects is the implicit assumption: if you use a project commercially and the developer has a commercial support platform, be so kind and pay the original developers a bit so they can improve upon the project.
The problem is when juggernauts with deep money pits, be it companies with net market values in the trillions of dollar range or companies being under influence of the CCP, come on the field and take the hard work of others to make money without contributing back either financially or with code. Legally, they are absolutely in the clear, if the project isn't under AGPL, CC-NC or other such terms. ElasticSearch got ripped off that way by AWS for example.
It's not stealing in a traditional sense, but it is breaking the ethos and expectations.
kiba 51 minutes ago [-]
Proprietary companies always have a license to print money.
People who do open source don't usually do it for the money or have the expectation of just making a living from it, never mind making a lot of money. They don't even charge a nominal price for their software. So you have a mismatch between funding and enthusiasm.
bityard 25 minutes ago [-]
Yes. Too many people in this community seem to be believe that Open Source is a marketing tool and somehow even more bizarrely, a business model. And then pretend to be disappointed when they find out that it is a poor fit for both and that people and businesses aren't tripping over each other to throw money at them.
Open source is a vehicle for giving the world something neat and useful, with no other obligations implied. (Other than perhaps the continuation of said freedom for downstream users, a la GPL.)
Miraste 46 minutes ago [-]
The main issue with this move is that it's not going to cut down on clones very much. Chinese 3D printer companies already clone all kinds of parts from other companies that don't provide design files, including stuff very similar to the now-proprietary extruder. They won't need to spend much effort replicating it. The people who lose out the most are open-source hardware hobbyists.
PittleyDunkin 1 hours ago [-]
> This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't.
I would argue that redis and elastic are signs that open source does work, albeit not well as a for-profit business. Open source hardware has a completely different set of problems.
delichon 1 hours ago [-]
> keep producing world class devices at reasonable prices
At the current price points can you really recommend a Core One over an X1 to someone with a tight budget? Without resorting to arguments about open platforms and the big picture?
Kirby64 1 hours ago [-]
The better comparison is a Core One vs a P1S/P1P. You can almost buy two P1 printers for the price of a Core One.
bangaladore 1 hours ago [-]
Disagree. The better comparison is Core One vs X1E. As frankly the main selling point of the X1E is Active Chamber Heating.
With your logic you can also say you can just get 2 P1S printers instead of an X1C, but an X1C is still sells just fine.
Kirby64 53 minutes ago [-]
The Core One doesn’t have chamber heating, it just has chamber exhaust. Not the same thing.
bangaladore 1 hours ago [-]
Firstly, neither of these are "budget". I think if you need a budget, you a probably best sticking to a Prusa Mini, Bambu P1s or A1 Mini.
Without a doubt. An X1 is 1k USD. This is 1,199 USD.
Truly this is a competitor to the X1E though which costs 2.5k (!!!) with basically the only notable addition being the heated chamber (which the Core 1 comes with for free).
I have multiple Prusa Mark 3s, a Prusa XL and an X1 carbon, and frankly I only use the Prusa XL nowadays (and sometimes the Mark 3s).
Bambu makes a good printer, but it has lots of annoying issues and proprietary annoyances. I also don't like them as a company, but that wouldn't prevent me from buying another if I needed and used it.
In my experience Prusa printers "just work" more often than Bambu printers do.
Kirby64 26 minutes ago [-]
Frankly, the only advantage I see from a spec list for the Core One is a chamber exhaust (not heater, just exhaust).
Compared to a P1P it’s missing a camera.
Compared to the X1C it’s missing a camera, the LiDAR, and carbon rods.
Also, the AMS solution on Bambu printers is much better than the MMU by Prusa.
Miraste 51 minutes ago [-]
It's worth noting that the X1 is on sale today. Normally it's $1199 as well.
kiba 1 hours ago [-]
I took a look at the price. They're almost comparable if X1/AMS combo wasn't (always?) on sale.
1 hours ago [-]
tourmalinetaco 25 minutes ago [-]
Why would I recommend anyone buy a printer that cannot be repaired? That’s just throwing money away and creating e-waste. Even a Prusa Mk4 makes more sense than the X1 when you consider repairability.
kiba 1 hours ago [-]
Those clones that you speaks of are often of questionable quality. Unless we're talking about creality printers, which were open source(at least with the Ender 3), and are also low quality.
But my question is "what's the point?" If you have an open source project and yet the commmunity is largely uninvolved in its development, why do you even care to be open source?
Yes, freedom is important, but hardly anybody but developers take advantage of it. The most important aspect of FOSS is that it's a marker of a project/product that won't take advantages of its users with shady business practices, and that's probably the most important thing about it.
serf 54 minutes ago [-]
I tried to stick to Prusa stuff through the release of Bambu products in order to support the notion of a group that can give-take within the OSH concept -- now they offer zero value comparably.
The Bambu products are better if you're willing to buy into proprietary stuff and you're not willing to put the leg-work into building something proper-open like a railcore.
Really sucks, but the writing has been on the walls for some time -- it has been harder and harder to find source/designs/models/etc regarding Prusa machines since the MK3 period.
antirez 51 minutes ago [-]
For people in the 3D printing space, the most important points so far are not the fact printers are designed on open source hardware, but:
1. That they are easy to fix. This is still the case with Prusa, and that's a good thing, together with their great support.
2. That replacement parts are relatively cheap. This has been an issue with Prusa: open hardware helps very little if you need to pay an unreasonable amount of money to get a nozzle and heatbreaker or so. Bambulab parts are much cheaper, even if the printer is completely closed.
3. The OSS nature & hackability of software: that, yes, mattered a lot, and Bambulab, Prusa itself, and many other companies benefitted from reliable and powerful open source software to drive 3D printers (slicers, firmware). This had the effect of accelerating the field.
A bigger danger than closed hardware is patents. Also in the field of 3D printing the feeling is that the small incentive to innovate (Prusa was really stagnating before Bambulab) was also a result of providing the same value instantaneously to all the competitors.
I believe in open source as an accelerator of society. I also like open hardware. However both open source and open hardware can fail in certain setups, and in this case it is better to move away.
daft_pink 2 hours ago [-]
Bambu obviously killed it.
longtimelistnr 2 hours ago [-]
I follow 3d printing pretty close but can't claim to be an expert. With that said, I truly thought they served different consumer segments with the only overlap being those who bought a Prusa pre-assembled beleving it to be a one stop shop machine. Bambu is a black box from China for an end user with little knowledge or care of maintaining a machine themselves (down to printing replacement parts)
Kirby64 1 hours ago [-]
Prior to Bambu, prusa was as close as you could get to “put it together and it’s ready to print” including printer profiles and such. Bambu did this cheaper and better, and much faster, so basically took that entire market from Prusa.
For anyone that wants a printer that “just works”, there’s little reason to choose Prusa over Bambu at this point.
kiba 1 hours ago [-]
Prusa grew up with the market. Their printers sold very well, that I had to wait for quite awhile for my (MK4) kit to get delivered.
girvo 1 hours ago [-]
> the only overlap being those who bought a Prusa pre-assembled beleving it to be a one stop shop machine
Thats a surprisingly large segment of the market, though.
longtimelistnr 1 hours ago [-]
Yes I agree, I suppose my point was as soon as Bambu went mainstream that entire Prusa appeal was killed
bmitc 1 hours ago [-]
Bambu Labs' quality and feature set is much, much higher and larger than Prusa's, and the price is right. Prusa bet on people wanting to continually fiddle with their 3D printer, but that segment is already niche and likely dying off.
kiba 1 hours ago [-]
Most fiddling these days have to do with the printing surface being unclean. I also experienced issues with my X1C too.
But the most common problem is the surface is unclean(on both printers), and my soap to water formulation not being quite dialed in.
Miraste 40 minutes ago [-]
What printing surface are you using? I use a PEI sheet that I clean with straight isopropyl alcohol, and I almost never have issues.
kiba 34 minutes ago [-]
PEI smooth and textured. Isopropyl alcohol works until it doesn't. That is why it is recommended that you use warm water with soap. I suspect the ratio of water to soap isn't dialed in quite right in my case, but I haven't bother to fix it just yet.
Either that, or don't touch the surface with your bare hands.
Miraste 28 minutes ago [-]
I can only speak anecdotally, but I've been using this sheet for ~4 years while only cleaning it with 90+% IPA, and I haven't seen any loss of adhesion. I expect to replace it due to scratches before I have any problems with the cleaning method.
gerdesj 30 minutes ago [-]
I always use IPA to clean the bed too.
I have once used glue for a very thin print with lots of intricate holes in it.
kiba 1 hours ago [-]
Bambu didn't killed its open source dream. Prusa did.
awestroke 2 hours ago [-]
Getting a bambu soon. Happy I didn't go for Prusa, as the open source aspect was the only advantage
Avamander 28 minutes ago [-]
Going for a Bambu if you valued the open-source aspect? There are a few comparisons here I won't make about how silly that sounds to me.
Novosell 18 minutes ago [-]
They clearly valued some other things higher, even if they also valued the open source aspect. There's no dissonance or contradiction in that. I went the same route they did, despite also putting some value in the open source aspect.
Rendered at 23:01:03 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I don't buy Prusa because they are OSH, I buy them because they are great printers. They are an open platform, if not open source. Which is good enough for my needs. If these changes they are making will allow Prusa to keep producing world class devices at reasonable prices, then more power to them.
And yes, I know some people hate Prusa or have had major issues. But they do a lot to move 3D printing forward, rising tide lifts all boats and all that jazz. We want all respectable and reputable 3D printer companies to succeed - because then everyone wins.
How do you steal Open Source? Can Pruse no longer use it themselves or something? Sounds wrong calling "companies creating products from other projects" stealing when the intention from the beginning is that others can freely use the created project for whatever.
> This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't
Isn't those examples that Open Source builds great software? Companies trying to wrestle control of projects after making them Open Source doesn't mean what's already there didn't have a great impact.
Thing is, the fundamentals of Open Source have changed over the last decades - and the assumptions people made Back Then no longer hold. Let me expand a bit:
Back in the late 80s and 90s, up until the early '00s a lot of popular open source software was developed by academic institutions or with scientific grants. For them, it didn't matter - the money way paid for anyway and sharing source code fits with the ideals of science. In some projects it's very clear that they have an academic history - my to-go example is OpenStack, the myriads of knobs it has absorbed over the years all come from universities wishing to integrate whatever leftover hardware they had.
But ever since academic funding all but dried up, life has gotten difficult. We got a few rockstar projects that manage to survive independently (cURL), godknowshow (OpenSSL), with consulting services (sqlite with their commercial comprehensive test suite, mysql, mariadb, psql), on corporate contributions (Linux kernel, ReactJS/Facebook), on donations (everything in the FOSS graveyard better known as Apache) or, like Prusa, on hardware they sell. The general idea behind many projects is the implicit assumption: if you use a project commercially and the developer has a commercial support platform, be so kind and pay the original developers a bit so they can improve upon the project.
The problem is when juggernauts with deep money pits, be it companies with net market values in the trillions of dollar range or companies being under influence of the CCP, come on the field and take the hard work of others to make money without contributing back either financially or with code. Legally, they are absolutely in the clear, if the project isn't under AGPL, CC-NC or other such terms. ElasticSearch got ripped off that way by AWS for example.
It's not stealing in a traditional sense, but it is breaking the ethos and expectations.
People who do open source don't usually do it for the money or have the expectation of just making a living from it, never mind making a lot of money. They don't even charge a nominal price for their software. So you have a mismatch between funding and enthusiasm.
Open source is a vehicle for giving the world something neat and useful, with no other obligations implied. (Other than perhaps the continuation of said freedom for downstream users, a la GPL.)
I would argue that redis and elastic are signs that open source does work, albeit not well as a for-profit business. Open source hardware has a completely different set of problems.
At the current price points can you really recommend a Core One over an X1 to someone with a tight budget? Without resorting to arguments about open platforms and the big picture?
With your logic you can also say you can just get 2 P1S printers instead of an X1C, but an X1C is still sells just fine.
Without a doubt. An X1 is 1k USD. This is 1,199 USD.
Truly this is a competitor to the X1E though which costs 2.5k (!!!) with basically the only notable addition being the heated chamber (which the Core 1 comes with for free).
I have multiple Prusa Mark 3s, a Prusa XL and an X1 carbon, and frankly I only use the Prusa XL nowadays (and sometimes the Mark 3s).
Bambu makes a good printer, but it has lots of annoying issues and proprietary annoyances. I also don't like them as a company, but that wouldn't prevent me from buying another if I needed and used it.
In my experience Prusa printers "just work" more often than Bambu printers do.
Compared to a P1P it’s missing a camera.
Compared to the X1C it’s missing a camera, the LiDAR, and carbon rods.
Also, the AMS solution on Bambu printers is much better than the MMU by Prusa.
But my question is "what's the point?" If you have an open source project and yet the commmunity is largely uninvolved in its development, why do you even care to be open source?
Yes, freedom is important, but hardly anybody but developers take advantage of it. The most important aspect of FOSS is that it's a marker of a project/product that won't take advantages of its users with shady business practices, and that's probably the most important thing about it.
The Bambu products are better if you're willing to buy into proprietary stuff and you're not willing to put the leg-work into building something proper-open like a railcore.
Really sucks, but the writing has been on the walls for some time -- it has been harder and harder to find source/designs/models/etc regarding Prusa machines since the MK3 period.
1. That they are easy to fix. This is still the case with Prusa, and that's a good thing, together with their great support.
2. That replacement parts are relatively cheap. This has been an issue with Prusa: open hardware helps very little if you need to pay an unreasonable amount of money to get a nozzle and heatbreaker or so. Bambulab parts are much cheaper, even if the printer is completely closed.
3. The OSS nature & hackability of software: that, yes, mattered a lot, and Bambulab, Prusa itself, and many other companies benefitted from reliable and powerful open source software to drive 3D printers (slicers, firmware). This had the effect of accelerating the field.
A bigger danger than closed hardware is patents. Also in the field of 3D printing the feeling is that the small incentive to innovate (Prusa was really stagnating before Bambulab) was also a result of providing the same value instantaneously to all the competitors.
I believe in open source as an accelerator of society. I also like open hardware. However both open source and open hardware can fail in certain setups, and in this case it is better to move away.
For anyone that wants a printer that “just works”, there’s little reason to choose Prusa over Bambu at this point.
Thats a surprisingly large segment of the market, though.
But the most common problem is the surface is unclean(on both printers), and my soap to water formulation not being quite dialed in.
Either that, or don't touch the surface with your bare hands.
I have once used glue for a very thin print with lots of intricate holes in it.