Comment by bmitc
14 days 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.
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.
What printing surface are you using? I use a PEI sheet that I clean with straight isopropyl alcohol, and I almost never have issues.
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.
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I think the problems arise from using glue on it.
If I only print PLA without glue, one wipe with IPA and it's clean.
Glue on the other hand, it really sticks and you need water and soap.
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.
The experience I have on MK4 and X1C are similar, as far as reliability, etc.
There's different annoyances for each; if you calibrate each time X1C is slower to get going. X1C is faster overall on bigger jobs. X1C has weird wifi error-out issues more often. MK4 gets a bit more gunk on the nozzle. X1C wastes more filament. X1C had some issues with retracting filament at first that I printed someone else's bracket design to fix, while MK4 just worked. X1C quality seems slightly better with PLA; MK4 does a slightly better job with PETG.
When wear makes major maintenance necessary, it's going to be easier on MK4.