Comment by zevon

7 hours ago

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).

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zevon

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hyperbovine  6 hours ago

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.

  • jwr  4 hours ago

    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.

    • cosmic_cheese  2 hours ago

      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.

    • kiba  2 hours ago

      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.

  • porphyra  4 hours ago

    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.

  • sarchertech  5 hours ago

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

    • ohdeargodno  4 hours ago

      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.

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kamranjon  3 hours ago

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.