Comment by hyperbovine
4 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.
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.
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.
It’s not better in every way. For long term reliability and ability to repair and upgrade, Prusa is far superior.
If your hobby is 3d printERS sure (and more power to you), but for many people (me included) the hobby is 3d printING
The point is not that Prusas need constant repair. The point is that they are reliable workhorses and repairable and usually also long-term-upgradeable.
But you get better results from the Bambu. I care about the product of the manufacturing more than I care about the tools.
That depends on what you’re doing. For many things Prusa printers produce higher quality prints.
3 replies →
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.
You don't care how expensive and complicated it is to repair and maintain your mountain bike (especially if you plan to eat gravel a lot)? And your take on machines is that you better throw away a bunch of working 3D printers and replace them instead of upgrading the old ones and adding new ones as needed? Hope you have a lot of money to burn in your personal and business life. ;)
4 replies →
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.
But why are you using the MK3S+ as a comparison point, instead of an MK4/S or Core One?
Because I, unlike many people here apparently, possess a finite quantity of money.
If you ever need to fix a Bambu printer, your opinion may change.
I can't speak for the enclosed models but the A1's self-diagnosis feature and troubleshooting wiki make most repairs and maintenance pretty easy.