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.
PS: A blog post related to this situation:
https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your...
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.)
“You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty.”
“You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above.”
https://github.com/prusa3d/Original-Prusa-i3/blob/MK3S/LICEN...
Indeed. But I guess Prusa also expected that people will buy the original such that this support this open-source mission can be sustained. This is where I personally see Prusa's fallacy of thinking.
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.
It sounds like the real claim is the device can actively keep the chamber at 55C. Other than semantics, I don't understand how this is different from having a dedicated chamber heater. I can close my X1C, but it won't maintain any stable temperature. The bed and nozzle are heating the chamber. This is all assuming the time to get to 55C is reasonable, and that 55C is enough. I personally have a need for 55C chamber often, but never 100C (X1E can only get to 60C).
Again, feel free to correct if I'm wrong, but directly from Prusa: "The automatic ventilation system and active temperature control"
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.
The P1S has the same heater (the heat bed) and the same concept of a variable speed fan that regulates how much air is drawn from the chamber. The only real difference here is that the core has a vent cut out, whereas the P1/X1 tell you to open the door for PLA to let it very slowly pull in cooler air (the fan still runs, just at a lower speed to prevent warping).
The Core One is technically not even comparable to the P1. It's not got a camera, nor an AMS system (the MMU is well known for being incredibly unreliable and finnicky to get working well vs a box that you plop on top and plug in).
The only real compelling thing about it is the upgrade path from the MK4, and the nice design cues like the integrated spool holders with potential for a dryer.
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.
Built in yes, and that's disappointing to see. Unsure why they aren't just including that at this point. Assuming its like the XL, you can use any camera you can find (phone, rpi, esp) and link it to the printer to get a "first party"
> Compared to the X1C it’s missing a camera, the LiDAR, and carbon rods.
I never use the LiDAR on my X1C. In my opinion is produces worse results then calibrating manually. Agree on the camera.
Regarding carbon rods, I would be surprised if it made any tangible difference to 99.99% of people.
> Also, the AMS solution on Bambu printers is much better than the MMU by Prusa.
Agreed. I never use AMS or MMU. For some its a dealbreaker to not have something as good as AMS. I never print multi material, other than using multiple heads on the XL.
I got my P1P pretty hesitant about the closed ecosystem, but having to never really think about my printer and whether a print is worth the time it’s going to take, which prevented me from printing a bunch of times on the Ender 3, I’m sold at this point.
I wish Prusa the best of luck with their new printer, and I’m sure it’s a solid piece of kit. I think they’ll do alright. Just like I feel as though Bambu have really changed the market in the last couple of years, they’re building in the footsteps of the paths carved by Prusa.
Also, as the other commenter noted, they actually are quite repairable. Bambu offers pretty much every part you could imagine and at prices that are extremely reasonable. Any wear component you’d expect is easy to replace.
Where can I buy a repairable 2D printer? I would prefer this if I could make a choice.
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.
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.
On top of that there's the incredibly slow response to Bambu and the other Corexy options overshadowing them, and the stream of lies from Josef Prusa regarding Bambu labs (e.g his tweets claiming they stole code and violated the MIT license, which he's since removed from Twitter but thankfully was backed up in several reddit discussions as well as archive.org).
I've got a lot of respect for Prusa and what they've achived but they really do seem to be fumbling pretty hard. The Core One will certainly get them back in the right direction but things like cheaping out and not including a camera when its already a worse product than the one they're trying to compete with feels like an incredibly stupid decision.
It's such a cheap part to include, for some sort of comparison a Raspberry Pi Zero camera is £14 on Pimoroni and thats a consumer price. Even if it was costing Prusa £10 per camera, thats absolutely nothing.
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.
The Chinese are very good at cloning. Releasing the design doesn't change this, as they don't need the PCB layout because they already have their own PCBs and have lot of people who can design electronics. In any case, there are hardly any secret sauces on a Prusa. Rather, Bambu doesn't even need to copy and are seen as surpassing Prusa in some respects(true or not).
He mentioned about keeping things secret to prevent supply chain competition. I wish I knew more about this issue, so I can't confirm or refute it, but it seems dubious to me as well.
Anyway, open source is only as good as how you use it or develop it. Prusa seems to be for the most part a closed shop, so they don't benefit from community development and seem to have Not Invented Here syndrome and allergic to using community developed solutions, except for software.
For the majority of people, the open source label signifies that you are much less likely to get scammed or get taken advantages of companies or individuals. That's probably the most important thing.
Anyway, I don't run an open hardware company, so take it with a grain of salt.
Barring any overwhelming breakthrough, other brands have them beat on price and performance. Hopefully they at least keep middle of the road models as open-source for those who really value that. I anticipate that the open-source printers will outsell the closed-source ones, unless they conceal the fact that they are now closed source.
By the way Prusa, if you don't want to help the competition, maybe don't let Prusa Slicer slice for other printers. But that cat is out of the bag, and it's also probably a marketing tool at this point.
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 I regularly see Bambu winning the reviews and awards these days, and I’m not sure if I would have been aware of Prusa if I were in the market today.
I really would love a multi-tool change core x y, but it’s soooo expensive.
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.
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.