[HN Gopher] With Core One, Prusa's Open Source Hardware Dream Dies
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With Core One, Prusa's Open Source Hardware Dream Dies
Author : iancmceachern
Score : 64 points
Date : 2024-11-20 20:35 UTC (2 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (hackaday.com)
| daft_pink wrote:
| Bambu obviously killed it.
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| 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)
| bmitc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| girvo wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Yes I agree, I suppose my point was as soon as Bambu went
| mainstream that entire Prusa appeal was killed
| Kirby64 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kiba wrote:
| Bambu didn't killed its open source dream. Prusa did.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| 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.
| delichon wrote:
| > 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?
| kiba wrote:
| I took a look at the price. They're almost comparable if
| X1/AMS combo wasn't (always?) on sale.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The Core One doesn't have chamber heating, it just has
| chamber exhaust. Not the same thing.
| bangaladore wrote:
| 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.
| Miraste wrote:
| It's worth noting that the X1 is on sale today. Normally
| it's $1199 as well.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| 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.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| 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.
| diggan wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.)
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > 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.
| kiba wrote:
| 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.
| Miraste wrote:
| 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.
| awestroke wrote:
| Getting a bambu soon. Happy I didn't go for Prusa, as the open
| source aspect was the only advantage
| Avamander wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| serf wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
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