Gratitude for Prusa's Design Philosophy: A Simple Fix Made Possible by Openness and Community  

Gratitude for Prusa's Design Philosophy: A Simple Fix Made Possible by Openness and Community

I am thankful that Prusa exists as a company, and I'm glad I chose the Prusa ecosystem. I did some simple maintenance today on my machine, simply replacing the idler lever on the nextruder. I say simple, but it's only simple because of the design decisions Prusa made on their machines and their company as a whole. They chose to design their idler lever compatible with additive manufacturing. They decided to release the .STEP files of their idler lever for free so anyone could print it at home without needing to order it. They chose to spend time and money on designing an excellent assembly guide. They chose to design the nextruder so that changing the idler lever is very simple. 

With almost any other machine that would break, the same process I described wouldn't even be possible. I would have to probably blindfolded try to figure out what was causing the problem, there would be no insight or material available on what was wrong with the machine, the support would probably just tell me to send the entire machine for a costly repair. Even if I knew which component was worn-out, I would have to reverse-engineer the part so I could create a replacement. All in all, it's just too much hassle and I would realistically just not do it. 

I work as a university teacher by day (in mechanical engineering -> product development), and one of the main reasons I do it is because I get to spend my time (trying) to contribute to a better society to live in. In the age of planned obsolescence, predatory tactics from companies, etc, I'm glad that one of the most established 3D printing companies is build around the polar opposite. I don't take it for granted and I'm just glad this exists. 

PS: And not to forget, the amazing community sharing material around Prusa machines that helped me diagnose that my problem probably was due to the idler lever.