Why stay with prusa?
Hi everybody
I'm a big fan of Prusa and love (and by times also hate) my MK3S+ with MMU3, but to be honest I've seen the Bambulab system including AMS and it is just from a differnt planet.
I was thinking of upgrading my Prusa to MK4 to have an up to date system with the newest features, but to be honest, for around the same money as the upgrade, I'll get a brand new, Bambu and if I'm waiting for black friday, I'll even get the big one.
Do you guys see any reason to stay with Prusa, besides that the company is just more sympathic?
I'm having a hard time with this, as I don't really want to change, but I also don't see an objective reason not to. It's not even the money, but the usability and built quality of Bambu. This is just an iPhone 15 of 3D printing and Prusa still delivers acoustic couplers that you have to built and maintain by yourself.
I've spontaneously decided to wait until Black Friday 2024 and if Prusa has nothing new out there that can compete with Bambu, I'll sell my MK3 and buy a Bambulab X1 or P1P.
I'm sure, I'm not the only one with these thoughts. How do you see this?
Thank you and have a great day
Fabian
RE: Why stay with prusa?
I can understand your concerns.
If you were to say that it's all about the money, I could counter that Chinese products are always cheaper.
There are also still Prusa printers that can technically compete with Bambu's flagships. However, these are also in a completely different price league.
I have also already played with the idea of bringing the competition into my home.
What is currently holding me back from doing so are several factors:
Product lifecycle: While I can demand extremely long lifespans from my Prusa devices and still find spare parts and installation instructions many years after purchase, I am dependent on the goodwill of Bambu support. If parts for the previous year's model are no longer offered, the printer can more or less be thrown away.
Support: Good support costs money, good support cannot be bought
Ecosystem: Bambu printers work wonderfully and "out-of-the-box", but they are also tailored to their own ecosystem. If this closes, you lose many amenities. If there are tensions between countries, some services could be closed.
If you choose a different supplier for the filaments, you lose amenities again. Even if I see many advantages in reading out the RFIDs of filament spools, which Prusa could certainly also make use of, it would be a small matter for a closed-source company to restrict this reading of tags in the future. I don't want to accuse anyone of anything here, but the possibility exists and is already being used by other manufacturers.
Community: While the Prusa community is characterized by being very helpful and wanting to advance the whole thing, the Bambu community regularly and exclusively strikes me as negative. There are supposedly no better printers or alternatives there, every other printer brand has lost its right to exist. Other techniques are always worse. Everything that is not related to Bambu is systematically made bad. There is currently NOTHING that could motivate me to identify with such a community!
Printing PLA and PETG at the same time? See the Guide for MultiMaterialSupports ----- Ejecting Buffer cassettes is not satisfying? May the Fork be with you!
RE: Why stay with prusa?
My first printer was a Prusa Mini. I ordered it the day after they were announced so it's one of the originals. It still runs great and I have no intention of getting rid of it. Two years ago I bought an MK3S+ kit. I was never able to get the bed completely level so I'm constantly changing the Z depending on where I print on the plate. Otherwise I like the printer. A year ago I bought a Bambu Lab P1P after reading all the great reviews. This printer quickly became my favorite and still is today. Later I bought an AMS unit for it. I recently bought a Bambu Lab A1 mini with an AMS lite. What a great little printer. If I need another printer someday I'm pretty sure it won't be a Prusa. If someone were to ask me for a printer recommendation, I'd suggest one from Bambu Lab.
RE: Why stay with prusa?
I built an MK3S back in 2020 and used it for about three years before selling it and buying an MK4 kit in January. I liked my MK3S but I love my MK4. They basically improved everything that wasn't quite right with the MK3S. My printing needs are fairly simple though. I don't have a MMU and I don't tend to print every day, unless I'm doing a big project.
Before I bought the MK4, I struggled for a couple of months trying to decide between the MK4 and a Bambu Lab P1P. I admit that for me it finally came down to the fear of the unknown. I was concerned about the elevated noise level. It doesn't work with Octoprint (which I use with Prusa). I wasn't sure that I could get it to work on my "guest" WiFi network, and I wasn't about to give it access to my primary LAN. I was worried about support if there was a problem. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't take it apart to fix something if I had to.
The MK4 checks all of the boxes for me, but I'm probably in the minority nowadays.
RE: Why stay with prusa?
I backed the Kickstarter X1C+AMS out of curiosity, but I will never buy another Bambu, no matter how cheap it is. There are many serious problems with the machine which you will never know because any criticism is downvoted or hidden on the forums or Reddit, and large numbers of YouTube and Instagram influencers cannot be expected to be impartial as giving good reviews to sponsors is their source of income. For example, the poor design of the X1/P1 hot end causes the nozzle to be bent after a meaningful amount of usage, through no fault of the user. But you will never know this because support and the community will blame you for using grid infill, or not choosing to do a bed level calibration after EVERY print etc. AMS is notorious for being a pain when trying to remove broken filament stuck after the first stage feeder. But it is your fault for not ensuring it isn't brittle in the first place. You cannot do live Z-offset, which is critical for printing on different build plate substrates or different materials. You cannot print Shore 60A filament without having to do modifications. The extruder gear is weak AF and grinds into a powder. Replacing an extruder motor requires you to remove 30 screws. There's a long list more and I suggest you do your own in-depth research.