RE: MK4 Network Issues
ChiTownGuy Thanks for the reply. I read your article. I'm a CTO for a mid size Holding company. I'm do not agree with everything in your article, however there is truth to it. There is a time and a place for a MVP, it should be used to validate you thought process will be successful, and it should seldom be used as a production product. Its not always upper management that hold back development, normally its a problem with how it is presented.
I have owned two other PRUSA products, one given to me by a friend the other my wife purchased for me (MK3s+), before that I had very old Anet A8. As I said earlier the PRUSA products just seemed to work right out of the box, and all expectations were met and then some.
The upgrade path to the MK4 was horrible, with the time to market issues after they announced the product. Then getting it and having the simplest of upgrades for PRUSA not work was just very disapointing. When I did the research, it looks like they had this same network issue in the Mini. Why would you carry over software /hardware that did not work in the past? Did they not care about their end users or did they not care about their Fantastic Reputation of having products that just worked?
PRUSA has many issues to work out. Quality products to the market, manufacturing (stop trying to do everything in house), and management to top the list. They need to change and stop repeating the mistakes they have made. At this point and unfortuantly I think they have a long ways to go to even catch up with the market (MMU is horrible compared to AMS or AMS Lite). They spent so much time sunbathing in the lime lite, they stopped producing relaible next gen products.
There is no doubt that PRUSA were major contributors in moving the 3d printing to where it is at today. And I think everyone that loves this market will agree that they deserved the round of applause when they received it... Its very unfortunate that they have created the set backs that they have had. They are mostly at their own making. You don't announce a product as being market ready that are not in this type of space. Prusa has done this twice (that I know of) XL and MK4 (MK4 was a response to Bambu).
I would have purchased the XL with all 5 print heads (announced over 2 years ago) if I could get it. But even today there is no way you can purchase and receive the printer in a reasonable amount of time. Its very sad, and now the XL is probably already out of date.
I really hope PRUSA decides to hire people that can get them back on track and have managment understand they need to listen to those that they hire.