Prusa Delays  

RE: Prusa Delays

Sourcing electronics in these current days can be a hellish job indeed. Somewhere between inavailability, insane waitin times and fake products.

RE: Prusa Delays

Sorry to say that, but if Prusa is completly relying on th STM32 family and this supply chain is super unclear for the next 3 years at least, then it's maybe time to swallow the pill and change to a different controller. This is what all the other companies are doing and Prusa obviously doesn't want to put in the work of rewritting all, which is understandable, but not the way to go. What if the STM32 situation get's worse? Do they want to postpone the launch of new printers or Minis (uses STM32 too) to 5 years while Bambo Labs will overtake and deliver? The power supply supplier I can understand and relate but then you pay double thr price of 120€ instead of 60€ and buy an EU or US made power supply (just bought for my company 1000 power supplies for medical use). What I read from this dev-report is that the printer was not market ready in design and they used this delay to iterate on the design. It's obviously not ready now either and they need until Christmas to hopefully have the design freeze and produce 100 test units and order the parts.

I for my part canceled my private day 1 pro-order and will order am Bambo Labs. Thinkin about doing the same with the company pro-order.

RE: Prusa Delays

A little miffed about the situation would be an understatement. I understand the demand on anything coming out of the East at the moment. It isn't just chips, but everything, tyres, bicycles, food produce. I agree with ChefBenni and my biggest gripe now is looking back at November, that super polished video that showed us all what they have been working on the past 5 years. A Printer with everything a hobbyist could dream of, looking like a near-finished product and a line of 'we just need to sort out suppliers'. To now, a late and frankly embarrassing blog post update to reveal that Beta testing hasn't begun. 
I think Prusa should have kept it a secret a bit longer, have a little more thought on parts and availability. 

But I will keep my pre order in place. Looking around at the market, once this printer does arrive, there still isn't anything to compare it to. 
I won't be going to a Chinese company due to aftersales problem solving/care. And anything aimed at the 'industrial' market is way out of a hobbyist budget.  

RE: Prusa Delays

Just really starting to learn the hobby, what are the “other controllers” out there? What makes their availability better?

RE: Prusa Delays

The situation is this in my opinion (just speculations): Prusa had some working prototypes of the XL and was proud of it and wanted to show. After showing it to the public they noticed printing the cycloid TPU part in the gearbox on their print farm MK3s is not gonna work reliable with an acceptable yield. Using resin is out of the game as it's not long term stable. So the only solutions they had was to make an injection mold or redesign the printhead, which they chose we know.

Using the STM32 availability as an excuse I described above. The XL will for sure run Marlin 2.0, like the Mini, and just quickly checking the Marlin webpage ensures my opinion. Marlin 2.0 is capable of running on following mikrocontrollers:

That means they could swallow the pill, employ 10 programmers (Prusa has now roughly 600 employees, right?) and switch their code to a different controller but they chose not to and sit out the STM32 shortage as long as it's gonna take. 

Market competition is out there, depending on your needs. Big printer are a lot out there, dual head support for support material are also out there with IDEX systems. For multiple different heads, like a milling head, it's only the E3D toolchanger. But remember how long Prusa took to implement Wifi on the Mini! Do you think you will get milling support within the next 5 years? And Prusa completly making their own CAM milling software for free? So what do you gain from the multiple head design if other tipe of heads than printing are not supported soon? In my opinion different nozzle diameter to improve speed and not print everything with a 0,25mm nozzle. At the same time, you can just buy a Bambo Labs X1 which is faster anyway. If you want multiple colors, same with the X1, pallet etc. If you want support material, every IDEX or Ultimaker does the trick.

I for my part will swallow the pill, ordered a Bamboo X1 instead of a third MK3s, as it's the same price now. For the multiple head parts, which you need for support material, I will probabbly design my own idex as most ones on the marked are a nightmare. I'm super sad about the news of Prusa as I was hoping so badly for this printer to be a success and that within 2022. 

RE:

Posted by: @chefbenni

 

For multiple different heads, like a milling head, it's only the E3D toolchanger. But remember how long Prusa took to implement Wifi on the Mini! Do you think you will get milling support within the next 5 years? And Prusa completly making their own CAM milling software for free? So what do you gain from the multiple head design if other tipe of heads than printing are not supported soon? 

From my point of view I don't care if Prusa never comes out with a milling head for any of their 3D printers.  Such a device would have very poor performance.  Much better to buy even a basic import hobby vertical mill, like Sherline or Taig, than to suffer with the abomination that a milling head on a 3D printer would be.

RE: Prusa Delays

Thanks for the explanation. That makes more sense to me now. I’m bummed because I knew it was going to be a while before the XL was available, so I recently ordered a Mini to get me through until what I thought was going to be late this year/early part of next year. Had I known we were this far out I would have ordered a MK3 instead.

A milling head is a stupid idea for a printer.  We are forever admonishing people to keep their print-sheets clean but with  milling debris, especially oil tempered milling debris, the printing function would be effectively destroyed.  There are plenty of uses for different printing heads without flights of idiocy.  Oh, someone will do it; just hope they keep quiet about it or a bunch of newbies will follow them and ruin their prints.

The lists of alternate circuit boards and power supplies are all very well but remember that whatever they use Prusa will be ordering in  lots of 50,000 or so, reliable suppliers in those quantities are few these days.

Cheerio,

RE: Prusa Delays

Posted by: @diem

The lists of alternate circuit boards and power supplies are all very well but remember that whatever they use Prusa will be ordering in  lots of 50,000 or so, reliable suppliers in those quantities are few these days.

I fully agree on the milling head feature, but it's what E3D showed so people will want it. Just mention it here. A laser head would be nice but dangerious.

About the numbers of printers I just did a quick calculation. Prusa shipped 2020 material worth 70 million€. Let's say they ship now 100million worth of stuff per anual. That is including material and other printers. So even if the XL will be 30% of the revenue (unlikely but possible) and roughly 2500e per printer (2 heads assembled without tax) we are talking in the max 10.000 pieces region, not 50.000. This is an absolute reasonable volume even with the current supply issues. I guess we need to wait and see.

RE: Prusa Delays

One month of from the last (and very late) update... Will we see an update in September?

"We’ll share more details about the XL soon. I’m fully aware that the last dev diary / update was released several months ago, so I want to make sure the next one comes much faster. We still have a lot of things to show: printing speed, soluble supports, and I want to share more details from the development with you. We’re running late and you absolutely deserve more information about what’s going on."

RE: Prusa Delays

I think that, if not a blog update, Prusa will issue new information during the Maker Faire in Prague ( starting next 17th Sept.)

For sure Josef Prusa will be there and the progress of the XL project will be the million dollar question asked by bloggers, customers/public attending the Faire or by live streaming. No way out for Josef this time (LOL).  

RE:

There are a few upcoming dates where the XL can be addressed.  I doubt Prusa will be able to deliver the first customer units in December.  It’s possible they will ship influencer/review units during that time.  This means we should see hands on videos, hopefully.  I remember being at ERRF 2019 where they announced the Mini.  I placed my order shortly after seeing it in person and received it just before Christmas.  ERRF 2019 was coincidently the first time Josef mentioned that the XL was in  development.  

Maker Faire Prague - Sept 16th

Prusa Live #45 - Sept 28th

ERRF 2022 - October 8th 

RE: Prusa Delays

A cutter, to me something that can handle up to large sheets of material.  Not if you have a rotary tool head that would cut holes/clean-up holes, that might be a tool that could be interesting.

A pellet head instead of a filament head would be interesting, especially for infill.  I think the nozzle pressure reading capability would give some ability to make sure it is printing.  Considering that it is a larger format printer, that could be a game changer on print cost and speed.  And that is where I hope that they can get some semi-production models into the right hands to start working on validation and design of alternate head designs.

Even if they have no updates, they need to be out there saying that they have no updates. Silence is no longer an option.

RE: Prusa Delays

It is my understanding that the real benefit from the XL is, other than the ability to use different nozzle diameters at once, to be able to print true multimaterial and multicolour efficiently. The MMU, Palette or the Bambulab filament changer system are absolutely no competition to that (super long print times, incredible amount of wasted material, tricky to dial in/temperamental). Dual extruders are an alternative but only if your use case does not need more than 2 different materials/colours. 

The only affordable alternative is the E3D tool changer and the XL will be a more polished, less involved experience probably. Less for tinkerers and more for those who want to print right away. 

Now, how big the market is of those who need more than just a dual extruder I don't know. But that is the use case for the XL.
Combining a CNC with a printer is always a suboptimal solution. You are better off buying two separate machines which do not have to compromise. 

RE: Prusa Delays

You are being too kind with "suboptimal". While I'm sure someone will come out with a CNC tool for the XL, the environment of CNC is the exact opposite of what is required for the additive manufacturing process (cleanliness). Whoever comes out with the first CNC tool better hope they sell enough to cover developmental expenses, because it won't be on the market long once people start figuring out how bad of an idea it is. 😉

Now, if your intentions are to purchase an XL and turn it in to a CNC machine, well then that's a different story.

RE: Prusa Delays

Seems to me like things are out of control, perhaps a management issue?

RE: Prusa Delays

No, the global supply chain is that bad right now. I work in manufacturing. Our inventory is approaching record levels because we have everything to build product X except part A. Everything to build product Y except for part B. Just goes on and on. Never the same stuff missing.

RE: Prusa Delays / Milling ....Really ?

sorry, but in my opinion the idea to have a milling feature for a 3D-Printer is absolute nonsense.
I have a CNC milling machine!
The main difference between milling machine and 3D printer is the mechanic, rigidity and robustness and the power of servos!
If you want to mill other materials than styrofoam like aluminum or steel, you need a machine which is heavy and strong!
A 3D printer would be overwhelmed!

RE: Prusa Delays

@richard-3 Not only that but 3d printers don't tolerate particles lying around. I have a cnc (x-carve) for wood and light metal and a germitsu for pcbs and both end up quite a mess after finishing a piece. 3d printer needs cleaning with ipa since it cannot even tolerate fingerprints not sawdust or metal or even plastic particles. I thing with the money needing to make a head and time to create a slicer edition for cutting , its better in terms of quality and money to buy a cheap cnc. In the size range of the XL you can find a wide range of affordable cnc's.