SL1 upgrades  

RE: SL1 upgrades

If you have not bought an SL1 yet, under no circumstances should you give Prusa money for a SLA machine:

• The SL1 is 2 year old tech now that they are charging ~4x competitive up to date (e.g. with 4k or Mono screens) printers.
• Live support can't troubleshoot/help beyond what is in the KB articles.
• Email support is very slow and is limited to their normal business hours during the week (e.g. you get 1 email at best per day if you are in the US).
• Email support is unwilling or unable to actually diagnose issues and instead wants to just throw parts at it until they get lucky.
• Email support doesn't seem to really care about customers (in a response to their horrid tank design their view was that tank leaks should be considered normal and having to replace FEPs after each print should also be acceptable).
• While they finally acknowledged that there is an issue with their tanks, they have made no mention of actually correcting the problem or made a KB article to notify users of the o-ring fix that the community came up with.
• I don't think it's specifically their fault, but they have been having supply problems for at least the last year and things like replacement LCDs can be out of stock for multiple months.
• They have mentioned releasing a "big brother" to the SL1 this year (guessing something to "compete" with the Saturn), but there has been no further discussion of what it will be or any possibility of SL1 improvements/upgrades. I expect it will be late to the table and way over priced again.
• They are ignoring PRs to the CW1 firmware (I've had one waiting since Nov to allow for longer dry times and another has been waiting since Jan to add agitation to the wash cycle). I haven't tried to make an SL1 firmware PR, but I wouldn't expect much better.

The only nice things I can say about it:

• Once I got past all the issues that caused me to learn how incompetent their support is, it does produce excellent prints (but so do printers ~1/4 of it's price).
• PrusaSlicer is so much nicer to use than Chitubox. Lychee is out now to offer an alternative for other printers (supposedly does the SL1 too), but I still find PS much better.

RE: SL1 upgrades

I complained a day too early: https://blog.prusaprinters.org/introducing-sl1s_fastest_desktop_sla_3d_printer_51436/

Which includes: https://shop.prusa3d.com/en/original-prusa-sl1s-speed/1594-original-prusa-sl1-to-sl1s-upgrade-kit.html

My take is that $2k is WAAAAAY too expensive for something with specs that look similar to a Mars 2 Pro and I expect the same support issues. So I think most of what I said above still applies.

You could buy a Mars 2 Pro and a bunch of resin for $400 (or make a solid down payment on a Saturn for a real "big brother"), but it pleases me that there is an upgrade path for the SL1 and at a cost that doesn't feel too unreasonable.

RE: SL1 upgrades

We’ve ordered the upgrade kit, but gotta say that the upgrade costs more than the Mars 3 we also just preordered really hurts..

If I didn’t already have this printer and hadn’t already paid it off from print jobs, I wouldn’t be looking at the SL1S with any envy still. 

RE: SL1 upgrades

This upgrade is very disappointing with no 4k when devices 1/6 the price include it.

RE: SL1 upgrades

Posted by: @dio

This upgrade is very disappointing with no 4k when devices 1/6 the price include it.

Most of those common "4K" printers do have a resolution of 42µm. The SL1 has 47µm. This isn't much of a difference.
4K doesn't say anything about resolution or quality. It's a big marketing gag.

A relative and one-dimensional value that doesn't scale with the screen format or size. It also doesn't say anything about pixes spacing and filter rates.

RE: SL1 upgrades

As loyal Prusa fan I given chance and planned pairing up new Prusa SL* printer with my existing EPAX X1K (if they reduce price), but ended up loving my EPAX X1K even more because it has nearly same features, quality and support for just 600$ (or as low as 420$ i bought on sale). It only lacks having tilting mechanism that gives speed advantage to SL1S 

I got for X1K:

-XY resolution: 47µm

-Av. exposure time: 2.5-3sec

-nFEP (PFA) film

-Ethernet port

-All metal body

-Rocksolid Z rod

-CUSTOMER SUPPORT

RE: SL1 upgrades

proper ballscrew machines are so much more reliable than leadscrew machines