I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that  

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

I really would love to have a Prusa. But the price keeps pushing me away. I'm always checking the resale market, and believe I will find one someday. Manufacturing in USA (Mk4) might help??? Not sure.

The initial purchase price might seem daunting but my 2017 vintage Prusa was printing happily all last night - I have spent many times more on filament to feed it than on initial purchase and spares...

Cheerio,

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

MK3S was a workhorse. I know i was really loving it (not the mmu2 though). But that was then. And then there was mainly brands like ultimaker (brands premium on pricetag) various chinese that you had to fiddle with, and Prusa a rather newcomer with a good solution and approach that started dominating the hobbyist , pronsumer market.

My OP is exactly that. Prusa is not what it was in 2017. The market changed, good quality is now more evident on common brands without prices skyrocketing. Prusas prices gone up and in my case the quality is not in par with that increase. I mean i get an enclosure in almost all their competitors. The XL enclosure was 750 (paid less though because got a coupon because i bought it first day) and it caused issues i didn't have before. Before I was getting my prints ABS/ASA warped (not what you would expect from the price tag of the XL) but it was printing. After the enclosure i keep getting overheat error. They send me another heatbed board etc but no solution. I still cant print ASA if i dont leave the enclosure door open ... which beats the purpose. Sorry i didnt mean to complain or open a troubleshooting post. Its just i believe that Prusa is in danger of getting left behind. Even my SLS1 was complaining from the beginning about the fan on starting sequence half the time (i changed the fan changed a couple of other things but in the end i just ignored it and keep printing). 

The examples i wrote in the OP is what i would consider if i was buying now a multihead and an MSLA printer. I really like Prusa. I trully hope that by the time that i will need to change my XL or my resin Prusa will still be my main approach

Posted by: @diem

The initial purchase price might seem daunting but my 2017 vintage Prusa was printing happily all last night - I have spent many times more on filament to feed it than on initial purchase and spares...

Cheerio,

MK3S was a workhorse. I know i was really loving it (not the mmu2 though). But that was then.

- and my XL is at or approaching the point at which the cost of materials consumed matches the purchase price...

Another workhorse.

Cheerio,

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

Hmmm Maybe now is a good time to ask people what they think of the new Bambu Tool Changer announced?  For me, mind blown.

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

Posted by: @allen8355

Hmmm Maybe now is a good time to ask people what they think of the new Bambu Tool Changer announced?  For me, mind blown.

At a first glance it looks good. Is similar to bondtech's indx approach.The issue with this approach is the time consumed. AS far as i understand a kind of AMS will still be there. The benefit will be that there will be a dedicated hotend for each filament and thus no poop or material contamination.  But there will be still time consumed for filament retraction and loading. In the end of the day it will be cost and benefit option. Meaning if there is a 1000E 4 toolhead approach for snapmaker u1, vs 7 hotends/ams for 2.5k (llet say) vs Prusa XL 5th for 4.8k  (all of them with their enclosed options) then if the quality of snapmaker is decent then there will be a very tempting solution.

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

I'd also have a hard time buying something new from Prusa that hasn't gone thru a year of customer "testing". (Unless you like being a beta tester) The MK4, XL and Core One pretty well all prove that. So they'll have an added difficulty in the competition.

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

I think time will tell which way is best, but I like it because, in theory, you can use many types of cheap toolheads of different types for different materials. It looks like one toolhead is fixed, and this could be for supports, or TPU, then six more driven by an AMS. (New 6 spool AMS maybe?)  I don't think loading and unloading time will be very long. After a material is loaded the first time, it would be unloaded just by being cut, like it is now in the X1 or P1, and that hotend would be removed and stored. When its needed again, the hotend is replaced and the filament from that hotend is forced into it. 8 seconds to heat and its ready to go.  

I don't have an XL, but that has to take some time to heat the nozzle on every change, or do the nozzles stay heated, which isn't great for the filament? 

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

@Allen8355. I had the mmu2s and now the XL. I think the mmu was faster in its approach than the AMS, which i never had, but the difference with the multiple toolheads its huge. Especially on long prints.The temp on the toolhead stays at a level. By the time a change is needed that is instantaneous. There is no need for waiting for temperature.  Let say that you have an average print with 1000 toolchanges that takes 10h to print(similarly to something im doing now). If you eliminate the common factors between AMS/mmu and multiple heads like let say purging then with AMS approach you need let say additional 15 sec for unloading and the reloading the next filament. If you add for at least 5sec for the bambus approach to heat the new nozzle (especially if it has to go to 250C for materials like ABS) then that means 20000 additional seconds on you prints that makes approximately 5.5 hours. At least bondtech's approach has a filament for each head already preloaded and that extra time is waiting for those 5-8 sec for the nozzle to heat up. And on an additional note flex filaments dont behave really well with constant loading and loading attempts. I think there is a reason that they are avoided in AMS.

Also not to sound like im advertising anything but snapmakers 4th approach in conjunction with the cost (for now its under 900E) , for me, if it is build decently , its the best approach. MAYBE bondtechs INDX if it finds a suitable host.

@Crab. I agree with you on that comment. But unfortunately in my case , even after two years ... the XL, it is still... let say unpolished. If it wasnt for the multiple toolheads i dont think i would by it it just for the volume.

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

In my Prusa days, I had an MMU and MMU2, and never could get either to work, so can't comment on that. I have a Palette 3 Pro which does work well with the MKx but uses lots of space, and lots of setup.  I have 4 Bambu printers each with an AMS, and I won't argue that they are very slow with Muti color/material, and they waste ALOT, but they are pretty reliable. They work best to be loaded with multiple colors and/or materials, so you can make changes remotely when you print with one color and/or material. If you print much multi-material or multi-color, they aren't the real answer. They can do it in a pitch, which is mostly what I need.

The Snapmaker is really interesting, with its limit of 4 colors/materials, which is great for the price. Even better is all the others we will see pop-up in the next year. I think competition is FANTASTIC.  Hopefully Prusa is working on something as well.  Maybe some cost-cutting, at the least. 

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

Even better is all the others we will see pop-up in the next year. I think competition is FANTASTIC.  Hopefully Prusa is working on something as well.  Maybe some cost-cutting, at the least. 

This is exactly my opinion too. Things with actual multimaterial started to roll out and become parts of the lineup of various brands and not the niche. That means , i hope, more logical prices and more features and options. Im just printing an air-balloon with petg frame and instead of "fabric" i use 1mm thick elegoo 83A tpu. There was no way i could print that in one go if it wasnt for multi-material.

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

@tsamisa Did you have issues getting your mmu2S working?. I followed its issues and looked at its schematic and it seemed that the electronic design was flawed and never fixed by Prusa (the 5V power supply voltage was too low and so many users reported needing to supply their own, additional power). I see lots of other poor engineering decisions. One such item is  the poor networking performance on Prusa’s new MK4/Core one/XL platforms that required them to compress their gcode just to get adequate thruput; and this leads me to believe they don’t have or value the engineering expertise & testing processes they are going to need to stay ahead of the competition. 

The Snapmaker U1 looks like an amazing idea. I almost backed it, but I know that stuff needs some time to shake out design weaknesses. But if they can pull that off, that might hit a real sweet spot for the increasing demand for multi-color prints .. and for allowing a 2nd support material with minimal waste. I’m not sure I fully understand Bambu’s newest nozzle-change idea.. but they have a good track record for success.  So I’m looking forward to evolution in this area over the next year, as I look for an upgrade for my MK3S+/Octoprint which has worked very well for me for PLA/PETG/TPU. 

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

@Crab. About the mmu2s. MMU2s was for me a PITA and not worth the effort i put in to it. It wasnt for me as much as the undepower problem as the the stringing. Whatever id did at some point it would fail. I live in a warm environment (cyprus) and whatever i did there was stringing that would either produce loading errors or drag the "string" with the moving parts etc. The solution for me was antimix's "drippling" prusaslicer fork along with the use of the blade. And even then i would get failures. And the troubleshooting on this was horrendous. Having a print that due to the filament changes goes from 6 hours to 24 and then fail when im not looking or sleeping? I just ended up using the muuu2s only for spooljoint. Quite a few people commented at some point that antimixes simple solution was helping them but for some reason, that i cannot understand, prusa refused to include it in their main fork even to be disabled by default.

Prusa seems to start cutting corners sacrificing their name. Abysmal wifi response and having to compress the gcode, printing the plastic parts of the XL on PETG instead of at least ASA, the whole overpriced afterthought that they called an enclosure without a single heat sensor in it ( i get overheating errors when i close the enclosures door), not having proper ventilation and cooling fans on the various boards (i had to print mod on a 5k printer... come on), a curing station that worths as much as a decent resin printer for the sls1, etc.

About the bambu h2c , as far as i understand with what i've seen and the fact that the H2D can be upgraded to H2C , gives me the impression that the addition to H2D/AMS will be a set of 6 nozzles that can be exchanged during printing time. This as far as i understand will be in the place of the one of H2D toolheads (thats why they claim to have 6+1 nozzles) and it will be basically nozzles that can wireless heat up via an induction circuit. The filament path will still be single and will need to unload and load the next filament. What you gain is that you will have no poop since there will be no contamination in the nozzles. 

I truly welcome the competition and i rather see prusa being a valid option, and maybe a bit more expensive , withing acceptable margins instead being another company that failed because they thought they were untouchable. Prusa can't keep charging a premium for their names without the quality and features to back it up.

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

Posted by: @crab

I see lots of other poor engineering decisions. One such item is  the poor networking performance on Prusa’s new MK4/Core one/XL platforms that required them to compress their gcode just to get adequate thruput; and this leads me to believe they don’t have or value the engineering expertise & testing processes they are going to need to stay ahead of the competition. 

I agree with that. OK getting 3d printing working (at least in the early day) wasn't always easy, but W-Fi, not working well on a $5000 printer is unacceptable.  It does look like prices are dropping slightly. An assembled XL with 5 extruders AND a case is only $4500 now, before tariffs. It needs to be $1800. 

I have always assumed that it was only because clueless users badgered them that Prusa supplied WiFi interfaces.  No sane engineer would voluntarily fit radio frequency communication to a lump of metal with large moving parts.

Cheerio,

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

grin.. damn.. that wire would be really long on those drones.. you still using a land-line and rotary dial?

Posted by: @diem

I have always assumed that it was only because clueless users badgered them that Prusa supplied WiFi interfaces.  No sane engineer would voluntarily fit radio frequency communication to a lump of metal with large moving parts.

Cheerio,

RE:

Posted by: @diem

I have always assumed that it was only because clueless users badgered them that Prusa supplied WiFi interfaces.  No sane engineer would voluntarily fit radio frequency communication to a lump of metal with large moving parts.

Cheerio,

 

Well let see. Other companies used wifi and until now we haven't heard of moving parts starting to go haywire because of... radio frequencies. Not on 3d printers or any other of the multitude of electronic devices that now have wifi and moving parts.  Also let say that you are ... right... and the rest of engineers wrong. Then explain as a company the reasons why you should not provide WIFI, instead of providing a lousy solution just to say you did it. Either do it well or not at all. Also i guess you know that not all people have structure cabling where their printer is and not all of them are print farms, offices or business so that they should. If the ONLY solution you can think of that is left for them is plugging and unplugging a usb or sd card everytime you want to print then make it industrial level that could withstand a few thousand pluggings and not looking flimsy and thus  being afraid that the next time you push your usb in it will come apart.

Also before i forget. If Prusa was ... gently forced to provide wifi support then what the point of providing a investing in a cloud control solution like prusaconnect. Only for those lucky ones that their printer is sitting next to their roouter and have a cable connection? Its a waste of time and money. 

Remote printing control only makes sense for print farms big enough for employees to do all the machine interaction allowing the design office to operate without getting their hands dirty.

For those with fewer printers remote printing slows the workflow - you have to attend the machine to remove the previous print and load fresh filament then go to a workstation to send the file and start the print followed by checking the first layer ... if the print is not started immediately the filament sits there absorbing moisture and deteriorating to the point that eventually you may have to revisit the machine to change to fresh filament.  Much easier to take the file with you and swap the drive in, load the appropriate filament and start manually.

Cheerio,

RE: I think Prusa should start to take more in consideration that

I would say that Prusa 100% agrees with your workflow. And if I used your workflow, I'd likely not be enjoying or using a 3D printer. (And I'm in a 90% humid, maritime environment most of the year). If remote transfer of data slows your workflow, you need a new workflow.

And I worry for you, because the number of clueless users is rising every day, so who knows what they'll want next.