Prusa or Bambu?
I have enjoyed my Ender 3v2 but my extruder and hot end are acting up and I am ready for a more reliable printer. I like the simplicity of Bambu but it seems to come at the cost of customization. Prusa seems to be more open and extendable, but at the cost of increased complexity. What would you recommend?
Prusa has been a part of the community and active contributors since the very beginning with Adrian Bowyer's open source university project (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RepRap) That is why the entire hobby exists. If it wasn't for proprietary companies like Stratasys, we probably would have seen the hobby start in the 90's instead of the mid 00's. Exploitation through digital theft of ownership is terrible for everyone.
I bought a Prusa. I wouldn't accept a free Bambu printer if you paid me. If I have a choice to own a product, versus renting a product at full retail price when the product is not for sale, I think it is an easy decision. You can own or be owned. I am not for sale.
Honestly, the second half of this post is not a very true statement, and is pretty disingenuous to reality. The Bambu ecosystem can operate independently of Bambu labs if you want/need to, there are plenty of knock off replacement parts to keep it running long term, you can buy all the consumables from amazon/aliexpress and many of the other components. The slicer has a feature rich open source alternative too, so software isn't an issue. The only thing it has against it is its not open source. I own both a prusa and now 2 Bambu printers. I spent a long time researching what I was going to purchase to upgrade my prusa printers. The mk3.9 upgrade for my mk3s+ was almost the cost of a whole new printer, and new units were more expensive than the p1s. The p1p/s has more build volume, is faster, and has been more reliable and in general usable than my prusa ever was. I want to support prusa but they have fallen way behind in nearly every way. If you don't want your data collected and you desire privacy you can have that with a closed source product, it's not impossible. And you can get a better machine at 2/3 the cost of a prusa or a multi material one at the same cost.
I simply do not support any company exploiting an open source community. You will find that the parts availability will disappear as soon as retail availability dies. It happens with all proprietary garbage. The only reason for proprietary in this space is exploitation of the end user.
I bought Prusa.
I hope to be able to still use the machine in 10 years.
I'm much less confident that BambuLabs machines will be able to do that, than Prusas. This is because of multiple reasons:
But Bambu has Prusa beat on price for similar performance. By a significant margin.
And to further your question, I'm not sure Bambus Printers have that much more "simplicity" in use than Prusas. Especially if you buy pre-built. Both are rather plug and play.
In short: I fear / believe that Bambu is exactly the kind of company that ruins products. Underbid your competition, cut costs at the customers expense. Why provide updates to your old products when you make a new gen? Why use a part that lasts longer than the required period for repairs? etc.
The fact that they started regular sales this year (I Believe before was pre-order?! would have to check) and already have 3 different platforms out (X, P and A) is quite a lot of fragmentation. Maybe they designed for that from the start, but... we'll see. AMS and AMS lite also seem quite different.
They may even be the worst kind, that underbids the competition and takes development costs as losses to destroy the competition until you are an effective monopoly, at which point you can fuck everything up way more (increase prices, cut quality / development etc)
In Fairness, they may also not be. They may also have excellent long-term reliability and support. Maybe in 5 years P1 and X1 still get feature updates. Maybe the design decisions turn out to be outstanding.
I've had my mk1 kit for nine years. I expect I'll get another nine out of it before it goes to college.
All great points. I am selling my Mk3 and just got a Mk4. The speed on the Mk4 is amazing. Build quality is definitely better on the Mk4 from the Mk3.
The bamboo is pretty full of thin plastic parts that you can't print to replace (something I did a few times with my Mk3). The not flat bed thing is weird and tells me they have a manufacturing issue that they worked around in software instead of truly fixing. I really hate the IP theft issue, so that is a deal breaker for me. Ultimately, the printer seems like a decent product but I also don't trust that it will last a decade.
The only thing I think the Mk4 is missing is a camera / octoprint support, but I can live without those.
The only thing I think the Mk4 is missing is a camera / octoprint support, but I can live without those.
Firmware 5.1 enabled octoprint support.
Not as far as they'd like, but it works. From memory what is missing is some support when Local and Octoprint mix (i.e. when you print locally, octoprint can't stop the print. Bit annoying but far from a dealbreaker imho)
I have a Bambu P1S. I think biggest fear is the cloud stuff goes or gets hacked whereas Prusa prints straight to the machine which is less of a man in the middle problem. I can't speak of longevity but the P1S is pretty idiot proof as a printer and I like the AMS aside from the needless pooping which is more of a firmware issue - should be a way to suppress purge poops if a person knows they're using same filament between prints.
As for fragmentation, the X & P range are essentially the same except around the edges - the control panel, supplied nozzle, lidar, camera etc. The A seems like a weird diversion but it has been received favourably and slaughters the Prusa Mini which is getting on in years.
I really like the open nature of Prusa. I won’t tolerate a printer that requires a propriety web service to use like Bambu. I have a Prusa Mini, MK3S, and now the XL, and I am happy about how easy they are to operate and maintain. Every printer is a winner and only gets better with every release. I’m a customer for life.
That said, the cost is a little higher than I’d like and the technology is often a little behind (a bit like my Apple products) but the reliability is so good that it’s completely worth it.
I'd add that quality and their adherence to open standards comes at a cost. That's why prusa is more and a little behind in fancy new features. But 100% that's a cost I'm willing to make to support such an amazing company that treats their employees so well and gives so much to the community.
One major con for Bambu is that the firmware is not open source (at least, last I checked). This puts you in a walled garden of sorts. It also can make you vulnerable, for example earlier this year a bug caused printers connected to Bambu's cloud to start prints that weren't request. You can imagine how bad that is.
This being said, I plan on my next printer upgrade being to a Bambu. I've gotten tired of the calibration game and Bambu does that well.
Mk4 is amazing. Calibration is annoying. They definitely did an amazing job there. Bambu's plate is never flat... It's a manufacturing / design issue. They work around it in software. I can't imagine the other silliness in the printer if they can't even make a flat bed.
Personally I don't think Prusa is really as far behind as some people claim. A lot of printers on the market are still single material bed slingers, and it's not like Prusa doesn't have a Core XY, it's just a large and expensive machine (Prusa XL).
Considering they have been in the market a long time and their printers are known to be reliable workhorses, I went with the Mk4.
A lot of people seem to to think that bedslingers are inherently worse than core xy kinematics.
Core xy is definitely more compact.
In return the belts are longerz tightening them more complex (x and y can become unaligned).
Core xy can be easier for input shaping, as only the z axis mass changes.
Ellis, who is very highly regarded in the Voron world, thinks that bedslinger style printers can offer higher quality prints. My general surface finish is way nicer now that I have a higher quality extruder, but z axis artifacts are certainly a thing on my 350mm^3 CoreXY.
I recently agonized over this decision a bit and went with a Bambu. When it comes down to it, the prusa printers are just really hard to justify given that you are paying more money for fewer features even if you assemble it yourself.
I agree with what others have said that the reliability and longevity of Bambu printers is a concern, but frankly if I’m still into printing in a number of years and Bambu starts to really enshitify, I’ll build a Voron or get something even better that hasn’t come out yet.
I think you line of thinking just convinced me to go with bambu. If it starts sucking in a few years, voron or ratrig will have grown even more and I'll build one of those.
Get the Creality K1 max instead of either. No dated design like in Prusa. And it's open enough and easily hackable to repair and modify as needed.
I get all the arguments for Prusa, but right now there's no excuse for how far behind they are in the industry. I would not invest in their machines until they do some catching up. What you get from them does not justify the price. They got complacent.
While Creality is not as open as Prusa it's not as closed down as Bambu. Their parts tend to be more off the shelf and readily available, and they are also cloned by lots of other manufacturers.
The machine will be repairable and have lots of community support for many years to come.
I have a K1 and was wondering if it would be mentioned. In the beginning I had extrusion problems, I contacted Creality and they had new, redesigned parts in my hand in a week. Since then it has been a workhorse, slapping perfect prints down every time.
I am deciding between the a1 or k1 since microcenter has the k1 for $430.
Did creality get the lidar workin?
I have a ender 3 v2 and flsun super racer and wanted a third printer to speed things up
I bought a Bambu P1S with AMS for Black Friday - something like eur 100 off and a couple of free spools of filament on top of the 3 250g samples they pack in the box. I've only had it about 4 days but it's pretty decent. It's a little loud, but it's fast and enclosed so potentially I could use it with more exotic stuff than PLA. My old printer is an Ender 3 Pro with upgraded board & BL Touch and I reckon this new one is 4x as fast. It's incredibly easy to use - autolevelling, Core XY, filament loading. Only downside is it poops filament out the back and so I reckon I'll have to 3d print a poop slide to bring it around and to the front. The Bambu slicer is a fork of Prusa Slicer - I wish it wasn't so egregiously different graphically but if you've used Prusa Slicer then it's more or less the same except for how prints are sent to the printer.
I've not used a Prusa to compare. People say they're workhorses but I wonder if the Prusa Mk 4 was rushed out judging by some people's comments about the firmware.
The Prusa would be a lot more like your Ender. But like your Ender, they aren't exactly plug and play. That said, they are tried and true work horses. And as another commenter mentioned, very open. Bambu, on the other hand, ships ready to print and from what I hear is reliable and simple. Unfortunately it is much more closed, and you are at the whim of a company that could just decide to kill your printer one day, or take away features with a firmware update.
That's exactly how I feel. I don't want to tinker with my printer anymore.
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