Yesterday, Prusa Research officially unveiled their next printer, the Core ONE. Going over the features and capabilities of this new machine, it’s clear that Prusa has kept a close eye on the rapidly changing desktop 3D printer market and designed a machine to better position themselves within a field of increasingly capable machines from other manufacturers.
While some saw the incremental upgrades of the i3 MK4 as being too conservative, the Core ONE ticks all the boxes of what today’s consumer is looking for — namely high-speed CoreXY movement with a fully enclosed chamber — while still offering the build quality, upgradability, and support that the company has built its reputation on. Put simply it’s one of the most exciting products they’ve introduced in a long time, and exactly the kind of machine that many Prusa fans have been waiting for.
Unfortunately, there’s one feature that’s ominously absent from the Core ONE announcement post. It’s easy to overlook, and indeed, most consumers probably won’t even know it’s missing. But for those of us who are concerned with such matters, it’s an unspoken confirmation that an era has finally come to an end.
With the Core ONE, Prusa Research is no longer in the business of making open source 3D printer hardware, but that doesn’t mean that the printer isn’t hackable. It’s complicated, so read on.
Death by a Thousand Cuts
To say that Prusa Research pivoting away from the open source hardware (OSHW) principles that guided the company, and indeed the 3D printing community, through its early years is a disappointment would be quite an understatement. It’s a crushing blow. One which critics will use to call into question the viability of building a sustainable business model around OSHW. But it’s also not hard to see how we got to this point.
The first warning sign came back in 2021, with the announcement of the Prusa XL. With this new high-end printer, the company seemed uncharacteristically hesitant to open things up, which frankly wasn’t entirely unreasonable. The pricing of the XL put it closer into the professional market than a traditional hobbyist machine, and there were some new features like tool changing and a segmented heated bed that were unique enough that they’d want to keep the details under wraps until the machine at least got a foothold in the market. So if Prusa wanted to play this one a little closer to the chest, so be it.
But things took a concerning turn last year with the release of the i3 MK4. Although Prusa still called the printer open source in their marketing, the reality was a bit more complicated. While at least some of the printer’s technical information was made available, especially the elements that were inherited from the earlier i3 models, there were several rather large omissions.
Printable parts were available only as STLs, there were no design files released for the printer’s control board, and the Nextruder (which was introduced with the XL) remained all but completely proprietary. Many argued that the MK4 didn’t meet the standards that Prusa had set with their previous printers, and that continuing to call it open source was misleading.
If it wasn’t already obvious that Prusa’s commitment to open source was beginning to waiver, Josef’s post on the Prusa Blog made his position abundantly clear. Framed as a call for discussion, the post outlined his feelings on the open source community and what he perceived as the failures of common licenses such as the GPL. While he said that the company still intended to make their machines open, the writing was clearly on the wall.
A New Chapter for Prusa
To be clear, the Core ONE is of critical strategic importance to Prusa. The company needed a revamped machine to combat increased competition from Chinese printer manufacturers, and while it’s not being marketed as a replacement for the i3 MK4, it’s not hard to see the direction the market is moving in. The i3 is a workhorse, and won’t be going away anytime soon, but the chances that it will see a MK5 at this point seem exceptionally slim.
But the Core ONE also represents a mostly clean slate design, one that shares relatively little with the i3. This frees Prusa from any obligation, perceived or otherwise, to continue releasing the printer’s design files. Indeed, the term “open source” only appears once in the announcement post for the printer — and that’s when referring to the firmware and slicer code, which are.
Although we don’t have documentation or an assembly guide for the Core ONE or the MK4S->Core upgrade kits yet, it looks as if very little of Prusa’s remaining open source hardware has been brought forward.
Potentially the Core ONE is using some variation of the CC BY-SA 4.0 licensed MK52 magnetic heated bed, but beyond that, we already know that Prusa is still keeping the design files for major components such as the Nextruder and xBuddy 32-bit control board under wraps for the time being.
Not Open, But Hackable
So we know that Prusa isn’t advertising the Core ONE design as open source hardware, and that only limited technical data has been released for the few components and subsystems that it inherits from the XL and MK4S. But what does that actually mean for users like us?
That’s where things get a little tricky. While Prusa’s newer printers certainly do not meet the literal requirements of OSHW, they’re still remarkably transparent in a world of proprietary black boxes. We might not get the design files for the printed parts in these new machines, but you’ll get STLs that you can run off if you need a replacement. We can also be fairly sure that Prusa will continue their tradition of releasing wiring schematics for the Core ONE as they’ve done with essentially all of their previous printers, which is more than we can say for the vast majority of consumer products.
While the lack of design files for these new Prusa printers is unfortunate on a philosophical level, it’s hard to argue that they’re any less repairable, upgradable, or hackable than their predecessors. In fact, Prusa’s actually made at least one improvement in that department — announcing that breaking off the control board’s “Appendix” security device and installing a new firmware will no longer void the printer’s warranty.
We should also consider that even Prusa’s earlier printers have not always been as open as the company would perhaps like us to believe. Sure, for the Prusa Mini you could hop on GitHub and grab the KiCad files for its mainboard, and the design files for the i3 up until the MK3 are available as GPLv2 licensed OpenSCAD code. But the company has never actually provided a complete Bill of Materials for their printers, and even after years of requests from the community, they have still yet to release the source code for their bootloader as they consider it a separate project from the main GPL-licensed firmware.
Prusa has always used a somewhat piecemeal method of releasing the source and design files for their products. But it’s worked for them up to this point. The bottom line is, makers and hackers will still have plenty to work with, even if things aren’t quite as open as we’d prefer.
Becoming Your Own Enemy
On a personal note, I find myself conflicted. I’d argue that the i3 MK3 is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the “Prusa Experience” — support, reliability, upgradability — is worth spending the extra money on. I’m also confident that the Core ONE is precisely the kind of machine Prusa needed to remain competitive in today’s market.
At the same time, there were issues that I was willing to overlook because the company was producing open source hardware. When a shipping date slipped, or a firmware update introduced a new issue, I let it slide because it was for the greater good. But now that they’re no longer calling their printers open source, I can’t help but feel some of that goodwill evaporating — and I’m probably not the only one having similar thoughts.
Ultimately, the part that bothers me the most about this change in Prusa’s approach is that it all seems predicated on a bogeyman that I’m not convinced actually exists. The company line is that releasing the source for their printers allows competitors to churn out cheap clones of their hardware — but where are they?
Let’s be honest, Bambu didn’t need to copy any of Prusa’s hardware to take their lunch money. You can only protect your edge in the market if you’re ahead of the game to begin with, and if anything, Prusa is currently playing catch-up to the rest of the industry that has moved on to faster designs. The only thing Prusa produces that their competitors are actually able to take advantage of is their slicer, but that’s another story entirely. (And of course, it is still open source, and widely forked.)
So will the Prusa Core ONE be a good printer? Almost certainly. Will I buy one? Very likely. But part of me will always be disappointed that the guy with the open source hardware logo tattoo took his ball and went home as soon as the game starting getting tough.
Best “buyer beware” notice I have seen in a looonng time.
The problem with open source is it makes you a manufacturing company, not a design company. If engineering sets you apart from your competitors,open source just opens the door for better manufacturers to undercut you. R&D has an expense and Prusa is far from a great manufacturing company even if they are a great engineering company.
They’ve got no chance competing on price, and if they open all their designs fully, that’s all they’ve got. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve said prusa are great, and the reply is just that you could buy 3 Chinese printers for the same money.
What would people copy exactly? They’re behind the curve currently hardware wise.
You could argue the main thing they got is QA and manufacture and support in the EU. Some customers are willing to pay a premium for it.
What do you mean!
All they did was basically copy Bambu Labs X1C printer. An amazing printer to say the least. Yet Prusa is more like a Harbor Freight copy of it.
Closer comparison is Apple vs Android. Bambu revolutionized printers and has a very strong platform, but the costumer service is laughable, the machines are impossible to do repairs on by design (let alone hack), and anything they do give back to the community has to be clawed out of their hands. As a comparison, Prusa has great costumer service, is easier to repair (and thus hack), and is (fairly) open source, in fact they’re the entire reason Bambu has such a competent slicer in the first place.
Yep, the comparison holds, because just like with Apple, Bambulab didn’t revolutionize anything and just packaged a Voron running Klipper in a shiny CNCed aluminum enclosure, and yet its fans feel like they “invented” the thing 😂
Such a simplistic and wrong view. Show me one other mainstream printer that had all the features the X1 did at launch.
Lol.. Check the CEL robox.. Whilst missing some of today’s bells and whistles, introduced so many useful improvements years before the mainstream. They even had valves heads so no drips.. Plus ruby heads, auto levelling, etc
“Mainstream” — but Jeremy’s point was that what Bambu did was to take builds that were already in the community builds and commercialize them, making them mainstream. Esp. the Voron, but that’s just the most “mainstream” of the hacker printers that inspired Bambu.
Bambu basically took existing designs, brought in design-for-manufacture know-how, and commercialized them. Just as Creality did with the v-slot-and-roller Prusa i3 clone design, also to great success.
The open-source 3DP innovations are what drives this industry. It’s a pool of free R&D that they all swim in. And of course I’m not saying the Voron came out of nowhere either.
This mainstreaming is great, because it means that people get more printer for more money, but critically less tinkering effort, because not everyone is a hacker.
But yeah. Mainstream is exactly the right word. With all of its positive and negative connotations.
Yes at launch it was good futures but now that’s it’s old, there just expensive features, I use a ton of x1cs at school and my a1 at home is way better in reliability, in my opinion, the core one is the x1c, but better
you forgot bambi created high tech device including a lot of sensors in their motion system for compensation never seen before. In case of reliability are their printers ahead and well designed for high performance. I own a X1C from the very first beginning and it is an impressive piece of hardware.
That’s a surprisingly good comparison actually, though I hope the market never narrows us down to just the two brands. And, unfortunately, I think Prusa is more the “Google Mobile” or “Samsung” here, with RepRap being closer to representing the open source group that started the project.
“machines are impossible to do repairs on by design”
???
What are you talking about? Hacking, absolutely you’re right there. But repairs? They have basically every part available from their own webstore, at a reasonable price, along with videos on how to do repairs. I don’t think I’ve ever had any household appliance that came even close to this level of serviceability.
Appliances are what you should be comparing it to, it’s a finished commercial product, like your TV or inkjet printer. Try to buy a new motor for your stand mix from KitchenAid and have them tell you how to install it. It’s not going to happen. Bambu has their flaws, but servicing isn’t one of them.
I get your point but KitchenAid is not a great example – very easy to source parts and access service manuals for their products.
The Bambu engineering team came from DJI, and it shows. DJI also offers comprehensive spare parts for their otherwise-non-hackable-and-entirely-black-box bits.
For the end-user, it’s certainly a win. For the hacker, well, maybe you can figure out how to repurpose them?
Ok, try replacing a single pulley.
SPOILER: It’s glued in place. You’ll have to spend 8 hours scraping off the glue and gluing in a new pulley or replace the entire assembly which you can only buy from Bambu Lab.
With the Core One, you can replace a pulley in a few minutes because nothing is glued in. And you can buy pulleys in bulk from any source, not just the manufacturer. That’s what defines repairability.
The pulley design sucks but that is not the entire printer. They designed it to be repairable and mostly succeeded with a few exceptions.
Your Prusa also contains parts that can only be sourced from one source. The electronics for example.
Not really. Being able to repair something rather than it being junk on first failure is what defines repairability. Single source is a limitation if they cease manufacture or go bust, but so long as they maintain availability, the parts offer repairability without any need for drm-locked tools or large jigs. So they haven’t really gone Apple or John Deere
I’ve found Bambu Labs customer service and documentation to be excellent. At first the customer service wasn’t great, but it’s a lot better now. I can’t really compare to Prusa as I don’t own one. It’s definitely not hackable, but… that wasn’t bambu’s goal now was it? They wanted to make a quick, reliable machine. I’ve had an x1c and other than a burned out lidar board, which was my fault, it’s been great, fast, and high quality. When I ordered the new part bambu sent me a new lidar for free as they had stopped making the one that came with my original machine and the new board wasn’t compatible.
So all enclosed CoreXY printers are now Bambu copies? What about those that existed long before Bambu? Like all those opensource Vorons and gazzilion other printers both proprietary and opensource.
I don’t think this is a fair assessment. It’s a Core X-Y printer, but the frame design isn’t “box with panels”, but something more akin to a monocoque design. The Prusa design also re-uses enough parts from the Mk 4 design that they’re offering an upgrade kit to turn a Mk4 into a Core.
Characterizing the Core One as a cheap copy of the X1C is incorrect on all counts. The Core One is not “harbor freight” quality, it is not a copy of the X1C, nor is the X1C’s box frame core-xy configuration particularly new or unique.
I don’t know, the X1 is a quality machine but this looks higher quality. As for being a Bambu copy, that’s a little rich when Bambulab released two bedsligners that could easily be called i3 and Prusa Mini “copies” by the same silly logic. You might also not know that Prusa Pro’s AFS “Automated Farm System” contains a bunch of CoreXY printers similar to the CORE and was released in 2021.
I think it is unfair to compare Prusa to Bambu Lab. The latter may not have copied anything from Prusa, but they did had influences from Open Source projects. This quote is taken directly from their site’s page for the X1C:
“Acknowledgement
We express our thanks to the 3D printing community. We have learned a lot about 3D printing from YouTube channels, Reddit discussions, and open source projects. We would like to thank Teaching Tech; his calibration page inspired us to implement the Lidar to do the all important calibrations automatically. We would also like to thank MirageC. If it had not been for his HevORT’s stunning performance, we would not have set our target acceleration to 20 m/s^2 two years ago. Finally, we would like to thank the Voron team. We have done many feasibility analyses and evaluation experiments on a Voron 1.8 during the early days of this project.”
Also, let’s not forget that Chinese companies have been subsidized from their government in order to dominate the market, which is plain unfair competition Prusa have to go against.
Is Prusa letting go of the Open Source ethos sad? Yes, it is. But at the end of the day they are a company, and as a company they have to decide what’s better for their business. There are still loads of other Open Source 3D printers still available, so anyone who really cares about that can still “vote” using their wallets by not purchasing Prusa printers.
There is a a lot of tinfoil to this reply. Every nation supports its companies to some extent and Prusa has many agencies in Europe that buy their printers due to where they are based as well.
I’m tired of this Chinese bogeyman rhetoric that constantly sees Prusa given every bit grace possible and portrays every Chinese company as the devil.
With your quote you took a company acknowledging the advancements of hobbyists and tried to twist it into indicating that their machines were in any way clones.
Prusa isn’t open source either yet you don’t have the same thing to say for them.
Not true. China wants to be number one in everything. What the commentator said earlier is accurate and has been for decades. If it wasn’t for prusa, what you see in large of the 3d printer community and manufacturers of such Chinese knock offs wouldn’t exist. People like Bambu labs not only took the open source code to make their very own slicer from Prusa, but also alot of the design elements while introducing some things of their own. China is not our friend. Not all citizens of course are bad people, but that country is mentally trained to be and see themselves as better than others. This recent printer model and the xl may not be fully open source in every way, but they are a heck of lot better than Bambu labs.
You meant, if it wasn’t for stratasys, right?
Are you really complaint about a company building on top of open source code? That is very anti-open source of you.
Also plenty of other countries see themselves as the best and want to be the best too, stop trying to spin that as something only China does.
“Not all citizens of course are bad people, but that country is mentally trained to be and see themselves as better than others.”
I think there’s a lot of that in any population or social group and your comments indicate it’s true where you come from also. People are pretty much people wherever you go.
Bambulab has contributed enough to the codebase that Prusa slicer has brought back features and Orca slicer, arguably the enthusiast favourite has opted to base itself off of Bambu Studio.
How can you argue they are not following similar principles to Prusa when Prusa forked Slic3r, and then pulled in a lot of changes from other slicers such as Cura, Super slicer, Orca, and even Bambu?
This appears to be a clear double standard where when Prusa does it, it’s called good, but when Bambu does it, it’s called bad.
Why are you pro the GPL3 nature of the body of this slicer when it benefits one company but not the other?
As for Prusa being better open source wise, sure, but they negate that in my opinion with the constant misleading marketing and attempts to appear like an open source company through and through without being one.
As for China, I agree with a lot of the caution regarding their government of course, though I should say I think the idea they want to be number 1 in everything implying every company gets favouritism doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think instead, they focus on key areas, and I’m not sure 3d printing falls in that considering Bambulab appears to be privately owned without direct government ties, as with the other 3d printing companies.
It’s not then Chinese companies, it’s the government. The companies don’t set the rules, and I’m not sure they even benefit that much – it’s the government that benefits most from the trade imbalance.
I don’t know if the Chinese government directly subsidizes all Chinese company. However, having taken multiple trips to multiple coastal Chinese cities , I do know that all Chinese residents directly subsidize our insatiable apatite for cheap products by being forced to live and work in a system with very weak labor and environmental protections. Community organizing is routinely suppressed and free speech is none existent. This type of system, the very system all Chinese companies benefits from, is as far away from the open source ethos as one can get.
I’ve never actually thought about the whole thing that way for some reason. Very good point.
What a world we live in. First Jürgen Klopp, now Josef Průša.
Whelp, I never bought a Prusa, but now I’m gonna not buy it harder. My next printer will be a DIY Voron.
heh i’m ambivalent about prusa changing direction but my printer just turned 10 years old and its mild maintenance problem is becoming slightly more acute. last week i had to print a replacement part while manually feeding the extruder with my fingers! it had some under-extrusion, of course, but it worked well enough to print a proper replacement.
so the phrase “my next printer will be a ___” resonates with me. and i’m not making any predictions…i hope to enjoy the uncertainty: will i buy a product, or build another kit, or simply maintain this one “forever” like the ship of theseus?? is the catastrophe of printing a replacement part on a broken printer the straw that broke the camel’s back? or proof that the dreaded can happen and i can still cope? i am waiting to turn the page and find out :)
I had to do that with my ultimaker original once. It started my search for a new printer. I passed on the Prusa because of the price. With cheaper options available and a lower income than when I bought the ultimaker, I couldn’t justify the price. What I ended up getting was the Voxelab Aquila. It was around $200 and while it has had some issues, the cost per printed part is far more reasonable, and the quality still leaps and bounds beyond the wooden ultimaker. I probably still need to upgrade a few parts like the extruder gears due to slipping, but overall it has been wonderful. I need to get my auto bed leveling worked out too.
Anyway, my main point here is don’t be afraid to go cheaper, but know it’ll require a bit of work. So far it hasn’t required shoving filament into the Bowden tube, but it’s not click and go either.
I really just wish there was a $1000 well made, mostly preassembled Voron running Klipper out there. I don’t want to spend 40h building the printer, I just want to be sure that when anything breaks, or if there’s anything I want to tweak, I can just head to AliExpress to buy inexpensive parts or to GitHub to modify code, printable parts, and board/schematic files. The Sovol SV08 is the closer we got to that.
That’s basically what RatRig is, plug and play premium corexy with high touch support.
Except for the $1000 part.
My Sovol SV08 was delivered on Monday (Nov, 18) as of this writing it has 27 hours of printing on it. All ASA prints except for the initial benchy with the included crap filament.
Sitting next to my Vorons it is not a 1 for 1 copy. But it certainly is printing at a very similar quality and speed. I’m also about $500 ahead on the cost of the machine. It takes me a full day or more to assemble, install klipper and start the first benchy on a Voron at this point. I had the SV08 printing a benchy in less than 2 hours from the box hitting my doorstep. I think I paid $549 direct from Sovol for it, amazon wants I think $699.
I won’t be building another voron after putting this one together. I’ll buy another SV08 and modify it to what I need. If for nothing else it just being faster to get running.
Then simply buy another user’s Voron. That is very common. Especially since we tend to build one or more Vorons too many for our own good 🙂 Head to the Discord.
That requires trusting another users assembly.
Would you trust someone else’s car mods?
I think the same is true with 3d printers and it’s why modified printers command such a low price relatively.
Then we will welcome you.
The problem with open source hardware is that as a company you literally give away your products and intellectual property away for free
So where is the profit at?
That’s why windows and Microsoft office isn’t open source
Same with adobe acrobat and PDF
Etc.
Open source from a business pov is the worst business model, can’t make money if you give it away.
Once you make something better then maybe you can release the source code and schematic/blueprint and charge more for the superior products
you can’t make money on software sales while giving software away. you can’t make money on design sales while giving a hardware design away.
but you can still make money on selling the hardware itself, though obviously sharing the design gives you some competition. you can also make money selling support or integration. and you can of course make money on extras and so on. for example, intel contributes significantly to open source projects, and they are rewarded in hardware sales…the thing they sell (chips) isn’t the same thing they give away for free (kernel drivers).
just as one oddball example…i make an open source app that is free on the google play store and it has generated enough interest that someone has offered to pay me to make a branded / customized version to be bundled with their own product. i wasn’t interested because that wasn’t really part of my plans but these little opportunities do pop up. yeah, they could hire anyone to fork my project, but they started by making me an offer first.
in other words, ymmv. open source can certainly rule out certain business models, but enable others. and there are more important things in the world than profit. shrug
How many scratch built prusas are you aware of? Most people shied away from the kit versions let alone building from scratch.
The business models for open source are different.. not necessarily worse. Prusa was selling experience, quality, convenience and support. The parts cost in the printers were a fraction of the cost of the printer.
What??
At least where I live, almost no one buys an assembled Prusa, only a kit.
Not only it is significantly cheaper, but when you build it yourself, you are in a much better position to fix issues you run into later, all by yourself.
The only people buying assembled printers are businesses.
I’m not a running a business, the MK3+ I bought was assembled.
Never use absolutes! B^)
That’s a fallacy. That assumes that the only business model that exists is selling boxed software/hardware (“box-less” downloads included).
Sure, that’s the easiest model to make money off but it is far from the only one.
There are plenty of companies around that produce free (as in freedom, not beer) software – and make a living from providing proprietary add-ons, paid services built around the software, etc. WordPress, Redhat, Grafana, Docker, Apache Foundation, Mozilla … In the world of hardware just look at SparkFun.
Unfortunately a lot of people don’t understand neither the market nor the license they have used. That something is under GPL doesn’t mean that someone else will do the legwork for you and go to the courts to enforce it against eventual violators. Or that GPL really means “free for anything” – including becoming the author’s direct competitor. It isn’t “open and free – but only if you don’t compete with me”.
Prusa was justifiably pissed because of the tons of cheap I3 clones that were using his R&D and undercutting his business. But then he either should have chosen a different business model than “shifting boxes” because the entire thing was not exactly unforeseeable – Czech factory producing the machines from 3D printed parts and mostly hand-assembling them can’t exactly compete with far East mass-produced goods. 3D printers are a commodity – also thanks to Prusa’s work.
Or he shouldn’t have opened the machines up to begin with. Which would have likely gotten him bad press, given that he has started off from the open source RepRap project (as did majority of those early bird consumer 3D printing companies) – and most likely not helped him any in the long run because it isn’t like there wouldn’t be consumer 3D printing if there wasn’t Prusa. He and his company were far from the only ones in the low cost printer market and even the open source ones.
He did a lot of important and innovative work – but his complaining about “freeloaders ripping him off” is just butthurt. His company has also been asleep at the wheel the last few years, producing rehashes of the existing designs while the world was moving in a completely different direction and has long outpaced him.
Well I can open source a nuke then
That’s why open source hardware is not a good business model
Have you ever studied business economics or ran a successful business?
Open source people just want free shit IMHO
Great Scott Gadgets does… I own write a few of their products.
Of course you can open source a nuke. The problem isn’t knowing how to build one. It’s getting your hands on the yellow cake uranium. Lol… Are you sure you’re enlightened?
Same with 3D printers. There are no secrets that can’t be reproduced just by buying a printer and taking it apart. No patent? No problem! Of course if you’re giving away the plans, no one needs to buy your printer or even know how to reverse engineer or 3D model.
Then again, open source people tend to not give much thought to money. They already have enough or just don’t want more. It’s only when that changes along the way do people start closing previously open designs.
Your comments on Linux below make no sense. Is using Linux somehow hiding a crime? Not wanting to give money to a company that makes a worse OS should be illegal or something? What are you talking about? That’s a rhetorical question. I don’t really care.
yellowcake from ore is doable literally with buckets and hardware store chemicals. Processing a 2-digit number of tons of ore would be a lot harder, but isotope separation is probably the stopping point for any individual backyard nuke attempt…
A country can source yellowcake
Theres plenty of it under Chernobyl
Just like a company with more money than you can just take your open source idea and just make a product, then under cut your price
Are you trying to be a smartass?
Im pretty sure with the electrical and nuclear engineering and military background i could open source and build a nuke
Just go to the right country
A German American engineer that understands nuclear physics is getting it right out the horses mouth
These are some deeply smooth-brained takes.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make with “Well I can open source a nuke then” but it certainly isn’t informed or cogent. There are already detailed plans for fission and fusion weapons available online. The difficult part of building a nuke is refining the fissile material.
Also, claiming that “Open source people just want free shit IMHO” while they are providing the designs for their hardware for free is baffling. They aren’t asking for anything — they’re giving it away.
In addition to the other well written rebuttals, it’s always possible to limit your license in ways that keep people from wholesale copying and selling a competing product.
A ton of OSS make money by being fully open source and free for the end user but cost money for a license and support for businesses.
So it’s not needed to fully lock things down to hide from competition.
I also want to echo the other sentiments that their printers have been behind the curve for awhile now so copycats are likely not a real concern.
It becomes required to lock things down and hide details from the competitors when the Chinese in particular are great a creating a cheaper illegal clone product but neither their government or yours will actually prevent these clones from being sold in your own backyard…
I agree you don’t have to use any particular model for your business and many can work, but hardware as it has so much more R&D costs is exceptionally difficult to make a viable open source business while the clone that breaches the limits of your license is never made to obey, pay damages, kept off the market etc.
It’s not like they can’t buy a machine and then unleash a horde of techs to reverse engineer it.
The more closed the tech is the more it hurts the customers who can’t do that.
But that costs that company time and money – and in that time you are selling your new product at a price that pays for your R&D and is actually profitable, as there is not the comparatively cheap model undercutting you because it had almost no costs by copying your homework reverse engineering (where you don’t even need to know why something is that way just copy it – as even if its patented etc the Chinesium producer will never suffer for it, your government won’t block those imports etc).
I agree closed is bad for the customers, at least once it gets beyond a certain point – you don’t need to publish a document that tells me the bearing/pulley etc diameters, can just measure those details on the worn/broken parts. But it may just be a required evil in the current global economic markets (though I’m not sure the current status quo with China will really last).
Foldi-one gets it.
If I can download the pcb, upload it to a pcb maker, and have it arrive 3 days later good to go, it’s almost zero effort to clone a design. Figuring it all out with wire cutters and multimeters takes months!
With Prusa being behind the times hardware wise historically, why would they need to copy prusas hardware? It’s never been their strong point.
Prusa certainly makes money off their printers, and while open-source, the real value of the company is literally in the name. As the author said, there are aspects of Prusa ownership that comes with expectations (customer service etc).
Problem is hardware and software behave according to different dynamics. Calling them open doesn’t change that.
The problem is that Open Source isn’t a business model, it is a software development strategy. When people try to turn it into a business model it becomes the basis for a very weak business.
I appreciate and support Open Source as much as I can, but I also feel that Prusa has excellent products that benefit the 3D printer market. If their business fails, it doesn’t help any of us. I want them out there innovating and competing with others. Attempting to beat Prusa at the 3D printer game has motivated many creative ideas.
I can respect that they need to protect their IP to maintain a competitive edge. Competing against other companies that are free-riding on your R&D investment is hard to do.
Let’s also be fair, Prusa is tighten down their Open Source philosophy in a very light way. They could have become another Stratasys, and one of those is more than I want around.
Prusa has to deal with some real market forces and subsidies from China. He is still focused on rock solid products and I don’t get the vibe he is wanting to “close source” and take it private and make all this money like you’ve seen with some other projects. My take is he’s trying to protect his offering the best he can. Will it still be highly hackable? Yes! Replacement parts that you can easily swap? Absolutely. Stellar customer service? Sure why not. This all reads to me like he’s “the man in the arena” dealing with reality while carrying on with his principles. It’s easy to bemoan him not meeting some perfect ideal if you’re not actually trying to live by the ideal and literally run a company. My Prusa printers have been amazing. Im ride or die with him.
Prusa was doing just fine before Bambu Labs. There were plenty of MK3 clones, yet that era was their highlight. The whole “Chinese competition” is an excuse and a bad one. The author had it right. Prusa started having trouble because another company leapfrogged them in design and capability. Bambu Labs didn’t get there by ripping from Prusa.
Also my experience owning a Prusa XL has not been great. Shipping on everything was horrible and absolutely no communication or support from the company. Since then it’s had a whole host of issues, none of which the company will fix or provide adequate support for. This latest release just confirms it, I’m done with them.
Bambu basically took the core xy platform model but they also have clones of very Prusa like models. I would not say Bambu is the target though because they actually add some neat innovations. I think it is the super cheap very direct copies out there. At some point someone says I went with the cheap one because Prusa was too expensive. If Prusa has to do the R&D so you can buy a cheap clone from another vendor that is why they are going more closed. I see this same thing happening to tool manufacturers who innovate only to be undercut by cheaper exact copies. Prusa has done a lot of the 3D printing industry by taking open source slicers and printers and refining them and giving back the improvements but they cant be just the designer and let someone else make the profits.
That’s not what’s happening though. Thing is people still bought Prusa’s back when they were a top model and provided top customer support, even with Creality in the game. Just look at market share changes since CoreXY and Bambu Labs became big in the market. That’s what took most of Prusa’s core business and the Core One is clearly their answer to that. The Prusa XL was an overpriced, unfinished answer as well. They innovated plenty with the XL, but no one copied it and Prusa lost a ton of market share to better designs.
That is kind of the point, Prusa has had to play catch-up. No one is copying them right now, they are all trying to copy Bambu Labs. Just look at Creality and Sovol, both copying either Voron or Bambu Labs. Same with Anycubic machines, going for an obvious A1 look. Prusa prices are high, things like shipping times and launch problems are the same as they were several years ago, etc. I’d pay for the reliability except I have found my Sovol SV06 to be more reliable than my XL, which is crazy.
Also the community gave back plenty to Prusa as I understand it…I mean he’s using CoreXY designs now and copying others, yet making it not as open source. He’s basically turning around and doing what others are. Not cool.
Would that be because you’re used to free shipping from China, subsidised by the Chinese government?
From day one Bambu has built warehouses all over the world. I can get items in 5 days from EU store in Germany for max 10 € shipping.
Prusa were absolutely fine before Bambu came along. There wasn’t a huge issue with clones, Prusa could still continue to operate and make profit. The issue now is that they have fallen behind and much better value printers exist now. No one is trying to copy Prusa anymore, they are behind yet now they choose to try and stop people copying them? That seems very odd. If there were loads of other companies making clones of every product Prusa puts out then it might make sense but that isn’t reality. Practically all printers now are ender 3 style printers, voron clones or similar designed as competitors to the Bambu P and X series. No one is trying to copy the MK4, no one is trying to copy the XL, why would they start trying to copy the Core One? Most companies already have core XY printers on the market.
Bambu destroyed them in the market. There is little reason to get an i3 MK4 if you can just get an A1. I can’t really think of anything that would make the MK4 better than the A1 which is much cheaper.
The reality is that Prusa just hasn’t kept up and their competitors have massively improved.
Bambu didn’t destroy Prusa. Bambu just made a product that appeals to what I would term consumer 3D printer operators at a reasonable price. Prusa, and the rest of the 3D printer market were previously selling mostly to what I would call prosumers.
The A1 series in particular is putting 3D printers in the hands of people Prusa could never hope to sell to and who would have previously bought a gen 1 Ender 3 and given up. I think Creality might have managed it if they’d more aggressively priced the V3 Ender 3s (KE, SE) but they are fighting the baggage of people who shouldn’t have bought gen 1 E3s and they sat their prices in an awkward middle spot between the A1 and the A1 mini. In my view, Creality have done the smart thing with the K1 max and K2 by beating Bambu on build volume and waiting until the AMS was mature to learn from the mistakes made by Bambu with their AMS.
You don’t think Bambu is going after the Prosumer market as well with the X1 and even the entry level enterprise market with the X1E?
As for Creality being “smart” for waiting for the AMS to mature, Bambulab is about to release their next top of the line printer. Seems they waited long to copy.
Hardly the innovation I think we should be treating as model innovation citizens there.
I will say the K1 Max was decent for the time it came out. The K2 also looks decent but I’m just not following the narrative you are giving alongside.
I think you misunderstood, a prosumer and even a commercial user can still use a consumer product. In the commercial space, they seem to be using X1s in the same fashion as RAID.
As for the new Bambu machine, all we know is that it will be a higher end model than the X1E so I don’t think it will be cutting into the space occupied by the X1 downwards printers any time soon. Bambu specifically mentioned this because, I presume, they were concerned about an Osborne effect.
I don’t find a problem with this. It’s hard to make money with open source hardware. Prusa does not have blank check product development by a government agency to my knowledge. I would rather them stay alive and profit than go bankrupt and remain open source. I don’t want another DJI only market like what the consumer drone space has became. When a government can pay for all your pitfalls in a public arena, no one wants to play anymore.
Of all the commercial 3d printer manufacturers, Prusa still track closer to the open source philosophy, and contributed more to the open source community than its closest competitors. The ability to upgrade from the current bed slinger Mk4, like the one I have, to the newer CoreXY Core ONE runs contrary to the mass market disposable appliance mindset, but fit the hacker ethos rather well.
Sovol currently is more open source than Prusa
That is a bargain for a Prusa printer. I was expecting the price to be somewhere between 2-3k€.
Such a quality printers, I love my MK4S. Perfect print every time.
Alas, it is the fate of all open source projects… Fork it, and continue elsewhere.
STEP files for the Mk4 are available on Printables. There don’t appear to be STEPs for the few changes introduced in the Mk4S.
They haven’t been releasing full hardware info since the mk3s.
No full assembly, no full pcb files, no bootloader information, and the warranty void detection.
I started 3DP with an early Prusa clone. It was fiddly and I spent more time making the machine work than I did just printing parts. I shoved it into a corner and it collected dust until I gave it away years later. Bambu recognized that there was a decent sized market that doesn’t see 3DP as an end to itself but rather a tool that needs to just work. I’m fine with it not being open sourced. I really would rather spend time on projects and not leveling the bed, calibrating filament, getting the temperature right for best bed adhesion and diagnosing a litany of errors and fixing them. Maybe some people live to tinker with their 3DP, I just want it to work. Open Source doesn’t move my meter much.
The X1C is not perfect and I might give the new Prusa a look. What I don’t see is a decent entry against the AMS. I love being able to print from up to 16 different filaments without touching the machine. I know many people use AMS for multicolor prints but I just like having a decent number of types available. Plus multicolor is terribly wasteful. I clean up my bed after each print so the machine is available to print the next one. The machine lives in my basement and my office is upstairs. I send off the print when I finish the design and only have to go down to the machine when the print is done. It still requires a little fussing but it is on the level of what I do with my table saw and other shop equipment. Prusa, take notice, your customer base is changing.
The irony here is that if you had bought an actual Prusa it would have just worked. They have a well earned reputation for being easy, workhorse machines.
Exactly, buy a cheaper copy of a Prusa and use it to evaluate Prusa’s products. Also warn Prusa that their customer base is changing even though you have never been a Prusa customer. Maybe they know their customer base is changing so they offer a reliable reprap type printer in the MK4, pro level cartesian printer, high end core xy and consumer level core xy, and dont forget SLA. Which customer base are they missing, the cheaper than dirt chinese knock off market?
Their announcement video shows that it works with their MMU3, which granted is five filaments and not sixteen, but is a rock solid multicolor system.
Yes the MMU3 is actually slightly faster at changing filaments (because it doesn’t need to purge the nozzle) and is less wasteful (because it doesn’t need to purge the nozzle then kick out the poop). As far as being integrated into one cohesive unit with a drybox with semi-automatic loading of new filaments into the box, the AMS wins hands down.
Every single nozzle multiple colour system needs to purge the nozzle to some extent. The amount that needs purged and how it is purged can vary though. Prusa just purges into a separate tower on the build plate.
In case of Prusa it retracts the filament completely before pushing new color. In Bambu it cute the filament near the hotend and it takes quite bit of plastic to purge that last piece.
I really loved the idea and open source of Prusa. I held off for years buying a clone, because they had quality issues, and were still janky. I just couldn’t justify the cost of a Prusa, and the shipping fees for a gimmick toy that people mainly printed upgrades and fixes for the printer vs making cool stuff.
I don’t buy a paper ink jet and get excited about having to make custom parts to prevent paper jams, or accept poor paper roller sticktion for a high gloss premium paper photo print failing 3/4 complete.
The market was stale with minor accessories, but no polish. 3d printing was staying a hobbies toy. Prusia may research ideas, figure out something just enough to get it to work most of the time, but like most geeks, they dont polish to consumer friendly. They get to geek l33t friendly. A fiddly bit of kit that you had to get a PhD in just to troubleshoot failed prints. Then Bamboo lab shook the market with a multi material printer that just worked. A slicer that just worked. People were just dragging and dropping files and clicking print, like a printer should. I didn’t hear people talking about hacking and tweaking and customizing and swaping hotends and extruder and all that l33t jazz. Adam Savage said it just worked with everything he wanted to print. It just worked. Like a consumer printer should. Not a hobbies toy that you get bragging points over in forums for and look down on the noobs over.
Adam Savage likely needs things to just work.
You ask “Where are the clones” they definitely exist. I was in a discord’s maker channel like a week or so ago talking about looking for black Friday deals on possibly getting my first printer, and when talking about how I may not be in the market now cause the printer I would want would be too expensive, within about 5 minutes someone linked me to an aliexpress link of a Prusa clone that “he had been running flawlessly for 2 years” that was less than 50% off the official. I don’t really love the idea of buying a clone like that so I will not link it, but they definitely exist.
Very much depends on what you class as a clone. Not every bed slinger is a Prusa clone and Prusa didn’t come up with the idea anyway. The i3 bed slinger style design has existed for a long time and existed before Prusa too.
The “bed slinger” came from Prusa’s rep rap lineage to which he was a significant contributor. Comparing all bed slingers and all core xy printers is like comparing F1 race cars and model T Fords as being the same platform. Most innovations in 3D printer lately has been in software which is really the hard part. If you look at it that way, all the 3D printers are rip offs of various CNC machine tools since the bed slinger style and core XY gantry systems all came from those motion platforms way before 3D printing was even a thing.
The listing in question literally mentioned Pursa i3 MK3S in the name. I will happily admit that I am not deep in the maker space and don’t know the ins and outs, but to me, that is pretty clone-y to me yea?
It looks like the upgrade the community was waiting for. Prusa made many mistakes among which his OSHW tattoo and sitting behind the wheel thinking he only needs to drive a straight line. Still, he has a company and the rest of us prob. don’t. Hackaday is closed source, so shouldn’t play the open source trumpet too loud. Key issues I had with the open source model is that prusa did not design the printer in freecad, also not possible. It is a complex machine, hard to fork and contribute. Monetization was never solved. Open source make sense for a new comer, less for an incumbent. Mixed strategy is what I remember from game theory.
There is very little benefit or need for Hackaday to be open source.
It really doesn’t matter what software something was designed in, what matters is the format they share the design in. Going for standard formats that anyone can use with pretty much any software they choose is what matters, not whether or not the software used was open source.
Open source doesn’t make a lot of sense for new comers either, chances are that anything they release will just get used by the larger, more established companies.
The “open-source” nature of the product didn’t influence me at all when I bought my Mini years ago. I don’t even think I was aware of it, although I do consider it a bonus.
As long as the product remains hackable, serviceable, and well-supported by both the company and community… I don’t see the problem.
The key point is that is remains hackable, and serviceable. This is CERTAINLY part of open-source, and Prusa has shown that their old hardware is meant to be re-purposed. Whether that is through upgrade kits, or by using hardware that can be used for completely unrelated projects — they are hackable at heart. Not sure I can say the same for my HP paper printer — hope the 3d printer industry does not do the same thing.
I’m a happy owner of a MK3, and I can’t say that I necessarily blame them for taking this route. However, now I’m not going to buy one.
Who cares about open, shut up and take my money, sorry China.
I care about open. I want my products that I buy to be repairable, and especially for 3d printers, modable. For me, FDM 3d printers got me into electronics and micro-controllers. A ROBO3D R1 was my first printer, then a Mendel 90. My ROBO R1 let me play with the hardware and electronics to shape me into who I am today.
This is much more than a product, it is an entire mindset to kick-start a generation of engineers. For that, I am supportive of Prusa over Bambu Lab. Call me a fan-boy; I call it hopeful of the future.
This is good enough for me. I trust Prusa to be both reliable AND hackable. My i3 is a workhorse. I’m gun-shy shy to other companies proprietary printers because “it just works” … until it doesn’t and the replacement part is a $500 unit.
I’m heckin excited. I’ve wanted a CoreXY since I first saw MirageC’s insane speed. Prusa is the only brand I’m willing to drop a whole grand on.
Obviously feeling ambivalent. Prusa has always been an example of OSHW working, but if I’m honest it’s been a rough road for the last few years and it’s been pretty obvious that Prusa has been bleeding market share to the Chinese brands. Josef has made a wonderful company, that a lot of people believe in, and I can only assume that ensuring its survival is a heavy responsibility. Looking at 3d printing as a whole, Bambu has made it clear that it’s time for a lot of companies to pivot. Disappointed that Prusa can’t keep the dream of OSHW alive, but in all, I still want to see them succeed.
Chinese companies have gained a lot of market share but mostly it isn’t because they are just copying prusa. It is because they are producing better products at better prices.
The open-source hardware business model relies on constant innovation.
Nate, from Sparkfun, gave this great talk a million years ago that basically sums it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aglidIqSrnE
If you open-source everything, you will be copied. You have 6-12 months to make your money on an idea, and then you have to move on to the next.
If you don’t open-source, you will be copied. You have 9-15 months to make your money on an idea, and then you have to move on to the next.
Making it easier to copy your ideas puts the fire under your R&D team’s rumpuses, and promotes innovation internally. It’s also acknowledging a reality instead of fighting it, which is probably healthy.
If you have a customer base of hackers, open-source provides them ridiculous additional value, and they will recognize that.
If you can offer additional resources that take advantage of the open-sourciness, you should. Like education and good documentation.
Ironic that you would mention Sparkfun. I used to check the Sparkfun blog daily for interesting tidbits. For the last couple of years, I have been checking it less and less. Less interesting products at a more expensive price. It seems like they have released several product lines in the past few years that flopped. I rarely see an article on Hackaday from someone using the Qwiic bus, MicroMod, etc.
It was the “evil mad scientist” website that lead me to Hackaday, and then I got tired of seeing them post so many cookie recipes and Halloween decorations.
Prusa is moving closer to a “certified ecosystem” where they partner with specialized manufacturers to provide enhancements to their machines without having to reinvent the wheel each time. It also means they can provide a greater level of plug-n-play integration for non-techies not available in a true open source business model.
Licensing parts of the design and similar seems far more sensible to me as a business head. At least this way China has to buy at least one to copy, rather than zero!
You mean like with Bambulab having certified 3rd party add-ons such as E3D accessories or Biqus Revo adapter?
Not sure how Prusa is unique here.
“The company line is that releasing the source for their printers allows competitors to churn out cheap clones of their hardware — but where are they?”
There were plenty of i3 clones back in the day, before Bambu.
Yeah, back when Prusa was at their most successful. That’s the point, they didn’t matter. It isn’t the cheap i3 clones that are giving the company a run for their money, it’s more advanced CoreXY machines that didn’t need to copy anything from Prusa.
So to blame those clones for their current troubles is nonsense.
You understand they’d have made more profit if they’d sold more machines, yes?
Would they have, when a great deal of their initial noteriety and customer good will came from being fully open source?
This reminds me of the turn Ultimaker seemed to make around the Ultimaker 3 era. The Ultimaker Original, 2, and 2 plus had proper open-source hardware and software. Then, the Ultimaker 3 (and 3+) had a more close source feel since they were releasing CAD models 1 year after launch.
The Ultimaker 3 (UM3) brought dual material printing before that was a commonly solved problem, and I can see why they did not want to release CAD files immediately.
Perhaps controversially, I think the UM3 open-source model is quite sustainable, and I wish many companies (looking at Bambu Lab) would adopt it. The idea is: Release CAD + Code ~1-2 years after product launch. This gives companies enough time to move innovative product, and after 2 years there are likely hardware issues. Publishing proper open source files lets the user fix/repair/mod their printer when their printer has issues. But 2 years after product launch is not compromising on intellectual property (IP). [If it is, maybe that company should die?]
Anyway, despite the non-idea reality we live in, Prusa seems aligned with the morals of a person on Hackaday, and I would gladly support them over a Lexar-like Bambu Lab.
Prusa have been lost for a while.
They sat about for too long just resting on the MK3 and when they released the MK4 it was too little of an improvement and the competition was already much better and more advanced. The problem isn’t people copying Prusa, they managed fine when people were copying them before, but no one wants to copy them now because they are not the best anymore.
The competition has shot past Prusa and so far they can’t catch back up.
I also think Josef has lost it a bit too. Like with his comments on the Bambu Stratasys court case, basically saying that Bambu deserve it when Prusa is infringing the exact same patents that Bambu allegedly is and are even more now with the core one. Also the whole maker world drama. I know it must suck for competitors to come out with better products but it seems Josef has just turned that into hatred.
From the outside it very much looks like Prusa got complacent. They released the MK3 and then what did they do for years? It took other companies beating them to kick them back into action. How many printers has Prusa released since Bambu came about and how many printers did they release between the MK3 and then? Even when the MK4 released it was barely an improvement over the MK3 yet took five and a half years.
I don’t hold much faith in the future of Prusa. they are grasping at straws, they are abandoning one of their main selling points because they are scared of something, that based on what they have released about the printer so far, won’t happen.
They have a very loyal following for the i3 platform and you could have upgraded that platform all the way to the current MK4 the whole time and you like everyone ignore the fact that they have had core xy systems, SLA, pro level cartesian systems. The entire five years I have owned Prusa printers I have seen lots of improvements in software, multimaterial, and hardware. We usually always know what they are working on next. They gave us a pretty nice fork of an open source slicer that they have vastly improved. I don’t think they have given up on anything. Far as I know they will have an i3 style and core xy in their lineup together.
I can’t help but feel that it is a bit of a waste to close source the 3D printer hardware these days (hobbyist or low commercial level). The mechanics are widely understood (lets face it, it is not rocket science) and any new feature that relies on electronics just requires implementation. This is why BambuLab didn’t need to clone a Prusa at all. Yes, the XL has a tool changer and a segmented bed, but again, these are nothing ground breaking and could be implemented quite easily.
I actually feel that the magic sauce is in the combo of the firmware and the slicer, and so I think that Prusa should have rather focused their closed sauce efforts on this if they wanted to maintain the competitive edge. And this is why BambuLab chose to fork the software.
This is battle Prusa cant win. I think, they cant do fully open source hardware and be competitive with all companies in the world in todays world, where Bambu showed direction and everybody play catch up game. Still, they offered conversion kit from mk4s to core one. It surprised me. I would understand if there was more open upgradeable i3 line and closed non upgradeable corexy line. For me, this possibility is evidence, Prusa tries to continue its legacy, even if it isnt 100%.
It probably indicates their market share is in jeopardy. Open source is not really compatible with being cutting edge. You sink money into r&d and ideas that don’t pan out, then your Chinese competitor just copies the good ideas and undersells you.
I think their options are to just to gracefully enter a niche as a highly repairable and well supported workhorse that is not cheap or cutting edge. Or to compromise on their open source ideals to remain competitive. We can see with this which way they’re going. It sucks but I can’t really blame them.
Real question though; What ideas has Prusa put out recently hardware wise that have been copied?
You have to be in the lead for that to happen. To my knowledge it hasn’t happened since the release of the Mk3s over 6 years ago and even more if you count the mk3 and mk3s as the same family.
I’m surprised nobody has compared Prusa to Raspberry Pi. There are several parallels, but the main one is: you can get cheaper hardware from other companies, but Prusa/Pi will give you the best support. Neither of them are completely open hardware. If you don’t need the support, you can look elsewhere. But if you need something to work, there’s value in that support.
The profit motive is incompatible with freedom? Shocking!
If a person lives a “profitable” lifestyle, as opposed to a “sustenance” lifestyle, I’d say they have more freedom.
Freedom to have spare time, spare time to learn more, build more, move to an even better job/location, freedom to save money for emergencies, freedom to contribute more to those less fortunate…
Meh, I still think Prusa are doing their best and are at least remaining as “hacker friendly” as they can be without the clones taking ALL their lunch. They have moved the technology on a lot, to everyone’s benefit, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable that they should want to carry on a profitable business from their labours.
They are still making excellent printers that are well supported, and complaining about things like you can “only” download STL’s for replacement parts is a bit disingenuous.
Is it a shame they have had to close up? Yes. Is it understandable? Also yes. Is anyone doing it any better than Prusa? Not that I can see. Is anyone selling better quality hacker-friendly printers? You guys tell me.
From what I can see if I want a printer that comes out of the box and “just works” my choices are mainly Bambu or Prusa, and it’s pretty easy to see which one of those two has the more hacker-friendly ethos even if they have to hold back a little to stay alive.
What in the last years have they made hardware wise that any company had had the need to copy? Im not sure I see the need for closing up. If you’re behind there isn’t much to copy.
You can buy on Aliexpress today a clone of Prusa mmu3. Bambu took prusa slicer and made their own fork and made it closed source. They also made their own proprietary and incompatible .3mf format creating confusion for users.
Clearly the Chinese manufacturers think its ok to take someones IP, copy it and then undercut the original developer on price.
Nobody would tolerate this for long.
So, I agree that those kind of actions warrant prusa taking their products out of open source.
Yep its s pity but unavoidable.
To be honest, I have no sympathy for hackers at all.
Bambu Studio is still open source. In fact Orcaslicer is another fork of it.
.3mf is open source
https://3mf.io/spec/
I think 99% of the people saying, “Woe, is me.” Did not read or understand this article. Most people using 3D printers are not even cognizant of the open source 3D printing or using their printer or tinkering with it in that way. So this has NOTHING to do with most commentors who were dragged here by the headline, and thusthis has little to do with Prusa vs Bambu.
For people who care about open source it is a blow from a perspective, but is it really? Should not open sourcers (sorcerers?) be sourcing parts individually and making their own 6 -axis printers that uses pure carbon nanotubes for filament? I mean you still can pull off the board of a RRUSA and make it open source…steel frames, stepper motors, and PETG parts are still agnostic materials.
Thank you for this very complete review.
I share the same feeling for open source and I also understand the challenges of Prusa.
I when I bought my first Prusa the fact that it was open source was a big selling point. Reviews of its quality made it my first choice. When I started making money on f this stuff the reliability and the fact that they just work became my primary focus. The guy makes good printers and that’s good enough for me. I have printers from 2017 still cranking out parts and I won’t trash them until they’re dead. Failures are few and quality is till high for the market I cater to.
His customer service is excellent and I can get parts quickly. Although I am looking to pick up a Bambu for printing some personal stuff I think I will stick by Prusa for the stuff that counts. I will most likely be purchasing some of the new printers when they become available.
There is more to the hacker community than just “open source.” Remember how Ultimaker’s Thingiverse used to be the best place to download printable parts? Then they went in and ruined it with mandatory sign-ins (even though it was all community-generated content)?
Yeah, I remembe that, and I am grateful that Prusa’s Printables arose about the same time, and hackers suddenly had another source for downloadable objects.
So, while they may fail the open-source purity test, Prusa seems like the lesser evil in the 3D printer space.
I had a Thingiverse login a couple of years ago, but stopped logging in after a few months.
This past Spring it no longer recognized my login or password.
You can get delta printers with easy modeling>layer software for around 300 USD brand new.. Tough to compete with that at profit..
“Printable parts were available only as STLs”
I’m not seeing how that isn’t open-source. I frequently modify stl files or use them as the basis of new designs. Most 3D print sharing sites categorize remixes and include license categories for them, which are very common re-works of objects reliesed as stl, open for modification.
I’m not seeing how there is a demand.. Modeling and layering AIO software is so easy now, and usually included with 300 USD printers.. Nobody should be waiting on shared worked..
One of the main reasons I’m drawn to open source products is that they give me a fighting chance of keeping the product working even if the company disappears or stops supporting the version of the product I have.
Prusa in my experience has always gone above and beyond the call of duty in terms of offering upgrade paths for older models even as new models were introduced, so I’m less concerned about whether their products are open source in the purest sense.
And supporting a company operating in a peaceable, democratic country where there are decent labour laws and environmental protections still counts for something in my mind.