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Original Prusa MK4

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Re: Original Prusa MK4

#161

Post by faeranne »

outworlder wrote: post #104
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #12

These look like very solid improvements over the MK3S+ (I personally have two MK3S+, and use them a lot), and I love their commitment to open hardware and for making upgrade kits available, but it's a bit disappointing to see still how far Prusa is behind truly next-gen printers like the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon.

Disclaimer: I own an Ender 3, heavily modified. Prusa printers are generally rock solid and their quality control is great. For 1k, I really think we should be looking at a CoreXY machine (or, at least, something that doesn't have a bed that moves, whatever the kinematics). That's a major speed limitation, and it also causes vibrations even in lower speeds as you are moving the bed and your entire model. That's the o…

> However, they are the same company pushing for pre-sliced files which is a terrible idea.

Agreed, though should be noted this happens across the industry. Whoever is the current fore-runner tends to push for it. MakerBot did the same thing back when they led the pack. Thing is, the only end Prusa can get from this is encouraging use of their printers. A shady method for sure, but MakerBot wanted to push for an entirely proprietary chain, from the model file to the printer, and because they had just gone proprietary, they could make that happen. Prusa has no legal or technical weight to make that happen (and hopefully they have no intention of going that direction). So long as they keep pushing open hardware and firmware, their push for presliced is (to me) not a deal breaker. It's wrong, and they should be called out for it, but it's not gonna lead to malicious legal action.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#162

Post by postalrat »

openmapsguy wrote: post #108
tcoop25 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just canceled my X1-Carbon order. Just spend some time on the Bambu Labs subreddit and you will see a lot of frustrated owners. It is insanely loud, and it seems unreliable and buggy. I have owned a lot of printers over the years, and the only printers I, or any of my colleagues come back to are Prusa printers. They are incredibly reliable. The few times we have had issues with a part, we have been able to print a…

You’ll find people frustrated with Prusa too. There was a whole discord dedicated to trying to fix all issues. People act like having the power supply die, bed probe not being reliable, not having x axis tensioner are all normal. Just print out a bunch of parts from some randoms to fix. Also Prusas software are forks too so weird thing to call out bambu for.

What power supply would you suggest Prusa use instead of what they are using? Is Bambu using something better?

Bambu slicer is a fork of Prusa's slicer. Prusa's slicer is a fork of Slic3r. Although perfectly fine it is notable that both Prusa and Bambu make 3d printers while the Slic3r project was just making a slicer.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#163

Post by HeavenFox »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #159

There’s also various upgrade kits from the 3 to 3.5, 3.9 and 4. Here is the full kit https://www.prusa3d.com/product/original-prusa-i3-mk3-s-to-m...

Sadly at $579 that is almost the price of a full printer at $799.

May as well buy the full printer and sell the old one :(

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#164

Post by svachalek »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #131
f38zf5vdt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a proprietary versus open source argument. You can build a mk4 clone for much less than the price of a Prusa-branded one, as everything is open source. The higher price tag is like a donation to open source. Prusa also makes the open source XL if you want an CoreXY model, or you could go with a Voron which is also open source.

I don’t know why this is being down voted. Prusa are trying to make an open source hardware company work and I guess this is what it looks like. There is so much noise on HN about repairability. Well here is some open hardware And it’s ”the Chinese printers have so much more features!”

My experience with repairability on Prusa is pretty awful, lots of $1 parts that need to be airmailed from Czechia for $50. At least the Chinese stuff is easily available.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#165

Post by asveikau »

mft_ wrote: post #158
asveikau wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just learning too, but wanted to throw in that for an HN audience, OpenSCAD may be intuitive for modeling. You basically write up models in a simple declarative programming language. I found this easier to get started with than more GUI based tools.

I’m interested which GUI CAD tools you tried? I don’t use it myself but I find Fusion 360 magnitudes more intuitive and capable than OpenSCAD, which I really tried to like!

I was initially interested in FLOSS tooling, so one that i tried and also wanted to like was freecad.

Haven't tried fusion 360 yet. Would stress again that I'm a noob.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#166

Post by Filligree »

sottol wrote: post #129
Filligree wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Mk3S and a Bambu X1C. The Bambu is much, much better. The Mk4 covers most of the distance, but at a price point matching the X1C, and it's only most . Speeding it up is nice, but... pressure advance depends on detailed characteristics of the filament, such as viscosity, which varies from brand to brand and color to color . The X1 has a lidar, which from experience actually does work as advertised. The Mk4 ha…

As far as I've seend the X1s lidar is mostly useless, it's doing fine-calibration at most based on the current filament profile and seems to be inconsistent. That's not to say that the X1 itself is - just that lidar is imho a gimick.

I've done a great deal of printing, both with the lidar enabled and disabled.

For PLA it doesn't make a big difference. But when you're printing polycarbonate or PETG, the quality difference is dramatic. Perhaps you have a defective unit?

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#167

Post by faeranne »

ferminaut wrote: post #30
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #12

These look like very solid improvements over the MK3S+ (I personally have two MK3S+, and use them a lot), and I love their commitment to open hardware and for making upgrade kits available, but it's a bit disappointing to see still how far Prusa is behind truly next-gen printers like the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon.

I own two MK3s+'s. They are solid machines if you are looking to print PLA and some PETG. The stock extruder is a PITA. The MK4's redesigned nozzle/heat break & 10:1 extruder are basically a Bondtech LGX + Revo & should make for a great improvement. The MMU3 seems like a marginal improvement, you still have purge towers & large buffer boxes. Hopefully the reliability out of the box has improved. I wonder if it's too…

I'd argue that Prusa still has value over both Voron and Bambu Lab, though that value is dependent on the user. Voron still requires significant self-assembly, as you can't buy it as a prebuilt (far as I know), and doesn't have a company directly sponsoring it (that may be a plus for some). Bambu, on the other hand, is well built, but highly proprietary, and can absolutely rug pull without warning. This puts Prusa at a perfect position for makers/tinkers/hackers. The ability to continue to self improve if one wants, without needing to if one is too busy. I'm personally not a fan of Prusa Connect, as I like having all my systems run under software I've vetted, and right now that's still OctoPrint. But the thing is, I can still absolutely get OctoPrint running on the Prusa Connect hardware. It requires some tinkering, but that's in my control. Voron requires I build everything from scratch, and Bambu requires I use only their firmware/connection app. I've got so many things already linked with OctoPrint that moving systems simply wouldn't function. I'd have to completely reset all my automation.

As for Ratrig, that might be a healthy competition, though I've never looked into the quality of parts there. I know I've sat an Ender next to my Prusa and found the price vs quality to match surprisingly well, so Prusa's not the only game, but for something I can control, while still having a company to lean on when I want to, Prusa's got a good thing going.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#168

Post by postalrat »

bboygravity wrote: post #157
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest disadvantage in my mind of the Prusa MK2/3/4 printers is they use the original i3 design. It's a good design, and very simple to build, maintain and program. But it limits the print speed due to the amount of mass that has to move, particularly in the Y axis. The entire bed has to move which induces vibrations at higher speeds. Newer printers (including the Prusa XL) use a CoreXY design, where the extrude…

I'll take the slower printer speed if it means I get better reliability, repeatability and repearability. Any day. I've wasted enough hours on fancy features/materials/settings that don't work. Couldn't care less about the feature of being able to print a part a few minutes/hours faster tbh.

Years ago people were talking how delta printers were so much better, faster, cheaper, etc than bedslingers. Years later people forgot about delta printers and now its core-xy. Meanwhile bedslingers continue to just work.

I could care less if you printer goes 50% faster if it fails even 5% more.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#169

Post by postalrat »

Francis2023 wrote: post #101

Replaced all 25 MKS3+ machines with 15 Bambu P1Ps and 5 Bambu X1C's about 2 months ago. Sold the last Mks3+ yesterday. They Print 3 Times faster than the MKS3+ with same or better quality in some prints. 24/7 printing almost with zero issues in my print farm. BVery easy to send jobs to it from the Bambu slicer based on the Prusa slicer which is open source and enhanced to make complicated print jobs spread across mul…

You created an account just to say you aren't going to buy something?

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#170

Post by mft_ »

asveikau wrote: post #165
mft_ wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m interested which GUI CAD tools you tried? I don’t use it myself but I find Fusion 360 magnitudes more intuitive and capable than OpenSCAD, which I really tried to like!

I was initially interested in FLOSS tooling, so one that i tried and also wanted to like was freecad. Haven't tried fusion 360 yet. Would stress again that I'm a noob.

Makes sense - my experience is that FreeCAD is just brutally unintuitive to learn and use. (And this despite now being pretty competent with other parametric CAD packages.)

I get the FLOSS preference, but this is an area which sadly lags far behind. If you're really keen to learn CAD, maybe give F360 or OnShape a go? I suspect you'll see a huge difference...

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