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Original Prusa MK4

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181–190 of 277 posts

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#181
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I also assumed the lidar is a complete placebo having owned the P1P and seeing how well it prints with PLA plus looking at available lidar sensors and their accuracy but maybe it does work? Would love to get a teardown on what components it uses but couldn't find anything online some months ago.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#182
post #75

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 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…

I own and operate two Bambu X1C with AMS for my prototyping business. They're excellent printers. Since I received them, I have practically stopped using all other printers. They are gamechangers, printing twice or three times as fast, in dramatically higher quality, in engineering materials. Second hand experience from the forum is not giving you the full picture.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#183
post #75

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 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…

My sample size of 1: I've been using my X1 for over 3 months and in that time printed about 60-70kg of various filaments: PLA, ASA, PETG. Printer worked out of the box, required no adjustment either at start or after. The only tinkering, if you even can call it that, I've done so far was adjusting nozzle temp by 5C for one specific brand of PETG and capping print speed for silk pla (if you print it too fast it's no longer "silky"). Everything else just prints on default profiles.

If you are printing with enclosure doors closed printer noise is acceptable - I wouldn't sleep in the same room, but I can work (including taking video calls) with printer running 2.5-3m from me. Carbon filter seems to be working nicely too - my air quality monitor isn't picking much VOOCs or fine particulate.

tl;dr; I've had fewer problems with X1 than with any other printer I owned, including laser and inkjet ones.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#184
post #82

These are nice and I have MK3 as well. However, I am doing most of my prints on HP MJF these days. It’s so much better and the cost is very reasonable. FDMs are good toys that require love. A lot of it (which can be good and bad).

>FDMs are good toys that require love. A lot of it (which can be good and bad).

Eh, that's not really the case any more. If you spend a sensible amount of money on a properly built machine, it's pretty close to fire-and-forget. Features like automatic bed levelling, PEI build plates, runout sensors, reliable direct-drive extruders and spaghetti detection have removed most of the annoyances in FDM printing.

I was a long-time FDM sceptic, but the technology has reached a level of maturity where it fills a useful niche. FDM machines are an increasingly common sight in machine shops, tool rooms and MRO facilities; in an environment that's staffed by people who are familiar with CAD/CAM, they can produce a useful subset of parts with an almost trivial level of cost and effort.

Unless your employer is extremely generous, you probably don't have an MJF or SLS machine that's just sitting idle in case you need a widget in a hurry. FDM thrives in the niche traditionally occupied by hand tools and that sloppy old Bridgeport - workholding one-offs, kludgy parts to keep a machine running until the field tech arrives, parts you only need in order to make other parts. An FDM printer is the mechanical embodiment of the phrase "close enough for government work".

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really, really bad look for them recently in my opinion. The Prusa XL has been over a year and a half late. We had to preorder it, plunk down $200 as a deposit... and wait as they redesigned it over and over and blamed part shortages. Now, out of nowhere, "MK4 - Buy Now! No Preorder!"

They added a button to convert your XL preorder to an MK4 order with priority . So they're alienating people plonking down $1,000 for a printer by letting people from an unrelated queue jump in front of them... And then shaking the faith of people who already waited this long for the XL. It starts to scream "we won't even be able to make enough XLs and would much rather you just forget about that". - Edit: Wow and ac…

Perhaps they set aside some percentage of XL preorders worth of MK4s that are ready to ship. As long as they overestimate that number vs reality, they can ship to the MK4 first order and XL conversions first, then start shipping to those that purchased with Lead Time stated. And if they over estimate the conversions, (almost) nobody with a Lead Time is going to complain about getting it early.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AFAIK the newer Delta power supplies (black case) are fine. The older mystery meat power supplies (silver case) don't have a good reputation, but they're easy enough to replace with a Meanwell or the newer Delta unit.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#187
I've been thinking about making a DIY record lathe.

If anybody here is big into DIY 3D printer hacking, do you see any big blockers with using a 1-D Prusa system to host a record cutting head?

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#188
post #25

From outsider perspective (fdm) 3d printers plateaued relatively quickly; while the speed improvement is undoubtedly nice for heavy users, even at 3x speed I don't know if it is really transformative. Meanwhile the print quality hasn't changed really that much afaik? Of course being more reliable and less fiddly are certainly good improvements but I don't see them being transformative or making 3d printing conquer ne…

> Meanwhile the print quality hasn't changed really that much afaik?

Several of the features in the MK4 are for quality (but also help speed). For example, VFA steppers are purely for quality improvement.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#189

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?

On top of that, they are throwing shade at a machine that's not even on the guest list, totally swerving into the wild world of off-topic shenanigans!

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#190
post #75

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 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…

I have both an MK3S and an X1C and the MK3S has basically been unplugged since the X1C came. I love the Prusa and I would not hesitate to recommend it, but the X1C is a generational improvement in 3d printing.

I really have no idea what you’re talking about with regard to it being loud, and I’ve had pretty much zero failed prints (at least not attributable to the printer).

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