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Original Prusa MK4

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Re: Original Prusa MK4

#191

Post by Baeocystin »

postalrat wrote: post #168
bboygravity wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Heck, I'm still using my ancient Rostock Max, and it works just fine for my needs. It's such a stable platform that I haven't had to re-zero the bed in months. Once it's up to temp, it's in spec. My only wish-I-had was the ability to use a wider variety of filament, but the bowden tube is just too long for any of the specialty mixes. No issues at all with PLA, though!

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#192

Post by jsjohnst »

outworlder wrote: post #105
jsjohnst wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just spend some time on the Bambu Labs subreddit and you will see a lot of frustrated owners. I have had mine (w/ four total AMS units) for two months now and have over 500hrs of printing so far w/ minimal failed prints. I often print in sport and/or ludicrous too. I own eight other 3D printers of various major brands (including Prusa) and it’s by far and away the best I’ve ever owned. Easily comparable to printers…

How easy is it to repair?

I own replacement parts for every expendable and/or non-warrantied part. I’ve test replaced a bunch to prove it works (engineer mindset, you don’t have a backup unless you know it works).

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#193

Post by jsjohnst »

asveikau wrote: post #100
jsjohnst wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just spend some time on the Bambu Labs subreddit and you will see a lot of frustrated owners. I have had mine (w/ four total AMS units) for two months now and have over 500hrs of printing so far w/ minimal failed prints. I often print in sport and/or ludicrous too. I own eight other 3D printers of various major brands (including Prusa) and it’s by far and away the best I’ve ever owned. Easily comparable to printers…

> Your loss! This reminds me of an attitude I see in some of these hobby communities. The idea that someone who is happy with a different product is somehow wrong or losing. People are highly invested and identified with their choices. Why not just be ok with choices other people make, even if we disagree with them?

> The idea that someone who is happy with a different product is somehow wrong or losing.

Actually, it wasn’t really that I thought they were wrong/losing, it was more a response to the virtue signaling on GP. Nobody cares they canceled their order because they read some words from random people on the internet. Honestly, nobody should care I’m happy with my purchase either! :)

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#194

Post by foxylad »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #135
anamexis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like an odd place in Prusa's own product line-up. I have a Prusa MINI+, which for $450 gets you a great printer. The print volume on the MK3 and now MK4 is just not that much better - 180x180x180 for the MINI, 250x210x220 for the MK4. If I wanted to upgrade and wanted to stick with Prusa, MK3/MK4 wouldn't come into the picture, I'd go straight to the Prusa XL.

I have a Mini too, and I could see myself get a MK4 as the Mini has been a bit of a disappointment. The X and Y axes on mine aren't 90° and there seems to be no hardware adjustment (just a rigid printed part), no support for software adjustments either (the respective GCode is disabled in firmware), so I can't print proper rectangles, just parallelograms, and any boxes and lids I print never fit properly. I want to k…

Very happy early Prusa Mini owner. I do remember some difficulty when assembling it, which lead to non-square axes. After an hour or so I eventually got right, so you might want to try redoing the tower assembly.

I don't have a filament sensor (I also print mainly small parts, so rare to hit the end of a spool), and haven't had any problems with heating elements, z steppers or nozzle crashes. I did experience the extruder clicking due to shrinking PTFE in the hot end, but I've ordered the E3D Revo mini hot end which will prevent that problem ever happening again.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#195

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

eropple wrote: post #153
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!”

Prusa absolutely builds good stuff, but their level of repairability just isn't different from most other printers--Bambu notably excepted, as they're a pretty closed system. They're all extremely commodity parts, from boards to v-wheels. I wish them well, but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price. (The Prusa XL may change this and I'm really excited to play with one.

Bambu just proves the point. Do you think they are going to make more integrated and closed systems or start opening up?

Someone has to take the hit with development. And that costs money.

>but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price

Has the value in terms of price to features ever really been competitive? I got the MK3 soon after it was released and even then you could get an i3 clone for much cheaper that produced similar results. The Chinese clones didn’t have 3D printed parts either.

But now is the time Prusa is not price competitive?

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#196

Post by asadjb »

xnx wrote: post #6

Would someone explain what is notable about this? I'm not familiar enough with the 3D printer space to know what new features and capabilities are developing.

Most of the listed features are incremental updates over the previous model; the MK3. However, as someone who's been using 3D printers for about 3 years, I'd say the biggest improvement here is the automatic first layer calibration.

Until recently (most notably until the Bamboo Labs Carbon X1) you had to spend time setting up your printer to get a good first layer. This would involve changing the distance between the nozzle that lays out the melted plastic and the bed on which the model is printed. Because this distance varies not just between different units of the same printer, but also has to change based on what material (PLA, PETG, etc) you're printing with, it needed some knowledge to set correctly.

While that process did get much simpler (with most of it being automated), it still involved some tweaking on the part of the user. That's a problem for people who are new 3D printing. It meant that you couldn't start printing immediately after unboxing your printer. It also meant that you had to spend considerable time (a few hours at least in my case) figuring out what a "good first layer" means, and then tweaking your printer to print the first layer well.

With this update, you can now start printing immediately after unboxing your printer (after some minor assembly), which is a huge thing for people who are new to 3D printing.

When I got my first printer a few years ago, I remember having to spend a couple of hours initially learning how to do this calibration, and I didn't get great results until a few more weeks of learning and tweaking.

Note that this is from the perspective of a hobbyist. People using 3D printers on a commercial scale might find the other improvements to be a big thing for their use case.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#197

Post by jrockway »

tcoop25 wrote: post #75
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 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…

Yeah. I looked at the X1 Carbon longingly and knew that with so many software features developed in such a short time, it was going to be a bug fest. That's just how software engineering is.

The Prusa i3 family may feel a little outdated, but what it lacks in cool marketing features it makes up for in amazing reliability. The thing works every single time I try to print something. The CPU not being able to address 4GB of RAM doesn't really limit what you can print, though the community sure loves to talk about it.

I am very tempted to buy the upgrade kit, but honestly, I'm not sure it's worth it. My filament doesn't jam, I don't use filaments the infrared detector can't see, I'm not in a hurry (so don't need input shaping), and my Z is dialed in. The MK3 is a great printer even in a world where the MK4 exists! I'm waiting for the Prusa XL to start shipping so I can print larger models.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#198

Post by foxylad »

sho_hn wrote: post #8

So I would really like to get into 3D printing, but I struggle with discomfort over the health implications. I live in a small rented apartment and can't easily work out space or, much more importantly, external venilation. Yes, I've looked into PLA vs. ABS, I've looked into enclosures with carbon/HEPA filters, etc., but I still don't want to have it in my living space without a vent to the outdoors. Here's the best…

If you are OK with a 180mm build space, grab a Prusa Mini. Very quiet, fits in a cupboard, just works.

For me, ventilation isn't required for PLA. The smell is minimal and not unpleasant, and I often print (in a cupboard) while working two metres away.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#199

Post by asveikau »

jsjohnst wrote: post #193
asveikau wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your loss! This reminds me of an attitude I see in some of these hobby communities. The idea that someone who is happy with a different product is somehow wrong or losing. People are highly invested and identified with their choices. Why not just be ok with choices other people make, even if we disagree with them?

> The idea that someone who is happy with a different product is somehow wrong or losing. Actually, it wasn’t really that I thought they were wrong/losing, it was more a response to the virtue signaling on GP. Nobody cares they canceled their order because they read some words from random people on the internet. Honestly, nobody should care I’m happy with my purchase either! :)

Yeah, I'm not trying to peg the attitude on you either. I've just seen that in 3d printing (and many other topics) threads, and you reminded me.

Re: Original Prusa MK4

#200

Post by eropple »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #195
eropple wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prusa absolutely builds good stuff, but their level of repairability just isn't different from most other printers--Bambu notably excepted, as they're a pretty closed system. They're all extremely commodity parts, from boards to v-wheels. I wish them well, but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price. (The Prusa XL may change this and I'm really excited to play with one.

Bambu just proves the point. Do you think they are going to make more integrated and closed systems or start opening up? Someone has to take the hit with development. And that costs money. > but the value of their devices to date just does not equal the price Has the value in terms of price to features ever really been competitive? I got the MK3 soon after it was released and even then you could get an i3 clone for m…

In the last year, I've bought two separate sub-$250 3D printers that I just threw on a table after connecting four screws and a couple cables and they were dead-on out of the box.

Prusa's hat has been "it just works!". That's been the conceptual moat. That is the part that isn't distinctive anymore.

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