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Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

drewdevault.com

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Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#141

Post by sebazzz »

slau wrote: post #35

I think Prusa has had a couple of missteps of late, but they’re not in the gutter yet. On the XL: the 0.6mm makes sense with the build volume, to significantly improve print times, but seems to really not work well with the 5 toolhead models, and introduces massive amounts of zits, stringing, cross-contamination, etc. On the Mk4: at the price point, it’s maybe missing a few features to really hold up against the X1C,…

There is nothing wrong with Marlin, especially not for the purposes Prusa uses it for.

Marlins biggest weakness is needing to recompile for some things because they are defined by compile-time. All other things like active input shaping calibration can be added relatively easy.

Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#142

Post by flutas »

skybrian wrote: post #21

I suspect this article isn't accurate about Prusa. It's not clear that they're "floundering" (versus worried). They do have other products (resin printers, supplies like filament). There is a PrusaConnect cloud service and they recently launched a Printables website for sharing models. And probably other stuff I missed.

I don't know about floundering either, but Bambu has absolutely changed Prusa, but imo it's for the better.

Prusa now has ads (spending on ads, not embedding them in their devices), and a marketing budget, and sends review printers to people.

Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#143

Post by yetanother12345 »

MegaDeKay wrote: post #33
Palomides wrote: post #6

>Imagine a Prusa where it works out of the box, you can fire up a slicer in your browser which auto-connects to your printer and prints models from a Prusa-operated model repository, paying $10 for a premium model, $1 off the top goes to Prusa, with the same saved payment details which ensure that a fresh spool of Prusa filament arrives at your front door when it auto-detects that your printer is almost out. The prin…

Indeed. Critics of Bambu were all over them when their cloud-connected printers started "creating plastic objects without user intervention" due to a glitch [0]. In fact, the printer had to be connected to the cloud initially but they have since relaxed that. Having said that, a feature on Printables where you could order a part in the color of your choice and have it delivered to your door for a reasonable price cou…

> a lot of people could use a 3D printed part.

We use 3D printers @work. Also, some colleagues have their own printers as well. Turns out, there is in fact a market for 3D printed parts already. You simply contact "the printer" with your sketch, get a price quote, and if acceptable you will get you part delivered by mail or whatever.

I'm not sure where the marketplace is at, but you may want to try the usual suspects like fiverr etc.

Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#144

Post by yetanother12345 »

Palomides wrote: post #6

>Imagine a Prusa where it works out of the box, you can fire up a slicer in your browser which auto-connects to your printer and prints models from a Prusa-operated model repository, paying $10 for a premium model, $1 off the top goes to Prusa, with the same saved payment details which ensure that a fresh spool of Prusa filament arrives at your front door when it auto-detects that your printer is almost out. The prin…

Question: Is a 3D printer "a printer"? The difficulty of substituting a 3D for a 2D etc would suggest not so.

So, if we agree that somehow there is not much overlap in the 2D vs 3D printing businesses it would seem sane to suspect that business models adopted in one market might not all be suitable for another market.

Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#145

Post by snom380 »

The article does nothing to back up the claim in the title, that Prusa is actually floundering. Presumably if somone writes a post tomorrow about how the Hare programming language is floundering, and that ends up trending in various forums with the language dying being taken as matter of fact, then Drew would have liked whoever wrote it to have done a bit more research.

Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#146

Post by yetanother12345 »

TheCleric wrote: post #83
Palomides wrote: post #6

>Imagine a Prusa where it works out of the box, you can fire up a slicer in your browser which auto-connects to your printer and prints models from a Prusa-operated model repository, paying $10 for a premium model, $1 off the top goes to Prusa, with the same saved payment details which ensure that a fresh spool of Prusa filament arrives at your front door when it auto-detects that your printer is almost out. The prin…

Agreed. I thought they had some good points up until this and immediately thought “I would RUN from a company that did this.” Also do people REALLY pay for models, let alone $10? I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve paid for a model to 3d print. Much easier to find an existing one, hack one, or just make my own.

I can confirm that there is indeed a market for (unprinted) models, just like there is a market for print-to-order parts. The market works such that you pay for the right to print the model even if the model as such has one license or another.

Check markets like Fantasy, role-playing, games, if in doubt

Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#147

Post by rcarmo »

sebazzz wrote: post #141
slau wrote: post #35

I think Prusa has had a couple of missteps of late, but they’re not in the gutter yet. On the XL: the 0.6mm makes sense with the build volume, to significantly improve print times, but seems to really not work well with the 5 toolhead models, and introduces massive amounts of zits, stringing, cross-contamination, etc. On the Mk4: at the price point, it’s maybe missing a few features to really hold up against the X1C,…

There is nothing wrong with Marlin, especially not for the purposes Prusa uses it for. Marlins biggest weakness is needing to recompile for some things because they are defined by compile-time. All other things like active input shaping calibration can be added relatively easy.

I’ve converted all my Marlin printers to Klipper. The ease of tuning and macros made a substantial difference, and now I have a proper API (and MQTT integration) to get notified of printing progress and issues.

And just as far as _printing_ is concerned, the speed and quality I can get out of an 8-year-old Prusa clone with Klipper is pretty amazing.

Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#148

Post by rcarmo »

MegaDeKay wrote: post #48
lawn wrote: post #25

> They have been struggling as of late, and came under criticism for making the firmware of their Mk4 printer non-free. One of the biggest reasons I didn't choose a Mk4 was precisely because they moved away from open source. If you're like me an values open source highly and is looking for a printer, the VORON printers are the way to go. They're DIY printers where you assemble them yourself, so they're not for you if…

I have a half assembled Trident on a table behind me right now. Like you, I greatly value open source. I didn't realize at the time I ordered the Trident that the Mk4 firmware was non-free, but Prusa didn't make the final cut regardless. In my mind, Prusa hasn't been showing enough innovation. The bed-slinging Mk4 coming out at the price it did against CoreXY printers like Voron and Bambu was like bringing a knife to…

Voron kits are pretty tempting, but although I have been thinking about a Trident one myself, I’ve been looking at the Vivedino Troodon 2.0 series, and wondering why there aren’t more Voron-like pre-assembled printers out there.

Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#149

Post by rcarmo »

I don’t really think Prusa is floundering, but I just don’t get their go-to-market strategy or technology roadmap. Klipper is now taking the low-end Chinese printer segment by storm, Vorons are a _way_ better value for money if you value maintainability (although assembly won’t be everyone’s wheelhouse), and the MK4 wasn’t really that innovative.

Bambu is just catering to a different market—they just went and added dozens of little creature comforts and tweaks to their hardware and software to the point where it’s literally point and click, and even the offshoots are good. I’m in the process of switching from SuperSlicer-which caters better to non-Prusa printers-to OrcaSlicer, which is full of nice touches and productivity enhancements like multi-plate projets, and that’s a Bambu Studio clone.

What I’m afraid of with Bambu is long-term maintainability of their printers. I can replace belts, gears, extruders, etc., the works for most of my printers (I just re-printed a broken X-axis assembly for my 8-year-old Prusa clone), but am really unsure I’d be able to maintain a Bambu four years down the road.

Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate

#150

Post by CodeWriter23 »

cmsj wrote: post #46

I have a lot of respect for Armin, but it's pretty clear he doesn't really understand the specifics of what he's talking about here. > people are complaining (The MK4 firmware is not Open Source) the link here is to a reddit post ( https://www.reddit.com/r/prusa3d/comments/10g6fgv/prusa_givi... ) in which the complaint is not only not about the MK4's firmware, it's also not even about something not being open source.…

> It's a legitimate complaint

I disagree 100%

Deleting the attention required to maintain a community has enabled Prusa to deliver a superior slicer to, say, Cura and its derivatives.

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