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.
Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
21–30 of 159 posts
Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
#22Honestly, I think Prusa is floundering for the same reason other equipment makers are floundering.
People bought a ton of goods during the pandemic, because they didn't go out much and now people are going out more and the spend is returning to services, meals and entertainment, so people are spending a lot less on devices.
Higher interest rates are also reducing capital investments across the world.
We are just seeing the cyclical change in spending habits over time.
Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
#23The author starts out discussing licenses and by the fourth paragraph has jumped to the standard "I've never used a prusa, but here's why they suck" talking points and then at the end of the article even points out that the license talk has nothing to do with their assertions. > Prusa responded to this certainty by not diversifying their business model whatsoever. There has only ever been one Prusa product: their lat…
> If you can't spot the difference between a Ender 3 and an MK4
The author isn't saying that, they said it's "better than half the value". Something that's let's say 2/3 as good will definitely be obvious.
Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
#24The author starts out discussing licenses and by the fourth paragraph has jumped to the standard "I've never used a prusa, but here's why they suck" talking points and then at the end of the article even points out that the license talk has nothing to do with their assertions. > Prusa responded to this certainty by not diversifying their business model whatsoever. There has only ever been one Prusa product: their lat…
> If you can't spot the difference between a Ender 3 and an MK4 The author isn't saying that, they said it's "better than half the value". Something that's let's say 2/3 as good will definitely be obvious.
The initial cost of ownership is the only thing that matters?
Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
#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 you just want to unbox and press print, but if you want a completely open source printer (from software to hardware) then look no further.
You can even get a cheaper VORON 2.4 or Trident kit for less than the Mk4, and still have some room to replace parts with! And you'll get a much more powerful printer to boot.
Oh, and I avoid the Bambu labs printers because they demand an always on internet connection for you to be able to print with them. The repair-ability is also very poor.
Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
#26There’s a bigger issue I noticed lately that really concerns me more than situations like Prusa. I’m trying to build a Millennium Machine Milo CNC and sourcing the aluminum plates cost a pretty penny. Whereas if you were in China, you probably know someone that can machine it for you for a fraction of the cost even factoring cost of living. You can see people on YouTube making these really elaborate hobby projects li…
I guess you just have to know right people, I have a machinist friend who does small jobs for his friends all the time and some people have milling machines in their garage.
You can probably get machining work done very cheap in the local technical school.
Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
If all you took away is “cheap plastic from China” and that they should have gone for low cost, you haven’t paid enough attention while reading this article. It talks about building a better product and investing in the experience and ecosystem, which the chinese alternatives have done. We are about to witness the same thing happening to cars very soon.
The trouble is, the author doesn't at any point discuss what makes the products better. They just claim they are as if initial cost is the only factor.
Author here. For the price tag of a Prusa Mk4 you can get a Bambu X1 Carbon 3D which is, metric for metric, a better printer -- larger volume, 16 color prints, faster printing, better resolution, pretty much all stats. Go for Creality and you can get the K1 Max at $300 less than the Mk4 (currently on sale, so more like $400 less) which is even better, again, in every spec and comes with an ecosystem that Creality has invested in to a much greater extent than Prusa.
Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
#28>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…
It need not be predatory, nor need it be mandatory for users to take advantage of these features, nor need it be proprietary or non-free.
I agree, but I think the incentives tend to push towards user hostile results. It's a small jump for the business mind to go from free cloud optional to free cloud only to paid features cloud to subscription only cloud, or selling plastic to only supporting their own plastic, and so on. Web services are so cheap and profitable that it feels like every business converges towards them now. I'd really rather buy from a company that makes money directly from selling good hardware (but certainly the hardware is useless without ongoing software development, and we're back to the original issue).
Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
#29I find this really fascinating as my company has several products and we've been considering for years whether open source is a better direction than what we are doing now, which is to sell closed source software to enterprises. Needless to say, this is a very different market than the one Prusa is attacking, but I've still got opinions. I find it interesting that this comes the day after Xmas. My house was already c…
If all you took away is “cheap plastic from China” and that they should have gone for low cost, you haven’t paid enough attention while reading this article. It talks about building a better product and investing in the experience and ecosystem, which the chinese alternatives have done. We are about to witness the same thing happening to cars very soon.
Fine, I'll admit I am not always a careful reader.
But, I did read it as: they should have diversified. I know from first hand experience that this is really expensive to do for a company. And, only possible when you can reduce costs in other ways, which China obviously has an advantage in the manufacturing realm.
I think what I'm trying to say is that instead of diversifying, maybe their best bet is to make a really high quality product that appeals to a different category of people than Best Buy consumers. I have no evidence to prove this feeling though. It is just what I aspire to buy when I do buy things.
Re: Why Prusa is floundering, and how you can avoid their fate
#30>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…
It need not be predatory, nor need it be mandatory for users to take advantage of these features, nor need it be proprietary or non-free.
Then what's the point? It would take effort to develop these "features", the only benefit of which would be predatory. For example:
> Bambu’s cloud slicer is a massive lost opportunity for Prusa.
Bambu's cloud slicer is a complicated SaaS undertaking that incurs hosting and storage costs, yet doesn't (so far as I know) generate any revenue for Bambu Labs. So why do it, unless you want to make sure that a copy of whatever your product prints gets sent to and stored on a server in China? What's the "non-predatory" justification for this over local slicing?