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Comment by detaro | Hacker News Reader

I think the point is that a bunch of companies make or made good printers, and Prusa stands out because of their community.

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I have often considered buying a Prusa, and it was because their printers are good quality and low fuss, the community has literally never been a driving force.

Perhaps you could replace community with ecosystem in that sentence.

Perhaps the value of the community is this widespread belief in the quality of their printers (even if deserved - you still gotta hear about it). In a marketing sense the community was the _only_ driving force.

By the way when did Prusa become known for their printers? I was around when Ultimaker 2 was considered the best in a "Just Works" kind of way and Lulzbot was the choice for the more tinkerer/hacker-aligned user.

I stepped away from FDM printers and onto Formlabs' STL printers around when U2 ruled (not exactly a move to greener pastures, they're closed-source all the way), seems like a lot has changed since I left as no-one is even mentioning Ultimaker or Lulzbot. I'm just kinda disappointed and bummed to see Ender of Creality and other Chinese printers enjoying increasing prominence considering their flagrant and persistent GPL violations.

I think around 2016 with the end of the Mk2/start of the Mk3 is when they really came into their own. Ultimaker, from my understanding, was always a business/institutional aligned company and only popular in the more well-heeled hobbyist circles, and while Lulzbot was popular they didn't offer much that Prusa didn't and had to compete on price, which meant they suffered the same fate as every other American manufacturer: Lose to Eastern Europe and Asia.

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