Comment by riddley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by riddley | Hacker News Reader

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> The thing is, there really isn't much of a difference between an Ender 3 and a Mk4 that a typical consumer (that is, not an enthusiast) would understand as justifying the bigger price tag.

I'm not sure what makes you feel so comfortable deciding that for everyone? Having vastly better components that are much less likely to fail is something I think anyone would find valuable. If you give an absolute beginner an MK4 and an Ender 3, they're going to use the MK4 every time. It's vastly less effort to get started and the QC of one vs the other isn't even a competition.

> The Mk4 price completely eliminates Prusa from the entry- to mid-level market which is a big lost opportunity when new enthusiasts are learning on other brands

I mean, this is the trick of your faulty logic, right? Prusa makes flex-plates popular and the Chinese printers all jump on board. Prusa makes auto-leveling popular and the Chinese companies (eventually... why aren't you talking about how long it took them to do this?) jump on board. And on and on it goes. And it's not just Prusa, it's the whole 3d community that's been looted by these Chinese companies. They're happy to steal from Voron and really anyone and then you act like it's innovation and decry Prusa for not innovating recently enough for you and praise the looters for selling you something cheaper because it's made by slaves.

You seem great at spotting these lost opportunities, but you act like just because a company isn't doing the things you want, they're dying. It's poorly conceived at best and astro turfing/stanning at worst.

> and by the time they want to upgrade to a Mk4 price-point, they have much, much better options than Prusa

You could really help your position by backing up these claims. What makes them "much, much better" ? Initial cost of ownership and what else? Cloud slicing is not something I would want -- ever, so please don't list that as some objective "better."

> Prusa is not the right choice at any price point anymore and has little to no market relevance left, except maybe among a certain niche of enthusiasts.

And yet, they can't make printers fast enough.

> And yet, they can't make printers fast enough.

I generally agree with your comments but I think you've accidentally brought up a really good point. Prusa would do well do improve on getting their new models out the door faster. The Mk3S was getting fairly long in the tooth before the Mk4 came out. The printer they introduced before that also suffered from a very long development cycle. This leads to lost sales in a competitive market.

What you've said is true, but it assumes the goal is money. If that's the measurement, then yes they should do that. I'm not him so I can't say for certain, but money doesn't seem to be Jo's end-goal.

I’m 100% in favor of money not always being the primary purpose of a business. That being said, you still have to be profitable (if even by a penny), or the business will cease to exist at some point. I hope there is enough of a niche for what Prusa wants to continue to do, but I’m not sure.

I'm not sure either, but AFAIK they've expanded every year. They seem to be doing fine.

They will be doing fine until suddenly they're not doing fine. There's a delayed effect that you see from your business decisions because it might take years to play out. It's best to get ahead of problems before they become problems.

I think Prusa should step up their again and realize that open source isn't really the problem. Everybody gets cloned, closed source or not. It's the nature of the beast.

>If you give an absolute beginner an MK4 and an Ender 3, they're going to use the MK4 every time. It's vastly less effort to get started and the QC of one vs the other isn't even a competition.

The actual market isn't Ender 3 vs Mk4.

It's extremely hard to argue that Prusa printers represent a good value in any market segment in a post-Bambu world.

>What makes them "much, much better" ? Initial cost of ownership and what else?

They're cheaper and produce better prints faster without requiring any manual tuning by the user.

I'm a hobbyist. I own multiple high end printers that I've dumped $2k+ into. They're fantastic machines that I enjoy tinkering with.

But I've also got an X1 for when I just want a part and don't want to think about it. It's an appliance. It just works. That has massive value for people where printing is a means to an end rather than a hobbyist journey.

If you're a hobbyist that wants to tinker, there's nothing that justifies dropping 5x the cost of an E3 on a Mk4. $800 will go a long way toward making up any difference.

Or just go all-in and build any of the full hobbyist designs that will be a far better printer than a Mk4 anyway.

>And yet, they can't make printers fast enough.

Because they refuse to engineer their products for mass production. Which is, coincidentally, one of the reason why they're also failing to compete on price.

> The actual market isn't Ender 3 vs Mk4.

Goalposts moved!

> It's extremely hard to argue that Prusa printers represent a good value in any market segment in a post-Bambu world.

I don't find it hard.

> produce better prints

Citation needed*

> faster

I've heard this is true, so let's roll with it!

>multiple high end printers that I've dumped $2k+ into.

You must mean high-end China, yeah? $2k doesn't sound like much when it comes to FDM high end.

> But I've also got an X1 for when I just want a part and don't want to think about it. It's an appliance. It just works. That has massive value for people where printing is a means to an end rather than a hobbyist journey.

Are you thinking that Prusa printers are a "hobbyist journey"? Because they're definitely an appliance. Not only that, they're an appliance that can be repaired with off-the-shelf parts for the most part.

> If you're a hobbyist that wants to tinker, there's nothing that justifies dropping 5x the cost of an E3 on a Mk4. $800 will go a long way toward making up any difference.

I totally agree (given the constraint.) No tinkering necessary on an MK4. Have you ever used one?

> Because they refuse to engineer their products for mass production. Which is, coincidentally, one of the reason why they're also failing to compete on price.

This is more eye-of-the-beholder stuff. You think this is bad. I think this is good. Makes the world go 'round.

While it does hinder them competing on price, it also grants them some flexibility to improve designs over time. Since the printer has printed parts, users can print the new/better designs if they want.

The thing I've noticed about Chinese-printer proponents is that they're hyper focused on price. Even when I say "Initial cost of ownership and what else?" you lead with "They're cheaper" Let's say that the prints are better, I think they do print faster and I'll take your word for it that they don't require any manual tuning by the user (just like Prusa.) What about repair? What about contributions to the 3d printing community? What about support (and I'm not talking about Prusa's chat/email)?

My first Prusa printer was an MK2. After its release, Prusa continued to iterate on that product and offered multiple upgrade kits over its lifetime at reasonable prices that brought compelling features. Do you think BL will do the same? Or will they instead want you to buy a whole new printer to get the latest whatever that they've lifted from the community?

I'm going to guess that you don't care. That's your right of course, but there are people who do care about e-waste and planned obsolescence and buying as few products made by slaves as possible. Those people aren't wrong just like you're not wrong. We just value different things.

>Goalposts moved!

I'm not the one who set that goalpost and I disagree with it because it's nonsensical. The market is not a binary between a $1000 Mk4 and a $200 Ender 3, period.

>You must mean high-end China, yeah? $2k doesn't sound like much when it comes to FDM high end.

No, I'm talking about hobbyist builds. Yes, you can drop a couple of orders of magnitude more on industrial printers but I was under the impression we were discussing the consumer space, unless you'd like to move those goalposts?

>Are you thinking that Prusa printers are a "hobbyist journey"? Because they're definitely an appliance. Not only that, they're an appliance that can be repaired with off-the-shelf parts for the most part.

That's not what I was saying at all. I was saying that if you're after the hobbyist journey, dumping $1k into a Mk4 doesn't make sense. That's money better invested in something that will ultimately be a better printer.

If you're after the appliance experience, the Mk4 is a worse option than a Bambu would be.

>While it does hinder them competing on price, it also grants them some flexibility to improve designs over time. Since the printer has printed parts, users can print the new/better designs if they want.

This isn't mutually exclusive.

Bambu has made revisions to the parts they send out of the factory. End users have made extensive modifications like the excellent Hydra AMS.

Being flexible doesn't mean locking yourself into low volume, expensive production.

>don't require any manual tuning by the user (just like Prusa.)

Not just like Prusa. Better than Prusa does. The machine calibrates itself for EM and PA for any arbitrary filament. This is a large part of the "produces better prints" equation.

>What about contributions to the 3d printing community?

Their slic3r fork is the basis for Orca Slicer, which has become my preferred slicer on non-Bambu printers.

>What about repair?

Bambu provides detailed repair guides for the entire machine in both text and video format:

https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/x1/maintenance

>What about support (and I'm not talking about Prusa's chat/email)?

Nearly every part on the printer is directly available on Bambu's webstore and reasonably priced.

>Or will they instead want you to buy a whole new printer to get the latest whatever that they've lifted from the community?

Long term support remains a question mark but they've made promising first moves on that front. The P1 series have seen a number of upgrades since launch and the firmware for the X1 continues to receive significant firmware growth -- a completely new motor calibration routine got pushed out this month, for example. It's an unknowable at this point.

I assume they want to keep their printers with 3d printed parts for the following reasons:

(1) Dog fooding their own printers (in mass production) so they're reliable;

(2) Making DIY, modifications and repairs easy on their printers;

(3) Ease of prototyping and making new products.

It seems that given a large production scale, (3) would not be so important. (1) seems very important, but maybe they could reduce the number of printed parts and still have "enough dogfooding"? As for (2), perhaps they could compromise on having injection molded parts that can be replaced (i.e. are interchangeable with) printed parts.

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