And that is the reason why buying Prusa is so much better than buying Bambu Labs. They care about open standards and the community.
I had a Prusa Mk3 for many years. Extremely reliable and open printer if you don’t use the MMU. I might go back to Prusa someday but I’ve got a Bambu X1C which my router is blocking from connecting to the outside world and I’m pretty happy with it.
LAN only A1 mini with AMS for me. I will switch to Prusa eventually. But I never put in the effort to use my Ender 3 much, so the bambu ease of use pitch was what I was looking for.
Prusa printers are MUCH better than Ender 3s just FYI. Not even in the same class. If you end up getting a modern prusa you’ll get something like the Bamboo but more community driven and with real technical support.
I’m still sore after Bambu’s whole slicer locking down bullshit, but you can’t deny that Bambu also got the entire 3D printing industry to pull their collective fingers out and start actually making great printers that “just work” - including prusa, who were very clearly caught off guard as well. Before Bambu came along people were still recommending Ender’s as a good “first printer”, which is all you need to know. Now there’s a ton of good options (including prusa).
I do you one better, I admit that I was a few times on the fence on buying a Bambu Printer exactly because of this. But the Apple approach they are pursuing was always off putting. Nonetheless they pushed the whole industry to new goals, which is very nice.
I have to admit I gave in and bought one, despite my misgivings about their approach and at this stage I have no regrets. It really does “just work” in a wonderful way.
At first I was annoyed they used non standard nozzles, but AliExpress sorted that out in no time. The nozzles they use on newer machines are pretty great too, no more burning myself trying to unscrew a nozzle to swap it.
There’s no doubt that some of their decisions have been questionable, but some I really do agree with.
My first printer was Prusa MINI and it sucked so much. Something constantly stuck or broken.
And when they went closed source, they lost all my support.
Odd, I had the exact opposite experience. That thing is still going strong with next to no maintenance.
Lucky you, I even got a faulty motor in there. Getting a good print was constant tinkering. That’s fine for Ender 3 price point, not Prusa prices.
Maybe I was just unlucky, but unlike many people on the internet I simply don’t like Prusa printers.
That sucks, I’m sorry you had such a shitty experience. It does seem like they dropped the ball there.
Thanks. I’m a Bambu user now. Might have to come back to Prusa some day because I really dislike what Bambu’s doing lately, but so far not a single thing has broken (well, other than things I broke) after two years of use.
I would really like something top level which is not made by Prusa nor Bambu, I guess.
I don’t know what was wrong with your printer but the support should have figured it out and given you spare parts to fix it.
They didn’t, apart from when the motor got broken which they send me a replacement for.
Hmm, seems like a decent idea. Definitely better than closed tag systems.
Definitely! Mostly looking forward to see how/if other printers (especially Klipper) will support it
For an open source system I think it’s mainly just a matter of when. Granted there are currently complaints with the licensing for the system, so that might hurt/kill traction.
I mean it’s fairly new and the maintainer seems to be open for a license change.
Support in Klipper sounds amazing. There could be open repositories of printing parameters. Not 100% sure how Klipper would pass the info to the slicer but that seems solvable.
I’ve not user Klipper in a long while, but would it not suffice if Klipper knew 'Spool has 100m Filament left, print says it takes 110m, throw an error/require user confirmation to continue '?
I wonder if an external DIY sensor could be attached to unsupported printers so the signal/standard could be utilized. Maybe for something like the Creality line it would be as simple as a small display indicating detected filament parameters (for the user to input in the config).
There are USB NFC readers. Someone could add support for that to Klipper.
It can. All standard spec NFC: https://specs.openprinttag.org/#/nfc_data_format
So any USB or GPIO reader would work. This will be in Klipper quick I bet.
I’m sure the likes of Bambu will never support this, but lots of other makes likely will. Some will jump all in right away (it is cheap and a useful feature for their customers), others will jump in when forced. Some of the cheap ones will never jump in because that is $.50 they don’t want to spend.
I think Bambu have their own solution and since they don’t want their users using other brand filament they would be nuts to support an open standard
What’s the problem that spool tags solve?
I’m not knocking against this initiative by prusa, but the idea of spool tags in general.
By itself, it’s does not solve anything.
However it gives some extra data that can be used by the printer firmware.
The NFC tag contains data about the right printing temperatures, the color, the amount of filament left in there spool …
So a lot of QOL features can be developed with that. For example
- having a message of the amount of filament left in not enough to finish the print I’m about to start,
- auto adjust temperatures depending on the loaded filament,
- importing a library of available filament in the slicer just by taping the spool on the NFC reader.
- using this library of filament for multicolor/multi material printing. So instead of printing selecting each head individually in the slicer and then having to remember to load the right filament, right color in each head you can just select the filament you actually want and the printer will manage.
Alot of poka-yoke stuff then?
As a novice with a bambu lab printer, the rfid has saved me and my wife a couple of times from messing up with the wrong settings. Most of what we have is pla but the occasional petg and abs cause a surprise.
I would think that comes with experience. Each to their own I suppose. If it makes the technology more accessible, I’m all for it, but not at the cost of increased prices.
NFC stickers cost virtually nothing when bought in bulk. Like, less than 10 cents if you are buying at extreme numbers. Programming them is dead simple as well.
It’s a minor thing, but it helps. They put rfid tags on merchandise in some stores instead of bar codes, so I assume the cost is negligible.
On a tangent: That’s an even better use case, actually. Rfid makes it super convenient to shop at Decathlon (sports equipment store): you just throw all your clothes in a basket at checkout and it calculates your total in an instant. No scanning, no fiddling.
That’s sick, I would love to see this become commonplace
