undefined | Better HN

0 pointshorsawlarway6mo ago0 comments

I guess. Having just bought a Prusa Core One because of concerns about the direction Bambu is headed...

I regret it. Hands down. It is absolutely worse from a practical standpoint than the much older X1C I have, and the absolutely maddening part is that the "worse" bits are mostly software related.

You can hate on Bambu all you want (and frankly - a good chunk of it is well earned, but some is exaggerated or false) - but it feels like they use their products, and they care enough to fix the rough spots.

So while I like the ideals of Prusa... I can't say I'm super impressed with their latest offerings. Bambu's ecosystem is justly WILDLY better. The slicer is less annoying, the printer is more consistent, the monitoring tools are better, and most importantly - when I hit print, it just fucking does it.

I've had the Core One for less than 3 months, and I'm already into the double digits for number times I hit print and I come back 5 hours later to find.... it hasn't even damn well started the job. Instead...

"nozzle wipe failed. Retry?"

"different filament is loaded. unload? Select No to start print" (side note - it's just fucking wrong here, the filament from the correct MMU slot IS loaded, I just did it manually at the printer because if I don't and I switch materials - the next print is a guaranteed failure. The MMU is a whole different clusterfuck of bad software design, cool 3d printed engineering, bad software design)

"Nozzle clean failed. Retry?"

"The bed appears to be unlevel. Perform leveling?"

"Bed heating disabled due to inactivity" (This one still stumps me, I hit print, and came back to this message - my guess is nozzle clean fail and this just dismissed the first one... but who knows).

"Nozzle wipe failed. Retry?"

---

Basically - I am fucking tired of "Core One needs your attention!" popups on my phone. Especially for the stupid things like approving a nozzle clean retry, or re-leveling. I am also sick of wasted time thinking the machine is printing when it's not.

Right now, I would absolutely buy a Bambu over anything else in the market for FDM.

0 comments

cosmic_cheese6mo ago

The reality is that “just works” is going to outsell just about everything, including high ground on morals and privacy. If competitors want to keep up they’re going to have to offer models that don’t require any tinkering/tweaking even if doing so is possible, supported, and encouraged.

horsawlarwayOP6mo ago

Yeah... The market is still shifting in response to the X1C.

10 years ago... I would manually level my ender, religiously monitor it, and still deal with a decently high failure rate (esp for anything other than PLA). Tuning the printer took easily as much time as I actually spent printing with it. I upgraded all the things, flashed firmware, ran octoprint, etc...

It was like driving - gotta keep the hands on the wheel and maintain alertness at all times. It was an activity that required my attention and focus.

Then I caved and got an X1C in 2023. It's... a really, REALLY good machine.

It's like flying somewhere. I get on the plane, start up a movie or a book, and someone wakes me up when the flight is over. It's a tool that is doing things for me while I do other stuff.

I'm at the point where I'm not really interested in the "middle" all that much. Either go with a Voron and get the "I'm driving" feeling if that's what you want. Or get a Bambu and get chauffeured to successful print.

pests6mo ago

The 3D printing community is really two different groups: people who like to actually print things and people who like to tinker with their printer.

1 more reply

tfvlrue6mo ago

I have been using a Core One at home for the past six months or so, and have not had this experience at all. For me, it just works. I can send prints to it and it completes them, hands-off.

It sounds like there may be a hardware problem with your printer. Did you buy it assembled or do it yourself? You may want to contact Prusa about this, because I can confirm this is not normal behavior for this printer.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse