I’ve been waiting to finish up with some major life stuff before diving into the world of 3D printers. Now that is finally behind me, and I am currently trying to find out which printer I want so that I can place an order.
So far I’ve set my eyes on the new Prusa CORE One. It ticks a lot of the boxes that I think I am after, including:
- As open as I can get (before going into that Voron-stuff, which I think I’m not ready for). I don’t want to be bogged down with having to run proprietary slicers through Wine and things like that. I am not sure how big of an issue that is with e.g. Bambu or Creality (if at all), but I’ve seen enough rug-pulls and enshittification processes that I don’t really want to risk that. I want to be sure that I can use FOSS tools such as Blender and FreeCAD for design, and similarly open slicers, and the whole workflow will work just fine.
- As future-proof as I can possibly hope for. I think the upgrade path from the MK4 to CORE One shows that they are serious about sustainability and longevity of their devices, and as far as I can tell, I should have no troubles sourcing replacement parts. I also want to support companies with this philosophy.
- Has a decent print volume (I know there are bigger, maybe I will be constrained by this at some point?)
- Enclosed - a major reason I did not want the MK4S was that it was not enclosed (but maybe you can get an enclosure?). It will be placed in my study where I spend most of my computer time (which often times is a lot, so I imagine I will be in the room while it is printing). I imagine, with the additional filter, that it will be better with an enclosure. Also, it will be easier to keep good temperature control during prints, as it can get cold here during winter.
- Locally produced (I’m EU based).
I understand that other manufacturers provide more “bang for the buck” and that I in that sense will be overpaying feature-wise. I am fine with that given my emphasis on the above criteria.
However, I am a complete newbie to 3D-printing. I am sure there are some limitations I have not thought about, and I was wondering if there are any major things I have not thought about that would actually affect me negatively and should make me reconsider this model?
My first printer back in 2016 was a FlashForge, which at that time filled a similar role in the market as Bambu is doing now.
Their designs were initially more open than Bambu is now, but went more proprietary over time - I had a Dreamer which still used a lot of “standard” parts. Despite that I ran into several issues that were either a pain to work around, or impossible, due to Flashforges attempts at keeping bits proprietary. I switched to Prusa after that, and have been happy ever since.
For me personally that experience was enough that I’ll never by something like Bambu - though for people with less technical abilities who just want a box that works they’re perfectly fine.
Currently I have a mk4 upgraded from a mk3s as main printer, in the enclosure, with mmu. I’m considering upgrading it to a core one next year, purely because of the lower footprint of the core one in a case compared to the prusa enclosure, and my limited space. My old flashforge was corexy, and was quite annoying about bed leveling - which lead to me avoiding corexy for a while after that. But as far as I can tell the bed mount on modern corexy are way better than on the old flashforge (which had a tendency to bend forward), plus there’s autoleveling now.
Yeah, that is the situation I am hoping to avoid. I was very close to buying a Flashforge some years back actually. Glad to hear you are happy with your current setup. :)