Another BL competitor coming

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Phrozen is now entering the Core XY market with a printer similar to the
P1 and X1 series. It’s in a kickstarter phase.

They have a couple of ideas that even BL might consider. The ability to do dual extrusion being one of them.

It’s also a 300 cubed build volume.

This is an ambitious undertaking for a company that has never built an FDM printer before.

They are taking the approach of putting most of the weight on the bottom. This can be a plus or minus. They are doing this because the bed does not move up and down, but a carriage system lifts and raises the XY rails.

They also take a direct stab at Bambu Lab. To quote:
“Unlike some of our competitors with closed systems, Arco empowers users to make modifications via Klipper firmware, giving you more control of your 3D printing experience. With Arco, you have the liberty to make personalized adjustments, delivering a creative and customizable printing experience.”

Now, taking all that into account, other manufacturers have tried making direct competitors to the P1 and X1 series, but the first attempts have fallen short on all of them. Some of them miserably short.

If their printer does have the same quality at speed, then to me that will be a good thing, as competition ALWAYS breeds innovation.

Being bigger, their prices are higher. After the kickstarter early bird prices a printer w/o the side panels (think big P1P) will be $849, with the panels like a P1S- $1018, and with the panels and an AMS equivalent (called the Chroma Kit) will be $1435.(think X1C)

Do a search for Phrozen ARCO to see details.

My hope is this will spur more innovations for BL printers, and maybe even some hardware upgrade kits for the existing printers.

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By the time the first Kickstarter backers will receive their unit, Bambu Lab will have presented their Gen2 models :sweat_smile:

Phrozen is a bit late with their “copycat” of the X1/P1S Combo, that is “slightly” better than the original …

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Patent

Hmm, anyone have the Patent number?

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total lack of pride, creativity and originality. By copying X1C combo they’ve just confirmed and demonstrated that BL has set the norm in fdm printers; sadly for Phrozen, Arco doesn’t bring anything novel or original, just a larger bed size. While I, and many others BL printer users, might have our differends to settle with BL (especially with their customer support), i do find Phrozen’ Arco lame. The only positive thing that could come out of this is putting pressure on BL not just to improve their current customer service, but also to come up with an improved X1C version… eventually a dual head , and perhaps a price drop.

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The flying gantry would be nice, especially on a larger printer. Unless you want to build a voron, I don’t know where else you’d find it at that price point.

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Troodon seems to have an offering.

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The printer will probably function well enough. I think these clones miss the real point of Bambu printers though, and it’s why their jabs and Bambu fall flat with me too. I mean, there’s that Magneto by Peopoly that looks pretty neat too, that people are saying is going to give Bambu a serious fight. I would be pretty happy to get to mess with any of these printers, or a Voron! But that is separate from my desire to actually print.

Those printers are still printers made for 3d printing enthusiasts. Bambu is targeting the consumer market. I don’t think people always get/understand that. They look strictly at the printer itself, on the tech specs, and don’t take the time to understand the whole image. It’s not just the printer, it’s the whole system and how it comes together for the end user.

I guess drones is a good way to consider it. There’s some amazing FPV drones out there, but they aren’t DJI drones, and DJI drones aren’t the FPV drones (I know DJI has a FPV drone, but why I’m discounting that in this argument is a explanation of it’s own). If I want a stable platform that I can just use, DJI is awesome. If I want to go crazy and take the hand rails off, I whip that FPV drone out and go bananas. They’re the same thing, but different parts of the market, and targeting different people.

These printers are like that, and why these clones (They aren’t just clones; they do all look like awesome printers that try and bring their own ideas to the table too) kind of mis the point, and why the critics miss the point too, in my opinion. They’re still trying to be a FPV drone while competing with a camera platform drone.

But that is separate from my desire to actually print.

I love messing with printers and all of that, but I also love just being able to design and print; focusing on the design! That’s also why I have a custom built FPV drone and a regular DJI drone. Sometimes, I just want to take it easy. Sometimes, I want to do crazy tricks that’ll end in my drone smashing into the ground because I obviously need more practice. That FPV drone is built for that though, ha!

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That and the orangestorm giga, with its insane build volume of 800x800x1000mm. If it were available and it worked, I’d buy one today. So, I hope it works out well for them.

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Indeed, BL is pretty much targeting the average consumer and not the (hard core) tinkerers. They’ve addressed the the quite large market of average “Joe” who would be interested in a “print out of the box” 3d printer or, if a comparison is permitted, interested in a "print in place " type experience. Just the plug in and print type of guy. I find your comparison with the DJI drone is pretty much accurate, given that BL’s core developers came originally from DJI drones.

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I keep using the term “complete off the plate”. Which is the idea that it shouldn’t necessarily require any more assembly/skill than what would be needed for something you bought from a department store. The AMS is a vital part of this too, I believe.

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So far it is just “another potential coreXY player on the market”. Cause it’s strange to call a competitor printer that is not released yet with a printer that soon will be 2 years on the market. Phrozen is doing nice printers so hope their quality will be transferred to XY… But looks like by the time it is released new Bambu flagship will arrive. That’s were competition will be but not with the current models.

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I somehow doubt BL will come up with a new flagship anytime soon, considering the troubles they have with delivery of the current orders, the problems with their supply chain for the spare parts and their catastrophic customer service/support, next to their troubles with the A1, P1 and X1series. Far from me the desire to see them fail and fall, however, until they don’t address their current problems (the elephant in the room, or in the China shop, if you prefer), I don’t see them having the resources (the human resources and materials, as the financial ones could be solved either through investors or through Chinese government infusion of capital) required to launch a new and radically improved printer. Time will tell, and BL might prove me wrong and take the risk (and gamble) of launching a new flagship printer even if they haven’t reached the required maturity level to sustain their current products and provide support to their current customers.

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Their CEO in the interview last year mentioned flagship “next year”. He told that don’t want just to scale up x1c but bring new features. And recently this has been confirmed it in the printing contest here: https://twitter.com/BambulabGlobal/status/1754686850609107331

“Winners will receive a signed Bambu Golden ticket and redeem it by contacting us through 3 social media accounts（X, Instagram, and Facebook） when our flagship product in 2024 is launched.”

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Sadly, the quoted Tweet seems to be unavailable (see attached screenshot). In any case, I have no reason to doubt you, as you’ve got nothing to gain from this. As I’ve stated before, it could turn out that BL will be launching a new printer (or an improved version) this year. However, whether it will become their new flagship, that remains to be seen (and decided by the users and the market). And, frankly, I’d like to see BL come out with something novel and technically ground breaking. But no matter how novel and ground breaking the new printer (if any at all) will be, unless BL will be capable to solve its current issues and dramatically improve their customer support services, I fear that no matter how impressive their new printers will be, their competitors will overtake them eventually. Don’t get me wrong. I very much enjoy my X1C and the 2 AMS units. I bought them because I’m not a (hard core) tinkerer but a consumer; I’m not running a 3D printing farm to make a living, it’s just a hobby. I prefer spending my free time creating stuff and printing it for my enjoyment and for the pleasure it provides me when offering things I make to my family and friends. So if BL will come up this year with a way better and significantly improved new printer, and if it turns out to be really good, I might eventually consider purchasing one, sometime next year, after sseeing and learning what other users, more knowledgeable and experienced than me, have to say about it.

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Not gonna lie, I was seriously considering backing the Arco, but having been part of the Mighty 8k preorder I did abstain in the end and am eyeing a X1C instead.

I don’t doubt the quality the printer will have, even if some mentioned the AMS and PTFE tube angle might give problems. However so far what they’ve shown simply is not all that convincing. It’s mostly promises of delivering features in the future, like optimizing the purge tower, purging to infill, spaghetti detection, etc.

They did the same with their 8k resin printer in the preoder, promising an app would come with which to control the printer remotely and would make the camera they added onto the printer work. This took them half a year to develop the app, and in the end it was just to see print progress on your phone and make single photos with the crappy 2014 webcam they tacked on. The promised timelapse is still not delivered and I doubt it ever will come.

So yeah, maybe they will fulfill all those promises, and maybe it will work nice in the end. But from past experience that will probably pe 1-1,5 years after the Kickstarter delivers. All that stuff should have been done before the Kickstarter launch.
That being said, Kickstarter is now at 1,5M so I’m clearly the outlier.

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Perhaps this new and mysterious printer is the one BL has filled a patent application for, last year in summer [CN111775448A - Intelligent 3D printing platform - Google Patents], or perhaps it’s the rumored G-series [Bambu Lab G1 Series Archives – SFF GEEK], that was supposedly ready for launch in Q1, this year, we can only guess at this point in time.

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Don`t see you are are busy with her. I’ve been following them since January.

I don`t think you can compaire the X1C with a Phrozen incl. PentaShield incl. Chroma Kit

May I`m wrong:

In contrast to Bambu, I see by Phrozen only small markups in local specialist retailers for there currently sold printers - this with long-term relationships and maintain ther customers in Thaiwan style and sustainable.

So they may don’t focus on sales on their website. They may try to keep the prices on par with the existing local sellers - and if they do that here too, the BL printers will then getting an hard hit on the store shelvess because then the price tag on the smaller printer will then be more expensive. I’m happy to use store shelvess if it acceptably more expensive because you have a local contact person and you can also get very interesting warranty extensions over several years at a reasonable price…

Phrozen also has loyal customers who pay extreme attention to printing quality. They are also very transparent when it comes to color changes, the fact that only PETG and PLA currently work in the AMS is mentioned very clearly in the description.

A lot of emphasis was placed on TPU on the Printer only (if that’s true, by far the fastest TPU printer).

So may the big difference are:

  • Size
  • lidar/spaghetti monitoring and first layer checking
  • Print speeds without AMS with TPU
  • Customer support - how they build customer trust
  • They will now pay extreme attention to print quality. This is there customer segment at heart, the artery that keeps the company running. So if you’re talking about Prusa gets competition, then now.
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bambu does not care about phrozen in the slightest lol. bambu printers getting a hard hit on the shelves?? lol thats funny

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I agree. Because of the ease-of-use changes and a fairly large drop in prices in the last year or so, I would argue that the entire market is growing much faster than before. The axiom for such a scenario is that a rising tide carries all ships. Therefore, as long as this trajectory continues, we’re a long way from a purely cut-throat scenario.

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and most likely just another Klipper CoreXY unlike Bambu