I got my H2D a few months back and bought my kids a P1S that was on sale for black Friday. I am curious if anyone has both the Bambu and Prusa printers and could tell me why Prusa has such a loyal fanbase. They kind of remind me of Leica cameras from what I have seen and read. They seem to be geared towards people who like the printers more than printing and are willing to pay more just to say they are part of the Prusa club, but I wasn’t sure if I was being fair. Part of me wants to get one just to see if they are anything special. I love my Bambu printers and will probably get more in the future, but I am curious if I am missing out on something. I had heard that Bambu was formed by former DJI engineers, and DJI makes such awesome products.
Two different primary market segments being targeted by these two companies.
Bambu is selling to people who have minimal 3D printing experience, the printers are marketed as appliances - take them from the box and they just work, no tinkering to get them going. Bambu captured something absurd, like better than 30% of the entry level printer market within the first year of launch.
Bambu’s forward thinking design process was quickly validated as pretty much every other printer manufacturer scrambled to duplicate the Bambu level of functionality and automation.
Prusa, on the other hand, is marketed towards people who won’t have a problem if they need to tinker with their machines, and require more intervention to get printing successfully. They’re open source. And they arguably target the prosumer market much more so than entry level. Prusa buyers are 3D printing “enthusiasts” who want hardware they can easily modify if they want. They have very little of any presence at the lower end of the market where Bambu dominates with multicolor capabilities. And if you want multi color on a Prusa, it will cost you more than a Bambu to get there.
I don’t see Prusas as the machines you would buy when you want to tinker. Before BambuLab entered the market, I recommended Prusa mini as the perfect entry machine, delivering great results with no fiddling. BambuLab have brought “works without tinkering” to a new level at a much lower price, but Prusa printers also provide easy access with little headache.
Today, the main appeal of Prusa is their openness and the care for existing customers.
A BambuLab printer has a limited supported life time. After 3 years, many will replace it by a newer model.
With Prusa, you invest once and then you stay up to date for a very long time. E.g. when Prusa updates their models, they always provide everything you need to upgrade your existing printer with the new features. That goes so far that they even enable you to convert an MK4s (a bed slinger like the A1) into the latest Core One ( a Core XY like the P2S), reusing most parts. Of course that is a major act of tinkering then. But you will rarely put your bet in the wrong horse that gets abandoned after some time.
And also support from Prusa is known to be stellar. While I had only good experiences so far with Bambu Support, it is apparently no comparison to the speed and excellence of Prusa’s support.
Finally, the way that Prusa supports open source and gives away their Know-How to the public, resonates with many. It makes them easy to grow warm feelings with the company and makes customers loyal, even if they don’t have the best product on the market at the moment. Many are convinced that this is a temporary state and in the long run, they are better off staying with Prusa. BambuLab doesn’t do much to foster such feelings at all.
Disclaimer: I don’t own and haven’t owned a Prusa printer myself, but I know a few people who do. I had an Ultimaker 2+ for more than 10 years before I switched to an X1C.
Pretty much - the short way of putting it is “there are two kinds of people in 3d printing - those for whom the printing is the hobby, and those for whom the printer is the hobby.” Granted, Prusa’s kind of the “old man” of the hobby- the old, solid brand, and you have to admit they’ve given exceptional upgrade paths for their printers… but, again, aimed at “the printer is the hobby” (to a degree.) Then again, I think they aimed more at “prosumer” to begin with, given they’re making the printers they use.
This is also part of their credibility. Prusa uses their own printers to make parts for the printers they sell. They have a vested interest in making the machines as reliable as possible. That was a powerful selling point before Bambu came along.
Part is right, but ONLY an IDIOT will pay $500 to upgrade their Prusa 3mkIII to what is a 4. But there are Prusa folks doing just that. I had one and it just didn’t make financial sense. And these printers don’t last any longer than a Bambu. Practically the same parts (motors and rods. and belts.) Just sayin. I’ll keep my 2 Bambu printers. I can just send files and they print 99% perfectly vs 75% with my old prusa.
Prusa 3D lays off nearly twenty five percent of developers due to financial issues.
Hi!
I have an important message for you today that I am not writing easily. But it is necessary. Over the past few years, our team has been growing every year with new colleagues, and we are currently 1144 people. The company has grown, but with many new projects, our team grew as well - and faster than the business itself. We have reached a situation where our costs are increasing faster than our revenues. And that no longer makes sense.
At the same time, we are in a situation where, since the beginning of the year, we have not been meeting sales targets even by 90%. With high fixed costs, increasing competition, a drop in the value of the dollar, and other factors that we can’t all influence, it’s quite an unfavorable combination. We are all, of course, looking forward to INDX, but as part of this year’s plans, there are also other important products that, like INDX, are not yet ready - so they might be delayed, further threatening our ability to meet targets. Overall, we are taking on unnecessarily large risks, and it is necessary to address this.
Part of the next steps will be, among other things, a reduction in the number of positions. It’s a difficult decision, but we are making it to stabilize the company. This will inevitably impact the composition of some teams in Prague and the associated downsizing. The exception is operator positions - there, we are continuously optimizing efficiency and are currently in line with sales targets, so no major changes are planned there.
I know you have a lot of questions right now. Each of you will learn about this in the coming days from your team leaders.
At the same time, we are starting to implement a more general cost control process. This will happen gradually over the next weeks and months, and the measures will be the same for all companies. The goal is simple - to bring our margins back to where they were in 2024.
We have never done anything like this before. But it is a normal thing that companies that grow rapidly must occasionally do to stay healthy.
And one last thing – I honestly admit that we should have addressed this situation last year. We hoped that our plans would be met, but hope is not hard data, which is what we should have been following. We misjudged it, and that’s our mistake, from which we are learning. At the same time, we are still very optimistic for this year, thanks to the arrival of INDX and the general push toward local manufacturing self-sufficiency. We just need to be as well-prepared as possible.
Ondřej and Josef (the one from the USA)
Prusa is in a crowded field competing against several other companies that mainly cater to 3D printing enthusiasts (not the general public that Bambu Lab aims for). For some reason, some 3D printing enthusiasts also buy BL printers even though they are not built for tinkering. So the competition pressure is high for Prusa.
Some of Prusa’s approaches are also doube-edged swords. The use of 3D printed parts inside their printers allows for flexibility but it also increases costs and is hard to scale up. The emphasis on upgradablity from old models to new ones appeals to tinkerers but it also puts additional constraints on the implementation of new technology.
I think the downside of these approaches is part of the reason that Prusa printers are expensive and the implementation of new tech is slow.
Even though they are 1000+ people now, from looking at their github repos I’d guess 25% of “developers” is still less than 10 people.
I had a Prusa Mk4s bed slinger. I thought for awhile I would upgrade it to a Core One, but finally realized I could buy a Bambu P2S complete for not much more than Prusa’s upgrade cost alone.
The Prusa now sits unused in a corner.