There’s also a stark difference in philosophies: Bambu has stated that P1 owners can expect support to end in 2028. While that might seem like a long time, system builders and graphics card makers have historically offered lifetime support—a powerful statement, even if impractical given the rapid pace of obsolescence. In contrast, Prusa conveys a commitment to supporting their products for as long as possible, emphasizing durability and longevity over predetermined timelines.
LOL, oh yeah, you’re right. I also realized this wasn’t a valid comparison anyway, it should have been “Bambuuuuuuuuu, where’s the X1C to 1stQTRNewPrinter kit”… but no, that would cause chaos here too.
I think this will be my entry in to the Prusa ecosystem. I went to pre-order it today but the cheapest shipping was $400. I emailed PrintedSolid and they said they aren’t doing pre-orders but as soon as it ships in January they’ll have it on the US site.
I’m not leaving Bambu, I’ll have to register my dual-fan-ship.
Active Chamber Temp Control - a temp sensor and increased fan speed if the temps are rising. X1 also has a temp sensor.
Build volume is not even helmet size.
MMU is not as nice as AMS system.
The wifi with Prusa was very slow anyway.
It’s a good thing they finally step up their game. I live in the EU and I should support them but I can’t justify their printer’s price point, especially with features already existing on many other printers for longer time, and with parts still bought from China. I can buy a few Creality and one of them could be one that is not… meh. It’s good for those with already something like an MK4 at home but I wouldn’t get it as a brand new printer.
This are the prices in the EU. It’s quite a difference at the moment.
Hope on 2028 they make them open source if they feel like they will not be making any money from the units therefore stop upgrading and bug fixing firmware.
tf u mean " MMU is not as nice as AMS system" ams wastes way more filament than the mmu3 and takes alot more time to load and unload the filament to and from the hottend. the mmu3 has 5 colors and the ams has 4. the ams system is the bad one in existence
Define wastes. Look at the size of the purge block. I would much prefer waste filament sent out of the back of the printer than take up build plate space.
Aside for wasting more filament with purges, using AMS, MMU is everything worse.
At least AMS can load and unload filament, while so many users of MMU reporting failures over the years with loading and unloading.
The MMU is significantly more expensive and you can buy like almost 2 AMS units with that, and up to 4 units to get 16 colors.
Did I mention that you get tubes and roles everywhere with the MMU system? AMS is also closed in a box. MMU takes so much space.
MMU takes like 2 days to assemble it. It’s more of a custom upgrade, like from barebone ender3 to something usable.
MMU is not plug and play, you need to tinker with it. MMU has problem with mixing colors, although so does AMS if you change the settings.
The only better option they have is tool changes for the XL but it’s very expensive.
I forgot to ask. Why is this printer compared with X1C? Does it have dynamic flow calibration, first layer inspection or spaghetti detection? Last time I looked at a prusa, it had no accelerometer. Obviously no spaghetti detection since it has no camera, you need a custom mod for that.
Looks like a really good product and the price is fantastic.
From what I can tell, Prusa is mostly targeting companies or other institutions that want to use 3d printers instead of just end consumers. So it is understandable that no camera is built-in by default (would be problematic for security).
For me personally this won’t be my next printer, because
It only has an MMU, which seems to be okay/has some reliability issues. (Might have changed since I researched about it)
The MMU uses quite a lot of space, I love the compactness of one AMS unit on top of the printer
The print chamber dimensions seem awkward, would have preferred something like 256x256x256. With my old Ender printer I often had the problem that some models could not be printed with it, because they were designed for larger bed sizes.
Multicolor without a ton of waste is not really solved yet, sadly. Maybe I will really have to buy a Prusa XL someday or build a voron toolchanger.
Independently of that, I am really happy that Prusa continues to stay competitive. From what I can tell, most manufacturers are chinese companies, many of them with huge quality control issues/just dumping garbage printers on the market. (Looking at you creality). The big innovators that continue to develop printers in their own ways, seem to be Stratasys (the beloved patent trolls ), Prusa, Bambulab, and the open source community (like the voron printer or ratrig).
While that article was interesting, I think it really misses a big point and is being disingenuous. Prusa is not closing off their architecture, what they appear to be doing is not publishing the design so that one can build your own Prusa as they apparently did previously–I was not aware that his was the case, can someone confirm this? The source code is still open and that’s what matters.
While the X1 had its open-source project, which Bambu grudgingly refrained from interfering with (if you read Spaghetti Monster’s ominous sky-is-falling blog post), the P1 is locked up, as is the A1. None of Bambu’s printers are designed to be user-extensible.
I think this blog says it all. It comes across as not only condescending but practically sounds like a propaganda piece one might expect from Orwell’s 1984—“don’t go against the party; you’ll regret it.” In stark contrast, Prusa is inviting the community to tinker.
The argument that this Hackaday article quickly overlooks is the IBM PC architecture. The PC BIOS was never open source, yet no one would argue that the PC architecture wasn’t designed to be extensible from day one. I remember when IBM introduced the product in 1982. One must also remember that, in 1982, there were several open architectures competing for enthusiast wallets—S100, Apple II, and Tandy TRS-80 are just three examples. The 3D printing industry reminds me a lot of those early PC days.
What I believe sets Prusa apart in the open architecture area is this part of the announcement: following their tradition of creating user-extensible products, they are openly inviting the community to mod their machines. Can Bambu say that? Aside from printing one’s own P1P case, which was one of the things that originally drew me to Bambu.