Another reply to Josef Průša

https://www.haerdin.se/blog/2023/04/01/another-reply-to-josef-prusa/

by todsacerdoti • 3 years ago

33 48 3 years ago

The newest printers out of prusa, the recently launched mk4 and the much delayed prusa xl are absolutely half cocked. They have interesting design ideas, but are shipping without features that we now know are absolutely table stakes for quality machines.

Concretely: the mk4 talks about having input shaping, but doesn’t come with an accelerometer, which is needed for that to work well. The sovol 06 is a much more affordable machine that has similar motion system to the ml3/mk4

The xl really should be a fully enclosed printer like a voron trident or bambu x1 carbon. (The latter two have similar ).

If you ignore all the alternatives to prusa machines that are out there, they’re reliable machines that do the thing. But there’s so much amazing stuff in both community driven open source printer designs and also much more affordable manufacturing of the open source designs than you can get from prusa.

sokoloff3• 3 years ago

You do not need an accelerometer for input shaping. You only need one to determine the optimal constants (which represent the resonant frequencies of the machine). Once determined, the accelerometer is not needed. All machines made the same way will be able to use the same constants.

jimktrains2• 3 years ago

Until maintenance is done or the machine is customized, like changing the nozzle or air duct.

cassac3• 3 years ago

Well we don’t really know that an accelerometer is needed for input shaping for a nozzle that is only accelerating across a single plane. The mk4 nozzle only moves on one horizontal axis when printing not two like the XL and the Bambu. Not that I don’t trust your take, but Prusa usually has their ducks in a row and I expect this to be no different.

I don’t care about any features of the Bambu line and would continue with Prusa line. They are nice sure but they aren’t that much cheaper with that much better features. You didnt really mention these jaw dropping world changing features so feel free to fill me. I hope it’s more spaghetti detection.

carterschonwald8• 3 years ago

You’re forgetting that z hops are a thing. Even in a single axis the load from Eg the filament reel depends on the actual weight of the reel, and there’s almost certainly some variation in the cast aluminum frame parts (internal voids are I’m told an inevitable happening in aluminum/metal casting at scale). I assume the input shaping also would be needed on the bed slinger element as well.

As for the bambu, I’m getting voron level performance out of it, though admittedly with a much less open machine. I was using a prusa mini much of the past year but I quickly hit a lot of rigidity issues with its frame that were impossible to address without a total rebuild.

I guess for me the issue is simple: most of the plastics which I want to build stuff with (whether for engineering reasons or haptics of how they flex and feel) really require / benefit from enclosed printing. Pla is an incredibly strong material, but it can’t really handle any flex without brittle failure. And I just don’t like that.

I’m also in the process of putting together a voron v0, which I expect I’ll use even more due to sheer speed and ease of heating.

Nylon and asa and tpu are just so much more gratifying in my use cases.

jdietrich2• 3 years ago

Well we don’t really know that an accelerometer is needed for input shaping for a nozzle that is only accelerating across a single plane.

Input shaping requires an accelerometer for calibration. On a bedslinger like the Mk4, you need two sets of measurements - one for the toolhead and one for the bed, because both are moving and both can experience different resonances. The Prusa solution is to pre-calibrate input shaping from the factory; this is less than ideal, because printer resonances can be substantially affected by the surface that the printer is sitting on. The user could re-calibrate input shaping, but that would require them to connect their own accelerometer module to the motherboard and find some means of jury-rigging it in place.

https://blog.prusa3d.com/announcing-original-prusa-mk4_76585...

rcarmo• 3 years ago

Yes we do, because the accelerometer is used to measure resonance on all axis when the printer vibrates at speed. Check the Klipper documentation to see how it works.

sircastor• 3 years ago

I'd say the proof is in the product. I've read a lot of complaints over the last couple of days that the Mk4 isn't CoreXY, doesn't have an accelerometer, should be enclosed, should be _____. If the Mk4 can produce the same quality of print, does it matter how it gets there?

To use a metaphor, Prusa made the very best, reliable car you could buy. Then a bunch of similar cars, that were pretty good were released. And a few really amazing Sports cars were released. And Prusa showed up again with a really reliable, solid car. And people are mad because they thought they were going to be bringing out a flashy sports car.

skybrian• 3 years ago

"Table stakes" seems hyperbolic here given that we've lived without input shaping at all for quite a while.

Speed boosts are welcome but that doesn't mean everyone needs to "overclock" to get the absolute best performance. And if you do want to do that, couldn't you add an accelerometer later?

stevenhuang• 3 years ago

+1 on the sovol sv06, did a bit of digging and this looks like the best featured printer at the moment for the price point ($350 CAD right now on Amazon prime)

carterschonwald8• 3 years ago

Yeah, I would have saved a fair bit of money if I had gotten the sovol 6 as my first machine (though the sovol 5 is a bit more rigid and space efficient)

arcanemachiner• 3 years ago

The article refers to getting "Behringer'd". Can anyone tell me what that means?

TaylorAlexander3• 3 years ago

Lower cost adequate quality clones coming out and eating in to your core business.

Mistletoe2• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behringer

Behringer products are often half the price of other audio gear and have a matching reputation for suspect quality.

https://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/comments/6bqb18/ar...

TheRealPomax2• 3 years ago

Quoting a Reddit post from 6 years ago isn't super great: Behringer got A LOT better in the last 5 years to the point where they're now just a "you get what you pay for" cheaper alternatives to otherwise unaffordable gear.

Mzero• 3 years ago

GPT4: "Getting "Behringer'd" is a term used in the context of this article to describe a situation where a company copies the design of another company's product, manufactures it at a lower cost, and sells it at a cheaper price. This term is derived from the practices of the audio equipment company Behringer, which is known for producing affordable versions of popular and often expensive audio gear by replicating their designs. In the article, the author suggests that if Prusa Research chooses to keep its electronics closed, it might face competition from others who would create open replacement boards – essentially getting "Behringer'd"."

tiedieconderoga• 3 years ago

People may be reacting negatively to your comment because it quotes a language model verbatim, with no context or analysis.

You can probably understand why that might not be considered a constructive contribution to most discussions.

TimSchumann• 3 years ago

There’s an entire paragraph midway through the article that explains it well.

A similar sentiment is echoed in the post A reply to Josef Průša by Stargirl Flowers, but this time in regards to Uli Behringer. This despite Behringer engaging in the historically progressive task of cheapening audio hardware by copying other designs and manufaturing and marketing them at scale (putting aside Behringer's litigious behavior). Stargirl calls this competition "parasitic", despite also citing the proliferation of Stratocaster clones and the benefit thereof to musicians.

grepLeigh• 3 years ago

I think the phrase refers to Behringer, a German audio/synth equipment company that pumped out cheap eurotrack + modular synth components. I'm not a synth person (and forget how I even know about this), so I looked around for a more authoritative recap and found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/onllk0/synthesi...

Didn't know /r/HobbyDrama existed either. What a world!

My hot take is that in the consumer commodity market, Prusa is losing market share to Chinese competitors. Consumers are extremely fickle and price-sensitive. What I think is interesting is that Prusa also has market share among small/medium manufacturing shops - although I have no idea if this segment is growing or shrinking. The strengths behind the Prusa brand (open-source ethos, reliable work horse machines, longevity) make Prusa a clear winner if I need to allocate capital for 20x 3d printers in the ~25cm build volume category.

I see Prusa XL as an important stake in the large-format B2B 3D printer services market, and it makes sense that consumers aren't 100% satisfied with the current developments (large-format 3D printers are historically not oriented for the consumer market). I think it's exceptional that Prusa is applying their open source ethos to large-format 3D printing, which tend to be closed software/hardware ecosystems with a retail price tag of 5-10k USD.

bmitc• 3 years ago

Behringer has frequently cloned both out of production and in production music instruments and equipment. They are very controversial, some which is not helped by the company's CEO, who is the namesake of the company.

In the synth world, they have released out of production, extremely rare, and extremely expensive synthesizers. I think in most cases, they aren't necessarily copying so much as re-releasing because they are often products that the original manufacturer either refuses to or can't (in terms of lacking the engineering capability) re-release. And sometimes, the original company is not even around anymore. Behringer has its own chip manufacturing, which helps it achieve low costs. But they do also directly copy active and on the market products. These are much less justifiable.

kristianpaul• 3 years ago

Thats why i opted buying my 3d printer from https://reprapltd.com/ reprap project founder

chomp• 3 years ago

Tl;dr capitalist market worship, and “whether or not you’re open, you can get out competed, and yes a 1:1 clone is just competition bro, sorry you’ve contributed to the community but somehow the clone company doesn’t have to do r&d and they wind up with lower costs, such is the market”

Sorry for the reductionist take but something about this article irks me. Surely there’s room to complain about the expense of giving in a growing room of takers. In software we have the wonderful AGPL. I can see why Prusa wants something to help grow an open source hardware community without rewarding takers.

TaylorAlexander3• 3 years ago

Based on other language in the article (talking about bourgeois character and suggesting the solution is socialization) I don’t think your read is a fair one. Even Marx understood capitalism’s power to lower prices, it’s just that there are other side effects to capitalism that lead to issues.

Also you cannot “help grow an open source hardware community” with closed source hardware.

2muchcoffeeman• 3 years ago

My take on the article is the same as chomp’s.

Průša incorrectly states that "there are 1:1 clones of hardware or software on the market that do not bring anything back to the community". But the cloners do bring something to the community, namely lower prices.

The author either fails to realise or simply doesn’t care that the lower prices come at a cost. Relying on cheap Chinese clones is an evolutionary dead end. They aren’t going to open source their hardware ever.

You also can’t get lower than free on open source software. So all the Chinese forks will essentially get closed.

Prusa is stuck and doesn’t know a way out. They built their brand on being open, but that will surely force them out of business.

bsder• 3 years ago

Sorry for the reductionist take but something about this article irks me. Surely there’s room to complain about the expense of giving in a growing room of takers. In software we have the wonderful AGPL. I can see why Prusa wants something to help grow an open source hardware community without rewarding takers.

Every product now tries to have a cloud component with encryption. People like the article author are why.

oh_sigh• 3 years ago

A world where one group pays R&D costs and another group rips off the final result and can offer it for less ends in a world where no one invests in R&D

RobotToaster2• 3 years ago

We already have specific hardware licences like the AGPL for hardware, the CERN-OHL-S. [0]

Despite claiming to want to remain open source, any license that bans "1:1 clones" would, by the very definition Prusa endorsed[1], not be open source.

[0]https://cern-ohl.web.cern.ch/

[1]https://freedomdefined.org/OSHW

mavu• 3 years ago

What a terrible whiny article.

If you actually read the original by Prusa, you will see that it is mainly about 2 things:

1) GPL and other license violations by 3d printer manufacturers

2) fraudulent local patents on things already in production and on market by competitors (who intentionally did not use patents to protect their IP)

If this article was a assignment in a language class, I would grade it a "F" for missing the mark completely.

RobotToaster2• 3 years ago

Prusa doesn’t help himself here though. He then says he needs a new license, to replace the one manufacturers are supposedly ignoring?

jacknews• 3 years ago

"I would like if the Prusa i3 MK4 were also completely open, but if it isn't then I will simply spend my money elsewhere."

The point is without people taking a stand on open source, there won't be anywhere else to spend your money that is open source.

musingsole2• 3 years ago

I don't buy it (pun intended).

The challenge of a profitable, open source business model is very real, but also very surmountable -- as evidenced by Prusa's existence in the first place.

Thinking one has to straddle the line between philosophy and pragmatism is a false dichotomy. Open Source is a movement, not a binary.

musingsole2• 3 years ago

This response references Thea Flowers' response: https://blog.thea.codes/a-reply-to-josef-prusa/

Prusa exists in what I hope is a time of transition from capital/ownership mindsets into a new type of open market. Wanting to straddle the fence in the name of profits shows once again Prusa only partially understand the movement they benefit from and namecheck frequently.

Comparing Prusa to Marc Jacobs to emphasize the brand over the product is genius.

Another reply to Josef Průša

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