With Core One, Prusa's Open Source Hardware Dream Dies

There are too many cheap clones. Too much stealing of the open source work. This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't.

I don't buy Prusa because they are OSH, I buy them because they are great printers. They are an open platform, if not open source. Which is good enough for my needs. If these changes they are making will allow Prusa to keep producing world class devices at reasonable prices, then more power to them.

And yes, I know some people hate Prusa or have had major issues. But they do a lot to move 3D printing forward, rising tide lifts all boats and all that jazz. We want all respectable and reputable 3D printer companies to succeed - because then everyone wins.

> keep producing world class devices at reasonable prices

At the current price points can you really recommend a Core One over an X1 to someone with a tight budget? Without resorting to arguments about open platforms and the big picture?

I took a look at the price. They're almost comparable if X1/AMS combo wasn't (always?) on sale.

The better comparison is a Core One vs a P1S/P1P. You can almost buy two P1 printers for the price of a Core One.

> Too much stealing of the open source work

How do you steal Open Source? Can Pruse no longer use it themselves or something? Sounds wrong calling "companies creating products from other projects" stealing when the intention from the beginning is that others can freely use the created project for whatever.

> This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't

Isn't those examples that Open Source builds great software? Companies trying to wrestle control of projects after making them Open Source doesn't mean what's already there didn't have a great impact.

> This isn't remotely shocking, just look at Redis, Elastic and many many others... Open Source works until it doesn't.

I would argue that redis and elastic are signs that open source does work, albeit not well as a for-profit business. Open source hardware has a completely different set of problems.

Those clones that you speaks of are often of questionable quality. Unless we're talking about creality printers, which were open source(at least with the Ender 3), and are also low quality.

But my question is "what's the point?" If you have an open source project and yet the commmunity is largely uninvolved in its development, why do you even care to be open source?

Yes, freedom is important, but hardly anybody but developers take advantage of it. The most important aspect of FOSS is that it's a marker of a project/product that won't take advantages of its users with shady business practices, and that's probably the most important thing about it.

Firstly, neither of these are "budget". I think if you need a budget, you a probably best sticking to a Prusa Mini, Bambu P1s or A1 Mini.

Without a doubt. An X1 is 1k USD. This is 1,199 USD.

Truly this is a competitor to the X1E though which costs 2.5k (!!!) with basically the only notable addition being the heated chamber (which the Core 1 comes with for free).

I have multiple Prusa Mark 3s, a Prusa XL and an X1 carbon, and frankly I only use the Prusa XL nowadays (and sometimes the Mark 3s).

Bambu makes a good printer, but it has lots of annoying issues and proprietary annoyances. I also don't like them as a company, but that wouldn't prevent me from buying another if I needed and used it.

In my experience Prusa printers "just work" more often than Bambu printers do.

Disagree. The better comparison is Core One vs X1E. As frankly the main selling point of the X1E is Active Chamber Heating.

With your logic you can also say you can just get 2 P1S printers instead of an X1C, but an X1C is still sells just fine.

> How do you steal Open Source? Can Pruse no longer use it themselves or something? Sounds wrong calling "companies creating products from other projects" stealing when the intention from the beginning is that others can freely use the created project for whatever.

Thing is, the fundamentals of Open Source have changed over the last decades - and the assumptions people made Back Then no longer hold. Let me expand a bit:

Back in the late 80s and 90s, up until the early '00s a lot of popular open source software was developed by academic institutions or with scientific grants. For them, it didn't matter - the money way paid for anyway and sharing source code fits with the ideals of science. In some projects it's very clear that they have an academic history - my to-go example is OpenStack, the myriads of knobs it has absorbed over the years all come from universities wishing to integrate whatever leftover hardware they had.

But ever since academic funding all but dried up, life has gotten difficult. We got a few rockstar projects that manage to survive independently (cURL), godknowshow (OpenSSL), with consulting services (sqlite with their commercial comprehensive test suite, mysql, mariadb, psql), on corporate contributions (Linux kernel, ReactJS/Facebook), on donations (everything in the FOSS graveyard better known as Apache) or, like Prusa, on hardware they sell. The general idea behind many projects is the implicit assumption: if you use a project commercially and the developer has a commercial support platform, be so kind and pay the original developers a bit so they can improve upon the project.

The problem is when juggernauts with deep money pits, be it companies with net market values in the trillions of dollar range or companies being under influence of the CCP, come on the field and take the hard work of others to make money without contributing back either financially or with code. Legally, they are absolutely in the clear, if the project isn't under AGPL, CC-NC or other such terms. ElasticSearch got ripped off that way by AWS for example.

It's not stealing in a traditional sense, but it is breaking the ethos and expectations.

The Core One doesn’t have chamber heating, it just has chamber exhaust. Not the same thing.

It's worth noting that the X1 is on sale today. Normally it's $1199 as well.

Proprietary companies always have a license to print money.

People who do open source don't usually do it for the money or have the expectation of just making a living from it, never mind making a lot of money. They don't even charge a nominal price for their software. So you have a mismatch between funding and enthusiasm.

The main issue with this move is that it's not going to cut down on clones very much. Chinese 3D printer companies already clone all kinds of parts from other companies that don't provide design files, including stuff very similar to the now-proprietary extruder. They won't need to spend much effort replicating it. The people who lose out the most are open-source hardware hobbyists.

Frankly, the only advantage I see from a spec list for the Core One is a chamber exhaust (not heater, just exhaust).

Compared to a P1P it’s missing a camera.

Compared to the X1C it’s missing a camera, the LiDAR, and carbon rods.

Also, the AMS solution on Bambu printers is much better than the MMU by Prusa.

Why would I recommend anyone buy a printer that cannot be repaired? That’s just throwing money away and creating e-waste. Even a Prusa Mk4 makes more sense than the X1 when you consider repairability.

Yes. Too many people in this community seem to be believe that Open Source is a marketing tool and somehow even more bizarrely, a business model. And then pretend to be disappointed when they find out that it is a poor fit for both and that people and businesses aren't tripping over each other to throw money at them.

Open source is a vehicle for giving the world something neat and useful, with no other obligations implied. (Other than perhaps the continuation of said freedom for downstream users, a la GPL.)

Thanks for the correction, it does not have a dedicated chamber heater. But I don't think simplifying it to "chamber exhaust" is correct.

It sounds like the real claim is the device can actively keep the chamber at 55C. Other than semantics, I don't understand how this is different from having a dedicated chamber heater. I can close my X1C, but it won't maintain any stable temperature. The bed and nozzle are heating the chamber. This is all assuming the time to get to 55C is reasonable, and that 55C is enough. I personally have a need for 55C chamber often, but never 100C (X1E can only get to 60C).

Again, feel free to correct if I'm wrong, but directly from Prusa: "The automatic ventilation system and active temperature control"

> Compared to a P1P it’s missing a camera.

Built in yes, and that's disappointing to see. Unsure why they aren't just including that at this point. Assuming its like the XL, you can use any camera you can find (phone, rpi, esp) and link it to the printer to get a "first party"

> Compared to the X1C it’s missing a camera, the LiDAR, and carbon rods.

I never use the LiDAR on my X1C. In my opinion is produces worse results then calibrating manually. Agree on the camera.

Regarding carbon rods, I would be surprised if it made any tangible difference to 99.99% of people.

> Also, the AMS solution on Bambu printers is much better than the MMU by Prusa.

Agreed. I never use AMS or MMU. For some its a dealbreaker to not have something as good as AMS. I never print multi material, other than using multiple heads on the XL.

The way they describe the active chamber management in their blog post is basically to say “the enclosure allows it to reach temps as high as 55C, but you can keep it enclosed and drop the temperature so you can print PLA and PETG”. There might be some insulation perhaps, but getting to 55C is not particularly hard on almost any printer. Uninsulated printers with enclosures that are reasonably tight will hit 55C no problem. Add some insulation and you can hit 70C pretty reasonably all without any chamber heating.

Bambu sells replacement parts for their printers. Very little of the printer is not repairable.

At some point the value proposition makes sense. People buy non repairable 2D printers all the time.

Also, as the other commenter noted, they actually are quite repairable. Bambu offers pretty much every part you could imagine and at prices that are extremely reasonable. Any wear component you’d expect is easy to replace.

The core one doesn't have a heated chamber. It has a fan at the top that regulates air leaving the chamberm hence "active chamber heating" rather than "heated chamber" in their marketing materials. The heating is done by the heatbed, making it comparable to a P1S rather than an X1 or X1E.

The P1S has the same heater (the heat bed) and the same concept of a variable speed fan that regulates how much air is drawn from the chamber. The only real difference here is that the core has a vent cut out, whereas the P1/X1 tell you to open the door for PLA to let it very slowly pull in cooler air (the fan still runs, just at a lower speed to prevent warping).

The Core One is technically not even comparable to the P1. It's not got a camera, nor an AMS system (the MMU is well known for being incredibly unreliable and finnicky to get working well vs a box that you plop on top and plug in).

The only real compelling thing about it is the upgrade path from the MK4, and the nice design cues like the integrated spool holders with potential for a dryer.

Have you looked at the parts shop? You absolutely can repair a Bambu printer, and as someone with a farm of the things can attest that it's no more complex than working on Prusa's. You still need to buy the parts from somewhere. Bambu's own pricing on parts is pretty reasonable in my opinion.

Re "or with code", none of the "open source companies" these days actually care about that, they are all about paying back their VC investors and making money.

PS: A blog post related to this situation:

https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your...

> At some point the value proposition makes sense. People buy non repairable 2D printers all the time.

Where can I buy a repairable 2D printer? I would prefer this if I could make a choice.

Prusa gave everyone permission to make copies of their i3 series machines, make modifications, and distribute modified versions. It’s not theft if you have been given explicit permission to make copies.

“You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty.”

“You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above.”

https://github.com/prusa3d/Original-Prusa-i3/blob/MK3S/LICEN...

If it doesn't work well for such high profile names, why would we expect it to work at all for an unheard of nobody? Doesn't that mean that kpen source doesn't actually work?

I rarely print multi material in the same print just because of the filament wastage, but damned if the AMS isn’t worth it for not having to mess around rethreading the filament for filament changes. I know that’s a luxury “nice to have”, but after years of fighting with an Ender 3 Titan extruder and the filament curling just enough to not make it through the PTFE coupling, the AMS is such a time saver. Pop in a roll, push it in an inch, then forget about it and pick it from a list when I print. Done. Love it.

I got my P1P pretty hesitant about the closed ecosystem, but having to never really think about my printer and whether a print is worth the time it’s going to take, which prevented me from printing a bunch of times on the Ender 3, I’m sold at this point.

I wish Prusa the best of luck with their new printer, and I’m sure it’s a solid piece of kit. I think they’ll do alright. Just like I feel as though Bambu have really changed the market in the last couple of years, they’re building in the footsteps of the paths carved by Prusa.

Not only does Bambu sell parts, but there’s a pretty healthy market of third party parts as well. Saying these printers are irreparable is plain false.

> Prusa gave everyone permission to make copies of their i3 series machines, make modifications, and distribute modified versions. It’s not theft if you have been given explicit permission to make copies.

Indeed. But I guess Prusa also expected that people will buy the original such that this support this open-source mission can be sustained. This is where I personally see Prusa's fallacy of thinking.

Sure, their choice to give it away may not have gone as they hoped, I’m just pushing back against the idea that making copies of a thing the creator explicitly gave permission to copy is “stealing”. The core of open source is that making and distributing modified or unmodified copies is good. Calling it stealing undermines the very important social work we can do with open source.

There can be many ways open sources comes into being. The way any open source software I've written is I've needed it myself and made it available to others. There has never been an expectation of getting paid for it, it doesen't even matter if anyone ever uses them, because the software's primary purpose is to solve _my_ problem

> Compared to a P1P it’s missing a camera.

The video showed a camera with an "optional" legend.

Besides Apple, which other <$2000 electronics/hardware purchase isn’t “open”? As in you can buy parts for repair/upgradability right?

> The core of open source is that making and distributing modified or unmodified copies is good.

The core is not that it is "good", only that it is allowed (i.e. we won't sue you if you do).

this is such a bad take. there is a huge subset of the community that made contributions to 3d printing both randoms and other companies.

ie bambu pushing the slicers and printers to actually not be dead slow