With the k1, Bambu labs, and prusa xl all coming out I’m really starting to look at my 3 year old SK-GO as “slow”. Do you think it’s worth waiting for awhile and seeing if the competition heats up more or should I just pull the trigger on one of the current high speed machines

  • cereal7802
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    1 year ago

    You have 3 very different things listed there.

    The K1: Creality printer with many issues. Yeah it is fast corexy, but they keep having to pull it from sale and people still have it falling apart or trying to rip the hotend out of itself. Personally, I would avoid it.

    Bambu Labs: 3d printer company. They have 2 different printers to choose from. The X1 carbon being the flagship, fully enclosed corexy printer. I have one and while I like it, I don’t like the reliance on cloud and how locked into Bambu labs parts you are with it. As an example, a company designed and manufactured a small batch of hotend for the X1 that would boast higher flow rate and used a more normal round ceramic heater. When they asked Bambu if they could provide information on how to pid tune the new heater, bambu said “you don’t. We do that at the factory”. They have even stated they won’t be opening that ability up so you will almost certainly never see an aftermarket heater for the bambu printers. The other option is the P1P. It is the same basic printer as the X1, but it is not enclosed and some of the features are not present such as the lidar and chamber carbon filter. If going bambu, I would probably suggest the P1P as is it cheaper (They just reduced the price $100) and works really well.

    Prusa XL: Larger format Prusa printer. It also has the option for multiple print heads so you can use different filaments on a print (I think it will allow for different nozzle sizes too) without needing them to be the same temp, and without the need for purging, saving time and materials. Unless you need the additional material support, I personally consider other options. The Prusa MK4 makes more sense for most people and even then, with Prusa having higher pricing for their printers, you might find something for roughly the same price that is larger and has more serviceable parts (with the MK4 you are pretty much locked into Prusa for replacement parts, and not real upgrades or after market exist). The downside to similarly priced alternatives being much assembly is required and you may not feel comfortable doing that.

    In the end you have to consider what you are looking for, and compare the features of the available options. Of the things you listed I would feel perfectly happy with either the Bambu options, or the Prusa options, but for the home user I think the Bambu options work out better. For me, I went Voron 2.4. I bought my Bambu x1 carbon so i could print ABS parts more easily. Once the 2.4 is built I suspect the Bambu will spend most of its time in the closet until I find a multi color print I want to do.

    With that said, waiting doesn’t make sense. Most of what you are looking at are recently released and not really do for a revision. You also have to consider things in the 3d printing world happen all the time. There isn’t a cycle of new stuff like with computer hardware. If you are in the market for something new, look at what is available and see if anything fits your needs. As long as you are making a decision based on what is the latest at the time of purchase, you are probably not going to miss anything.

    • @jdconoly@lemmy.worldOP
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      51 year ago

      I hadn’t really considered building out a Voron but looking into it, it seems like converting the so go into a voron is probably the way to go. Thanks so much for the info!