I’m looking to buy an intermediate level printer to upgrade from a MK2, and I’m deciding between a P1S vs a MK4.
I have never considered getting anything other than a Prusa, since I’ve had such good experiences using mine, however I heard that recently they’ve switched away from their open source model(?)
That and being made in the EU was the main differentiating factor for me, however I do hear really good things about Bambu printers.
Does anyone have experience with either?
Edit: Found a lot of the information I was looking for here: https://lemmy.world/post/9500502
Gotcha. I remember seeing that they are switching to injection molding in a recent YT video of their labs. I’m not sure what everyone is talking bout when they mention Prusa is less open source than before. Seems like just some misinformation I guess. Thank you for the reply.
The injection mold comment in the Prusa tour video was sarcasm that might‘ve went over some people‘s heads. Prusa being less open source seems completely made up to me. No idea why someone would say that other than making closed source printers like Bambulab‘s look less problematic.
Ultimately it‘s up to you to decide how much you‘re willing to spend and how much you value convenience vs. actually owning your printer and contributing to 3D printing staying open source.
I for one see enough parallels between the new generation of closed source 3D printers and seemingly cheap HP inkjet printers that became increasingly more hostile towards costumers as they gained market share to not touch them with a stick.
He made a post about some future printers not being fully open source anymore. The post is here: https://blog.prusa3d.com/the-state-of-open-source-in-3d-printing-in-2023_76659/
These are the working points for their future license (not fully fleshed out):
These terms are incompatible with open source.
Those seem reasonable
Do they? Well, that’s up to everyone, I guess. They don’t seem reasonable to me, but that’s beside the point - this is not an open source license anymore.
Yeah, I guess I should say it’s not as bad as I initially thought. It’s not great, but I do see why they want some of those rules for companies that are using their firmware for profit without even changing the headers. Must be frustrating, but at the same time, Prusa just invested a ton into injection molding, and the MK4 is > $1000, so… I think a lot of these bad decisions are trickling down to the end user.