[nebula8804]

You are letting your past experience color your objective opinions here. As someone who refused to even want to get into 3D printing.... last month in preparation for DEFCON, I was forced into entering this world in order to make a special project for the con.

Knowing absolutely nothing, I first picked the Sovol SV06 because is was a strong recommendation from Reddit for the price I was willing to pay.....turns out its nothing more than a toy. In fact all these bed slingers are. All this modding and manual work is not something a normal person wants to do. It like we are still stuck in the 1970s computer kit building era and everyone in the community is in denial.

Out of pure desperation and considering my hard deadline of DEFCON, I bit the bullet and bought a used Bambu Labs X1c. This machine is in a class of its own for 3D printing newbies. I just load the filament, slice my model in their easy to use software and click print. That printer saved me big time. I consider it the absolute bare minimum for 3D Printing for people that dont really care about 3D Printing.

I hope that the X1c or something like it eventually reaches a price point where it is accessible to the mass market and becomes the bare minimum standard of quality and ease of use. Anything less will keep 3D printing as a niche hobby. Kinda like how we went through decades of really awful inkjet and laser printers to now get printers that are cheap, accessible to anybody by being plug and play and straightforward and fairly ok in reliability: basically an extremely mature market.

One more note about open source: There is no "open source" desktop laser/inkjet printer and people get on with their lives regardless. The 3D printing community embracing open source is an artifact of it still being stuck in the "computer kit building" era.

[regularfry]

The Sovol SV06 is what people get pointed to when a Prusa Mk4 is outside their budget. The Reddit community skews to enthusiasts who don't mind the maintenance and people with more time than cash (no shade - it's just a numbers game). The Mk4 is a remarkable bit of kit, and still firmly on the open source side of the fence. The Bambus do have an edge on the raw stats, but both my Prusa filament printers (a Mk4 and a mini) are set-and-forget appliances at this point. I've done nothing other than update firmware on the Mk4. As far as I'm concerned they've nailed the hardware, and it's (for now - Prusa have been making worrying noises here) open source. I wouldn't have any worries recommending the Mk4 for a newbie who's got the cash for it.

> One more note about open source: There is no "open source" desktop laser/inkjet printer and people get on with their lives regardless.

Closed source laser drivers are the precise reason why free software exists. RMS not just getting on with his life in the face of closed source tomfoolery is why we have the GPL at all.

> The 3D printing community embracing open source is an artifact of it still being stuck in the "computer kit building" era.

If your budget doesn't get you out of the "kit of parts" range, sure. Compare like with like, though: a new SV06 costs £200. A new X1C costs £1300. The SV06 isn't cheap because it's open source, open source is what lets it exist at all.

[nebula8804]

>Closed source laser drivers are the precise reason why free software exists. RMS not just getting on with his life in the face of closed source tomfoolery is why we have the GPL at all.

Typical FOSS person never reads my point clearly: Can you name one printer on the market that is open source? ie. All the parts are able to be purchased and built? (You know since that is the kind of 3D printer I was criticizing...)

>If your budget doesn't get you out of the "kit of parts" range, sure. Compare like with like, though: a new SV06 costs £200. A new X1C costs £1300. The SV06 isn't cheap because it's open source, open source is what lets it exist at all.

Thats all well and good but again it does not change the fact that it is not something you can rely on to just get the job done. That was my point.

Going back to my comment you didn't read fully:

I hope that the X1c or something like it eventually reaches a price point where it is accessible to the mass market and becomes the bare minimum standard of quality and ease of use.

[regularfry]

> Typical FOSS person never reads my point clearly

No, what has happened here is that I have understood and rejected the framing of your point. Open source 2d plotters are trivial to find, as are open source printing presses of all sorts. By narrowing your framing to the one part of the market that is demonstrably broken and anti-consumer to try to score a cheap point, you're actually proving mine.

The reason you don't see open source inkjets and laserjets is because the technologies are patented, which is exactly the problem the open source 3d printing aims to defend against. Not because nobody wants to do it, or because it's a bad idea: it's because HP will sue you into the ground if you try. And that's the situation Bambu are actively trying to create for themselves.

> Thats all well and good but again it does not change the fact that it is not something you can rely on to just get the job done. That was my point.

So what? Buy crap, get crap. Again, the problem here is not the existence of a product that does not satisfy your personal needs. Why pick on your personal experience with the SV06 to tar the entire open source 3d printing sphere with the same brush? Why bring up the SV06 at all? Why bring up open source printing at all?

> I hope that the X1c or something like it eventually reaches a price point where it is accessible to the mass market and becomes the bare minimum standard of quality and ease of use.

It hasn't. That proves precisely nothing either way about open source vs closed source.

[nebula8804]

>No, what has happened here is that I have understood and rejected the framing of your point. Open source 2d plotters are trivial to find, as are open source printing presses of all sorts. By narrowing your framing to the one part of the market that is demonstrably broken and anti-consumer to try to score a cheap point, you're actually proving mine.

You are treating 3D printing as some sort of industry where the tool itself is the product. This is why you are bringing up 2D plotters and printing presses. I am treating it where the output is the product. This is what the mass market expects. This is entirely why desktop printers are mass market (you can find one lying around in most homes with a PC) and 3D printers are not. My original comment which you didn't actually read alluded to 3D printing being stuck in the "computer kit building era". PCs would never have become mass market if they were stuck in the kit building era.

>The reason you don't see open source inkjets and laserjets is because the technologies are patented, which is exactly the problem the open source 3d printing aims to defend against. Not because nobody wants to do it, or because it's a bad idea: it's because HP will sue you into the ground if you try. And that's the situation Bambu are actively trying to create for themselves.

The reason we don't see open source inkjets is that any printer produced would still not be a big enough of a market to appeal to the mass market consumer and there obviously isn't enough interest in the niche market to justify the cost. You would need to build up an ecosystem when the existing closed offerings are so mature that there isn't any benefit to be gained other than maybe "freedom" or control over the software. That has always been a niche position. Furthermore, there are obviously enough competitors in the market to not run into HP's patent issues so the reality is that there isn't enough of a motivation (ie. market size) to put in the effort or else someone (even Chinese companies that normally skirt patents) would have attempted it.

>So what? Buy crap, get crap. Again, the problem here is not the existence of a product that does not satisfy your personal needs. Why pick on your personal experience with the SV06 to tar the entire open source 3d printing sphere with the same brush? Why bring up the SV06 at all? Why bring up open source printing at all?

So now 300$ is crap huh? Lets just call it what I originally called it: a toy. That was being nice and honest to the open source bed slingers. You are the one being mean to them. My point was that it is not a tool normal people can rely on. My original comment that you didn't read said that it is a toy. What I mean by that is that its a hobby where you have to assemble it, constantly fiddle with it(software and hardware wise) to get any sort of consistent print and have to repeatedly retry or alter your object to suit the printer.

>It hasn't. That proves precisely nothing either way about open source vs closed source.

Well I know that it hasn't, that why I hope it does as it will make 3D printing mass market and just a regular occurrence in every household and these open source models will end up in the trash bin of history just like the PC kit machines of the 1970s.

Come on man, these open source 3D printers have been around for 10+ years. They were niche back then and they are still niche. Thats not going to change and shame on all the people bashing a company that at least introduced something that the "rest of us" can use without have giving up the rest of our lives thinking about it.

[onli]

Laser and inkjet printers are not exactly a healthy market, and one customers are not accepting anymore because of all the user hostility. That's not a convincing argument pro the proprietary future of 3D printers.

[nebula8804]

I didn't say it was a healthy market (which is subjective anyway). I said it was a mature market. ie. The tech is established and all the brands are pretty much interchangeable for the most part.

[benj111]

>You are letting your past experience color your objective opinions here

Surely an objective opinion should be informed by past experience at the very minimum? I'm not even sure if you can have an objective opinion without some comparator.

[blackfawn]

Pretty much everyone I know in IT-related fields despise laser/inkjet printer companies and their slimy tactics. I refuse to touch anything HP at all any more, solely due to their printer drivers. I've gotten to steer a number of companies away from outfitting with HP products simply due to distaste of their sleazy drivers.

Suggesting 3D printers should be more like ink/laser is 1000% the wrong direction. 3D printers exist _because_ of open source, it isn't some "artifact" holding them back

[nebula8804]

And yet millions of people buy regular printers, use them for what they need to print and then move on with their lives. Its a mature market where all the players are more or less interchangeable and you can go to the store, get a box, plug it in, put in paper, and a cartridge and click print.

[oortcloud42]

Could you elaborate on the SV06's shortcomings? I bought one after selling my Ender 3 (the shittiest machine ever made) and it has everything you want from a home 3D printer. Auto-calibration, no manual bed leveling, an excellent extruder, powder-coated PEI sheet (can print PETG straight on the bed without damaging it) and it's really sturdy. Oh, and it works out of the box (after some quick assembly). It's basically a Prusa without the signature orange and exorbitant pricing. (nothing against Prusa, I love their products, they're just really expensive for the average tinkerer.)

[__jonas]

I’m currently researching what printer to buy and I was put off by the fact that the SV06 doesn’t have filament runout detection, so I’m personally considering the Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro instead which seems to have the features I would like in the same price range.

[oortcloud42]

Filament runout sensors can be easily DIY'd (endstop switch with a roller in a 3d-printed casing). You'd have to recompile the firmware though so I see how that could be a pain. I wonder why Sovol didn't add one, they're dirt cheap, small and easy to integrate.

[nebula8804]

Have you used the Bambu Lab?