Yesterday, Prusa Research officially unveiled their next printer, the Core ONE. Going over the features and capabilities of this new machine, it’s clear that Prusa has kept a close eye on the…
Sad to see them go this way, but not unexpected, thanks to the article by Josef Prusa where he complains about open source.
Agreed, it’s nice to see Prusa put up a modern consumer printer, but for the price I didn’t see anything in the announcement that would make it easier to recommend over the bamboo for the “I need it to just work” folks or the SV08/ voron for the folks that like to tinker (and value not living in a walled garden, Sovol’s hot end/ nozzles not withstanding).
Having just built an LDO 2.4 kit a few months ago, I have no regrets. The 350 kit + printed forward parts weren’t that much more expensive than what this is slated to retail at, but I get a comparatively massive build volume, nerd cred, and the open source nature means that I can tweak, mod, or otherwise upgrade to my hearts content, from being able to run whatever hot end/ extruder I damn well please, to custom parts (hell, I’ve already swapped the tool head mount for Vitalii’s metal one- not quite the COTS ethos of the voron design, but about a thousand times easier line up and tension, worth every penny), or more complicated projects like ERCF or Box Turtle.
SV08/ voron for the folks that like to tinker (and value not living in a walled garden, Sovol’s hot end/ nozzles not withstanding).
I would call the SV08 hot end/nozzles proprietary-ish. They still published everything on github, which enabled the community to design a modified heat sink (that I got printed on PCBWay). The updated heat sink allows you to swap in an E3D Revo nozzle. That wouldn’t be possible if it was truly proprietary.
Agreed, it’s nice to see Prusa put up a modern consumer printer, but for the price I didn’t see anything in the announcement that would make it easier to recommend over the bamboo for the “I need it to just work” folks or the SV08/ voron for the folks that like to tinker (and value not living in a walled garden, Sovol’s hot end/ nozzles not withstanding).
Having just built an LDO 2.4 kit a few months ago, I have no regrets. The 350 kit + printed forward parts weren’t that much more expensive than what this is slated to retail at, but I get a comparatively massive build volume, nerd cred, and the open source nature means that I can tweak, mod, or otherwise upgrade to my hearts content, from being able to run whatever hot end/ extruder I damn well please, to custom parts (hell, I’ve already swapped the tool head mount for Vitalii’s metal one- not quite the COTS ethos of the voron design, but about a thousand times easier line up and tension, worth every penny), or more complicated projects like ERCF or Box Turtle.
I would call the SV08 hot end/nozzles proprietary-ish. They still published everything on github, which enabled the community to design a modified heat sink (that I got printed on PCBWay). The updated heat sink allows you to swap in an E3D Revo nozzle. That wouldn’t be possible if it was truly proprietary.
If I remember correctly, they give back money to the voron community and are (as far as I know) fully open source all the way.