Who are some 3D printer vendors that are worthy of support?

I would have said Prusa a year or two ago but they've reneged a little on their open-ness. That was probably in response to Bambu being fully closed and gaining so much market share.

The Core line of printers seems promising and a big leap towards closing the gap towards Bambu's corexy printers but haven't used one yet and I've been out of the game a little. Bambu though is probably more of a high-end appliance type than Prusas more utilitarian feel.

	▲	gmueckl 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I splurged a while ago and got a pre-assembled Core One. It worked great right out of the box and is has been worry-free so far. So far, I've treated it very much like an appliance with no tinkering on my part yet. The machine is still quite hackable. Prusa publishes the firmware and CAD files for their printers, although the CAD files aren't under a fully open license. The support is generally nice to people who tinker with their printers and sometimes even seems to be genuinely invested in seeing tinkering projects succeed.

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GuB-42 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd say Prussa.

I am not going to say they are perfect, but I think they have a good balance of ethics, openness, product quality, innovation, availability and price. By that I mean their are the best in none of them, but I don't think of anything better as a combination.

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nullstyle 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Prusa sat on its haunches for a decade, happy to leave progress on the table as long as their salaries got paid. Bambu actually got non-technical people into the hobby and has always had more bang per buck.

Buy a bambu; use Orcaslicer

Edit: didn't mean to say "held the industry back"; I would categorize my opinion more along the lines of "were happy to get fat on past offerings" or the like.

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aschla 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Prusa is generally like Apple in that regard, in that they wait for the new technology to be tried and true before committing their design(s) to it. CoreXY is the most prominent example.

Prusa was actually the "non-technical" printer company for quite a while though. They would sell to schools and libraries, and still do, and offer(ed) assembled kits.

I don't own a Prusa, I've assembled Vorons and have a highly-modified Ender 3 S1, but if I was in the market to get a user-friendly printer, or recommend one, I'd get a Prusa.

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sottol 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My thing with bambu was always that they polished whatever the industry (and hobbyists) had invented and closed it all off, then also innovating on top of that but never giving back unless they _had_ to. Polish and mechanical design are great but corexy kinematics, input-shaping are imo what made the X1 stand out as the fast+good-qual printer when it launched. A lot of what they added on top was then to build a moat.

This may be a controversial take, but imo it would be Bambu to set the industry back by a decade if they "win" and lock up the market. That's clearly their strategy afaict.

Does anyone remember Bambu patenting existing open inventions as their own? I can't seem to find good links anymore (?!) but there's some details here https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5134/8/6/141

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nullstyle 3 hours ago | parent [-]

If no one else is willing to give a polished experience, they have no one to blame but themselves. My father doesn't want to be a 3d printer expert or filament researcher; he wants to print things in 3d as a hobby. Looking back at the reprap, ultimaker, and prusa — the big boys of the maker-oriented printers that i remember — none of them made any progress on making the hobby more accessible to someone like my dad. Bambu deserves some recognition for that.

	▲	therouwboat an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I never had any problem with prusa default filament settings and printing is easy with prusalink or usb stick.

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therouwboat 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I did quick search and bambu p2s seems to be 30% faster than prusa mk4s and few hundred cheaper. Prusa is more accurate, more open and has better spare parts supply. Bambu doesn't have wifi connection unless I use their cloud?

I'm gonna keep using mk4s.

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nayuki 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The Bambu Lab P2S is a CoreXY printer, and that's why it's physically faster than the Prusa MK4S which is a bed slinger.

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nullstyle 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’ve always got more consistent and accurate prints out of my x1c versus the prusa mk3 i tolerated. Even just the enclosure makes the bambu experience more much more consistent in my experience

	▲	rleigh 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The enclosure is the real added value, hardware-wise; and the H2D has even better environmental control (active heating and cooling of chamber). While the open-source part of me loves the more open nature of Prusa, the commercial-minded part loves the immediate convenience of the Bambu. But the environmental control is something which Prusa doesn't really do well yet. Heated chamber, as well as filament humidity control is something Bambu has done which Prusa has not, and when it comes to printing with "engineering" filaments like PA6CF, PA6GF and other higher-end lubricating plastics for bearings etc, along with support filaments like PVA which are incredibly hygroscopic, the Bambu is the only contender if you want high-quality prints that don't warp. IMO this is where Prusa gave up the race and need to catch up. Give me equivalent or better environmental control, and I'll be happy to consider it. The accessibility to non-experts, and the fact that it just works out of the box without fiddling around optimising settings, is why I have a Bambu family at work and zero Prusas.
	▲	aschla 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Worth noting those are essentially different "generations" of printers, as well as different kinematic systems, CoreXY vs Cartesian.

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stavros 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How did Prusa hold the industry back? Were they suing other printer manufacturers who innovated?

"Not innovating myself" isn't the same as "holding other's innovations back".

	▲	nullstyle 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I didn’t say Prusa held the industry back; I said they sat on their haunches. Even the basic differences in stepper motors between what bambu chose and what prusa or ultimaker chose demonstrates my point. Edit: whoops! guess i did say they held the industry back... my bad /facepalm.

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kennywinker 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I just bought a qidi printer. It arrives in a few days, so I can’t speak to the machine’s quality beyond saying it’s reviewed pretty well - but the software is all open source klipper with no locks preventing you from modifying it. The hardware itself is closed source, but if you want an open hardware machine in 2026 you need to build your own voron.

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Lukas_Skywalker 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have a Prusa MK3S and it has been very very reliable. There's also a ton of mods you can download and print, which modify or extend the printer for specific use cases. They are a bit more expensive then their Chinese counterparts, but in my opinion, it's definitely worth the extra cost for the peace of mind.

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cjbgkagh 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Obviously it depends on what you’re doing and what is importante to you. It’s hard to beat Bambi Labs H2D or X2D for versatility, practicality, and price. Engineering filaments are getting a lot cheaper as the market expands so it helps to have a printer than can handle those. Given Bambi Labs is so cheap compared to the alternatives customers would probably be better off putting aside the savings to buy a second printer from a different supplier when one starts to catch up.

	▲	kennywinker 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		As I mentioned in a sibling comment, I bought a qidi q2 because i am gambling that they have caught up in terms of quality. The price is comparable to the bambu p1s, while the specs are closer to the x1c. Reviews seem to put it roughly on par with the p2s, which costs 30% more. It’s clear nobody’s caught up in terms of ux / user friendliness - but as an experienced printer i don’t need my hand held quite as much - and the openness is worth a lot to me. Being able to define custom klipper macros alone makes it worth it to me to stay away from bambu

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the__alchemist 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Prusa. And my Raise3D E2 has been solid for ~5 years. I can't directly compare it to Bambu, but it was a massive step up from the Creality Ender it replaced. It's a "Just works" machine.

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stavros 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Prusa is the most open of the printer manufacturers. They did have to backtrack a bit because Bambu copied their slicer to use for themselves and undercut them, but they're still as open as you can get in a capitalist economy.