Hi Folks,
Lots of interesting things happening in higher end (and even low end) 3D printers these days. Bambu Labs is shaking things up for turn key high speed printing, but with some issues and only in the 256mm^2 build volumes. Prusa and Voron Labs (designs only, not a "product") are doing large CoreXY stuff, and lower end makers are going hard into large printers for those who want to print one piece cosplay helmets and such. The 3D printed model aircraft folks have been playing large volume games for years, lots of info out there from them. Long thin stuff like rockets and aircraft wings sure are a good fit for high speed large Z height Deltas like the FLSun V400.
I saw the Prusa XL prototype / pre production machine at ERRF last October, it looked to be a good core XY well built machine. The stated plan is to open source everything as the machine moves to production, a big plus compared to Bambu, Build volume is obviously nuts for a home machine (in a good way). About the only thing that struck me as odd was the nozzles are specific to the machine. BUT - The nozzles are very long, bypassing the entire discontinuity between nozzle, hot zone, heat break, filament guide as found in most printers. Prusa expects to have a variety of hardened and normal brass nozzles available at shipping time or shortly thereafter, and expects aftermarket makers to provide them as well. Several times Prusa employees have said they are focusing on print quality first and speed second, a nice change from all the folks showing off vaguely boat like blob benchies that printed in under 5 minutes.
Like most Prusa machines, it's pricey, but the components are all good quality. Sort of like saying my RatRig V Minion is way overpriced compared to a Kingroon mini. It will be interesting to see how Prusa does with this machine, the MK3 series has been sitting at a high price point distinguished from products at 1/4 the price or even less mostly by name and customer support. I wish them well, the company shares a lot with everyone who does 3D printing regardless of the machine(s) you use. I really like that fact that they did not put a bar across the upper front of the frame, numerous folks have removed these from other "cube" printers with no issues and having a cross member in this location really gets in the way. It's the worst attribute of my Ender5 S1, but the Ender5 frame is not rigid enough to take this off, so I added corner connectors to stiffen the frame up beyond stock. Turning a negative into a positive is about the best that can be done in this case.
The Prusa XL is maybe 10mm in all dimensions that the largest Voron kits I know of, and building a Voron is quite a bit of work. A good quality Voron 350mm^2 kit is around $1500 USD (Fabreeko pricing), plus a Pi ($150 these days), all the printed parts (days of printing ABS/ASA and several spools or $150+ to buy from a service), and a hot end ($80 plus). Add effort and money in assorted amounts to get swappable tool heads, but figure a couple hundred dollars anyway. It will take days to build a Voron as well, my simple V minion was two days from opening the boxes to first test print and resonance testing, a Voron is far more difficult to build. At $1000 more ready to go, with tool head changer and two tool heads, the XL looks pretty good if you need it's capabilities. Unlike the high waste of a Bambu with multi material options, swapping toolheads produces very little waste beyond purges and allows mixing materials that print at differing temperatures, something that is hard to get right when using a single print head and change just the filament approach. Having the well regarded Prusa support behind the printer might be worth it to some folks, some vendors respond slowly or with silence or excuses, Prusa tends to respond with answers and fixes or parts. I don't own a Prusa, too rich for my budget, but an XL or a decent IDEX printer really tempts me. If the XL delivers, I think it will be the absolute best multi material FDM large volume fairly high speed yet affordable printer in existence. Bambu may be able to support 16 filaments in theory, but the single print head means lots of waste out the rear of the machine, and many folks are having trouble with getting even the base 4 spool filament feeder (AMS) to work reliably.
Where something like the Bambu P1P could excel is a print farm doing medium and small sized prints. You could buy 4 P1P printers for the price of a single PrusaXL. Most print farms are just churning single color stuff out at an OK quality, in PLA. In a print farm, you want consistency, having twelve different slicer configs for 12 different printers is a nightmare. Reliability is huge, hobbyists may enjoys tweaking initial layer heights every other day, but for production you just want an appliance that works without added drama.
There's a lot to like about the XL on paper, we'll see how it performs once a thousand of them are out in the real world.
Print speed will be interesting to see. The Bambu printers are fast, but somehow all the Bambu fan boys, who are almost fanatical in some cases, make excuses for, or ignore, the print quality. You can tell it's a boat, just look from the right angle! And it printed in 7 minutes! And so what? I wouldn't put it on any diorama or model railroad layout unless it was as junk in the back of a boat yard under overgrowth. Maybe. I see people carrying on about some big print that took 2 days on an Ender3 finishing in only 18 hours on their Bambu, but the vertical surfaces look quite poor to me. The Bambu is also closed source and uses proprietary parts, with a build volume of about 250mm^2. Voron print quality can be excellent, but many folks building these focus on speed and use large nozzles for high flow rate. Which might be a good call for something like a flywheel casting pattern that can be readily hit with body filler and sanded if doing conventional casting. Not so hot for lost PLA or printed wax though...
If your primary concern is build volume rather than speed and multi-materials you might also consider either the Ender5 Plus or the Anycubic Kobra Max. Odds are the print quality will be fine if you don't push to the max on speed and you'll be staying under $600 for the same or larger build volume. Won't be the same quality of machine, or as fast, but if big prints are only occasionally needed does it really matter if one takes two days to print instead of 23 hours? I print stuff overnight regularly, printing the smaller prints during the day to get a couple of prints done, then setting up the big part(s) and verifying the first few layers are good then head off the house for the night.
For some folks, I think a large volume OK quality FDM printer for big stuff and a resin printer for small detailed parts could be an excellent compromise solution. Getting to lower than 100 micron layer heights and resolution with FDM is pretty shaky, some folks have managed 80 micron layer heights with 0.25mm nozzles. The cheapest resin printers have 50 micron layer heights out of the box, with just under 30 micron resolution in many of the 8K printers on the market. Each technology has weaknesses and strengths, materials keep getting better though.
Cheers,
Stan
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