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I print a couple of tons every year and I would not be able to do that without the knowledge required to operate a farm reliably and productively. Yes, they're tools, but like all tools it helps to know what you're doing. If I hand you a machining center you won't be able to learn much without a lot of breakage and expense. If you get a lathe to learn and play with, to build up an intuition for feeds & speeds and how materials handle and chip then you will be able to use that machining center to the maximum of its abilities.

Tools require knowledge. 3D printers are no different in that respect and to toss $100 on a printer just to learn is money very well spent. And those old Prusa's excel at precision work, we can do stuff on those that we can not touch with any of the others.

by somehnguy4 hours ago|

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Most people don't intend to print tons every year nor desire to manage a print farm. Most people interested in creating object rather than managing printers will have an infinitely better experience getting a Bambu that is ready to crank out amazing prints right out of the box.

Other than basic troubleshooting (which they have documentation on) there isn't really a need to take a deep dive into how exactly each piece works.

I say this as someone who started printing many years ago with an i3 clone and has replaced nearly every piece of multiple printers (control board, bearings, hotend, extruder, etc!) over the years for better performance. I moved away from wanting to tinker with the printers and haven't touched them since getting a P1S years ago.

by wildzzz4 hours ago|

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I mean, it's kind of like comparing a tuner car with a new EV. Both will take you from A to B but one requires a lot more work to take you from A to B in a very specific manner while the other just turns on and goes. The tuner car has a tremendous amount of power and is really good at driving fast and accurately but it also requires a lot of work and custom parts to get it to perform like that. The most amount of work in maintaining the EV is that it may need new tires eventually, otherwise it just works.

Most people just want something that just works out of the box using models they downloaded from the internet. It's great that you want to have a 3D printer that performs at the absolute limit of the hardware but that requires work.

by jacquesm4 hours ago|

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Gah and here I was thinking I'm on hackernews rather than 'appliances are us'. Sorry, I got the audience mixed up ;)