@@jgj4430 Prusa has often been above many of the Chinese manufacturers who released janky, not ready products over the years. You paid a lot more for the product, but you knew it was quality and would just work. I own a modified MK3S+, it's rock solid, albeit a very old, outdated design. Can't say that about the XL, it was released not ready, and continues to be not ready. Only printing well with a 0.4 nozzle is really, really silly. Then there is their release of the MK4, which has nearly no innovation, it's the same product design, with new electronics and hot end. But remember when Prusa said for years that you don't need more than an 8-bit board. They lied to consumers for years, pushing the false narrative because they didn't want to change. They have just lost my trust. They too often lie and refuse to change, and are now being required to be dragged into changing, and even then, they are behind.
@@ScytheNoire It's not really that they've been going downhill, it's that certain other companies in the market now are offering arguably better products for less money. Prusa themselves still produce good machines that produce good results. They still do a great job with Printables. They still contribute a lot to open source. Etc.
@@simpl3y Yeah, I had the X1 and the Spaghetti detection almost never worked, it even ghost printed (nothing comming out but still continues) and the so called AI from Bambu lab did not stop the print. I have a Prusa MK4 now. Not fancy, but it simply works.
@@Raffix394 The Spaghetti detection gets better with every firmware upgrade. As it includes the latest AI training. I have yet to have a print to fail. However, it was unexpected that the AI recognized purged filament from the chute that made it's way on the build plate. It paused the print for me to remove it.
@@Raffix394 Im glad i cancelled my order for Prusa XL and got Bambu X1C and the fact i print in ABS a lot now the chamber is a must. I have Prusa MK4 which has been fine but im going to sell it, Prusa prints are way more hassle and the quality is not as good as Bambu prints. like chaosengine3772 said i now very rarely get any print fail due to the spaghetti detection works so well.
it's impressive that it has 5 toolhead, but the lack of any advanced and user concentric features that make the printer just works, and it being at such price, is a hard pill to swallow. year 2023 and it comes with 2000's UI and a knob. seriously over the years i'm so done with wasting time tinkering and need something that works, and if you're asking for that much money, it better be.
This would have been a cool printer a few years ago. The multiple print heads is exciting and has use cases, but the printer leaves a lot to be desired for everyday printing.
Waited for MMU3+Mk4+enclosure long enough to cancel my orders and saved some eur with X1C+AMS Given the fact that all of my maintenance so far was cleaning after longer ABS batch and a bit of greasing, I have happy workshop appliance and prototyping machine. So far ABS, PLA, PETG, TPU and ASA was super happy experience
I bought it because of the tool changer: absolutely worth it for me. It is awesome. If you want the fastest printer out there: XL is the wrong printer. If you want quality: get it
Not exactly. At default .6mm nozzle and horrible stringing/and loss of detail on top of needing to dial the printer in before it gets decent. Currently Prusa is sending out a bunch of firmware updates to fix the inherent problems in the hardware.
Just got into FDM printing a year ago with the X1C. I am sooo tempted to get this. The 5 heads for independent printing just sound too good to be true, especially with the steep learning curve you mention. Practice in patience I guess as we wait to see what the X1C "XL" does.
I'm more excited about the Voron kits that are adding multiple heads, and the ProForge 4 with 4 heads for 1/2 the price and larger print area and much faster print speeds. Hoping that last one really is rock solid as it's built based on Voron and other fast printers but with tool changer too.
It is impressive what kind of people review printers and comment below... people do not have a single clue how hard development is for these kind of machines. A tool changer can be so powerfull, something that the current bambu machines can never achieve. 5 Printheads, 5 different tools (cnc milling, pick and place,3d printing) or materials. This will be a software nightmare for sure, but way worth it! and even if people would like to compare it with the bambu brand. XL has input shaper and can print fast. be aware when printing fast the strenght of the product will decrease. further the amount of waste of the toolchanger is way less. And regarding the enclosure topic, you just dont buy the XL for industrial materials.
The standard has been raised, You can't charge a premium, take forever to finish your development, release a product with poor software, and not focus on the customer experience and still lead this segment.
The problem is they said they were going to release it, then back peddled for 2 years, only to still release prematurely. They rushed the mk4 release because of bambu. 2 years ago, people were glad to pay the prusa premium for top of the line performance and reliability, while bambu has raised the bar, prusa has still fallen. I really do hope they get it together.
@@ponn273 I agree that the tool changer is cool, but it's not mind blowingly hard, but I predict the premium model from bambu will have more than two heads and will match the Bambu customer experience at the same time. I hope the laziness has gone away in Creality and Prusa, a 3D hobby will benefit if they innovate and excel. Both got so lazy!
You know how hard it is to make a car - it's orders of magnitude harder than a printer, yet my car runs quieter than my laser printer :) And it doesn't matter how hard it is to make it - if the company has promised things that it did not deliver, it's still on them to gauge the difficulty before promising. Prusa came out with the XL after years of practicing software and hardware development with their other printers, and it's still 1/3 baked (not even half-baked). Bamboo didn't practice for years, yet I wish I bought one of theirs
I have a mk3 Prusa I've had for 7 years. The MMU2 was a complete fail. When they built the XL I think they abandoned the MMU series for something that actually works. I have now gone the Bamboo Lab A1 way and not being a fan of high speed its a much more capable of being a successful multimedia printer. The support for the Bamboo is very very good in my opinion. Bamboo Lab has being reported to be bringing out a larger format printer in 2025 something I'll be looking out for. Prusa XL is too expensive.
what? no possibility to use the different nozzles? that was something I was really hoping for. I hope that bambulab brings out an xl mot tool changer and ams and then maybe in the size 500x500x500
I’m happy with my Bambu X1C. I don’t print often and see it as a hobby so the filament waste is not a big bother for me. I just love how it basically just works. I _would_ like a larger bed to work with, but at this point I’ll be waiting to see what the inevitable Bambu XL has to offer before making a purchase decision.
It depends on how much a person prints and how much time idesires the work to be done. Waste is the big problem of single head multicolor printer, for some even more since their reliability is derives from cutting the filament and than the need to purge a more filament. It is easy to simulate the waste costs, are only needed the slicers software.
@@donkeymarco So let's do the math. 5 head prusa 3500(4k assembled...assembly required) and 120 shipping A1 combo 560(this would be the easiest competitor to compare as PLA/PETG/TPU) p1s combo 950 Enclosed prints more exotic materials X1C combo 1450 Enclosed prints more exotic materials $35 shipping or 0 if you are near a microcenter. If in the worst case scenario how much waste are you anticipating to spend 3K+ worth of *waste filament*. Keep in mind at default poop settings can be less than gram and it can be adjusted. So for the savings you can have a small print farm, buy filament(deal with waste) and still come out ahead in quality(.4mmvs.6mm) faster with the option of printing specialized filaments. This isnt even a comparison at this point.
@@hawtdayum If You really think to compare an A1 to an XL... That said make a spreadsheet, take some models to slice on a Prusaslicer and a Bambustudio. The slicer will calculate waste generated and time needed for multimaterial and multicolor prints. A good quality TPU costs from USD 40 to more than USD 50. PETG 30 - 40 ... PVB about USD 40 - 45, a soluble filament used as support from USD 60 for PVA, usually more, to USD 90- 100 per Kg. Than are even higher priced soluble materisls twice that price. Everyone have different use cases. Cost of ownership is not limited only to initial cost purchase. There are also other things to take into account, like warranty, what is covered by warranty and what is labelled ad "consumable" part. Than there is customer service. Support of the product over time, ... Just to remember that a Bambu X1E with LAN only mode, a higher temperature nozle and heater cost USD 2499, if I remember well. Probably includes also a better customer service.
@@donkeymarco If you are spending that much , per kg,on tpu/pla/petg/ your supplier must REALLY love you. 🤑 I gave multiple examples. What you choose to spend on filament the calculations are proportional. 3k worth of $20 filament or 3k worth of $100 filament. in the end you are either spending money on top of getting the XL or saving it if you bought another brand. If your use case is a large format PLA/petg printer with multi tool head and quality doesnt have to be great then the XL is your ,very expensive, option. If you can tweak your model then even an A1 can be decent. There are people who can create ironman suits on a prusa mini(painfully) but there are many inexpensive large format printers in general. elegoo neptune max is under $480(420x420x480). Bambu was 1 example but they handle multicolor and have more value than a 4k pla printer. I always say this about companies that lean on support as their differentiator. If the product was so good why would you need contact support? Last I checked Prusa gives you 1 yr warranty(in the states). Are you saying they have longer? Once you are beyond a year Support dept becomes the Sales department because your parts are not replaced for free. So since we are comparing different machines. Does the XL have an enclosure/ heated chamber? I must have missed that in the spec sheet. How much you think prusa will charge to enclose and provide a chamber heater for the XL so it's not just a pla machine?
The ONLY reason I’d choose this printer over Bambu is for the multiple print heads. They are definitely slipping in what they are offering these days, like they are riding lazily on previous successes,
Prusa was the Dell of 3D printers. I think calling them Apple is too generous. Yes reliable printers, but innovation is lacking, maybe except for the MMU, which took 3 versions and 6 years to finally work. Here is a hint for Joe, yes using 3D printed parts to make printers was novel in 2016, but those. days are gone.
@@A1N0 Isn't the whole point of 3D printing to become a better manufacturing process? Why even have 3D printing if it can't make its own parts? Are we going to doom 3D printing to just making trinkets, or are we going to take it seriously enough to take pride in using it - even in our own printers? Frankly, I think 3D printing should be making its own parts, in order to show that it's the future. Otherwise, maybe we should just throw all of our printers in the garbage because it's a useless technology.
@A1N0 "innovation is lacking"... Is there in the market a multitude of multihead multimaterial printers right now? Why is Bambu Studio a fork of Prusaslicer ...?
@@logicalfundy Actually the point of 3D printing was to be used for rapid prototyping. We are a LONG LONG LONGGGGG way from seeing it as an actual manufacturing process tool
I have a 5 tool XL. I think it is a great printer, but it took me som time to tweak the filament profiles. A 0.6 nozzle is not recommended (yet). 0.4 mm nozzles give a much better result. The firmware is clearly not completely ready yet. The printer must be capable to run faster and the problem with stringing when using a 0.6 mm nozzle is not solved yet. Input shaping works, but there is room for improvement. It is a shame there is no (transparant) enclosure (including top) available and I mis a camera. You can use an (old) phone, but a own webcam would be better. Since we had to wait for the XL for well over a year I expected the firmware would be developed beter and accessories would be available when they started to send out the XL. I don't use the spool holders, but print directly from dry boxes or filament-dryers. I can recommend the kit. It saves you money and assembly is pretty doable for everyone. If your printer may need tweaking or service, it is a great advantage when you already know how the printer is assembled. 5 tools is more than most people will use. I use my printer 24/7 and have a spare roll of filament for the two most used colours and a single spool for a sparsely used colour. In this way I can use my filament rolls to the last cm, without the printing stops waiting for a new roll. If you don't plan to print in multicolour or 24/7 often, you can save a lot of money by buying only a one, or two tool version. Extra tool heads can always be added later.
@@MotoSkwid I don't have any room above the printer, unless I put my filament on the roof :). I have one filament dryer, and one drybox at the left of the printer and three filament holders underneath. The filament dryer and drybox are used for PETG, the holders for PLA.
Base is one thing. But each "tool" is $500. Each tool? I'll just wait till others start doing the same multitool and the price drops. Prusa Greed vs My Patience. Watch I win.
Great recap! I've got a 5 toolhead XL and i am very satisfied with it. I was able to print multicolor, multimaterial and even multi nozzle size prints/ Prusa slicer doesn't support multi nozzle directly yet. However with some modifiers you can achieve it. Mixing materials is not a trivial thing even just different brands filaments is problem is on its own way. Think that someone is going to solve all of possible combinations with a single click is not realistic. It always brings in some additional tweaking. On other hand, it is interesting how everybody is talking about Bambu, how much advanced it is. The design is obviously changing the perception a lot. Nice looking printer. When I tried I didn't find any game changing feature with them which would change my experience ground up and allow me to do what I cannot do with Prusas.
Would you might sharing how you achieved multi nozzle size prints? I really hope that in the near future this will be implemented in the Slicer, but right now this machine is not completely up to its possibilities I guess. But I am really happy to have my own 5 Tooly :)
Think you are overreacting in regards to the enclosure being irresponsible, a lot of printers don't come with one, bed slingers like prusa mk3, prusa mini, Bambu a1, Bambu a1 mini, creality enders and elegoo all have printers that don't have enclosures with them. Can you tell us what material you were printing with when you detected the high VOCs? I have a industrial grade monitor and PLA and PETG doesn't give off particulates or VOCs anywhere near dangerous levels, it barely registers a increase.
Just to comment on 6:10, you can extrude just as much material with a 0.4 mm nozzle as the default 0.6 mm nozzle settings. Material flow rate isn't decreased much by the change in nozzle size in my experience.
I just tried the PLA/PETG combo for print/support and it's a mixed bag. The oozing is real, and the "ooze prevention" doesn't work all that well because the heads cool off and the first object they go to after a tool change gets a bunch of blobs. I had to add a sacrificial model that was there just for the tool heads to warm up. There are a number of awkward pauses in the beginning of every print- the printer "absorbs heat" for 10 min (skippable via the printer's screen), then waits for unknown reason, and then calibrates - it could at least calibrate when the temperature is close while still heating. It doesn't print all that fast, maybe 50% faster than my MK3S Its WiFi connectivity is weird, I much prefer the octoprint on my MK3S - I still don't use the printer's web interface with its old school password popup that browsers can't auto-fill
Why are there so many printers without enclosure if it is so bad? Seriously I am confused. Not everyone has a garage to put the printer in. I thought as long as I avoid the nasty stuff like ASA, the risk is fairly low.
That is something that will likely be debated until more research is done on long term exposure of the VOCs emitted. All plastics emit something when printed. Right now, most manufacturers just assume that materials like PLA, PETG, and TPU are generally safe. Even Bambu makes this assumption. I did a quick check - Bambu does not offer an enclosure for their A1 printers. So I think that the claim of being "irresponsible" in this video ought to apply to Bambu if they are going to call Prusa "irresponsible."
The Prusa hardware is excellent, but the software is way behind the BambuLab. No camera, no NFC for filaments, poor network performance. It is all a software issue so Prusa needs to speed up its software development for the XL to catch up with bambuLab. Now we will see in the next 6 months how things develop at both companies. Currently the XL is only at 70% of its potential and yes, too much fiddeling the the given price. I use the XL mostly for large fubctional parts and there it is good, but the user experience is way behind Bambu. Currently I say 1:2 for bambu
NFC needs to be made an open standard that anybody can use. Bambu did a terrible disservice by making it proprietary so third party filaments can't use it.
6:00 SuperSlicer uses % of nozzle instead of PrusaSlicers % of Layer height. This allows you to mix nozzle sizes, however it is pretty limited. The SuperSlicer developer restarted development in November last year and is working on the PrusaSlicer 2.7 Merge to add all the missing features as it currently has a fork of PrusaSlicer 2.5.
Anything closed source like Bambu is not good., also single head multicolor gives out lots of plastic waste which is highly irritating after 2-3 days of printing. the way forward will be multi tool head, where in future we can have vairable layer heights, as well as angled extrusions which can definetly be a game changer. movements will be mostly core xy going forward, maybe magentic levitating x but things should be open source, due to which companies like creality and bambu are winning by reducing the cost of parts of open source tech. however dependece on closed source will take us back. just my thoughts
It doesnt seem to be there based on most peoples reviews. I pondered getting one but already have an e3d tool changer. Im glad it didnt splash out and get a 5 tool XL, with that money I bought a lathe and 2 X1C combos.
Heck for the price of a XL 5 tool head you can have Open frame 6 A1 with ams lite 6x4 =24 colors Enclosed you can print more exotic materials 3 P1S with ams = 12 colors and you can add up to 16 or 2 X1C with AMS up to 16 colors. Are you saying your XL can print faster than 2-6 machines in terms of total output?
@@logicalfundy Maybe you missed the point. If I have 6x A1 printers they are outputting more than 1 prusa XL at a higher qualit to boot(.4mmvs.6mm). Even if a single XL multicolor print is fast than a single multicolor BL print, it will not be faster than 6 running at the same time. So if we are comparing price to performance it's not even close. If it's single color or a few filament swaps the BL printer beats the brakes off the XL. If I use a P1S or X1C I then have access to more colors besides 4 and more filament types because they are enclosed. All for lower price, higher quality and faster delivery no tuning or building needed.
Is it possible to shorten the PTFE tubes or do they have to have the defined lenght to work with the filamant detection software? would like to feed the extruder form above and not from the sides. And maybe an odd question but would it be possible to mount the 2 toolheads for example in position 2 and 4 and calibrate the printer this way so it would allow to use horizontal cable chains to guide only the cables?
I have had my 5 head since before Christmas. I am still getting the hang of it. Built like a tank with high quality parts. I have had problems with the extruders and Prusa support has been great. I added the SUMO enclosure because of the lack of one from Prusa. This is where I do blame Prusa, no enclosure and many spare parts are not in stock. I also have a Bambu X1C with AMS and the P1P. All are good printers and have their plus and minus.
As someone who actually has not found after a great amount of search, why its not directly on the OEM sight upfront, the average, recommended, or top speed of the XL printer I can tell you - NOT INTERESTED.
I really like the look of this printer and I am tempted to get one. But alas, my budget really likes the Creality K1C. Started out with a Prusa i3! Got two Creality's now, - CR10V3 and Ender 3 V3 SE - and they are both awesome printers. Really want to get into PA-CF printing, so the K1C looks promising. I don't trust Bambu Labs. Creality has at least made open source strides and distributes via lots of dealers.
Several TH-camr’s report prints lifting off the bed and layers shifting when multi-head printing with large prints (much taller and bigger than your box). Have you seen much of this?
I put my deposit down for an XL but got so sick of all the delays I redeemed my deposit , I held out on buying an X1 Carbon and AMS as I thought there would be some competition to the XL but that never happened and so I bought an X1 Carbon and AMS, I have calibrated the purge to lower the wastage but that wastage is still high compared to a toolchanger, I am glad I never bought an XL though!
If they were going to do an XL printer Id rather have seen a 500mm x 500mm. I have a rat rig v core at that size and I would have killed for a pruse alternative prebuild in that size
It's super cool but I'm nowhere near deep enough into 3d printing yet to have a good use for something like this. The MK3 I use will suffice for the foreseeable future.
I print functional parts for a business so I'm more interested in multi material printing, so printers like the X1 that can do multiple colors it's not really that exciting to me. The multiple heads is what can really help me out. I've already invested in an aftermarket enclosure and bought .4mm Nozzles as precision and detail are more important than speed for me. If be interested if you did a video on what some of the multi material challenges were and how you overcame them. I imagine printing PLA over PETG was a challenge for the very reason that it doesn't want to stick to it. I can see adhesion issues for that first layer. Subscribed.
@@Matt-bb3nr You can, and I actually do now without an AMS, the issue comes when printing materials with vastly different melting temperatures. It's very prone to clogging. For example printing something with a 300 degree melting temperatures before say something like PLA with a temperature more around 215. If you're not very careful when you switch to the PLA, if there's any of that 300 degree material left in the nozzle you'll clog it at 215. So while your correct it can work it's not nearly as efficient as doing it with multiple print heads.
@@Matt-bb3nr All of my printers have enclosures, I personally wouldn't go without one as the quality of the parts is generally much better when printed in an enclosure. I don't currently have a specific application where I mix higher temp materials with PLA on a single part, but I do print with both materials on my single nozzle machines and have experienced clogging issues when switching. So on the XL it will be nice to have a dedicated head for high temp materials and if an application arises where this would be beneficial to use both in the same part, I am hoping to be able to do it without issue. It just opens up the possibility for printing materials with vastly different melting temperatures with hopefully less issues. Time will tell. Also don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the AMS, it's a clever system, it just doesn't have some of the benefits that a multi head printer has. That's my opinion anyways.
If it had an enclosure it would be the ultimate printer. I wonder why prusa didn't release one. I'm hoping to see cpap remote cooling and a heated camber as upgrade options.
Luckily none of the 'negatives' you mention mean anything to me. I only need a large build volume printer that is 100% reliable , requires no tinkering or upgrades and functions just like my i3 Mark 3S over the last 4,000 hrs of print time ...
@@No0o0o0o0o0 I don't read reviews, I've talked with actual people who own one and it's just like PRUSA's other printers - the standard that others are compared to. How many times have you seen a review where you see something like "it's just like a PRUSA but ...", " as good as a PRUSA and only ..", " has similar reliability to a PRUSA and ...". There's a hint in there somewhere ... 😬
@@astrophysicistguy I look at reviewsare not tied to prusa only fans. If you only tried a Prusa and think they are the gold standard you have ignoring advancements in the past few years. People arent mentioning Prusa like that since 2022...I wonder what new thing came out around then... The XL has issues you can find it on YT or prusa forums. Tada3d, 3dprinting nerd, teaching tech, YGK3D, uncle jesse, dragon 3d and countless others. So while your buddies got goldilocks machines the reality is far different.
Bambu Labs killed Prusa...4000 dollars for the XL when the X1 is half the prices, prints 5x faster, prints better quality, and has tons of advances features.
@@dsjove FYI - Cura 5.6 does support different nozzle sizes. If the XL isn't locked down then this could be a workaround until Prusa Slicer supports it. I'm currently working on a Voron Trident with a custom toolchanger.
I also had a two-head XL on order. I canceled it after the extended wait. I'm glad I did. I agree with you that the lack of an enclosure is irresponsible. What I find more shocking is the poor software support for multiple materials. Yes, the printer is called the XL, but the primary feature many people are interested in is the multiple-material capability, so failure to deliver software to make this straightforward is a massive failure. If Bambu Labs delivers a multiple-head machine, the Prusa will have completely lost and have themselves to blame.
Yeah, so is the software in your car, TV, microwave oven, and probably every other applicant or vehicle outside of a computer, which a 3D printer, is not. What kind of car do you drive that has open source software? I'm waiting for your answer? Your car isn't evil, is it?
You remove the poop but still need a prime tower...It's not exactly like you are saving filament. If you remove the prime town then you are dealing with even more stringing and print errors.
Also how much filament/money are you saving between a 1k printer and a 3-4k printer? How many rolls can you buy for 3k? 150-300 rolls? So the poop(1-2grams) you mention is a penny or 2 worth of filament.
@@ronaldglider 🤔I'll assume you are American. You have a printer made and shipped from Prague by plane or sea to melt plastic. What was that about the environment? You pretend zero point energy exist teleport your printer to you. Seriously over the course of a *few hundred rolls* you may have less than 1 lost to waste. So $20 every few thousand worth of rolls used. The XL uses prime towers so its not zero waste. Also when the filament runs out on an XL there is about 54 inches(137.16cm) that go to waste. Look up Prusa XL Multi Tool Filament Runout for proof. about 10 min in.
@@personwomanmancameratelevision you are saving 4x as much filament as you waste on AMS/MMU setup. Blowing twice as much plastic in poop or waste tower as the print is like tossing money in the thrash. And you are forced to price your MM Prints higher.
You are assuming the quality of the XL is on par or better than any of the bambu printers. XL is objectionably worse. Look up any multi-color print from the XL. "Tada printing" for instance. How much waste when the print fails, looks terrible or doesnt meet spec? $3000-3500 in savings is filament, printers, parts. Adding more printers increases output but seriously you can have a whole print farm with 3500-4k. But when addressing 1 printer You would need to spend $3000 in LOST FILAMENT($20 a roll) at less than a .3-.1 gram per filament change depending on color. So to even break even you need about *150,000--500,000 filament changes for the break even price of the XL even pushes out a gram of plastic* . If you buy filament in bulk you can double those numbers. This is before changing flushing volumes, using waste for infill or supports, printing multiple duplicates in the same print job or designing your part to lower filament changes so you may never reach those break even price, during the life of the printer. It's basic math. Also rarely mentioned but between the XL spool and run out sensor there is a few feet of lost filament at the end of each roll that never gets used. And lastly filament is not wasted if your truly care about that. You can easily melt it into a mold. (lego blocks, art. functional parts etc)
As a newbie to 3D printing and a 3 week owner of a functioning XL (my 1st ever printer owned or used), I see I don't belong here. I need a masters in 3D printing. On a another note, are you sharing your stl files for the things you show here, especially the toolbox.
@@DerekWoodsDesign if he had said 36cm cube, I would agree that it is reasonable to interpret as correct. But cm cubed is generally considered the pronunciation of cm³ hence the same as cubic cm. Just like cm² can be called square cm of cm squared
@@hdhdhshscbxhdh4195 Seems like this might be a difference in regional dialects. Because I would never say cubed means cubic. For example, I would say "two miles squared" to describe the perimeter of a 2x2 area, versus "two square miles" which would be used to quantity area.
@@DerekWoodsDesign interesting, that is a good point that it's likely regional differences. I can't say I ever thought there would be a difference of interpretation for cm cubed since it is consistent with naming conventions in mathematics (i.e. "five x cubed" means 5*x^3 and not (5*x)^3 which is "the value of five x cubed"), but good to know.
$3500 before tax and it doesn’t even have an enclosure for advanced filaments. It’s also partially printed in PETG so even if you can get passed the feeling of being ripped off you have the risk of the parts warping if you try to make your own enclosure.
I have both an XL and a Bambu Lab PiS and love them both. They cannot be compared: I needed a reliable printer with a large printbed and could not find anything other than the Prusa XL. The system with multiple heads is a great plus: printing multi material things with one head is time consuming and wasteful. Although Prusa has a history of delivering later than promised, terms like "irresponsible" are overreacting: You are buying one, so you should be angry at yourself not so much at Prusa. Moreover, - as you said - it is possible to create your own case for the XL that works just as good and it saves shipping + taxes importing from Europe. The P1S is a great printer, yes it is closed source, but extra parts are cheap to get and Bambu printers are more polished than Prusa printers. There is however a big difference between both companies: Prusa is a European brand, Bambu is Chinese. In China you have more and cheaper resources in electronics and labour.
"you should be angry at yourself" what? Its Prusa's job to not sell an unfinished product, they've been in the space long for you to justify them resting on their laurels.
I ordered an XL when it was first announced, and have a MK3 and MK2.5. When all the delays started, I eventually cancelled the XL and bought a Bambu Lab X1Carbon. I'm so happy I did. I have 2 now, and a Bambu Lab P1S as well. In hindsight, the XL is fine, but the need for a BIG printer is limited. I had a large Craftbot 3 that IO just got rid of, used too much space and rarely did I print so large. How does the heating work on the XL? Does it keep all nozzles heated or do you need to wait for it to heat every change? Overall, I'm very happy with my Bambu printers and not sorry I cancelled the XL. Yes, its wastes filament, but usually I have different types of filament in my AMS so just using it for one color but with the ability to easily pick the material. I can do eveything from my phone and never physically touch the printer. Hopefully more multiextruder printers will come out, but at a much lower price.
It's quite intelligent with the nozzles, it will cool down to 170 if it's not going to being used for a bit but otherwise it'll keep it heated ready to go, when it stores/parks the nozzle there's a little flexible part that plugs the nozzle to prevent oozing.
Why does everyone pretend the xl is multimaterial, and the bambu can just change colors. It's also multimaterial. The only thing you won't print with the ams is flexibles. It's otherwise more capable in every way. Using petg support interface with pla right now.
@@logicalfundy it is faster at swapping, much slower at printing. Have to switch to a .4 nozzle to get decent quality, it's a bit bigger.. but now you have a .4 nozzle. No camera, sketchy WiFi, no enclosure, limited to 5 materials if you drop 3500 bucks. Whereas bambu will do up to 16. All the prusa guys wanna act like they're engineers all a sudden. Let's see you crank out flawless ASA or pc on those things. The bambu changes temp during purge for the material you're using. That's kinda nothing. Yet to see a good multi color print come off one, everything I've seen is acceptable at best
@@Matt-bb3nr The faster swapping makes it faster at color printing, hence the qualifier. For single color, It shouldn't be too much slower than a Bambu, since it has input shaping and a Core XY architecture. It probably comes mostly down to Prusa wanting to be conservative with their settings. A camera is nice, but it still works as a printer without one. Sketchy WiFi is true, although binary gcode and being able to start prints while still streaming the gcode in does help with the latest firmware. Bambu has several printers without enclosures. Especially the most recent A1 and A1 mini. 5 materials is enough for most people, I can't see fitting 16 tool heads into the printer. Maybe if they make an XXL? "Let's see you crank out flawless ASA or pc on those things." Funny you should say that - I have an enclosed Mk4, and I have a spool of PC on the way. Should be interesting. Prusa also has their own brand of both materials, so they have profiles for them. "Yet to see a good multi color print come off one, everything I've seen is acceptable at best" Lately I've seen some nice prints on r/prusa3d. The XL had a rough start for sure, but I think it's getting better with more recent firmware and people are figuring out how to tune it.
@@logicalfundy For what it costs, it should have been turn-key out of the box. Yet it's the same old wasting time adjusting and tinkering to get it dialed it. That with a .04 nozzle to get decent prints.What a mess the XL is. This is 2024, not 2015. The REPRAP of DIY, ALU profiles and printed parts replication vibe is old and done. Prusa needs to innovate or die out without a whimper.
Prusa needs to step up on innovation leaps as well as leaps customer experience, to just keep up with Bambu Lab, You can't be a premium brand if the customer experience and innovation lagging behind the regular to high priced market leader like Bambu, Creality and Pruse if nobody to blame but themselves as their machines sat in everyone's house and they rested on their lead. What happens if bambu lab releases a Even lower priced multi-head 36mm cubed machine. We all know it could happen!
Calling Creality a markt leader is a joke. Prusa there customer service is amazing compaired to bambu where it takes a day to even get a reply and when you do it's not always helpfull. Bambu would very much struggle with the challanges that the xl hold when it comes to software. Bambu only took everything from the open source community.
@@Parasite98 As far as Prusa being open sourced and having better customer service, It will take more than that for them to be a premium brand that deserves their premium price, they'll need to innovate at pace along with Bambu Lab! I think Prusa, will rise to the competition, if they have enough capital to scale up their innovation. If not, they'll have a tough time finding customers who want to spend two grand and still have to build for 4 hours! When you can, pull a Bambu out of the box and print better in the first 25 minutes. Open source was great when you had a fiddly mess of a product that had to be upgraded by the consumer to really truly work, my Bambu just works and really well just out of the box.
Prusas innovation is why every 3d printer on the market has heated beds and many have, auto bed leveling, magnetic removable PEI sheets and the I3 design. Thank you prusa for your innovations that every other printer uses.
At first I was excited about this and debated buying one, but bambu changed the game, and prusa is dead until they catch up imo. Prusas prints slow, less reliable (go look up some videos proving this for farms), and cost more than bambu. The only con with not buying prusa over bambu is that you dont get gummy bears in the box.
Unfortunately this is something I cannot recommend people to buy - it's $4000 even before assembly and shipping, and as it is it cannot even print basic engineering material such as ABS without a customized enclosure. The way I look at this is: you are paying for the price of an industrial 3D printer for a toy printer. Not to mention you'll need to wait 6-8 months for it to come to the US.@@Parasite98
Great review focussing on facts and useful information rather than influencer fluff. I learned a lot from this video - thank you! Keep up this style.
Prusa is a group I want to support.
Want to support. Unfortunately they have really been going downhill.
@@ScytheNoire quality? Organization? Red tape?
@@jgj4430 Prusa has often been above many of the Chinese manufacturers who released janky, not ready products over the years. You paid a lot more for the product, but you knew it was quality and would just work. I own a modified MK3S+, it's rock solid, albeit a very old, outdated design. Can't say that about the XL, it was released not ready, and continues to be not ready. Only printing well with a 0.4 nozzle is really, really silly.
Then there is their release of the MK4, which has nearly no innovation, it's the same product design, with new electronics and hot end. But remember when Prusa said for years that you don't need more than an 8-bit board. They lied to consumers for years, pushing the false narrative because they didn't want to change.
They have just lost my trust. They too often lie and refuse to change, and are now being required to be dragged into changing, and even then, they are behind.
@@ScytheNoire It's not really that they've been going downhill, it's that certain other companies in the market now are offering arguably better products for less money. Prusa themselves still produce good machines that produce good results. They still do a great job with Printables. They still contribute a lot to open source. Etc.
As far as I know Lidar on the bambulab printers doesn't detect failing prints, only first layer extrusion issues.
the live camera can detect spaghetti detection though (sometimes lol)
@@simpl3y Yeah, I had the X1 and the Spaghetti detection almost never worked, it even ghost printed (nothing comming out but still continues) and the so called AI from Bambu lab did not stop the print. I have a Prusa MK4 now. Not fancy, but it simply works.
@@Raffix394 The Spaghetti detection gets better with every firmware upgrade. As it includes the latest AI training. I have yet to have a print to fail. However, it was unexpected that the AI recognized purged filament from the chute that made it's way on the build plate. It paused the print for me to remove it.
MK4? Over a $1000 for a printer without an enclosure or even a simple camera? Yeah, I remember those days, wasn't it 2019? @@Raffix394
@@Raffix394 Im glad i cancelled my order for Prusa XL and got Bambu X1C and the fact i print in ABS a lot now the chamber is a must. I have Prusa MK4 which has been fine but im going to sell it, Prusa prints are way more hassle and the quality is not as good as Bambu prints. like chaosengine3772 said i now very rarely get any print fail due to the spaghetti detection works so well.
it's impressive that it has 5 toolhead, but the lack of any advanced and user concentric features that make the printer just works, and it being at such price, is a hard pill to swallow. year 2023 and it comes with 2000's UI and a knob. seriously over the years i'm so done with wasting time tinkering and need something that works, and if you're asking for that much money, it better be.
This would have been a cool printer a few years ago. The multiple print heads is exciting and has use cases, but the printer leaves a lot to be desired for everyday printing.
Waited for MMU3+Mk4+enclosure long enough to cancel my orders and saved some eur with X1C+AMS
Given the fact that all of my maintenance so far was cleaning after longer ABS batch and a bit of greasing, I have happy workshop appliance and prototyping machine.
So far ABS, PLA, PETG, TPU and ASA was super happy experience
I'm waiting to see what the Voron Phoenix offers, and if Bambu does a larger, better designed multi-head printers.
Came here to learn about the Prusa. Now I just want that STI GC8!
1:40 - The previous Prusa beds do move, but not vertically, they move in the y direction
I bought it because of the tool changer: absolutely worth it for me. It is awesome.
If you want the fastest printer out there: XL is the wrong printer.
If you want quality: get it
Not exactly. At default .6mm nozzle and horrible stringing/and loss of detail on top of needing to dial the printer in before it gets decent.
Currently Prusa is sending out a bunch of firmware updates to fix the inherent problems in the hardware.
the XL is now shipping with the .4mm nozzle@@personwomanmancameratelevision
Where did you get the file for that tool box? Was it on the included USB stick?
Will be interesting to see how the Prusa XL compares to Bambu’s gen 2 XL machine that’s set to be released later this year
Are their any dates?
@@Michadr announcement early February for the next flagship
It will definitely be interesting to see whether Bambu keeps with AMS or uses a tool changer.
@@logicalfundy Why not both?
@@personwomanmancameratelevisionWell you can, but that would be more complex and costly.
Just got into FDM printing a year ago with the X1C. I am sooo tempted to get this. The 5 heads for independent printing just sound too good to be true, especially with the steep learning curve you mention. Practice in patience I guess as we wait to see what the X1C "XL" does.
I'm more excited about the Voron kits that are adding multiple heads, and the ProForge 4 with 4 heads for 1/2 the price and larger print area and much faster print speeds. Hoping that last one really is rock solid as it's built based on Voron and other fast printers but with tool changer too.
It is impressive what kind of people review printers and comment below... people do not have a single clue how hard development is for these kind of machines. A tool changer can be so powerfull, something that the current bambu machines can never achieve. 5 Printheads, 5 different tools (cnc milling, pick and place,3d printing) or materials. This will be a software nightmare for sure, but way worth it! and even if people would like to compare it with the bambu brand. XL has input shaper and can print fast. be aware when printing fast the strenght of the product will decrease. further the amount of waste of the toolchanger is way less. And regarding the enclosure topic, you just dont buy the XL for industrial materials.
The standard has been raised, You can't charge a premium, take forever to finish your development, release a product with poor software, and not focus on the customer experience and still lead this segment.
@mikeehuber you are right. The standards has been raised for mid-tier printers. But the toolchanger is 3 tiers above it.
The problem is they said they were going to release it, then back peddled for 2 years, only to still release prematurely. They rushed the mk4 release because of bambu. 2 years ago, people were glad to pay the prusa premium for top of the line performance and reliability, while bambu has raised the bar, prusa has still fallen. I really do hope they get it together.
@@ponn273 I agree that the tool changer is cool, but it's not mind blowingly hard, but I predict the premium model from bambu will have more than two heads and will match the Bambu customer experience at the same time. I hope the laziness has gone away in Creality and Prusa, a 3D hobby will benefit if they innovate and excel. Both got so lazy!
You know how hard it is to make a car - it's orders of magnitude harder than a printer, yet my car runs quieter than my laser printer :)
And it doesn't matter how hard it is to make it - if the company has promised things that it did not deliver, it's still on them to gauge the difficulty before promising.
Prusa came out with the XL after years of practicing software and hardware development with their other printers, and it's still 1/3 baked (not even half-baked). Bamboo didn't practice for years, yet I wish I bought one of theirs
That multiple toolhead option looks awesome.
I have a mk3 Prusa I've had for 7 years. The MMU2 was a complete fail. When they built the XL I think they abandoned the MMU series for something that actually works. I have now gone the Bamboo Lab A1 way and not being a fan of high speed its a much more capable of being a successful multimedia printer. The support for the Bamboo is very very good in my opinion. Bamboo Lab has being reported to be bringing out a larger format printer in 2025 something I'll be looking out for. Prusa XL is too expensive.
This guy is pretty damn good.
What was exactly the problem with multimaterial printing?
Yes enclosure would be great 😊 but great durable printer for sure enjoy
The official cover for the XL is already available. You can order it. At least one point is no longer actual. If I put URL, the text is deleted.
what? no possibility to use the different nozzles? that was something I was really hoping for. I hope that bambulab brings out an xl mot tool changer and ams and then maybe in the size 500x500x500
great idea to use PETG for support of a PLA print...
But not the way he did😅😅 Only using it as support interface is THE way✌️
Can you use this with conductive filament in order to print PCB's straight into your prints?
I’m happy with my Bambu X1C. I don’t print often and see it as a hobby so the filament waste is not a big bother for me. I just love how it basically just works.
I _would_ like a larger bed to work with, but at this point I’ll be waiting to see what the inevitable Bambu XL has to offer before making a purchase decision.
22B??????
Just can't justify the price when you can get other multi color printers that do the same thing, (maybe even better) for a fraction of the price.
It depends on how much a person prints and how much time idesires the work to be done.
Waste is the big problem of single head multicolor printer, for some even more since their reliability is derives from cutting the filament and than the need to purge a more filament.
It is easy to simulate the waste costs, are only needed the slicers software.
@@donkeymarco So let's do the math.
5 head prusa 3500(4k assembled...assembly required) and 120 shipping
A1 combo 560(this would be the easiest competitor to compare as PLA/PETG/TPU)
p1s combo 950 Enclosed prints more exotic materials
X1C combo 1450 Enclosed prints more exotic materials
$35 shipping or 0 if you are near a microcenter.
If in the worst case scenario how much waste are you anticipating to spend 3K+ worth of *waste filament*.
Keep in mind at default poop settings can be less than gram and it can be adjusted.
So for the savings you can have a small print farm, buy filament(deal with waste) and still come out ahead in quality(.4mmvs.6mm) faster with the option of printing specialized filaments.
This isnt even a comparison at this point.
@@hawtdayum If You really think to compare an A1 to an XL... That said make a spreadsheet, take some models to slice on a Prusaslicer and a Bambustudio. The slicer will calculate waste generated and time needed for multimaterial and multicolor prints.
A good quality TPU costs from USD 40 to more than USD 50. PETG 30 - 40 ... PVB about USD 40 - 45, a soluble filament used as support from USD 60 for PVA, usually more, to USD 90- 100 per Kg. Than are even higher priced soluble materisls twice that price.
Everyone have different use cases. Cost of ownership is not limited only to initial cost purchase.
There are also other things to take into account, like warranty, what is covered by warranty and what is labelled ad "consumable" part. Than there is customer service.
Support of the product over time, ...
Just to remember that a Bambu X1E with LAN only mode, a higher temperature nozle and heater cost USD 2499, if I remember well. Probably includes also a better customer service.
@@donkeymarco If you are spending that much , per kg,on tpu/pla/petg/ your supplier must REALLY love you. 🤑 I gave multiple examples. What you choose to spend on filament the calculations are proportional. 3k worth of $20 filament or 3k worth of $100 filament. in the end you are either spending money on top of getting the XL or saving it if you bought another brand.
If your use case is a large format PLA/petg printer with multi tool head and quality doesnt have to be great then the XL is your ,very expensive, option.
If you can tweak your model then even an A1 can be decent. There are people who can create ironman suits on a prusa mini(painfully) but there are many inexpensive large format printers in general. elegoo neptune max is under $480(420x420x480). Bambu was 1 example but they handle multicolor and have more value than a 4k pla printer.
I always say this about companies that lean on support as their differentiator.
If the product was so good why would you need contact support?
Last I checked Prusa gives you 1 yr warranty(in the states). Are you saying they have longer? Once you are beyond a year Support dept becomes the Sales department because your parts are not replaced for free.
So since we are comparing different machines. Does the XL have an enclosure/ heated chamber? I must have missed that in the spec sheet. How much you think prusa will charge to enclose and provide a chamber heater for the XL so it's not just a pla machine?
Overpriced and a little late to the game in my own personal unwanted opinion lol.
Over? Its completely greedy as hell.
The ONLY reason I’d choose this printer over Bambu is for the multiple print heads. They are definitely slipping in what they are offering these days, like they are riding lazily on previous successes,
Or.... is Prusa simply taking their time to make sure they deliver high quality?
Meh. Terrible review. If you want a review, search out the people that actually have printing channels.
Prusa used to be the Apple of 3d Printers, Bambu is now that. Sorry Joe.
Prusa was the Dell of 3D printers. I think calling them Apple is too generous. Yes reliable printers, but innovation is lacking, maybe except for the MMU, which took 3 versions and 6 years to finally work. Here is a hint for Joe, yes using 3D printed parts to make printers was novel in 2016, but those. days are gone.
@@A1N0 Isn't the whole point of 3D printing to become a better manufacturing process? Why even have 3D printing if it can't make its own parts? Are we going to doom 3D printing to just making trinkets, or are we going to take it seriously enough to take pride in using it - even in our own printers?
Frankly, I think 3D printing should be making its own parts, in order to show that it's the future. Otherwise, maybe we should just throw all of our printers in the garbage because it's a useless technology.
@A1N0 "innovation is lacking"... Is there in the market a multitude of multihead multimaterial printers right now? Why is Bambu Studio a fork of Prusaslicer ...?
Well.... Apple almost died doing the Lisa, Jobs was ousted, he came back and apple became really successful...
@@logicalfundy Actually the point of 3D printing was to be used for rapid prototyping. We are a LONG LONG LONGGGGG way from seeing it as an actual manufacturing process tool
I have a 5 tool XL. I think it is a great printer, but it took me som time to tweak the filament profiles. A 0.6 nozzle is not recommended (yet). 0.4 mm nozzles give a much better result.
The firmware is clearly not completely ready yet. The printer must be capable to run faster and the problem with stringing when using a 0.6 mm nozzle is not solved yet. Input shaping works, but there is room for improvement. It is a shame there is no (transparant) enclosure (including top) available and I mis a camera. You can use an (old) phone, but a own webcam would be better. Since we had to wait for the XL for well over a year I expected the firmware would be developed beter and accessories would be available when they started to send out the XL.
I don't use the spool holders, but print directly from dry boxes or filament-dryers.
I can recommend the kit. It saves you money and assembly is pretty doable for everyone. If your printer may need tweaking or service, it is a great advantage when you already know how the printer is assembled. 5 tools is more than most people will use. I use my printer 24/7 and have a spare roll of filament for the two most used colours and a single spool for a sparsely used colour. In this way I can use my filament rolls to the last cm, without the printing stops waiting for a new roll. If you don't plan to print in multicolour or 24/7 often, you can save a lot of money by buying only a one, or two tool version. Extra tool heads can always be added later.
To be honest what firmware is ever complete
So are your filment dryer boxes located above the printer on a shelf? I was wondering if that is possible
@@MotoSkwid I don't have any room above the printer, unless I put my filament on the roof :). I have one filament dryer, and one drybox at the left of the printer and three filament holders underneath. The filament dryer and drybox are used for PETG, the holders for PLA.
Base is one thing. But each "tool" is $500. Each tool? I'll just wait till others start doing the same multitool and the price drops. Prusa Greed vs My Patience. Watch I win.
Great recap! I've got a 5 toolhead XL and i am very satisfied with it. I was able to print multicolor, multimaterial and even multi nozzle size prints/ Prusa slicer doesn't support multi nozzle directly yet. However with some modifiers you can achieve it. Mixing materials is not a trivial thing even just different brands filaments is problem is on its own way. Think that someone is going to solve all of possible combinations with a single click is not realistic. It always brings in some additional tweaking. On other hand, it is interesting how everybody is talking about Bambu, how much advanced it is. The design is obviously changing the perception a lot. Nice looking printer. When I tried I didn't find any game changing feature with them which would change my experience ground up and allow me to do what I cannot do with Prusas.
Would you might sharing how you achieved multi nozzle size prints? I really hope that in the near future this will be implemented in the Slicer, but right now this machine is not completely up to its possibilities I guess.
But I am really happy to have my own 5 Tooly :)
I would like a XL mini…. Which would make it the size of a MK4.
funny thing is one pretty much exists lol, they use it in their factory system
@@chomp7927The Prusa AFS are 34 x XL with a lower Z-height and an auto eject system.
I would like an enclosed, core XY, IDEX, that uses the same build plates as the MK3S/MK4.
Think you are overreacting in regards to the enclosure being irresponsible, a lot of printers don't come with one, bed slingers like prusa mk3, prusa mini, Bambu a1, Bambu a1 mini, creality enders and elegoo all have printers that don't have enclosures with them.
Can you tell us what material you were printing with when you detected the high VOCs? I have a industrial grade monitor and PLA and PETG doesn't give off particulates or VOCs anywhere near dangerous levels, it barely registers a increase.
Just to comment on 6:10, you can extrude just as much material with a 0.4 mm nozzle as the default 0.6 mm nozzle settings. Material flow rate isn't decreased much by the change in nozzle size in my experience.
I just tried the PLA/PETG combo for print/support and it's a mixed bag. The oozing is real, and the "ooze prevention" doesn't work all that well because the heads cool off and the first object they go to after a tool change gets a bunch of blobs. I had to add a sacrificial model that was there just for the tool heads to warm up.
There are a number of awkward pauses in the beginning of every print- the printer "absorbs heat" for 10 min (skippable via the printer's screen), then waits for unknown reason, and then calibrates - it could at least calibrate when the temperature is close while still heating.
It doesn't print all that fast, maybe 50% faster than my MK3S
Its WiFi connectivity is weird, I much prefer the octoprint on my MK3S - I still don't use the printer's web interface with its old school password popup that browsers can't auto-fill
Why are there so many printers without enclosure if it is so bad? Seriously I am confused. Not everyone has a garage to put the printer in. I thought as long as I avoid the nasty stuff like ASA, the risk is fairly low.
That is something that will likely be debated until more research is done on long term exposure of the VOCs emitted. All plastics emit something when printed.
Right now, most manufacturers just assume that materials like PLA, PETG, and TPU are generally safe. Even Bambu makes this assumption.
I did a quick check - Bambu does not offer an enclosure for their A1 printers. So I think that the claim of being "irresponsible" in this video ought to apply to Bambu if they are going to call Prusa "irresponsible."
Thanks for showing my upgrade ;-) Maybe you can provide a link in you descriptions to my mods? Would help me spread the word!
The Prusa hardware is excellent, but the software is way behind the BambuLab. No camera, no NFC for filaments, poor network performance. It is all a software issue so Prusa needs to speed up its software development for the XL to catch up with bambuLab. Now we will see in the next 6 months how things develop at both companies.
Currently the XL is only at 70% of its potential and yes, too much fiddeling the the given price. I use the XL mostly for large fubctional parts and there it is good, but the user experience is way behind Bambu. Currently I say 1:2 for bambu
nfc can be seen as an inconvenience in case of 3rd party filament but i agree on the rest
NFC needs to be made an open standard that anybody can use. Bambu did a terrible disservice by making it proprietary so third party filaments can't use it.
Kinda messed up considering Bambu is benefiting greatly from Prusa's work on the open source slicer.
@@bartz0rt928 Yes, but also vice Versa.
6:00 SuperSlicer uses % of nozzle instead of PrusaSlicers % of Layer height. This allows you to mix nozzle sizes, however it is pretty limited. The SuperSlicer developer restarted development in November last year and is working on the PrusaSlicer 2.7 Merge to add all the missing features as it currently has a fork of PrusaSlicer 2.5.
thanks for mentioning the restart of development. thats huge! :)
What's crazy to me was Prusa still charging almost $300 for shipping after I would spend almost $5k on a printer.
Anything closed source like Bambu is not good., also single head multicolor gives out lots of plastic waste which is highly irritating after 2-3 days of printing.
the way forward will be multi tool head, where in future we can have vairable layer heights, as well as angled extrusions which can definetly be a game changer.
movements will be mostly core xy going forward, maybe magentic levitating x
but things should be open source, due to which companies like creality and bambu are winning by reducing the cost of parts of open source tech.
however dependece on closed source will take us back.
just my thoughts
As someone who actually has the 5 tool XL printer i can tell you its amazing.
It doesnt seem to be there based on most peoples reviews. I pondered getting one but already have an e3d tool changer. Im glad it didnt splash out and get a 5 tool XL, with that money I bought a lathe and 2 X1C combos.
After fixing the issue with stringing I can tell you it is amazing. Just think of all the filament you will waste with the X1C 🤣 @@Festivejelly
Heck for the price of a XL 5 tool head you can have
Open frame
6 A1 with ams lite 6x4 =24 colors
Enclosed you can print more exotic materials
3 P1S with ams = 12 colors and you can add up to 16
or 2 X1C with AMS up to 16 colors.
Are you saying your XL can print faster than 2-6 machines in terms of total output?
@@No0o0o0o0o0 If you're using all 5 colors, it can certainly be 2-6 times faster than 5 colors via AMS..
@@logicalfundy Maybe you missed the point. If I have 6x A1 printers they are outputting more than 1 prusa XL at a higher qualit to boot(.4mmvs.6mm). Even if a single XL multicolor print is fast than a single multicolor BL print, it will not be faster than 6 running at the same time. So if we are comparing price to performance it's not even close. If it's single color or a few filament swaps the BL printer beats the brakes off the XL.
If I use a P1S or X1C I then have access to more colors besides 4 and more filament types because they are enclosed.
All for lower price, higher quality and faster delivery no tuning or building needed.
Why are you reviewing a 3D printer? You have no experience with 3D printing!
Waiting for the Chinese to get into the Multi-extruder game.
Is it possible to shorten the PTFE tubes or do they have to have the defined lenght to work with the filamant detection software? would like to feed the extruder form above and not from the sides. And maybe an odd question but would it be possible to mount the 2 toolheads for example in position 2 and 4 and calibrate the printer this way so it would allow to use horizontal cable chains to guide only the cables?
You can change the ptfe tube sizes. I extended mine so both detection units are on the same side.
ImO an Idex Machine is better than most tool changers
I have had my 5 head since before Christmas. I am still getting the hang of it. Built like a tank with high quality parts. I have had problems with the extruders and Prusa support has been great.
I added the SUMO enclosure because of the lack of one from Prusa. This is where I do blame Prusa, no enclosure and many spare parts are not in stock. I also have a Bambu X1C with AMS and the P1P. All are good printers and have their plus and minus.
As someone who actually has not found after a great amount of search, why its not directly on the OEM sight upfront, the average, recommended, or top speed of the XL printer I can tell you - NOT INTERESTED.
I really like the look of this printer and I am tempted to get one. But alas, my budget really likes the Creality K1C. Started out with a Prusa i3! Got two Creality's now, - CR10V3 and Ender 3 V3 SE - and they are both awesome printers. Really want to get into PA-CF printing, so the K1C looks promising. I don't trust Bambu Labs. Creality has at least made open source strides and distributes via lots of dealers.
Several TH-camr’s report prints lifting off the bed and layers shifting when multi-head printing with large prints (much taller and bigger than your box). Have you seen much of this?
I put my deposit down for an XL but got so sick of all the delays I redeemed my deposit , I held out on buying an X1 Carbon and AMS as I thought there would be some competition to the XL but that never happened and so I bought an X1 Carbon and AMS, I have calibrated the purge to lower the wastage but that wastage is still high compared to a toolchanger, I am glad I never bought an XL though!
The print volume is not 50% larger than the MK3 / MK4, which has 11.025 cm3 build volume, it is 432% the volume at 46.656 cm3...
If they were going to do an XL printer Id rather have seen a 500mm x 500mm. I have a rat rig v core at that size and I would have killed for a pruse alternative prebuild in that size
It's super cool but I'm nowhere near deep enough into 3d printing yet to have a good use for something like this. The MK3 I use will suffice for the foreseeable future.
I print functional parts for a business so I'm more interested in multi material printing, so printers like the X1 that can do multiple colors it's not really that exciting to me. The multiple heads is what can really help me out.
I've already invested in an aftermarket enclosure and bought .4mm Nozzles as precision and detail are more important than speed for me.
If be interested if you did a video on what some of the multi material challenges were and how you overcame them.
I imagine printing PLA over PETG was a challenge for the very reason that it doesn't want to stick to it. I can see adhesion issues for that first layer.
Subscribed.
Who says you can't do multi material with an ams. That's made up.
@@Matt-bb3nr You can, and I actually do now without an AMS, the issue comes when printing materials with vastly different melting temperatures. It's very prone to clogging. For example printing something with a 300 degree melting temperatures before say something like PLA with a temperature more around 215. If you're not very careful when you switch to the PLA, if there's any of that 300 degree material left in the nozzle you'll clog it at 215.
So while your correct it can work it's not nearly as efficient as doing it with multiple print heads.
@@bluerider0988 what are you mixing with pla that prints at 300. Not only that but that wouldn't require an enclosure.
@@Matt-bb3nr All of my printers have enclosures, I personally wouldn't go without one as the quality of the parts is generally much better when printed in an enclosure. I don't currently have a specific application where I mix higher temp materials with PLA on a single part, but I do print with both materials on my single nozzle machines and have experienced clogging issues when switching.
So on the XL it will be nice to have a dedicated head for high temp materials and if an application arises where this would be beneficial to use both in the same part, I am hoping to be able to do it without issue. It just opens up the possibility for printing materials with vastly different melting temperatures with hopefully less issues. Time will tell.
Also don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the AMS, it's a clever system, it just doesn't have some of the benefits that a multi head printer has. That's my opinion anyways.
@@bluerider0988and I'd totally be down with a tool changer, that's actually implemented well
If it had an enclosure it would be the ultimate printer. I wonder why prusa didn't release one.
I'm hoping to see cpap remote cooling and a heated camber as upgrade options.
That Godzilla is looking good
Luckily none of the 'negatives' you mention mean anything to me. I only need a large build volume printer that is 100% reliable , requires no tinkering or upgrades and functions just like my i3 Mark 3S over the last 4,000 hrs of print time ...
You should probably look up reviews before declaring the XL as reliable. It is far from it.
@@No0o0o0o0o0 I don't read reviews, I've talked with actual people who own one and it's just like PRUSA's other printers - the standard that others are compared to. How many times have you seen a review where you see something like "it's just like a PRUSA but ...", " as good as a PRUSA and only ..", " has similar reliability to a PRUSA and ...". There's a hint in there somewhere ... 😬
@@astrophysicistguy I look at reviewsare not tied to prusa only fans. If you only tried a Prusa and think they are the gold standard you have ignoring advancements in the past few years. People arent mentioning Prusa like that since 2022...I wonder what new thing came out around then...
The XL has issues you can find it on YT or prusa forums. Tada3d, 3dprinting nerd, teaching tech, YGK3D, uncle jesse, dragon 3d and countless others. So while your buddies got goldilocks machines the reality is far different.
3:35 just stating a claim that could have been checked with ease (lower speed) but not do it is weak!
Bambu Labs killed Prusa...4000 dollars for the XL when the X1 is half the prices, prints 5x faster, prints better quality, and has tons of advances features.
quality is trash, any bedslinger can do better but slower. full of vfa if printing slow and ringing if it goes full speed.
waiting for a printer which takes base colors and mixes the rest
Enclosure is definitely needed and it is sad that they do not offer one.
Do they offer an enclosure as a separate part?
I ordered one. There are not really alternatives.
not yet.
It was surprising to hear you cant mix nozzle sizes. Shouldnt that just be a slicer setting?
It's a slicer feature; not developed yet, hopefully in progress.
@@dsjove FYI - Cura 5.6 does support different nozzle sizes. If the XL isn't locked down then this could be a workaround until Prusa Slicer supports it. I'm currently working on a Voron Trident with a custom toolchanger.
@@JeffBradway It is not locked down. Hopefully the open source code will bubble its way to prusa soon.
I always print ABS. What good is a large format, when printing functional materials, if it isn't enclosed?
I also had a two-head XL on order. I canceled it after the extended wait. I'm glad I did. I agree with you that the lack of an enclosure is irresponsible. What I find more shocking is the poor software support for multiple materials. Yes, the printer is called the XL, but the primary feature many people are interested in is the multiple-material capability, so failure to deliver software to make this straightforward is a massive failure. If Bambu Labs delivers a multiple-head machine, the Prusa will have completely lost and have themselves to blame.
Bambu however is closed source and proprietary, therefore evil
Yeah, so is the software in your car, TV, microwave oven, and probably every other applicant or vehicle outside of a computer, which a 3D printer, is not. What kind of car do you drive that has open source software? I'm waiting for your answer? Your car isn't evil, is it?
@@A1N0 I love when folks fly the open source flag then scurry away when called out on their hypocrisy.
@@No0o0o0o0o0 lol you go into hiding every time I call you out on your stupidity. Irony.
@A1N0 Well most modern TVs use open source software, and more also many more appliances than You probably are aware of.
@@A1N0 I reckon you're aware of that dude who got stranded because his GM car OTA update borked. Proprietary software is evil
My 5-head XL is coming this month! Super excited
multimaterial without "printer-poop" is worth a lot!
You remove the poop but still need a prime tower...It's not exactly like you are saving filament. If you remove the prime town then you are dealing with even more stringing and print errors.
Also how much filament/money are you saving between a 1k printer and a 3-4k printer?
How many rolls can you buy for 3k? 150-300 rolls?
So the poop(1-2grams) you mention is a penny or 2 worth of filament.
@@personwomanmancameratelevision There is more to "worth" than just money --> Environment...
@@ronaldglider 🤔I'll assume you are American. You have a printer made and shipped from Prague by plane or sea to melt plastic. What was that about the environment?
You pretend zero point energy exist teleport your printer to you.
Seriously over the course of a *few hundred rolls* you may have less than 1 lost to waste. So $20 every few thousand worth of rolls used.
The XL uses prime towers so its not zero waste. Also when the filament runs out on an XL there is about 54 inches(137.16cm) that go to waste.
Look up Prusa XL Multi Tool Filament Runout for proof. about 10 min in.
@@personwomanmancameratelevision you are saving 4x as much filament as you waste on AMS/MMU setup. Blowing twice as much plastic in poop or waste tower as the print is like tossing money in the thrash. And you are forced to price your MM Prints higher.
You are assuming the quality of the XL is on par or better than any of the bambu printers. XL is objectionably worse. Look up any multi-color print from the XL. "Tada printing" for instance. How much waste when the print fails, looks terrible or doesnt meet spec?
$3000-3500 in savings is filament, printers, parts. Adding more printers increases output but seriously you can have a whole print farm with 3500-4k.
But when addressing 1 printer
You would need to spend $3000 in LOST FILAMENT($20 a roll) at less than a .3-.1 gram per filament change depending on color. So to even break even you need about *150,000--500,000 filament changes for the break even price of the XL even pushes out a gram of plastic* . If you buy filament in bulk you can double those numbers.
This is before changing flushing volumes, using waste for infill or supports, printing multiple duplicates in the same print job or designing your part to lower filament changes so you may never reach those break even price, during the life of the printer.
It's basic math.
Also rarely mentioned but between the XL spool and run out sensor there is a few feet of lost filament at the end of each roll that never gets used.
And lastly filament is not wasted if your truly care about that. You can easily melt it into a mold. (lego blocks, art. functional parts etc)
excellent comparison of both machines 👍
As a newbie to 3D printing and a 3 week owner of a functioning XL (my 1st ever printer owned or used), I see I don't belong here. I need a masters in 3D printing.
On a another note, are you sharing your stl files for the things you show here, especially the toolbox.
36 cm cubed doesnt mean what you think it means, when you are talking about build volume
36 cm cubed means exactly what it sounds like; A cube that is 36 cm on each side. Are you thinking of 36 cubic cm, which would be very small?
@@DerekWoodsDesign if he had said 36cm cube, I would agree that it is reasonable to interpret as correct. But cm cubed is generally considered the pronunciation of cm³ hence the same as cubic cm. Just like cm² can be called square cm of cm squared
@@hdhdhshscbxhdh4195 Seems like this might be a difference in regional dialects. Because I would never say cubed means cubic. For example, I would say "two miles squared" to describe the perimeter of a 2x2 area, versus "two square miles" which would be used to quantity area.
@@DerekWoodsDesign interesting, that is a good point that it's likely regional differences. I can't say I ever thought there would be a difference of interpretation for cm cubed since it is consistent with naming conventions in mathematics (i.e. "five x cubed" means 5*x^3 and not (5*x)^3 which is "the value of five x cubed"), but good to know.
$3500 before tax and it doesn’t even have an enclosure for advanced filaments. It’s also partially printed in PETG so even if you can get passed the feeling of being ripped off you have the risk of the parts warping if you try to make your own enclosure.
I have both an XL and a Bambu Lab PiS and love them both. They cannot be compared: I needed a reliable printer with a large printbed and could not find anything other than the Prusa XL. The system with multiple heads is a great plus: printing multi material things with one head is time consuming and wasteful. Although Prusa has a history of delivering later than promised, terms like "irresponsible" are overreacting: You are buying one, so you should be angry at yourself not so much at Prusa. Moreover, - as you said - it is possible to create your own case for the XL that works just as good and it saves shipping + taxes importing from Europe. The P1S is a great printer, yes it is closed source, but extra parts are cheap to get and Bambu printers are more polished than Prusa printers. There is however a big difference between both companies: Prusa is a European brand, Bambu is Chinese. In China you have more and cheaper resources in electronics and labour.
"you should be angry at yourself" what? Its Prusa's job to not sell an unfinished product, they've been in the space long for you to justify them resting on their laurels.
BambuLab will make one XL better, faster and cheaper, soon
@@divencia You mean "bambu lab will copy a cheaper XL later?"
@@ponn273 What does matter, is the final result. The market is speaking by itself. Sorry for the prusa fanboys
@@divencia Tell me you never had a Prusa printer without telling me you had one
Screw that price
Word!
I ordered an XL when it was first announced, and have a MK3 and MK2.5. When all the delays started, I eventually cancelled the XL and bought a Bambu Lab X1Carbon. I'm so happy I did. I have 2 now, and a Bambu Lab P1S as well. In hindsight, the XL is fine, but the need for a BIG printer is limited. I had a large Craftbot 3 that IO just got rid of, used too much space and rarely did I print so large. How does the heating work on the XL? Does it keep all nozzles heated or do you need to wait for it to heat every change? Overall, I'm very happy with my Bambu printers and not sorry I cancelled the XL. Yes, its wastes filament, but usually I have different types of filament in my AMS so just using it for one color but with the ability to easily pick the material. I can do eveything from my phone and never physically touch the printer. Hopefully more multiextruder printers will come out, but at a much lower price.
It's quite intelligent with the nozzles, it will cool down to 170 if it's not going to being used for a bit but otherwise it'll keep it heated ready to go, when it stores/parks the nozzle there's a little flexible part that plugs the nozzle to prevent oozing.
Why does everyone pretend the xl is multimaterial, and the bambu can just change colors. It's also multimaterial. The only thing you won't print with the ams is flexibles. It's otherwise more capable in every way. Using petg support interface with pla right now.
The XL is faster at color prints and has a larger print volume. I believe it might also be able to run a different temperature for each tool head.
@@logicalfundy it is faster at swapping, much slower at printing. Have to switch to a .4 nozzle to get decent quality, it's a bit bigger.. but now you have a .4 nozzle. No camera, sketchy WiFi, no enclosure, limited to 5 materials if you drop 3500 bucks. Whereas bambu will do up to 16. All the prusa guys wanna act like they're engineers all a sudden. Let's see you crank out flawless ASA or pc on those things. The bambu changes temp during purge for the material you're using. That's kinda nothing. Yet to see a good multi color print come off one, everything I've seen is acceptable at best
@@Matt-bb3nr The faster swapping makes it faster at color printing, hence the qualifier.
For single color, It shouldn't be too much slower than a Bambu, since it has input shaping and a Core XY architecture. It probably comes mostly down to Prusa wanting to be conservative with their settings.
A camera is nice, but it still works as a printer without one.
Sketchy WiFi is true, although binary gcode and being able to start prints while still streaming the gcode in does help with the latest firmware.
Bambu has several printers without enclosures. Especially the most recent A1 and A1 mini.
5 materials is enough for most people, I can't see fitting 16 tool heads into the printer. Maybe if they make an XXL?
"Let's see you crank out flawless ASA or pc on those things."
Funny you should say that - I have an enclosed Mk4, and I have a spool of PC on the way. Should be interesting. Prusa also has their own brand of both materials, so they have profiles for them.
"Yet to see a good multi color print come off one, everything I've seen is acceptable at best"
Lately I've seen some nice prints on r/prusa3d. The XL had a rough start for sure, but I think it's getting better with more recent firmware and people are figuring out how to tune it.
@@logicalfundy For what it costs, it should have been turn-key out of the box. Yet it's the same old wasting time adjusting and tinkering to get it dialed it. That with a .04 nozzle to get decent prints.What a mess the XL is. This is 2024, not 2015. The REPRAP of DIY, ALU profiles and printed parts replication vibe is old and done. Prusa needs to innovate or die out without a whimper.
Not worth it price to performance wise, too little too late. They stuck way too long with their outdated i3 design.
I3 design...ike the A1?
@@thatguypoopin No like the more modern betern models you know like all the Vorons, RAtRig, Bambu P1 whatever and so on, basically every fast printer.
@@sierraecho884A1 is not a corexy like a voron or p1p it a bed slinger like the i3
@@thatguypoopin I know it is that´s why I said, like a Voron or all the other fast printers, which is not an A1.
Too expensive and too long a wait
The XL would have been a great printer in early 2022.
No touchscreen, no enclosure, and still have purge towers...what is th point of this thing other then mixing materials?
that's not a purge tower..
its infact a priming tower
To rip people off.
...what?@@AnotherCG
Its weak point is the non-rigid frame, which negates all the features.
Prusa needs to step up on innovation leaps as well as leaps customer experience, to just keep up with Bambu Lab, You can't be a premium brand if the customer experience and innovation lagging behind the regular to high priced market leader like Bambu, Creality and Pruse if nobody to blame but themselves as their machines sat in everyone's house and they rested on their lead. What happens if bambu lab releases a Even lower priced multi-head 36mm cubed machine. We all know it could happen!
Calling Creality a markt leader is a joke.
Prusa there customer service is amazing compaired to bambu where it takes a day to even get a reply and when you do it's not always helpfull.
Bambu would very much struggle with the challanges that the xl hold when it comes to software. Bambu only took everything from the open source community.
@@Parasite98 You might think it's a joke, but their volume clearly made them a market leader just at a different price point than Prusa.
@@mikeehuber They haven't done anything new besides releasing 50 ender versions
@@Parasite98 As far as Prusa being open sourced and having better customer service, It will take more than that for them to be a premium brand that deserves their premium price, they'll need to innovate at pace along with Bambu Lab! I think Prusa, will rise to the competition, if they have enough capital to scale up their innovation. If not, they'll have a tough time finding customers who want to spend two grand and still have to build for 4 hours! When you can, pull a Bambu out of the box and print better in the first 25 minutes. Open source was great when you had a fiddly mess of a product that had to be upgraded by the consumer to really truly work, my Bambu just works and really well just out of the box.
Prusas innovation is why every 3d printer on the market has heated beds and many have, auto bed leveling, magnetic removable PEI sheets and the I3 design.
Thank you prusa for your innovations that every other printer uses.
At first I was excited about this and debated buying one, but bambu changed the game, and prusa is dead until they catch up imo. Prusas prints slow, less reliable (go look up some videos proving this for farms), and cost more than bambu.
The only con with not buying prusa over bambu is that you dont get gummy bears in the box.
too little, too late and too expensive for a machine that only prints toys.
Tell me you don't know anything about 3D printing without telling me......
Unfortunately this is something I cannot recommend people to buy - it's $4000 even before assembly and shipping, and as it is it cannot even print basic engineering material such as ABS without a customized enclosure. The way I look at this is: you are paying for the price of an industrial 3D printer for a toy printer. Not to mention you'll need to wait 6-8 months for it to come to the US.@@Parasite98
🧐 Have you actually used a 3D printer?
Wow. Have you printed ABS on an open frame machine before??😂
@@qiliu497 they drank the koolaid