No. None of this crap. I want to 3D print. I don't want to service industrial machinery in my spare time. Why should 3D printing require spending weekends troubleshooting machines just to keep the thing working? I want to print models not play repair technician.
Vorons are fantastic printers and a fantastic kit if 3D printing itself is your hobby. 3D printing is a fantastic hobby. There's tons of fun to be had building up and dialing in a printer kit. A well tuned voron can be up with the best of the best 3D printers. If that's what you want to do go for it!
But for heaven's sake I want to print models, parts and other practical things. I have other things to do and problems to solve. My 3D printer is a tool. If I have to spend just as much time working on the machine as I do using to actually print things then I'm not interested.
Bambu is still the best game in town for a turn-key, just works printer. Prusa can deliver the same experience at double to triple the ticket price. A voron is not a replacement for a Bambu printer no matter how good the printers actually are.
I’m sympathetic to your POV but the reason you should is that’s the price to keep things open.
Obviously many people don’t care about that. Fair enough. But then you should be prepared to deal with their shenanigans.
Prusa also does things like maintain and develop printables.com and PrusaSlicer (itself forked) which many of these closed printers fork with minimal changes.
People don’t care about this either. So again, get ready to deal with garbage when Prusa goes under.
I think it’s sad since the whole domestic 3D printer thing started as open source.
No, it's not, and the perception that it is hurts the cause of openness.
Open Source has every ability to be better, to Just Work, to not require constant debugging. Good Open Source systems manage this. The fact that 3D printers apparently have not is the fault of those printers, not any inherent quality of openness.
Comparing Bambu to Voron is an absurd comparison
I politely disagree. I was in the market for a more modern printer, and it boiled down to either a BL or a Voron - in the end I decided against ease of use and in favor of an open ecosystem. I agree in that they are not universally interchangeable, but for some people either can be an option, each with distinctive advantages and disadvantages.
the whole process is basically cnc but with z hops and extruding instead of removing material.
we do not even have conical slicing yet.
Ya, it is, and it’s been there for quite a while now thanks to Bambu.
The X1 just works. Coming up on a year of frequent use, I can count the number of failed prints on one hand. It’s incredible.
It's all just much less tinkering then 5 years ago.
Also, subtractive manufacturing is much harder than additive manufacturing, because you need to position the machine around an existing piece of stock and sequence your operations manually, instead of letting a generic slicing algorithm slice from bottom to top with an offset vs the intended printing location only being a problem if you accidentally print over the edge of the build plate, which is usually not possible mechanically.
also there are so much stuff that are in open prs and issues for years that are not implemented for slicers.
"take a load" - I don't know what kind of load, do you mean the fact that PLA is creeping under sustained load?
If that is YOUR usecase that is fine, but that does not mean that set and forget works just fine for others. Btw gun people use PLA plus just fine.
Don't get me wrong here. PLA is a great polymer, However you can't really expect parts made with it to hold up when compared to other "engineering grade" polymers.
Not many people use 3d printing for applications that require extreme strength though, that's really not the goal many people are aiming for.
I do this for a living and people are always looking for more parts to run through the process and better filaments to see those parts end up performant.
CF-PETG is strong! For a bit more toughness and temp resistance, PA12CF35 is seeing a lot of use. Some companies out there have service departments to keep machinery running. They apply FDM more than you might expect. Alloy 910 for gears, Cf of various kinds for abrasive scenarios, like cardboard handling, in one scenario.
It can be a fantastic material for some functional parts.
But even if not, I don't see how it's invalidates that there are printers out there that are more or less set and forget.
It is a great machine though it does not always make the strongest parts, and single material builds is geometry limiting. Lack of chamber heat and one nozzle makes some things easy, but does not entirely avoid the trouble with higher performing polymers.
I've owned or used probably every major (and some minor) printer released in the last 8 years and for most people Bambu really will just be "plug and play" (and even if something goes wrong they'll hold hands as much as needed)