Design obligations don’t stop at the hardware engineering (*cough* Prusa)
It took me a bit longer to get around to than I expected, but I have my Prusa CORE One L set up and running.
The printer is glorious, and I’m glad that the One L isn’t sold as a self-assemble kit.
Mind you, I put together a couple Meldels back in the day. It’s not that I can’t put something together. I’m just at my stage of the hobby where I don’t want to be in all roles of the product’s lifecycle. I just want to be a user… I don’t want to also be the product engineer, the support tech, and the service depot.
That’s why I went from a Mendel to a Ultimaker 2.
From the Ultimaker 2+ to a QIDI i-fast.
From the QIDI i-fast to a Creality K1C.
Yes, I had an Ender 3 (which was free), but it was an S1 Pro - which, is far removed from the Ender 3’s of olde.
The CORE One L does feel like a tank of a printer. Not quite the industrial heft of the QIDI i-fast, but certainly a step beyond Bambu’s offerings - at least in terms of build quality and materials selection.
What I was not prepared for, though, was the setup and software experience.
Woof.
The on-printer interface (screen, controls, design) is somewhere between the Ultimaker and the Creality. It’s functional, but it’s not a class-leasing experience. Same for adding the included camera, setting the wifi SSID/password, and connecting the printer to Prusa slicer (local connect, or cloud). As good as Prusa Slicer is, the user experience is worse than what you get out of Creality Print. Who knew that’d ever be a thing?
The truly mind-blowing thing about this, is that the CORE One L is a great printer. Once I get INDX, I’m sure it will be a truly transformative printer. Clearly the engineering talent is there. And yes, I get that these concerns aren’t really real issues for the person running 50 of these in a print farm. The problem, as I see it, is that the lack of focus on UI/UX makes this tough printer to recommend to a newcomer to FDM printing. For that person, it’s not about what the best printer is. Instead, it’s about what’s the best solution for them to operate without running into obstacles that they’re not likely to overcome on their own.
The problem is likely solvable, without Prusa having to change their development focus at all.
MAKE IT A COMMUNITY CONTEST
Make the basic operational workflow touchpoints (printer UI, setup, operation, slicer ops, and network printing) open to the public. This doesn’t have to be coders making pull requests. This can be clickable wireframes, demonstrating better UX ergonomics.
All of us are smarter than one of us, as it were.
C’mon Prusa… you have the best printer. Make it the best user experience, too.
