DRM on the resin combined with their high resin pricing is an issue. Heygears ABS-like is close to $90/kg while other ABS like are $25/kg.

Sadly this printer will never be a cost-effective solution with those jacked-up resin prices.

Recomendation?

The buildplate should fit to make it easy to use.

Software subscription and DRM on resin/filament are huge red flags. Had a look at heygears offerings as people describe it as the BambuLab equivalent for SLA. Looking into it, the feels more like a FormLabs company with overpriced resins and DRM to make you buy their resin.

Spending once 1.5-2k€ for the Flex RS printer is fine (more than I would like) but paying 40-70€/kg for resin killed it. Just not possible to economically justify paying twice as much for the source materials (resin). This would mean HeyGear jacking up the production cost by approx. 50-80%, indefinitely. A better option is it spend a day dialing in a third-party resin on the Prusa or Elegoo.

subscription = selling the same software indefinitely

paid upgrades = forced to deliver value/improvements with each paid update

for materials it is similar:

DRM = jacking up prices

open = competing on quality: You could use our first-party product with perfect integration but you are free to source whatever you like

Well, any printer will do that if you calibrate it well enough.

Pain point in the past where the build platform. Prints frequently failed because they would lift from the aluminum plate.

After a lot of trouble, I switched to a flexible buildplate which first was blasted with course “sand” followed by fine glass beans. flexplate so I can remove the print. The course surface makes the print stick but not stick too well. Would like this time to avoid all of this troubleshooting.

Also considered buying one of those printers that work upside down by projecting the light onto the surface and the print is lowered into the resin vat.

“Good” is fairly ambiguous here because what would a “good” slicer look like to you?

Good workflow (UI design), decent automatic support generation, good tool for manually brushing/configuring support material and ideally an elephant foot compensation setting/calibration for the first layer which has a significantly longer exposure time.

Support generation and being able to manually edit those pushed me toward PrusaSlicer.

The VAT tilt is a bit dangerous because of a potential resin leak of the release film, leaking into your printer’s internals

How big of an issue is that? Are there upgrades to seal the printer?

Back in the day, it was more or less a total economic loss for those cheap printers: LCD damaged, UV-array damaged and a complete mess within that was hard to clean.

I care about proprietary in the sense that I am locked to a certain slicer. Don’t care if the mechanical design and firmware is proprietary.

Also I don’t care that much about replacement parts. Affordable FEP-film (or those never versions of release film) is important. Other replacement parts are nice to have but never had to repair anything (the highest risk I see is flooding it with resin or dropping something in the vat that will crush the screen and if you are careful this is highly unlikely to ever happen especially now with the pressure detection on some printer models).

Great to hear you like it and that UV-tools work with it. What I hated about anycubic photon workshop was that the support generation was 100% manual (automatically created unusable results). PrusaSlicer was so much easier to work with.

The nice aspect of network connectivity is comfortably moving files to it and receiving a notification once the print is done.

I keep misplacing USB-sticks or it is a pain to first walk to the printer, picking up the stick, returing to the PC, and walking once more to the printer.

Bambu Lab A1 or even better the A1 mini.

You can get a plate swapper for the A1 mini. Combine this with an AMS for automatic filament changes (switching spools if one runs out) and you get a lights-out manufacturing solution: https://swap-systems.com/product/swapmod/

Do you mean with filament slicer a filament cutter?

Does Creality uses V6-compatible nozzles?

If one of the stepper drivers blows up (it happens and since it blows/damages the PCB it can’t be repaired) can I swap in a generic motherboard without replacing other components like the screen?

So your suggestion would have been the Creality K2 or K1C?

Tell me.

Looked last week into it and concluded that BamubLab is still the best option.

Runner up was Creality. They are equally proprietary these days.

Name one that is competitive to the BambuLab P1S combo.

Keep in mind that the operator is an average Joe, who knows nothing about 3D-printers, with minimal training on the job to do the maintenance.

Competitive (explicitly) includes cost: If I need to pay $2k for a printer that works just as well as an $800 option it is not feasible (for a business) to spend this much more.

I love DIY.

At home, I run and build DIY printers but you can’t deploy them in a business/production. Why? As soon as there is a printer that isn’t it just works with easy (and documented) maintance procedures the business needs to hire not only a worker but a worker who knows 3D printers. That’s bad.

Printers like the Sovol SV08 and Biqu AMS (still not launched) aren’t just there yet.

Combined with the BambuLab pricing on the A1 mini and P1S it is pretty difficult to buy FOSS.

Prusa is close with the Core 1 but they don’t have an good AMS package for their printers (their MMU lacks a enclosure/easy to deploy setup). They propably know it but don’t have the answer avaible.

Equally on the econmics side it is difficult: The BambuLab P1S killed the (FOSS) market.

If I compare a 1150€ BambuLab X1C against the 1350€ Prusa Core One I would likley prefer the Prusa product/ecosystem. With the P1S it suddently is 700€ compared to 1350€ for a machine that will produce the exact same parts with a near identical cycletime, uptime and opperating/maintance cost. The decission in favor of BambuLab is easy.

What a bummer.

Had high hopes of them cooking it in secret and releasing it with the potential for 4th axis stuff with the robot arm in the future (software update) or at least the community could use it as an easy-to-purchase devkit to develop their own opensource software solution.

With this being just a concept and them BUYING their award (sic., paid to apply with a high success of “winning”) turns this into a nothing burger.

Pricing will be interesting. My bet is on $5k. Trying to position it against machines like the BCN3D sigmax or Ultimaker Factor S4.

what i expect:

• IDEX
• nozzle is raised and lowered
• single extruder motor that is switched between both filament paths
• A1 mini style hotend/nozzle
• some other modules that will be useless. The laser module will be interesting as this converts a 3D-printer to a laser class 4 system(*).