Are there any reviewers on YouTube/Rumble/etc. or independent blogs that don’t post affiliate links, aren’t sponsored by the printer company, or had one sent out by the company? Those to me all seem like a conflict of interest.
Yes people need to make money, I’m not blind to that, but they can advertise other things that aren’t a direct conflict of interest.
I’m looking to get my first printer and would like to get info from an unbiased source. I just don’t know enough to weed through the million 3D printer channels.
The Sovol SV06 Ace seems nice with little research as it is large enough to print the project I have in mind and uses open source firmware (Klipper) which is a must for me.
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Good luck finding one. I put zero faith in any electronic reviews because it’s so commonly gamed that there’s no way to know whether you’re being fed bullshit or not and the likelyhood of BS increases when it’s someone who reviews these devices professionally. Even recommendations you get here could be fake or misinformed for all you or anyone else knows.
Reviewers without ANY potential conflict of interest don’t exist (and if you are even considering “Rumble” as something to trust… holy shit).
But also? Nobody has zero conflict of interest. Especially once they get into the “media” side of things. because you are going to meet employees of companies (or have colleagues become employees) and it is inherently going to shade things. I don’t like that Intel are dangerously close to circling the drain because one of my best friends from grad school works there. But also? I have a few people who work at a company that my firm does business with and we get drinks together when I fly out to visit.
But also? That is kind of what journalism(-adjacent) work is. Just because I have drinks with Fred and Sally doesn’t mean I am going to give them a pass for not meeting a deliverable or price gouging us. Similarly, I am not going to buy an intel processor just because a buddy of mine works on their compiler.
What matters is actually looking at how an outlet reviews things and how transparent they are with their biases and policies.
In the 3d printing space? I recently bought a new printer. The outlets that I genuinely trust are Teaching Tech and Maker’s Muse as both of them are very transparent on their review policies and have a good track record of reviewing things. I ALSO just did some youtube browsing to get close ups of aspects of the printer I was not sure about or to see what happens if you print on a stable surface (I love Angus but someone needs to take that table away from him…).
And if the extent of your research is asking randos on the internet to search for you? I recommend reading up on how prevalent astroturfing is and the cases of even “established” social media accounts being purchased/rented to post FUD. Because it isn’t just consumers who learned they can search “best doorknob reddit” to get a “better” answer… And while Lemmy is too small to really care about… it is also trivial to do this kind of stuff on.
Best ones I know of are maker’s muse and teaching tech
I really like Teaching Tech. He seems to do things out of his own interest and to spread knowledge. I also saw he has a policy on his website of how he conducts reviews. Thanks
The only review I care/cared about is when someone actually uses the thing. I don’t care what they review. I care about all the projects they do later using a machine. When I was buying, everyone was defaulting to a Prusa. When everything else broke they used a MK3, so that is hat I got. Also, only people with Prusa’s seemed to be actually printing while only owning one printer. Everyone yapping about cheap printers had a half dozen of which only one or two ever worked at the same time. That is way more expensive than buying one machine.
Since then, Prusa has gone less and less open source and community driven. I still value true ownership without strings attached more than any other feature. To trust someone else’s proprietary scam and potential manipulation is to sell yourself to rent a product. Prusa is now selling a proprietary printer too. I would be very cautious about them going forward. The real open source community is with Voron and many projects supported by LDO kits.
That is good advice. Thank you very much. I saw Teaching Tech has a video specifically about what printers he uses day to day. I had heard that about Prusa unfortunately. It sucks to see a company that pioneered a space change it’s values.
The far bigger issue is that reviewers don’t have the time to put 1000 hours and more on the printer. So a lot of them are just an extended unboxing experience.
Next issue is that nearly all of the influencers have no expertise at all. They are just talking heads and happen to know a thing or two about 3D-printing. This means they still have no clue at all about embedded/electronics and mechanical design and often make hillerious comments.
Reviews are good to learn about each printer features if you don’t like to read. Then, just do a check list and see which machine has the best specs for your needs. At least that’s my approach when buying printers because at the end of the day they’re all extremely similar and capable all things considered. A consideration that may only matter to few is the proprietary/open-source aspect.
Reviews will only emphasize bells and whistles you may not even need. Everyone will comment on their personal experience which will vary with the machine they have and the gap can be huge for the same machine because it’s a piece of hardware/software and some may have flaws despite all the quality checks.
but they can advertise other things that aren’t a direct conflict of interest.
Advertising things that arent a direct conflict of interest just results in poorly targeted ads, which both consumers and advertisers don’t like.
On the “open source” side, its not enough that the firmware is open source, the flashed binary needs to actually be unmodified. Marlin and klipper run 99% of the budget 3d printer space, and both are open source projects. There are still dozens of printers that are shipped with modified firmware with the changes kept secret. GPL is only as powerful as your lawyers are.
Is there a way to figure out if a product is shipped 100% open source? Maybe a website that keeps track of how open/closed each company is? Otherwise do you know of a way to reflash the system with an open source project? Something like a new OS from github? I’ve found in any hobby there tends to be a brand that has gotten lots of mod support from the community
Other than building the firmware and flashing it yourself not really?
Usually they will have flashing instructions somewhere, and thats a goodish sign. Even better if they have the source code published somewhere. But unless you build it and flash it yourself its impossible to know what is on there.
For a real-world example, many Anet A8 machines were shipping with “marlin”, but with the runaway thermal protection disabled.
I know this is for the SV08, not the 06 that I originally mentioned but there is a way to load mainline Klipper. I believe this would make the whole printer totally opensource unless you know of some other proprietary part I’m not thinking of.
That looks pretty convoluted, but yeah, thats kinda what you’d need to do. There are a lot of bits and pieces there, so if open source is essential, youd want to check that all are OS.
A more pragmatic approach may be to simply accept that because you can flash the firmware, that is good enough. The first party firmware will probably be good, assuming its not had safety systems turned off, and if the firmware actually becomes a problem you can always switch later?
If this is your first printer, I would stick with the stock firmware unless there is something wrong with it. Klipper/Marlin/etc dont really matter as long as it produces the correct print output.
It will be my first printer. I’m learning FreeCAD now in preparation. Open Source is important to me as I don’t like software spying on me so I’d go through this process. In the future if I end up finding that 3D printing is something I wish to pursue more I think I’d step right into a Voron.
Its a 3d printer, it does not need to be networked (often can’t be networked, without octoprint etc), so no real potential for spyware. Safety features being turned off causing fires is about the worst that can happen.
Its worth considering if you want to do 3d printing for producing prints, or tinkering with the printer itself. A lot of the cheap kit printers are very bare bones, so you’ll end up spending lots more time tinkering and upgrading. If you just want to make items, spend more on a higher end printer.
Cheap first and upgrade later is pretty reasonable though.
Good points. I’ll definitely ponder them and see if maybe I don’t want to network it
@sic_semper_tyrannis check this out. https://m.youtube.com/@AuroraTech/videos. Matter of fact reviews that certain don’t hype
She certainly is matter of fact, almost to the point of boring haha. I appreciate these types of reviews as everything looks to be on an even playing field. She was sponsored by Sovol on her Sovol review which makes me wonder if anything was fluffed up to sound better
