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.
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