u/quicksilver500

Hi there,

After having a mare of a time with the Core One L (mediocre print quality, constant clogging, & a nozzle crash within less than a spool's worth of material), I am looking for an alternative to purchase once my return process for the C1L is complete.

The SV08 has caught my eye as an alternative Core XY printer with similar capabilities, and even with potential for INDX support, which is one of the reasons I got a C1L.

I've had a browse of the sub but I haven't quite scratched the itch on wanting to hear from people who actually own an SV08, so I'm hoping you guys can help me out. Primarily I'm looking to understand how reliable the machine is in terms of things like failed prints, nozzle clogs, and overall print quality. Secondary to that, if the printer is failing on any of these aspects, eg. print quality, what the 'quality ceiling' is for the machine is in these terms, i.e. is it possible to bring the print quality on par with industry leading machines as long as you calibrate your print profiles correctly?

Thirdly, any other feedback and information would be very welcome, especially around recommend auxillary equipment or upgrades that should be obtained from the get go for the best user experience.

Thank you for your time!

Hi guys, I would just like to share my journey in owning a Prusa printer with you all!

This year I turned 30, and to celebrate I decided I wanted to splash out and get something nice for myself. I have been excited by the prospect of owning a 3D printer ever since the i3 release back in 2015, the possibilities seemed endless! It took me 10 years, but I got there in the end.

After many hours of research, I decided that Prusa were the only company I felt comfortable buying from, given their strong track record for reliability, repairability, and the company's reputation for championing Open Source ideology - something which I value greatly given that I have recently made the switch to Linux from windows (which I would highly recommend to everyone btw). The smug sense of superiority I got from buying EU was a nice bonus as well.

I wanted a reliable printer that would work for me for many years. Something that was rock solid and repairable. The idea was to have the capability to maybe even make some moderate amounts of money from designs or products. I was deciding between an XL or a Core One L (large print volume was a key feature for me) when I saw the announcement of INDX, and immediately I knew that the Core One L was the machine that I needed to get! It had a huge print volume, was strongly marketed towards professional use and reliability, and with INDX coming down the line around the time I would really be hitting my stride with the machine I knew that this was the right decision for me!

I purchased the printer in April, after saving up considerably given the expense of the printer and the fact that we are currently trying to save for a house deposit. It arrived in May, and I got straight to printing right out of the box!

I printed a [Benchy](https://imgur.com/a/1Q7FbLT) first, as is tradition, in the beautiful Galaxy Black filament that comes with the printer. It turned out great! I was super proud of it and excited to start printing my own designs. My first project was a doohickey for my parent's camper van, they had a spare part ≈ 5mm x 5mm by 50mm, the perfect starter project. I measured it and modelled it up in FreeCAD (yay opensource again!) and printed it. Forgot to add supports so it turned out bad, printed again with supports - lesson learned and my parents now had a new doohickey and one to spare - A great success!

Next - a guard for a pinch point on my stairs at home, I downloaded a 3D scanning app - imported my scanned mesh into FreeCAD - modelled up my guard, printed, the design was too tight, but the next one will be perfect! Modelled up the next iteration of the design and- print failure. Oh, whoops, my bad that 45° section didn't have adequate support and fell over let's fix that and go again and- print failure. Spaghetti everywhere halfway up the print. Okay, no idea what happened there, let's clean everything and try that again and- print failure. The HF nozzle that came with the printer has clogged. 2 hours spent trying to unclog it prove to be unsuccessful. Right.

I left it for the evening and swapped the nozzle to the non-HF that came in the box the next day, success!! The print came out fine, fit fine, and it was time to move on to the next project.

Something a bit more challenging, a Ø230mm x 100mm headlight cover for my motorbike. 3 design iterations later, and another nozzle clog which poked out the top of the nozzle (after disassembly of the nextruder) and was therefore reachable & recoverable, and I have two designs that I know will fit correctly, I just need to decide on the aesthetic design. Easy - I'll just print both in PLA and see how they look before the final version in ASA. The first print worked wonderfully, a 5 hour print. Fitted it up and it looked great, now to the second design tomorrow. Same print settings, very similar design and- print failure. Clogged nozzle, unrecoverable.

At this point I decided it was time to call support. Something which I have never really done (or have had to do) with any other piece of technology I have ever owned. They diagnose the issue as the Galaxy Black PLA that came with the printer. They'll send a new Jet Black PLA spool and, after some convincing from me, a new nozzle, a HF one of a different design to the one that came with the printer which I was assured would not have the same issues as the default one. (Why did they send out unreliable filament and (?) nozzle with their flagship 'rock solid' 1800 euro printer in the first place? Why were potential filament issues not communicated to potentially affected customers, especially a brand new inexperienced one?) But okay, I'll wait two weeks for the new parts to arrive so I can use my brand new 'top of the line' printer properly.

The replacement filament and nozzle arrive, hurrah. I disassemble the nextruder, put in the new nozzle, reassemble the nextruder, load in the new filament straight out of the bag, and print a Benchy. The results are... [Okay](https://imgur.com/a/8VJ1g8X). There are visible print defects - stringing, VFAs on the back end of the hull, and flopping overhangs on the roof, but alright this is just a test piece so I'll deal with it. I print the second headlight cover design. Again, stringing, VFAs on the outer diameter, and some weird slicing on some thin walls but nothing structurally important. I test the new design and decide I prefer it to the first one, time to move to ASA. I remove the PLA from the printer for the night and decide to print the next day.

After spending a long time slicing the new design for ASA to try to get the best result, I finally send the g-code to the printer and load up my ASA spool. As soon as the filament hits the nextruder the dreaded clicking noises start again. Another nozzle clog. This one seemingly happening when I removed the filament from the extruder the previous night. After only two prints, the Core One L is an incredibly expensive paperweight again. Disassembly reveals about 0.5cm of broken filament stuck at the top of the nozzle. Remove clog, reassemble, load in ASA, more grinding and clicking. Disassemble again, no visible clog at the top - the nozzle opening at the bottom seems to be clogged as well somehow. Reassemble the nextruder, load in PLA, high heat (PETG loading procedure), try to force filament through the nozzle, nothing. Poke it with the needle that comes with the printer, it just bends in half ineffectively. Dead in the water. Again.

After an unplanned evening dedicated to keeping my cool with 50 tabs open on nozzle clogs, I eventually manage to clear the clog and run a few purges with the ASA. Everything looks clear, I set off the print. The results are again, [okay](https://imgur.com/a/EtRrLBM). Print artifacts, horrendous surface finish at support locations, VFAs, and strong layer lines but it fits and it doesn't look terrible from a distance so, fine, I guess.

This evening I decided I would try the non-HF nozzle again with the ASA, seeing as it gave the best surface finish in my previous prints and I really don't care about how long something takes to print if it comes out looking nice. I spent another evening unclogging the old nozzle with the new PLA spool, and again eventually got a clear run of filament. I wasn't convinced, so I decided to do a quick test print of a calibration cube from printables. [On this print the nozzle crashed into the print bed halfway through the 'nozzle cleaning' run and gouged into the print sheet a good half a millimeter, completely ruining it.](https://imgur.com/a/1e2cbdt) None of this was detected by the printer, I was standing right next to the printer and reacted as soon as I heard the noise, but the sheet is completely destroyed, along with the nozzle. This occurred immediately after the printer had gone through it's nozzle/bed probing procedure.

My Prusa Core One L arrived in early May. Since then, it has spent more time nonfunctional than functional. Since then, by weight of printed material, I have more wasted filament due to print failures than I do completed parts. Since then, I have spent ten times as much time and energy troubleshooting this 'rock solid', 'reliable' 'tank' of a machine than I have troubleshooting FreeCAD, one of the most notoriously buggy pieces of 3D modelling software available to man. Since then I have run through three nozzles, destroying one, three different filaments, and a destroyed print sheet, with maybe one or two prints that I would actually qualify as passable. At all stages I have used the Prusa Slicer to slice the correctly chosen Prusa filament for my correctly chosen Prusa Printer with correctly chosen Prusa Nozzles, using the default Prusa settings - bar infill and messing about with supports.

Quite frankly, I consider this level of performance completely and utterly unacceptable for such a hugely expensive machine specifically marketed towards a more professional user, centered on reliability. I wanted this to work, so, so badly. I wanted to buy a printer and have an absolute blast printing all of the things that have come into my head to print over the years. I wanted to explore the feasibility of carrying out research and design, maybe even the potential around creating my own products. All of that potential and excitement has been left a charred husk in the wake of the Core One L's insurmountable and complete unreliability. This machine does not works as advertised. The main central reason I bought the Core One L was that I was absolutely assured of its performance and reliability. In reality, my experience with the machine is that it utterly and completely fails to live up to the expectations set out by the marketing.

As you can probably tell from the length of this post, I am incredibly upset by this whole affair. I have been left thoroughly disappointed, frustrated, and disheartened by this experience, so much so that I do not wish to continue with 3D printing as a hobby at all. I am currently pursuing a return for my Core One L with Prusa support, a process which I seriously hope is as quick and painless as possible, as my patience with the Core One L and Prusa as a company are completely worn through.

I want to postface all of this by stating that I would consider myself quite handy around tech, I have built and rebuilt my own PC multiple times, I have carried out screen replacements on mobile phones, hard drive recovery, I have breathed new life into an abused work printer (MK2 or 3) long enough to get a quasi-functional part out of it with zero experience or support. I am not thick stupid, as much as that might be a convenient answer to all of this for some of you. Apologies for the disclaimer but I have had enough accusations of general ineptitude and mental incapability leveled at me in this sub and I would like to nip those in the bud before they come flying at me again.

And for those of you who will reply with a "TL:DR lol", or snarky remarks about "Who cares?", I am going through the trouble of writing this all out specifically to warn potential customers of this company that there are, in fact, instances where Prusa printers are not 'rock solid' 'tanks', as much as the prevailing sentiment seems to be on Reddit. There are instances where these machines do not work as advertised, and there are people who have had terrible experiences with a Prusa product. You are not guaranteed reliability with this company. My experience is proof enough, in my view, given the amount of money I spent and the experience I actually received. So, if you're thinking about posting a smart 'you do not need to announce your departure' comment, maybe consider that this post isn't actually for you. Cheers.