Strana 101
not talking much about the higher K numbers
anymore, to say nothing of 16K. On the contra-
ry, in Asia, China and Taiwan, development has
picked up a frantic pace. Printers are evolving
in innovation steps measured by months, while
the lifespan of printers, especially the key ele-
ments like the LCD display, is longer than the
innovation cycle. So new, better quality and
cheaper machines are coming to the market so
quickly that it's not worth repairing the old ones.
And the notion of more Australian machines is
not even worth the discussion. Refurbishing an
Australian projector costs twice as much as
a new Chinese printer. Meanwhile, the Austra-
lians still have 4K resolution, while a new LCD
printer of the most expensive Chinese class
already achieve 16K. Additionally, Chinese prin-
ters have up to twice the build area. An Austra-
lian printer today has got to be one tough sell.
Under current conditions, even the Great Horst
Fuchs would probably not sell an Australian
printer.
This is the situation that has put us on the
edge of a dilemma, so to speak. Okay, the Chine-
se are said to copy and steal. But the Taiwanese
also produce very similar and probably equally
high-quality printers in the same price range.
They are also Chinese, but democratic and ho-
nest, respecting the rules. The descendants of
Chiang Kai-shek do not copy and steal, only the
descendants of Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai do
that, when you really think about it. Of course,
we can buy a Czech printer, because Mr. Pru-
sa neither copies nor steals, but unfortunately
he does not have printers on the level of the
Australians or the Chinese, regardless of their
geographical origin. Pragmatically, we have no
choice but to buy Taiwanese. They are in the
same league in every way, no?
And if you really delve into this a little deeper,
doubt begins to creep in regarding those Chine-
se vices. Who are they copying from when they
manage to outperform their competitors at a
better price? Maybe they have a time machine,
but the question is who they copied that from.
To tell the truth, I also have a problem with the
spying. I'm not an IT guy and I don't brag that
I understand everything, but I think that in or-
der for someone to spy on me on the net, I have
to have the offending tools that enable it on my
own devices. Australian and American printers
are connected to the net. But it's different with
the Chinese, their printers are not connected,
the data is transferred to them via a flash drive.
Honestly, it's a bummer, transferring data over
a network is better, and personally I would
risk the snooping. There is a proven way to spy
around the internet, most of them are based in
Ireland and speak ‘American’, and if some Chi-
nese James Bond is looking at our 1/48 scale
bombs and rockets, I'm completely stumped.
So there's still the possibility that the Chinese
are snooping even without being connected to
the internet. God knows, their technological
progress is really fast, maybe they have gotten
that capability by now.
To sum it up, my final impression of Mr. Pru-
sa after listening to his interview twice and
thinking about his thoughts for a week is that
I would recommend that he stop whining about
Chinese competition, get off his ass and come
up with something, or copy something from the
Chinese, so that he doesn't have to switch his
new American factory from producing printers
to popping out toasters (pun intended). Because
those Chinese printers will be better and che-
aper than his, even if the world's top customs
officer, President T., imposed a 100% tariff on
them. He would still have a few dozen percent
of margin left. Mr. Prusa doesn't produce many
printers of our type, I think he only has one type.
His domain is line printers. But as it turns out,
the situation in this market segment is similar
to that of projector and LCD printers. The Chine-
se also dominate line printers, with BambuLab
having the largest market share, over 40%, and
Prusa having 3%. I'm not familiar with filament
printers, we don't use them, but if you browse
the internet, look at prices and compare pro-
ducts, it looks like Prusa’s flagship unit costs
twice as much as the flagship of his Chinese
competitor. And that’s gotta be a kick in the
nads….
We are currently testing how Chinese prin-
ters handle different materials. We also have
material from Prusa. We hope that Mr. Prusa’s
resin material works well. If it is cheaper and
better than the Chinese equivalents, we will be
happy to buy from him, and the quantities will
not be small.
So, what’s our takeaway from all this? My opi-
nion is that most of what is said about the Chi-
nese and their industry is already ten to fifteen
years outdated. Today, the situation is complete-
ly different. The Chinese no longer have anyone
to copy from in most fields, they are a steamship
ahead of the competition in many of them. This
ultimately applies to our field as well. Who can
they copy from, when at least three quarters of
all molds for newly released plastic models are
custom-made in China? It's time to stop lying to
ourselves about our European and American
technological superiority, stop whining about
Chinese injustices and instead work our asses
off to catch up with their technological lead. And
it's not just about 3D printers.
INFO Eduard
101
March 2025