Geeetech

This is just a general rant for general discussion.

As I beat my head against the wall learning 3d and 3d printing, I'm constantly shaking my head at how antiquated everything feels. I'm writing this as I wait 10 minutes for gcode to upload to the SD card on the printer over octoprint, wondering why where isn't wifi on the printer and a desktop printer I can print direct from windows 10. The file transfer could at least use rudimentary data compression to cut the time by 2/3rds, after all, gcode is mostly numbers, spaces and a few letters, ideal for data compression. Why the heck is the SD card limited to 2gb SD? The wifi connector is a pathetic joke. The usb speed is only 250,000 kbs.

I had a little exposure to 3d printing 20 years ago and it seems that the only thing that has improved is the price, which has improved DRAMATICALLY! The thousand dollars today, back then would have been $100,000 and nowhere near as good.

I also want flying cars and full color 3d prints.

Pick up a raspberry pi 3/4 and load octoprint or repetier. That will give you wireless access to the printer with some added functionality. If you want to hook your printer directly up to your windows machine, repetier host is a good option there. Also when you are moving files that are megabytes in size, who cares about the speed across wifi, it will still take hours to print that 5 megabyte file.

If you want to compress the data, then you need a more powerful processor on the boards to decompress and more memory to handle both the original file and the decompressed file. Then there will need to be an OS on this new board instead of a simple controller and firmware. That adds costs, complexity, and potential incompatibility. Leaving the controller simple to follow pre-compiled gcode allows mostly universal compatibility (minus the differences of marlin/repetier/firmwareX or the printer settings that are a bit different between them) along with keeps costs low.

Also for full color prints... many options there too... multiple heads, filament splicers, pause and switch, a10/20m or t.

These printers are getting cheaper, faster, and prints higher quality. New print nozzles are released that can heat faster, beds heat faster, motors running cooler while going faster. All this happening while costing less per each component and companies like Geeetech looking at what has happened already and replicating those designs cheaper and actually adding improvements too. My old Solidoodle is unable to print half the quality these printers today at 1/3 the speed and it cost 5x more in 2012.

So I disagree with your assessment of the state of printers but I will agree there is always room for improvement