No worries; We see pretty much the same issues as you. But as you might understand, people within Ultimaker can't say anything about what the next products or steps will be outside of official communication. That is also the origin of the lawnmower joke; We can't say anything less we risk that people read too much in other things that we say.
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ahoeben 1,981
Obviously the Ultimaker lawnmower is long overdue. It has been rumored since forever:
https://community.ultimaker.com/search/?q=lawnmower&quick=1
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nallath 1,124
it's been in development for almost 7 years now. It's going to be the lawnmower to end all other lawnmowers
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neute 16
FWIW and aside from all the joking, I think Ultimaker is long overdue to upgrade its hardware.
Just last week I had my company's S5 drop its linear rods and belts all over the build plate (again) because a tiny grub screw came loose. Of course it had to be just hours before the end of a 36h build job and not, say, during a 30 min quickie. I'll admit that the machine is not the single most well maintained of all machines, and I took the opportunity to clean and lubricate everything. Unfortunately, design decisions such as clipped-in rods in plastic bearing blocks can't be corrected by some maintenance.
This is to say that while the Ultimaker motion system, that has basically been around since the UMO, was a very powerful kinematic and definitely served its purpose, it is time to move on and catch up with current designs (maybe even leapfrog the status quo a little bit?). Machines like the E3D toolchanger, probably the upcoming Prusa CoreXY machine or heck, even my Voron which consists of a few aluminium extrusions and a bag of printed plastic parts, jump leaps and bounds around the S5 - mainly due to a stiff and light motion system based on linear rails (which don't even have to be the best of the expensive, since we have rather small loads) and precise filament control, which is achieved through light and powerful direct dual drive extruders.
All of these machines cost roughly a third of what UM is asking for the S5. I'm not saying that UM should offer such a machine at this price point, since that is probably not possible due to overhead, the vast amount of software development that also goes into the UM ecosystem and some more economic reasons that are beyond me;
As an industrial customer who is somewhat invested in the UM ecosystem and the FFF market in general, I'm just saying that the 6k€ price tag on the UMS5 hurts a lot when I compare it to other machines such as the above mentioned, because *IMO* the hardware is not worth it (any more), even considering the ecosystem.
If a future UM machine would feature a rock solid and fast motion system, a precise extrusion system (could be 2,85 mm, could be 1,75 mm), optionally a Material Station that also works with, say, PVA and/or fibre reinforced materials - along with all the great ecosystem features and Cura 5.x with a smooth interface and arachne slicing engine - the machine could cost 10-15 k€ and still be a great deal for industrial customers. And synergies in development and sourcing could trickle down into a new prosumer device at 3-5k€, comparable to the current S5/S3 lineup.
long story short, circling back to the first line of this text, I'm sure that something like this is what is actually going on behind the scenes at Ultimaker. Beside all the ranting I'm still mostly a fan and excited for what is to come.
best, Niklas
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