Prusa XL - WiFi, Load Cell, and More!
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- čas přidán 19. 05. 2024
- I finally got my new Prusa XL with dual tool-heads in the mail. I got it assembled and have some very early impressions of it. Since there's not much out there about the printer, I wanted to give my thoughts an impressions. In this video I start using it more and talk about the networking, first layers, and test out my very first tool swap.
Prusa XL - www.prusa3d.com/product/origi...
My Favorite Tools - www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls...
Prusa XL Playlist - • Prusa XL
00:00 Intro
01:04 Networking
02:54 Prusa Connect, Link and Slicer
06:28 Transfer Speeds are Awful!
08:58 Prusa Connect Issues
09:57 First Layer Impression
11:34 Build Quality
12:54 Ooze Control
14:39 XL Back Panel
16:03 Multi-Material Print Test
17:54 First Tool Head Swap
19:03 Subsequent Tool Swaps
20:11 Print Quality with Tool Swaps
21:03 Early Impressions
21:56 Print Quality
22:34 Conclusion - Jak na to + styl
Hi Robert, thanks a lot for the no nonsense info you give in your videos about the XL. This is very valuable. Please keep up this series
Will do!
Thanks for the video, I've been waiting for this one to see the multi material / tool heads in action. Looks really good barely any wasted filament.
Yeah, barely anything. And on larger prints, it's going to be the same amount, so the wipe tower is really minimal and can be hidden easily on the print bed.
Great video! Very concise and honest. You touched on all the points that I hoped you would. I can’t wait for your next video. ❤🎉😊
Thanks!
I would like to see the capability to have two spools used consecutively. Once the first spool runs out the second spool is used. Could get rid of a lot of short spools that way.
Oh yeah. I'm not sure they have the functionality, should be easy enough to add in firmware. I'll look into that. I THINK they're just pushing people to use the larger spools for bigger prints. But I would love to get through a lot of my smaller spools.
Glad its working out despite the wait!
Yeah, I think the only things missing are print quality (or what I would expect from a next-gen Prusa), speed (input shaping) and a modern network interface. Everything else seems as promised.
This is what we call a review honest and clear no nonsense . i love it.
thanks!
thanks so much for the update. looking forward to more when you're ready to share something noteworthy. 👍👍😎👍👍
WHAT!? The last two videos haven't been noteworthy!? Yeah, I know what you mean. My next video is going to be combining two dissimilar materials. That's the dream!
Great summary, I really appreciated both this and the first installment. Recently got a Bambu but im also thinking of one of these. Different tools for different purposes. This for engineering grade multimaterial printing. The prospect of printing bushings directly into parts with igus filament, a rigid plastic or two, and also a TPE all in one print. It seems like this gets us to that holy grail
That's the real reason I'm after one of these. It has so much potential, especially if you factor in other tools that may eventually come along.
My single toolhead order email arrived, I'll add toolheads when I can afford to. I appreciate that Prusa will be making the price of spare heads similar to buying them with the machine.
I'm going to remain very skeptical on the actual multimaterial performance on this machine until I see it demonstrated. It's been highly touted as this machine's strong point, but I haven't seen it proven yet. Can their toolchanger do what E3D couldn't? The scenario you describe with a combination of rigid, flexy, and bushing/bearing filaments sounds cool and will be exciting to see if it really works.
I just tried this last night and it does work. I need to work on the TPU settings, since it was really blobby, so I need to adjust the linear advance, or change the temps. the default profile for TPU didn't work great for me. But it absolutely does print two different materials as you'd expect.
This is the next video I'm working on. I'll post some stuff on my instagram. I need to dial in settings for TPU (it's printing like crap, the profile isn't good), but it does absolutely do this, once I get TPU printing better.
One thing i was imagining too was having a structural “core” filament, and aesthetic (or even as you mentioned Friction, or as i was thinking Abrasion/UV/Chemical Resistance) outer skin.
Could also potentially have a cheap but boring aesthetically core, and Fancy Filament for the Skin.
Excellent content, thank you, please keep the vids coming
Will do. I'm in the early stages of testing different materials printed together. Mostly promising results so far!
Great video, it's how all such videos should be produced.
Still waiting for my day 2 two head XL but your videos are giving me a good idea of what to expect.
Thanks so much! Tell all your friends, I'm desperately trying to grow my channel more.
Very well done. This kind of summarizes my experiences. That is ... up to the part where I started to use different materials.
I also see minimal stringing, which is due to the 0.6 nozzle size. On other printers with 0.6 nozzles we do see a lot more stringing so kudos to Prusa for dialing in the 0.6 nozzles perfectly.
@16:20 It is actually doing some kind of nozzle cleaning before probing the bed. It heats up the first extruder to a lower temperature, retracts and probes/wipes a few points on the bed. The probed points must result in a stable Z-value and if not, the printer will halt and inform you that there might be a problem with a hot end that is not clean enough to do probing.
This happened to me once and this is kind of annoying because it takes a few minutes in the process of starting a print before this happens
After probing the bed, it picks tool 2 and purges that one first. @17:09 The wait after purging and parking that tool is to let tool 1 heat up, not for tool 2 to cool down. After this, all tools have the correct temperature and on other layers tool changes are fast.
I've been testing out some TPU and it's not great. I'm not sure if it's the filament or the machine, but I need to do some more testing. Also, thanks for the info on the nozzle cleaning, that makes sense. It's cooler when it does it to prevent oozing. So it's just a sanity check, interesting.
@@RobertCowanDIY I did a multi material test with PLA and TPU (Flexifil from FormFutura). Results was not perfect but acceptable and I was actually kind of surprised to see that my print did not result in a bit spider web. A 0.6 nozzle with TPU is not something I would try on any of my other printers
@@Rob_65Gotcha, I'm having some issues with TPU (it's just really blobby and ugly), maybe after I try a few others things I'll try going to a 0.4mm nozzle instead.
I am REALLY glad to see strain gauges/load cells making their way into more machines lately. I managed to snag an early Creality CR6 and have been in love with pressure sensing based bed levelling ever since. BLTouch was alright but it had so many clones and like a third of all the octoprint discord messages from new folks were just folks trying to get the thing to work correctly and either giving up and leaving octoprint, or giving up and disabling bed levelling, which was really sad to see. Inductive sensing seems like a good idea if users aren't changing buildplates/etc (good for closed-source, locked-down printers) but for open-source, modifyable things like Prusa and Creality, it is SO good to have that strain gauge bed levelling.
Haven't gotten a hands-on with a bambu lidar bed levelling demo yet but maybe that'll be the future after strain gauges become 'old tech'! :)
Is the LIDAR thing locked down with Patents, or no?
(Granted I don’t know if load cell is locked down or not too; Unlike Lulzbot, Prusa can be more Opaque than Full Open Source at times, for better or for worse.
@@ericlotze7724 Patents only apply to specific ways of doing things, generally. It's unlikely that the entire concept of using lidar would be truly and fully blocked by patents, but if they have locked down their version of it with patents, it may be some time before other companies come up with their own unique versions to comply with patent law.
I've turned off all the LIDAR features of the bamub, it's VERY inconsistent and only works with some filament and some build plates. Unfortunately, it only works with the stuff I don't use.
@@RobertCowanDIY I've wondered if there's a way to implement it that works uniformly across beds, but I think at this point a physical contact probe method such as a strain gauge is still the best to work with all printbeds, all coatings, and all filaments.
I think with a vision-base system, you're always going to chasing challenges like lighting, reflective surfaces, etc. The load cell is the right way to do it IMO. Vision also relies on so much more processing, which requires extra hardware and software. It just seems like throwing a lot of unnecessary tech at it. I look at the CNC world, why don't they just use AI vision systems for edge-finding? It's far better to just probe it.
Very nice job.
You are getting much better results than I am. My 2 tool head XL strings like crazy. Havent seen stringing this bad since my Ender. Been working with support but still cant figure it out.
I've seen that from other people. Mine has minor stringing sometimes, but nothing I even felt like addressing. I've seen others have issues though. I'm not sure why it works for some and not for others?
What table do you have the XL on in this video? My XL is on the way and I need a solid table for it and yours looks perfect for my needs!
Thanks in advance! You've made this buying process a lot easier! Cheers!
Really helpful review, with a good sanity check. I really want to see a full legit multimaterial print of really dissimilar materials (maybe flexible mixed with say nylon with PVA support interface layer? Go big or go home!)
Same! I'll get there. I just wanted to get some basic stuff out of the way. Now I need to do the hard stuff.
I just got my XL with 2 heads. Right off the bat I'm a little confused with the setting up Prucaslicer . Perhaps you could do a short session on slicer setup, printing with 1 filament then 2.. I was really confused at first about the wipe tower as I opened the XL setting with no project. Didn't realize they would provide a means of moving the wipe tower around depending on what being printed. Not new to Prusa, I've had a MK3 with S+ upgrade. Very happy with it. Got the XL for using soluble supports and larger build table. Don't really care about speed. Usually start a print and do something else, checking on it occasionally.
There's a section in the book that comes with the machine about multi-material printing. In short, you either paint surfaces or unmerge objects and then select the appropriate extruder for each painted section or part. I could do a quick tutorial coming up.
On my MK4 I haven't really found it an issue with the slow file transfer speeds over ethernet. I usually hit "Upload and Print", go clean the build plate, then walk away. It will finish uploading and then start printing.
Yeah, same. I usually just hit 'upload and print' and then alt-tab to another screen and do something else.
The tool changing speed is great, and actually much faster than I expected (what was that, 15 seconds including the wipe tower?). I only have the 1 tool version but will be adding tools as soon as they're available. And the input shaping alpha can't come fast enough (I think the current word is October for it), as that means 15 hour prints should be finishing at most 7 or so at the same quality...
For the first tool change it's maybe 10-15 seconds. But after the wipe tower is established it's under 5 seconds, maybe ~3. I guess the size of the wipe tower will remain the same regardless of print size?
@@RobertCowanDIY Wow OK i was trying to count seconds on the later one. Yeah I don't see why the wipe tower would ever get larger, since all it is doing is re-priming ("pressurizing?") the nozzle between turns... So why should that ever need more...
@@nightcrayonCorrect, I'll test it out there, maybe there's a trick I'm missing.
I was thinking about building my own toolchanger, but the time I'd have to spend buying parts and trying out stuff and calibrating makes the price of the XL way more appealing for the "ready out of box" experience.
Same! Even building a 350mm voron is relatively close in cost to this, and it doesn't have a tool changer or the reliability (from what I've heard from others that have had them). For what it is, it's not expensive. It's just expensive if you don't need a tool changer or the larger format.
I’m excited to see if it gets to a high level of polish and/or gets a huge community around it. The E3D Toolchanger seemed well built (and ASMBL was intriguing), but never really caught on. Supposedly the Original I3 Mk3 had glitches, but has evolved to be *VERY* reliable, has a huge community, and can be fixed/modded easily. Even Open5x was developed using one.
If these initial problems (which arguably should have been worked out already, at least in my potentially naive opinion) get worked out we have an exciting future with this machine!
Lack of enclosure really limits the materials. For such an expensive machine the lack of enclosure is bizarre. Overall print speeds also seems really slow for a corexy.
at the size, you wont find faster Printers
1) its really hard to make a big printer fast, much more mass, wayy more room for error... so its physically impossible to make it go as fast as a voron 0 for example
2) i agree its expensive and not that cool, but for ppl in the Industrie its way more important to have a reliable machine that does something right all the time, and high speed is for certanly a big risk of error
The speed will improve when input shaper hits. The lack of enclosure really is a shame. It'll cost me a bit to make one.
@@skywardsoul1178 Yes. The input shaper can't come fast enough (no pun)...
I'm gonna try whipping something up with cardboard, ha. But I do want to try making something easy. I'm not convinced it needs a full top on it, I think just some sides and front would be enough for most materials.
nice one.
One option to overcome the issue with managing multiple OctoPrint instances: OctoFarm and the FarmPi image. Holding out hope that OctoPrint will get supported on the XL.
Gotcha. I don't see a good reason why the XL won't get octroprint support, but we'll see.
The network transfer speed is supposed to be much improved in the 5.1 firmware. The biggest improvement should come from starting the print before the entire file is sent, but they're also doing compression and arc welding to reduce file size.
Gotcha. That seems like bandaids rather than fixing the issue though. Compression is always a good thing (assuming it doesn't change the file in any meaningful way). But it seems like they're not addressing the root issue?
@@RobertCowanDIYagreed, they should really track down the root issue.
It’s crazy that this bug is still lingering after so long, this should have been fixed prior to shipping the printers really :/
Edit, for info, my upload speeds are around 125kb/s 😢
I think the main cause of the slowness is the interface between the main board and the LCD board where the USB port is, but I don't really know for sure.
@@pyrhockzOh agreed, it needs to be fixed. That being said, it doesn't really prevent me from doing anything, it's just annoying.
@@mrjackson2kI wonder if they could make it so people could use a USB-C thumbdrive...
just one thing I don't get - how come prosumer level printer does not come with built in enclosure (and air filter) like e.g Bambu X1 Carbon. Makes it basically a PLA machine. It's like building a racecar and using cheap regular tires - can only drive it to grocery store. Great video btw, cheers!
I think it was released a bit early (which is ironic after all that waiting) so if we look back at this video in 6 months when they have a full enclosure option, input shaping, etc, it might be easier to judge? Right now it's not 'complete' in my mind. Keep in mind, I placed my preorder 1 hour after it was available, so this is still very much the first batch.
Some of the stuff Prusa does is really impressive. Esp the first layers, but some of the other stuff is really puzzling that they seem to skimp on. Such as the connectivity. Im also puzzled why they just didnt reinforce the frame at the front making it much easier to enclose.
I feel like there's a reason for that? Having used it, I'm very much appreciating the open-ness in front. It makes it FAR easier to use, get parts in and out of, etc. I wonder if the target audience is print farms. This might make sense, seeing as you want access.
@@RobertCowanDIY Maybe, but after having coreXY's for a number of years access to the parts have never been a problem for me. I have my printers on racking that are on 2 layers, accessing the prints are easy as the printers just lower the bed when its done, nothing is blocking entry from the front. It just seems like an odd design choice for me.
@@FestivejellyI assume It has to do with there afs system for farms. the part can't hit on the way out when you pull out the plate. Also better for vision systems and so on.
I can understand not having the one beam on top In the front but the 2 beams on each corner just doesn't make sense
@@teitgenengineeringMaybe costs savings? It would be relatively straightforward to add them. We'll see when and what they come up with for the enclosure option.
If you are uploading a file onto the printer main board on octoprint, it's very slow as well. Usually with octoprint you are streaming the file from the pi.
Ah, good point.
Can you test the buttons on the front of the extruders? They're supposed to extrude/retract the filament, but I've never actually seen anyone try them. My Prusa XL is still a long ways away so I hope they can sort out any issues like the slow network speed before it arrives.
I looked everywhere and I don't see any buttons. Where are they supposed to be located?
@@RobertCowanDIY The LED on the front is supposed to function as two buttons too. At least that's what they showed in one of the blog posts last year.
@@r3fuzeHUH, interesting.
I can confirm. That's what they do on my machine. I am not sure why I'd need that though.
@@ulaBCan you explain? The LEDs on mine do nothing.
I've run into an issue with doing a multi-tool head print via Prusa Link (sent from Prusa Slicer). It always freezes on the first tool change and I have to abort the print. Have you tried that on yours? Mine prints fine from the USB stick, just not over wifi.
Isn't it always printing from the USB? If you don't have a USB stick, it won't print, as there's no local storage, it doesn't load the file over wifi. The file I printed was already on the USB drive, let me try slicing something and printing directly through the slicer.
@@RobertCowanDIY Yes, you need the USB drive, however this was uploading a new slice to the USB stick via PrusaLink from PrusaSlicer. When I copied the gCode to the USB stick directly it worked. I think the file being uploaded is getting corrupted.
@@Arcadenut1I just tried a print and it worked fine. I did a multi-material print, sliced in Prusaslicer and uploaded/sent to the printer via the Prusa Link, setup in prusaslicer, no issues. It was a fidget thingie with 0.1mm clearance between the moving parts and it printed as if it was a single color/nozzle.
@@RobertCowanDIYI appreciate you testing it. Maybe it's something with my model. I'll keep testing. This is day 2 of using my XL, so it could be user error or I have an edge case :)
@@Arcadenut1 my first thought would be to try another USB stick.
I’ve had to disconnect the bowden tube to feed PA6-CF. Haven’t tried TPU yet.
Huh, why is that? Is it slightly thicker? I'm going to hopefully try TPU this weekend. I never really look forward to TPU, it seems to always be a bit of a pain.
Its so stiff it gets hung up 3/4 of the time. NBD to pop the tube loose and guide it in, but I’m sure people will complain about it.@@RobertCowanDIY
Hey Robert,
So, I have been testing a while with my XL and this is what I found with my wifi;
The WiFi transfer speeds can be really fast, depends on your network. I get around 30mb/s via wifi. However, the printer instantly writes it to the local USB drive that is inserted. From my testing, this is the process that caps the speed of the upload if you are directly printing via prusalink.
How did I verify this?;
If you upload to prusaconnect, it goes really quickly. When you then transfer from prusa connect to the printer, it slows down significantly.
Are you experiencing the same??
But with Prusaconnect, you're not really transferring data to a printer, correct? Or are you just talking about communication from the printer to the cloud service? But that makes sense, they might not have an actual high speed USB interface. The printer itself is responsive enough, but transferring any actual data to the 'local storage' is SLOW.
@@RobertCowanDIY Yeahh what I found is, if you connect and send to prusa connect directly from prusaslicer, it is a 2-stage process. It first uploads from PS to PC, which is fast. Then it moves the file from the cloud-based PC to the physical USB in the machine.
I suspect it does this in case of power/ internet outages.
This transferring process takes a really long time... You are actually moving the files to the physical printer, also with Prusalink.
You can verify this, because all of the cloud-uploaded files (PL or PC) are also on the USB drive afterwards.
Thought the dead-pixel was a clever laser pointer to know where the camera is looking :D
HA, I wish. My camera is getting a bit old and when doing long video shoots, a pixel or two get stuck until it cools down.
I think that the network speed issues are an artifact of the USB interface. The Prusa machines have an issue with how they deal with USB. File corruption is common. The devices are never dismounted and plugging or unplugging the drives causes issues. I think that the same issues happen when you turn the machine on and off. I have had it corrupt the file systems and have had files that I have transferred over the network corrupt in transit.
Huh, interesting. I still feel like this is a software issue, so hopefully it can be fixed with the existing hardware.
@@RobertCowanDIY I very much think that it is a software/firmware level issue. The current generation is the first that has used a USB port rather than an SD card. I think that there are issues with the way that they are addressing the USB port.
@@WonkoTSane The Mini has been using USB since 2019 and the MK4 and XL firmwares are based on that code?
I did not have any problems like you describe yet. But the USB drives they ship with their machines seems to have issues. Every time I disconnect them from my Mac, they take forever to unmount. After switching to a different stick, it works a lot better.
What's your criteria for an excellent print?
I guess no discernable flaws? no zits, perfect first layer, minimal (if any) stringing, etc. Basically and ideal print with no real room for improvement.
Thanks for the video! Why does it need a wipe tower with a separate toolhead for each filament? There's no old filament to purge like in a single toolhead filament changer, each toolhead already has the correct filament ready to go. Why wouldn't it just pick up the toolhead, unretract the filament and print?
Sorry for the late reply. Think of it more as a prime tower? Sure, there's heated filament in there, but it still needs to get the flow going. You don't have to use a wipe tower though, you can wipe to the interior (infill) and other options. If you print straight into the outer wall, you'll see some small gaps, so it needs to be primed first.
I didn't see it anywhere so would you mind posting exactly what TPU you're using? It would be great if you could go into anything special you had to do to use TPU. I can't even get it past the filament sensor on the side of the XL. Thanks!
I'm using matterhackers pro TPU. Are you cutting it at 45 degrees? You really need to cut it at an angle, and maybe line up the bowden tube so it's entering the extruder vertically, instead of at an angle. It takes a tiny bit of fiddling, but works fine for me.
Is used to access printer interface? (I would expect that "yes" but...)
I hadn't noticed that, but it's NOT https. It doesn't allow a secure connection. Not good.
Octoprint now works with my Prusa XL
Nice! It seems like they're actively listening to feedback and fixing some of the issues, which is nice.
Thanks for this, seeing the tools changes and the minimal purge tower has my mind made up, I have loads of multi colour designs and I`ve been wondering about the bambu AMS for some time but the waste and closed system has put me off. the 5 tool prusa XL will be perfect for me, its just a pain that its going to be next year now.
If you're just doing different colors, the bambu might still be the right thing for you (unless you need the larger size, don't like bambu, or don't like the wasted filament). It's still very very good at filament switching. I'm not trying to talk you OUT of the XL, but the bambu is still the better option I think for just different color filaments.
@@RobertCowanDIY Bloody hell, I decided to add a P1S plus AMS to my print farm, taking into account the time saving from going out to the printers and manually changing filament for colour changes, the actual minimal waste once you have dialled in the poop and got rid of a purge tower its a game changer. Joseph Prusa should be shitting bricks, and I love my 5 prusa machines, but next to the P1S they are dinosaurs. There is still a lot to evaluate but I dont think I will be purchasing another Prusa, at least until the 5 head XL has been out for at least 6 months and all the bugs have been ironed out.
Thanks for the advice.
@@daveglas1972 I don't think he's shitting bricks, they just hired an additional 100 people to help with manufacturing. They seem to be doing just fine.
That's interesting . . .
It is!
If they would send it to me. I preorders it right after it was announced ages ago. Needed it ever since. It's been ridiculous
What version did you order? I ordered it within about an hour of the announcement. The 5 toolhead versions have yet to ship from my understanding.
Yeah the 5 Toolhead version. It was supposed to be July for quite a while. Latest I think said August 8th it starts and they refer to that when I ask. But I probably preordered like 24 hours after announce. @@RobertCowanDIY
If this had a heated chamber and well cooed electronics, I’d have bought it instantly. One can only wish.
All the electronics are external (except motors of course), so heating the chamber is not too terrible. Why do you want/need a heated chamber?
@@RobertCowanDIY to run some industrial nylons we use. They need 90deg heated chamber.
@@deepinderjitsinghOh wow, 90C CHAMBER temp!? That's pretty cool! Can you tell me what kind of filament you use, I'm just curious.
@@RobertCowanDIY I don’t know the exact blend but it as nylon 6 and 6,6 plus some other polymer to increase the rigidity.
@@deepinderjitsinghGotcha!
It's really unfortunate that it doesn't support Octoprint.
Yeah, I'm torn. I like having the option, but I've spent too much of my life messing with Octoprint, so I'm pretty happy moving away from it. If Prusa Connect and Prusa Link get some significant improvement, I won't miss Octoprint one bit.
The upload speed to my MK4 is super slow indeed, the only things I really don't understand. First I used wifi, then I thought "let's use my ethernet network", and small files still take ages to get over. I now just use the usb, which is fine, but shouldn't be necessary at all. Prusalink is nice-ish, but no where near Octoprint, there's sooooo many features it still needs, for me the most part I'd like to cancel 1 object on a plate when it fails for instance. For the rest I like the machine a lot.
Yeah, that's the same experience I had. It's not been too bothersome, it's just strange it's THAT slow. Ethernet and wifi are the same speed which is odd. Hopefully a software update can fix this, since it doesn't seem like a hardware limitation.
very informative and nice videos! The camera setup is horrible tho ... my eyes hurt because of no existing focus and bad light like you mentioned yourself. I hope you will get that fixed, otherwise i wont be able to watch these videos in the future... sorry :) But keep up the informative way! thanks :)
Ha, right? Yeah, I really messed up the video. Check out my more recent video, it's much better and hopefully doesn't hurt your eyes. ;-)
8:00 Sorry to say it but I talked with a prusa dev and the transfer speeds is hardware limited. It won't improve. What can improve is reducing file size. Apparently that is something they are working on for prusa slicer, doing something to make the files smaller. Can not for the life of me understand how they came up with that and said to themselves "yeah that's fine for a >2k machine". But they make their own boards so I assume that has something to do with it.
Yeah, it seems like the USB interface is going over SPI or something silly like that.
I cannot wait for the Bambu X2 XL
A large next generation printer from them
I'd be curious how they approach it, bigger is challenging. I'd be curious if they'd try doing a tool changer.
They've had my deposit and hopes for so long. The news about Prusa Connect being shoddy is so sad. They've had years to develop and test this. And it should not be impacted by the supply chain issues. Prusa is looking weak
I wouldn't say they're looking 'weak', but they're showing the growing pains of spreading yourself too thin (between development, production, hardware and software). We'll see if they catch up.
Wifi isnt old school it is linux
the way they implemented it is old-school.
It's so strange that WiFi setup is the way it is because just in personal projects I've been able to implement the ol access point web GUI very simply with an esp32 with in built storage (and theyre using a similar thing for WiFi).
Its just a webserver and spiffs or nfs for xpressif modules so it's just strange something that takes a hobbyist a couple hours to implement wasn't here. Just screams rushed product to me, because it's not even like there are any concerns about security there because this is standard practice and within your home, so unless someone just so happened to snipe access in the 2 minutes you used to setup (The same risk every other device has, which can be mitigated in a number of ways but is one of those not really a threat threats), there is no risk because after that it's on your network the same way.
As for the upload speed thing, I totally get you not believing but I should mention that you (I'm guessing) mostly post functional prints that gcode wise will have a lot of long straight lines compared to more organic models like someone who wants to print figurines or cosplay props.
Those files on the other hand can get comparatively massive. Like waaay bigger than you might expect.
I would suggest if you were super curious you try a relatively complex figurine just to send it to the printer to see how bad the experience likely is for people who typically will run a different use case from you where big files are more of the norm.
That being said I forget the name of the setting but there is a setting that increases the minimum space between points that approximate curved patches that can dramatically lower file sizes. I recall it being used mostly for printers with weak processors being unable to keep up with lots of really short gcode moves, but it's a potential Band-Aid for the poor network performance at the cost of a minor decrease in accuracy (though for models, that type of accuracy loss is unlikely to be noticeable).
you are absolutely correct about the wifi stuff, I'm really surmised it ended up like that! you're right about the type of things I print. I do some more complicated cosmetic stuff from time to time, but I understand that a cosplay helmet with a lot of detail will be a massive file compared to most of what I do. But I still think ~1GB for a gcode file is an outlier and that should really only be about 10 minutes to upload. I think what you're thinking of is arcwelder. I've tried it before and it does a good job of reducing file size and complexity. Apparently the new version of something (maybe prusaslicer?) has something like that integrated to reduce file size.