This is interesting. Soval has become the budget open source brand. While everyone else is trying to prevent the competition from stealing ideas, Soval has been the contrarian and has been very up front about their desire to be open source.
I have 3 concerns:
First, advertised speeds are never what you can get in the real world. Due to the constant need for changing directions while actually printing. The machines can seldom get enough distance to reach their full speeds. 40,000mm/sec2 means little if the best you can get is 5000mm/sec2 due to all the short moves. So I’ll be curious to hear of what the real speeds are from consumers out in the real world.
Secondly, Soval does not have the best reputation for QC and responsiveness to problems. And they do have problems. It appears you can’t expect Prusa or Bambu level support if disgruntled users can be believed.
And finally, do you really need that print volume at a consumer level? Just how many life sized Mando helmets or Dwyane The Rock Lobsters are you going to print? At $1200, (projected street price), that is a lot of money to spend for a machine that might get used to capacity once or twice over the years you might own it.
The technology, which I didn’t get to–my bad it was 1:30am, has to do with being awakened by my phone sending me an alert to the possibility of 90mph winds along with possible flooding due to very heavy rains.
It might not seem like much to you, but when you live in a very rural area in the middle of a forest, we don’t get the niceties of more urban folks. Ignoring the years I spent as a medic and fire fighter in this area and getting my pager pinged for every weather watch from the county dispatch, (information the general populous doesn’t get), This is a new thing for us. Now, if only cell service wasn’t so poor here even more people could get such warnings.
And my automatic backup generator is still running and powering my house. A bit of tech kit you probably don’t need, but I do. So my lights are on, the air conditioning is working and so is my electric kettle to make tea. It might be all day or longer before the co-op can restore power.