3D Printer Experience and/or Advice

Community
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The reality is that even sub-$300 printers can do a good job if you use good printing materials and stick to settings that are slow and less material-efficient. It’s when people try to crank up the speed and use less supports and otherwise just try to “beat the system” that you start to run into more troubles.

That said, spending more on more solidly built printers will result in a better overall experience.

I still print the most on my plywood Makerbot Replicator (which had some ugprades to fix shortcomings that most printers today have already addressed) – I stop trying to “crank it up” for the most part now and thus get (mostly) reliable results.

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its not all roses with bambu, but the machine made a big impression on the market.
contras boil down to:
service from manufacturer is mediocre at best,
Software is closed but uses open source components, so its in violation of licenses,
Sends data to unknown servers without you knowing.
no generic replacement parts
QC seems to be spotty.
but nonetheless avery capable machine, but absolutely ruled out for my uses.

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Wow - some very quick responses so a few quick points for clarification:

  1. For engineering product development NOT production. Typically it’s the plastic enclosure for a product. I’m the EE but also project leader and run the company. I can get an .STL file from my ME in the evening, print it overnight and have something to hold, talk about and iterate the next day.
  2. Because of 1, speed is not most critical factor. I have some parts that are 8" in the z-axis and a resin build time of 12-14hrs. While speed is great, reliability and ease of use are more important.
  3. Ease of use and ability to spit out parts accurately. Open the box, take out the unit, setup and go thru calibration step(s). With the resin printers (I actually have 2, one smaller and one larger), it is level the built platform to the resin tank and that’s it.
  4. If there are upgrades I should be doing, easy to identify, install after unboxing, setup and go. I realize that these things have become hobbies unto themselves. I need an engineering proto tool to visualize and “feel” what the design is. For example, our stuff is almost entirely handheld. So I can put a print in some users hands to see if it’s too big, needs reshaping, etc.
  5. Chris certainly made it sound like the Prusa MK4 might fit the bill so that’s one specific machine to talk about. The Bambu stuff looks cool but being able to get parts to keep the thing running is certainly a need/requirement. If manufacturer support is not great, a community is fine also.

Thanks for the input so far all!

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at 4.
especially for working direct with client/user on iterative design, that is where a good Resin print shines, as it feels more liek the final thing and some resins can be shaped afterwards wit hmetalworking tools so you can in seconds/minuts change shapes add holes etc. wit hthe customer having it in hand and tryinfg out things.

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The advice I got about 3d printers was that I could either spend $300 on a cheap printer and then spend $700 in upgrades and 10-40 hours learning the idiosyncrasies of that printer OR I can buy a Prusa and just print. I opted for the latter, and I can say with the 2 Mk3’s I’ve bought, that has been the case.

I don’t have the Mk4 yet, but with how good of an experience I’ve had with the two Mk3s I own, it should be exactly that: “It just works”.

The only caveat to my recommendation is that I’ve only printed using PLA.

P.S. I’m not going to do the full upgrades from MK3 to MK4, because the price and parts provided is at a point where I’d rather just spend a little extra and have a MK3 and a MK4, rather than a MK4 and most of the parts of a MK3. However, I will upgrade the electronics, because I’m hoping the network printing options are solid.

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Highly recommend Bambu Labs Printer:

By far the best and fastest FDM printer I’ve owned and has a pretty affordable price.

1 Like
39

Hey Luke,

That one is on my radar as well. So I see they use RFID tags on their filament reels to help with ID of what’s there. Is that just an assist or does it prevent you from using 3rd party filament? Assist is good but only allowing their filament is likely a showstopper for me.

Keith

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i used to detest using my 3d printer, then i got the bambu x1c , it pretty much just works there a couple of issues but nothing major, can be a hassle though

the rfid tags are only for their reels currently, you just manually enter other oem’s types color/pla etc, and if you don’t update your firmware the newer bambu ones dont recongise anyway and you have to manually enter it

they focus mostly on cloud usage, you upload from their slicer which is a fork of prusa slicer , i use the orca fork. you can use ‘lan’ mode which is basically SFTP to a sd card you buy, but you can’t remote start it , that only works via cloud which is upload to amazon. then back to the printer. a lot of mqtt going on their cloud does go down more often then you’d expect. you dont need to use it, remote start would be nice on lan mode but i dont think they’re gonna add it as they’re radio silent any time anyone asks

the camera isn’t a normal stream theyve got some internal routing or something going on to sort it out so its the app

they use drop shippers as is common so it can be a fast shipping, their stuff goes out of stock quick

cardboard reels dont usually work in the AMS and some tpu’s don’t either, some CFs the AMS is pretty great though, a few teething issues but its clever

the fancy lidar and spaghetti detection is mostly marketing it always false triggers for me and i’ve esen it print nothing and all the calibration still works.

bed leveling is great, however they have an issue with bent beds because its like a 3mm aluminium pcb, we’re actually working on a replacement,

its a really fast printer, when it head crashes though it can be a mess, usually it just pops off but its can drag around and damage itself (As can any printer but the bambu is meant to come off)

we’ve printed about 1000+ things on it over the months and very few failures, i prefer the textured pei plate

but i like it that i leave it on all the time and just remote send a print to it and just pick it up later.

the community does a bit of that cargo cult brand loving that seems to happen to some things, so it can get a bit toxic sometimes

support is a bit hit and miss, but if you persist with them , theyll get to it eventually, just sometimes needs some back and forth

not all the spares are buyable yet, and the main boards are closed source, encrypted and not for sale yet, they also have to be married by support

some of the early ones had cheap sleeved fans that failed, but they seem to have fixed that

its definitely the closest thing to the ‘toaster’ of 3d printers, i gave my flashforge dual to goodwill (though i felt bad about it)

and it is really fast…

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Aside from the filiment that came with the machiene, I’ve been exclusivly printing with 3rd party filament with no issue. As Charlie said, the RFID is mainly just to populate the filament data automatically into the software. Easy for me to just select the filament color and type from the software. Maybe as you get into more tempermental materials loading more material properties becomes essential. I just print out pla most of the time.

I would say that the one thing that does concern me about this printer is that it has all of the hooks (cloud software, RFID readers, etc) for them to software push DRM later. With that said, I don’t know that this is the company intentions and in the meantime, it is just that much better of a printer that it is worth it.

My work tends to happen in episodes that if I am iterating on a product concept, there is always a new version of the print running. Even if a 3d printer lasts just the duration of that one project, it has easially returned it’s investment in time savings and 3rd party printing costs. I think that I’ll get multiple projects out of this one easially and it is hands down the best/fastest printer that I’ve used.

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Hey Luke - All good input and I think we have a very similar set of requirements. Iterating quick during product development. The only thing that might be a little different is that I tend to do first protos that I put in test customers hands in 3D prints. So having different material choices would be good. I’m particularly hoping that the TPU will be good for the softer parts of the protos.

And yea, I think they’d be stupid to push DRM later since it would kill their business model. They are already closed source on everything (despite taking open source and violating the open source licensing). If that happens and it’s more painful than it’s worth, there are other options to switch to.

Thanks for everyone’s input!

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The key for most professionals using it as a tool for their actual job is that it “just works”. Few of us have time for tweaking and puttering and modding, or for failed prints. My Raise N2 has filled that bill going on seven years now - never touched or modded it, not even to level the bed (OK, I removed the second extruder because I never use it, and had to replace the backup battery once). The vast majority of my prints are with PETG for its layer-bond strength, minimal warpage, and overall durability. While the N2 prints very nicely, I’m not overly concerned with print quality and almost always use 300µ layers for speed and strength. From what trusted people have told me, the Bambu is similarly “click print and walk away”.

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FYI, I did decide to give the Bambu Carbon a go…

So what do you guys like for 3rd party filament? Voxel looks to be pretty darn inexpensive but how well does it work?

Thanks for everyone’s input.
Keith

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Woot woot, I don’t think you’ll regret it

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i use either the bambu, matchbox or sun , just don’t get cardboard reels if you get the ams, which is worth it since you can use it to keep your filament dry with a few small printed mods.

wait til you print your first on ludicrous mode, makes other printers look like positively pedestrian

bests of luck and check your bed is not warped when you get it!

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I’ve been really happy with Polymaker PLA Pro (Amazon.com). They have generally “boring” colors, but it prints really cleanly.

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Overture or Hatchbox PETG.

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Thanks. @charliex Yea the Carbon comes with the AMS and hardened tips to support composite materials.

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yeah some of the composites don’t work in the ams but they list it on the bambu pages for them now, its worth buying some of the little extras spare plate, filament cutter etc.

then print out the tools they’re embedded on the machine so you just load and print them, but with the textured plate i’ve never needed the scraper or glue

the packing is pretty amazing, comes out pretty well the stuff under the bed is a little tricky to get out but that is it.

ams is easy to setup, print out some of the little moisture traps for the ams and get the blue ball material for them and it’ll keep your filament dry i added moisture displays to mine.

you’ll need an sd-card for ‘local’ mode and for time lapses multi colour dragon on bambu x1 carbon timelapse - YouTube

i nearly always let it do all the various pre run things, it does slow the run down but it seems to work, if i am reprinting on the same power cycle sometimes i skip anything but bed levelling.

for some reason i always call matchbox, hatchbox its just always stuck with me Julia reminded me.

mutli colour printing is fun, and a lot of people print a poop chute and a bento box with filter

fingers crossed on a flat bed too, happy printing.

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While watching reviews, analysis, etc on the Prusa, Bambu, etc, saw this mentioned. Looks like the way to go for printing plates… so gave it a flyer initially instead of extra plates from Bambu…
https://whambamsystems.com/flexible-build-system

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i have the wham bam, i still end up using the textured plate (as long as you dont mind the texture)