Hi everyone, I’ve been looking at 3d printers and not sure which one to aim for anyone got any recommendations on a good entry level?
Been looking at creality and bambu lab what else is out there these days?
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If Bambu is in the budget go for it. Haven’t had a single issue since getting the x1 carbon (almost 2 years) and it just works like a consumer product rather than something you need to fiddle with. Started with Ultimakers and I hardly touch them anymore.
The AMS also makes material switching and multi-material prints so easy.
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Nice, the A1 looks to be more realistic for me
+1 for Bambu
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+1 for BambuLab.
P1S or X1 model with AMS.
AMS:
These are good printers. Unpack and off you go.
//Rolf
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Bambu seems popular why is that? Reliability or ease of use?
I can attest to both of these. Reliability: it says that one should re-grease the Z-axis rods every 2-3 months. I haven’t done so in the last 5+ and they’re still perfectly fine.
In terms of ease of use, it can be as simple as hitting slice and sending to print.
And the Bambu Handy app (odd choice for an app name but I digress) allows you to view the progress of the print whenever, so I sometimes set something off and go out to meet friends or something, and then I can check on it while I’m out at dinner.
Just great value for money over-all.
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The P1S has a large print size, good resolution and high speed for the price.
It is ready to print, right out of the box.
I’ve managed to print some very tall prints with thin walls and no support or infill.
Printing really fast has changed my design strategy. I can print, test and re-model several prototypes in the time it would take to print one model on a crealty.
I’m sure there are better printers out there, but for the price, I am impressed, especially compared to printers from only a few years ago.
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I own the Bambu A1 w the AMS system. It is, to date, a trouble-free workhorse. It is very affordable and perfect for helping teachers with modeling for 3d printing. bk
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I cannot recommend Elegoo Mars and Saturn enough, especially the Ultra versions with the tilting that reduces suction.
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New bambu:
$1899 Standard
$2199 with AMS
$2799 with laser 10w
$3499 with laser 40w
Pretty amazing. Would not want to be laser cutting with that thing though, the “filter” system doesn’t impress me… Lots of toxics in that smoke depending on what you cut.
Pushing the 3D printing of a bike helmet seems pretty irresponsible.
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I was in a similar position last december, trying to decide between creality and bambu
I ended up going with Creality Ender 3 V3 because I was worried about the close system of Bambu Labs, given that 3D printing only got to where it is now after the open source community embraced the cause.
They since have changed some stuff that got people mad and say that they will be locking a bit more of the system for “safety reasons”, from that to charging subscription for its apps is just two steps away.
I did like the option to get AMS with the Bambu A1 however, I did not like the amount of wates that it generates and I decided to get the E3V3P for the openness and because I plan to get one of the open source multi filament systems going in the future, since they include a few better solutions that waste less material (filament is kinda expensive here in South America)
Now about the printer I got, it is freaking amazing, almost no assembly required, everything working fine straight from the box, using their creality print slicer (just changed to Orca Slicer this week to try to test some other features)
The plus is nice because I was able to print one of my boat projects in a 1 to 200 scale without needing to glue stuff together. The printer is fast, reliable and no brainer. I do not use their app on the smartphone because I don’t need too, but I did test sending a print from my phone while I was at work and it worked like a charm.
So yeah, most people spoke about bambu labs, but Creality last generation is at the same level without the shady stuff that I bet in 3 to 5 years will become a subscription system.
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The best options for you will be Bambu Lab P1S and Bambu Lab A1. The Bambu A1 offers a tuning-free and high-speed experience with fully automatic calibration and optional multi-color printing via AMS lite. The Bambu Lab P1S improves it further by being an enclosed type of printer. If you are tight on budget, go for A1 or P1S is the best choice
quite some time has passed and now im in crippling debt …im hooked there are printed parts everywhere and i need help 
got the a1 mini from campus and now i want to throw the training wheels away and go with an X2D for my personal printer cant decide with ams or without tho
thanks for the inputs!
Printed with an Eleego printer; even in the case of the toy gun, it shows excellent mechanical strength. I also recommend resin printers—the latest models are excellent.
The AMS is convenient in a production environment where I’m constantly printing with different materials. If you’re at home printing with 90% PLA for example, then it’s probably not necessary.
You could also get an active filament dryer if you intend to print with PETG etc. so that you can feed the filament directly from the dryer into the printer. Turn the dryer temp down or switch off when printing - heated filament can sometimes get too soft and extruder has problems.
fwiw, our office has 6 prusa XL’s. we printed a 40" x 65" x 12" architectural model all in-house in about 3 days. about 8 days including file prep, but way less time and cost than out-sourcing or laser cutting.
- there was a total of 10-12 overtime hours for three people managing prints; 35-40 total scheduled hours to assemble the digital files to print from scratch
- 2 print failures (annoying layer shifts)
- ~7 spools of woodfill used ~ $250
- longest print was 31 hours and used 1100 grams
- total of 168 print hours
no excessive ppe gear needed with fff unlike resin; very little post-processing (borderline fun since we assembled about 200 trees and the parts came together like lego)
in terms of value, the money we spent on the 6 prusa xl’s is about the same we would have spent if we contracted this single model out of house. and we’ve already used the prusa xl’s again for several presentation models for high-er profile clients.
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