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Willie Makeit
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The company I work for also represents MarkForged printers and they will tell you that the <$2,000 Bambu Carbon is giving the >$10,000 Markforged printers a run for their money.
OP
I actually think they are better than the Markforged offerings... And I'd still recommend a Prusa for the everyday guy...
Old tool guy
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What is the advantage or purpose of the enclosure? I don’t see a vent hose like laser engravers use, so i’m assuming there are no noxious fumes.
rlitman
Well-known member
PLA itself is supposed to be safe fume wise (though I have my doubts about the pigments found in most filaments). However, ABS has known fume issues, as do many other filaments. The enclosure though is usually to retain some heat. That's not an issue with PLA, but can matter with other materials.
OP
When printing filaments like ABS, you need high temps in the chamber... So the enclosure keeps the environment in favorable conditions by helping to regulate temperature.
Other filaments are really susceptible to air flow as well... So the enclosure keeps the breezes from your HVAC from disrupting things.
The X1 does have a vent fan around back.
slowtwitch73
Well-known member
Our library offers 3d printing.. they have 3 Prusas and swear by them. They get used 24/7.
I want to have a need for one, but can't get myself to do it.. esp now with the local library printing.
I want to have a need for one, but can't get myself to do it.. esp now with the local library printing.
OP
When you first get a 3D printer, you basically just print ********. Then, if you are like me, you lose interest after a bit.
But, once you find a real use for one… and start using it as a tool, it becomes invaluable.
But, once you find a real use for one… and start using it as a tool, it becomes invaluable.
If you want a printer that will just print great out of the box go with Bambu or Prusa. If you are up for tinkering or need a larger format then Creality has some nice options. Creality is about to release their K2 with multi material that could be a nice challenger for the Bambu. I am currently running a heavily modified ender 5 (now a mercury one.1).
slowtwitch73
Well-known member
Does this tie into the Rivian door handle feeling like a ***** when your eyes are closed?
Old tool guy
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How do they charge? By the minute? Weight of filament used?
This was a damned timely post! I absolutely LOVE my MK3, always working and never giving me issues. I use Octoprint, a small Raspi, and a camera to print to it from my PC, no cloud needed! However, lately I've been wanting more speed, after reading this I think I'll just got with the MK4 or upgrade my MK3.
Oh, and as far as uses, I've used it to make all sorts of prototype parts for my automotive projects. Most recently it helped me create a tensioner mount for my Novi 2000 blower bracket. I built everything in SolidWorks printed it until it I got the measurements right then had a buddy machine one for me. Before that a SBF timing cover seal installer, tungsten holder, and on and on. To me the biggest challenge is learning the CAD software!
Poolshark314
Well-known member
You find uses for it once you get used to it. Break a shelf peg in your kitchen cabinet? Print it. Ran out of potato chip bag clips? Print it. Want to mock up a design for a car part in the shop without going through several iterations in metal, print it.
It's basically a hobby to support your other hobbies.
OP
It's crazy how much more functional printers become when they can print fast... and both the MK4 and the X1 are probably three times as fast as the MK3? Close it anyhow...
In any case, I feel guilty if my printers aren't working... So, I have em going almost 24/7 on different projects. From the stupid **** like this spark plug display I made:
To really functional things like these wire grommets and M18 battery relocation brackets:
It just took me quite a while around how I could use plastic in my workflow...
Ooooh what is this? I think we need more details.
I think @PelicanPines has resources to help you forget that and get some female company (not that I'm judging how you live your life...)Does this tie into the Rivian door handle feeling like a ***** when your eyes are closed?
OP
I watch a guy on Youtube who recently bought a 3D printer to make parts for finishing out the boat that he built from scratch in his front yard in Tulsa. He's now in the gulf of Mexico making parts ON the boat, FOR the boat. Along with his Tormach CNC mill. Anyway.... he bought this printer for full price (not sponsored) and he says it's the best deal he found for 3D printers right now. He's made two videos about it already. The first video shows him hauling the new printer in his dingy/tender out to the anchored boat in the bay, and setting it up. The second video show him making a bunch of stuff for the boat. He's says this new printer is light years better than the 3D printer he had 10 years ago in his shop in Tulsa. After watching these videos about 3D printing, I may have to finally break down and get one. I thought these videos were pretty good so I figured you guys would enjoy them, too.
Video #1 (2 weeks ago)
Video #2 (a few days ago)
Video #1 (2 weeks ago)
Video #2 (a few days ago)
slowtwitch73
Well-known member
By weight... total bargain.
OP
And that printer isn't a great one...
I'm sure it's not spectacular... But for the price it seems to work pretty darn good. I know NOTHING about 3D printing, or 3D printers... But I do find the topic very interesting.
In the second video I posted, he makes a bunch of brackets for the boat and they seem to be very strong and totally usable.
OP
The key is staying reliable over time… they are so frustrating when you can’t count on them. Failures at the end of a 12 hour print will drive you mad.
I do a lot of structural things as well. I printed these brackets out of solid infill ABS for my crossbars. Just makes mounting stuff a little easier:
OP
Printed on the X1 as I don't have an enclosure on the MK4. When it works, it works beautifully... And it seems as though they are pretty damned reliable for most people. It's just really hard for me to get over the support experience I had just three weeks after spending damned near $1500 on the thing.
OP
I posted these earlier, but a friend of mine has a really rare and cool Cayman R. He got some carbon track wheels for the thing and needed some center caps. So, I got some Nylon filament infused with carbon fiber and then printed the centers on my Carbon X1 using a stainless steel build plate with carbon fiber laminated on top.
Honestly, the picture does not do them justice... They look and feel like hand laid carbon fiber...
Honestly, the picture does not do them justice... They look and feel like hand laid carbon fiber...
MadeByMiller
Well-known member
As a former Prusa owner (and accused fan boy) my only experience with the famed Prusa tech support left me so upset that I will no longer recommend the brand. After waiting nearly two years for the highly anticipated XL I preordered, my $2,500 machine was DOA.
On paper, the 24/7 online support chat sounds great. In my experience, it was an extremely frustrating waste of time. The chat representative served as a middle man for the actual tech support minds that were only available during Czech business hours. This meant that any steps towards diagnosing my printer fault were delayed at least 24 hours or more depending on what day of the week it was.
Despite being told I would receive email follow ups for my case, they never were delivered and when I asked, I was told a more direct email address to communicate to the actual technicians was not available. This meant that I would have to follow up myself when I didn't hear back from them by starting a new online chat, waiting sometimes over an hour to even get a response, filling the online chat middle man in on my case all over again, and then trying to get to the bottom of my issue. This process would take HOURS out of my day and would get me nowhere, ending with a reassurance that I would get a response back within 48 hours this time...
After running through this tech support goose chase numerous times over the course of multiple weeks and getting no answers and being denied the part I was sure I would need to fix the machine, I gave up. I asked to initiate the return process on the half baked machine that was delivered over a year late and never was able to get past the initial calibration steps, let alone actually print. I packed it up and sent it back to Czech Republic and awaited their inspection so I could receive my refund.
Let me vent about the refund process now. Prusa clearly states that they do not refund shipping/customs fees. This meant that I lost almost $300 to return a $2,500 machine that to no fault of my own was bricked on arrival. I wasted many, many hours dealing with the slow and frustrating online tech support only to be given the runaround and no actual "support", then I got the pleasure of burning hundreds of dollars to ship the boat anchor back to them in order to hopefully receive a refund of my purchase price. So I waited, and I waited.
A full month went by after I shipped the printer back to them and I still hadn't received a refund or even notification that they were inspecting the machine. Once again, I had to engage with the clunky online chat to try to find out why I hadn't received a refund and when I could expect it. My unkind messages must have gotten to the right people, and I was finally refunded my money (minus shipping/customs fees...) and that was that, my horrible Prusa support experience was finally over.
Since then, my Prusa mk3s+ machines have been sold and I've upgraded with three Bambu Lab X1C machines, two of which have AMS units. I've logged over 2,200 print hours combined on these printers and I couldn't be happier. I've not needed to test the Bambu tech support yet, but I've read both good and bad experiences. Past issues with Prusa aside, I have no interest in the MK4 machine. There's nothing remotely interesting to me about another Prusa bedslinger that's just trying to keep up with a Bambu printer.
My recommendation lies firmly with a Bambu Lab machine.
On paper, the 24/7 online support chat sounds great. In my experience, it was an extremely frustrating waste of time. The chat representative served as a middle man for the actual tech support minds that were only available during Czech business hours. This meant that any steps towards diagnosing my printer fault were delayed at least 24 hours or more depending on what day of the week it was.
Despite being told I would receive email follow ups for my case, they never were delivered and when I asked, I was told a more direct email address to communicate to the actual technicians was not available. This meant that I would have to follow up myself when I didn't hear back from them by starting a new online chat, waiting sometimes over an hour to even get a response, filling the online chat middle man in on my case all over again, and then trying to get to the bottom of my issue. This process would take HOURS out of my day and would get me nowhere, ending with a reassurance that I would get a response back within 48 hours this time...
After running through this tech support goose chase numerous times over the course of multiple weeks and getting no answers and being denied the part I was sure I would need to fix the machine, I gave up. I asked to initiate the return process on the half baked machine that was delivered over a year late and never was able to get past the initial calibration steps, let alone actually print. I packed it up and sent it back to Czech Republic and awaited their inspection so I could receive my refund.
Let me vent about the refund process now. Prusa clearly states that they do not refund shipping/customs fees. This meant that I lost almost $300 to return a $2,500 machine that to no fault of my own was bricked on arrival. I wasted many, many hours dealing with the slow and frustrating online tech support only to be given the runaround and no actual "support", then I got the pleasure of burning hundreds of dollars to ship the boat anchor back to them in order to hopefully receive a refund of my purchase price. So I waited, and I waited.
A full month went by after I shipped the printer back to them and I still hadn't received a refund or even notification that they were inspecting the machine. Once again, I had to engage with the clunky online chat to try to find out why I hadn't received a refund and when I could expect it. My unkind messages must have gotten to the right people, and I was finally refunded my money (minus shipping/customs fees...) and that was that, my horrible Prusa support experience was finally over.
Since then, my Prusa mk3s+ machines have been sold and I've upgraded with three Bambu Lab X1C machines, two of which have AMS units. I've logged over 2,200 print hours combined on these printers and I couldn't be happier. I've not needed to test the Bambu tech support yet, but I've read both good and bad experiences. Past issues with Prusa aside, I have no interest in the MK4 machine. There's nothing remotely interesting to me about another Prusa bedslinger that's just trying to keep up with a Bambu printer.
My recommendation lies firmly with a Bambu Lab machine.
OP
Everyone has a story man... Hate hearing you had a bad experience with Prusa.
Do you at all worry about data privacy with the Bambu? I start thinking about DJI and regulations and... It's sort of scary...
Those look really nice. Damn!I posted these earlier, but a friend of mine has a really rare and cool Cayman R. He got some carbon track wheels for the thing and needed some center caps. So, I got some Nylon filament infused with carbon fiber and then printed the centers on my Carbon X1 using a stainless steel build plate with carbon fiber laminated on top.
Honestly, the picture does not do them justice... They look and feel like hand laid carbon fiber...
MadeByMiller
Well-known member
I don't worry about it any more than I worry about the myriad of other wifi connected electronic devices in my life. My printers play an essential role in my business and my concerns lie in their ability to get the job done consistently, of which my X1C's have only ever impressed me.
Believe me, I was highly skeptical of Bambu Lab when they first hit the scene. Country of origin was high up there in my list of criticisms, along with the walled garden nature of the brand. In reality, I've found that Prusa uses their longstanding reputation as a crutch to sell largely inferior tech, and that's much more of a turn off to me than not being fully aware of what boogieman might be lurking in the Bambu cloud.
OP
I feel ya... And totally understand the bias. Hell, my experience with Bambu was sooo bad. I honestly don't think I've ever been that frustrated with a company before. In the end, they straight up screwed me. And that experience alone clouds my judgement for sure.
All that being said, the X1 isn't as benign as a device using your wifi connection. It's not just sending packets... When you print from a terminal, it's going over their cloud and as such, they are capable of capturing far more data off your network. Camera footage, Intellectual property, actual network access, etc... all up for grabs. And read their TOS... They are selling data. That scares me.
And lets not forget... Bambu is a company that spawned from a company that was banned from doing business with the US government.
This nerd goes over it all pretty well:
But if it prints well, people don't seem to care - right? Hell, I still have one and print with it daily. If I was doing something with valuable IP, I definitely wouldn't use it but, still...
***
What's interesting is to print the same part on both printers using the same filament. They usually finish within seconds of each other. Quality varies depending on the filament. For whatever reason, the MK4 seems to print PETG better than the X1... While the X1 is unbeatable with PLA... and of course, anything that needs an enclosure.
gtae07
Well-known member
That's mostly me.
Every now and then I'll decide I need to make something and fire up my old Ender 3 that usually sits in the shop gathering dust. PETG and PLA print well enough that I haven't expanded into anything else yet.
But every few months I'll read about some new affordable amazing printer and think "I want one!", just like I think about building my own icemaker from a chest freezer. Then I realize I have no real use for such a machine and shelve the idea.
OP
Yeah, you really need to have the thing top of mind or it won't get used. I think I use mine the most for organizational projects... Here's some drawers I did for the print station:
MadeByMiller
Well-known member
Yes, I feel like our experiences are a bit of a mirror image of each other. I think it's also fair to say that neither experience is representative of the companies. It's not easy or always useful to separate our experiences from our perceptions.
Print quality to me is moot. I'm confident I could get similar results on both machines as I spend quite a bit of time calibrating and tweaking settings. Features matter more to me in this comparison. The ease of sending prints, monitoring prints (integrated webcam and Bambu Handy app), AMS capability, enclosure, aux fan, build volume, and even machine build quality set my X1C far above a MK4 to me, especially when you compare price.
I'll admit, I'm ignorant when it comes to the data vulnerability issue. Call me cynical, but I pretty much assume that anything I do with an internet connection is being tracked and sold in some way. The results of this sort of data capture to my knowledge hasn't led to any real world consequences such as products/ideas being stolen. I think this would be way too risky for Bambu, no? Seems to me that stealing and selling IP would result in a fallout of trust and the death of the company.
OP
100% agree and said way better than I did.
Bambu, no? But these are the same guys behind DJI... and DJI definitely got caught doing some shady **** with mapping using data gathered through US consumer drones. So, they aren't above it... (pun intended)
Obviously, I'm not super up in arms about it as I'm still using mine... but it's something I think all Bambu users and prospective customers should be aware of.
AffableCurmudgeon
Well-known member
Agreed, now I do not know how I lived without one. I spent some time and learned how to use and design in Fusion 360. I print a lot of car parts, things for around the house, modifications to store bought stuff etc. It is a really a nice tool to have. I have a very basic Ender; I can't imagine the possibilities when I get tired of it and buy a more capable machine. Your review was very useful.
Having had mine for close to a year now, it's hard to imagine a shop without a 3D printer. I use it for all kinds of things. The ones more relevant to this forum tend to be storage and organization ones. For example, I made a full set of trays for my 1/2" drive sockets because I couldn't find any on the market that worked for my sizes and preferences.
And more uniquely, I designed and made this soldering iron station for my Omnifixo M4 and Pinecil 2.0. It's fantastic, fitting into my pocket for use in the field, yet being a fully featured station when in use.
EDIT: To be clear, I don't have a Bambu like some others in this thread. I have a heavily customized Voron 2.4 R2.
And more uniquely, I designed and made this soldering iron station for my Omnifixo M4 and Pinecil 2.0. It's fantastic, fitting into my pocket for use in the field, yet being a fully featured station when in use.
EDIT: To be clear, I don't have a Bambu like some others in this thread. I have a heavily customized Voron 2.4 R2.
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MadeByMiller
Well-known member
The modern consumer faces a minefield in terms of navigating the pros/cons of the corporations we support with our dollar. Hopefully your thread here will help some folks determine to which camp they're going to trust that dollar with. I appreciate your forum very much and threads like this for helping me make these often difficult decisions.
For the record, I think it was a genius move on Prusa's behalf to send you that printer and I in no way question the legitimacy of your Bambu complaints nor your praise of the MK4.
My opinion is that the marketing buzz about Bambu printers being "appliance" machines is also bogus. 3D printers are complex and the technology is still young. Anyone buying a 3D printer should anticipate a learning curve and expect that there will be print failures and machine breakdowns. It's a shame that it took so long for your AMS issue to be resolved (and I'm not excusing that poor customer service), but your printer would have still been just as useful as the MK4 you received during the interim if you had disconnected and bypassed the AMS altogether.
I know that you're not a novice 3D printer user, and I don't claim to be an all-knowing expert either, but if you have a printing issue in the future please feel free to reach out and I can try to help.
OP
Oh dude. I’m totally a novice…. I just get frustrated when I have to go in the weeds on one of these things. I’ll definitely hit you up.
OP
Having had mine for close to a year now, it's hard to imagine a shop without a 3D printer. I use it for all kinds of things. The ones more relevant to this forum tend to be storage and organization ones. For example, I made a full set of trays for my 1/2" drive sockets because I couldn't find any on the market that worked for my sizes and preferences.
And more uniquely, I designed and made this soldering iron station for my Omnifixo M4 and Pinecil 2.0. It's fantastic, fitting into my pocket for use in the field, yet being a fully featured station when in use.
EDIT: To be clear, I don't have a Bambu like some others in this thread. I have a heavily customized Voron 2.4 R2.
Dude. I want that soldering station!!!