Accessory questions for new guy before placing order

Bambu Lab X Series Bambu Lab X2D
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Totally new to 3D, looking to get the X2D as my 1st printer as a hobbyist. I’m suffering from a little info overload so hoping you can answer a few questions please:

1- Spools: Doesn’t it just make most sense to buy 4-5 high temp spools from the get go? They are the same price as low temp but will work with all filaments, so why would you buy low temp ones? I suppose I could print some off, but if I start with PLA like most beginners should then they are low temp. I’d rather just get it right the first time. Make sense, or am I missing something?

2- The AMS has a drying feature, but do I need to buy the adapter for it, it sounds like it doesn’t come with one? I’m only going to tun 1 AMS.

3- Filament dryer: Should I also be getting a secondary dedicated filament dryer, or is the AMS good enough? I’m not in a particularly humid area.

4- Extra nozzles; Sounds like it’s good to have a spare, X2D comes with .4 should I just get another .4 or should I get the .2, 6, .08 set? I have no idea if I will need or use the other sizes, maybe I’m overthinking it.

5- Build plates: sounds like I should have spares. Should I get the high temp engineering plate in case I do ABS for car parts, and then I think it need build plate glue also, or is that all overkill? What about the textured PEI plate and it’s benefits, maybe that’s a no brainer?

6- When using the secondary nozzle for braces/supports, what filament do you use? Is it the Support for PLA/PETG? Website is not clear as I don’t see spool of it and it’s way more $ than the filament.

7- Any other obvious accessories I’ve overlooked excluding tools, as that’s a whole nother list. LOL

Thank you.

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Buy accessories as you go and see what you need.

  1. The type of spool doesnt make that big of a difference until you start drying with an HT.

  2. You only need the ams power supply if you want to dry while printing. You can also find cheaper ones on amazon.

  3. Filament dryers are really nice to have. But the investment depends on your area and how much you will have to use it. I have been using a Sunlu S4 for awhile and I find it to be pretty good. Get something with at least 4 bays.

  4. Wait and see what you need for nozzles

  5. The textured pei plate is great. The engineering plate is very useful, but not needed. I would buy it if you plan to use ABS a good amount.

  6. I think the dedicated support material is a scam. Use pla on petg and vice versa. PVA is also fun to play around with.

  7. Bottle of dawn powerwash, some 91 percent IPA, and lint free shop towels for cleaning your plates.

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1 - you have to buy 10KG at once.
2 - yes get an adapter on amazon
3 - good idea. I suggest a double creality when it is 30% sales on amazon, 60€ circa
4 - 0.8 is overkill imo, I even stopped using 0.6 because it is faster to stick to the 0.4 and calibrations
5 - if the printer NEEDS the PEI for calibration purposes, keep it safe and in any case get a smooth plate I would say the Glacier all purposes all temperatures. you’re not being cheap on electricity’s bill, right ?
6 - PLA support is great to do his job. In any case you use it just for the interface, not the whole support
7 - I don’t know but I am interested

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I agree with everything Cincinnati said above.

No, just buy the high temp materials already on a spool when you start using them. Most of the time you will not find these materials as a refill anyways.

Additionally, when you first get started it’s actually worth it to try and by as many filaments on spools in the beginning to build up your stock of spools for refills. If you are paying more than $3 for an empty spool it’s rip-off in my opinion.

You can also print spools if you really need one. It can be fun to do this when you get started as you can choose from 100’s of designs or design your own to learn how to use design tools. It’s not as cost effective but it’s still cheaper than paying $6+ for an empty spool.

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5

There’s no need to buy spools if you are already buying filament, if you buy the first couple packages with the spools attached, once those are used up, you will end up with extra spools for refills later.

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I agree with most of what was said. Just a few additional experiences:

  • Don’t pay for empty spools. Your printer can empty a spool a day leaving you with a perfectly serviceable empty spool to take the refills: Yes, you can re-use them for future purchases of refills.
  • Set yourself a monthly budget for filament :joy:
  • I like my cheap single spool drier. It is rare that I need to dry 4 spools at once as I usually only need to refill single slots. I do however dry every single spool as they pick up moisture during shipping. The plastic bags they are in slow, but do not stop water uptake. After weeks on a ship…
  • Similarly, playing with the .2mm nozzle can be fun. The .6mm can also become useful but my .8’s are gathering dust… You do not really them (yet) though.
  • Spares are always good. Definitely 1 to 2 .4mm nozzles. You’ll probably want to have both a smooth plate and a textured plate.
  • I usually just use PETG as a support interface for PLA and vice versa. Works a treat. In rare and extreme cases, I go for BVOH.
  • Other stuff: You’ll be glad to have: a plastic scraper for brim removal, a stiff clean brush, microfibre cloth and dishwashing liquid for plate cleaning and a pair of flush cutters to cut filament. Everything else, you do not need (yet :joy: ).
  • There’s lots to learn: PLA prints, multi-color, multi-material support interfaces, (dry) PETG, flexible filaments (in decreasing hardness TPU for AMS, 95A, 90A,…), effect plates, high temp filaments, designing your own prints,… just take it one step at a time.

:four_leaf_clover: & :crossed_fingers:

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  1. No, don’t buy empty spools. In a few spools you will have a ton of empty spools
  2. No
  3. No
  4. Buy a set of high-flow tungsten carbide 0.4. If you plan to print small toys - you can buy 0.2. If you plan to print large strong parts - 0.6mm.
  5. It comes with textured PEI plate. Just buy a liquid glue for challenging adhesion material.
  6. That’s a bit advanced feature, but you usually use PETG as a support for PLA, or vice versa. Or support material, but IMO it’s trash.
  7. Buy spare filters. Standalone Air purifier with HEPA and carbon filter.

Also

I’d suggest to … not. X2D is amazing machine, but it’s way more advanced and niche due to Bowden setup. You will experience issues and it may deter you from FDM…

If this is your first delving into FDM industry, then I would suggest to start with something way easier and simpler to master. For example A-series. Or P2S.

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aaand here we go as usual :joy:

First motorcycle Triumph speed Triple no abs and later a custom, to drive like it is a speed triple and believe me, I smoked tons of R6 up the alps with a 60 hp “bench” :joy:
As women say, it’s not about the size, but how you use it :sweat_smile:

@Riffraff1 if you have budget get an H2C

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I would first define what you are going to want to print before going down the rabbit hole of accessories. The AMS 2 Pro will dry most everything except engineering materials.

If you don’t know what you want to print, but want to get your feet wet, stick with the combo and a couple rolls of PLA. Maybe add a roll of PLA support, but you will not need much because you are only printing what is called the interface layer between the actual support (same material as the part you want to print) and the functional part.

Lastly, the X2D is a feature rich printer, but can be fussy to get it printing right. It has many foibles that are still to be worked out. You may also want to consider a simpler machine as a starter printer. However, if you are the kind of person that likes to work “under the hood” to learn and understand all the inner working of things, then just keep in mind you will need to invest a portion of your time debugging your machine and print settings.

It’s good to have clear objectives before making any significant plunge.

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10

Thanks to all of you who took some time out of your day to respond to my many questions, and also offer advice, I really do appreciate it.

I’ve been mulling this over for months, and I do understand the X2D is sort of jumping into the deep end for me at least. I almost pulled the trigger on the P2S a couple months ago, but I’m glad I didn’t. After careful consideration the X2D just has too many things I like about it that I can’t pass up the opportunity. I’m going to be a 1 printer guy, so I want to get it right the first time and I feel that the X2D will be my best option to achieve that, but with some growing pains. I love to learn and tinker in my workshop so the learning curve doesn’t scare me, and it appears there is a wonderful forum here as well if I do get stuck. The last thing I want to do is drop a $1,000 on a printer and regret not getting the next one up for $100 more. The next one up from the X2D is way over budget, so it stops there. LOL

I think there has been no better time to enter this hobby than now, so I’m pretty excited to see all the possibilities it has to offer for us.

The first things I’m going to print after the usual requirements are going to be for my wife. Just like when I bought my MIG welder, welded up some garden art for her, and I’ve never heard her complain about the purchase. That’s my marriage tip for today. :wink:

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Just because the X2D has a ton of advanced features, it doesn’t men he has to use them. I’d get the X2D as a hedge against the future and ignore the complicated bits until they are needed. He may feel limited by an A-series later on.

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I realize the budget concerns, but you might want to consider the H series printers. There are a couple of reasons to give that some more thought.

  1. The H series is more mature and many of the bugs are now worked out.
  2. You get a slightly bigger machine and nothing is more frustrating than finding the bed size is just a little too small for the next project.
  3. The H series should produce slightly better prints. The X2C might catch up, but who knows.

I have had a few times where I bought a machine (i.e., lathes and mills) and found its limitations bite me, which forced me to upgrade and my total cost for the right machine becomes much higher than just getting what I have now.

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Sale starts Monday too. Might make H series more appealing

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Honestly, this was me back in February/March. I’d been interested in it for a while, and was getting my wife looking at it.

We weren’t sure if it was gonna be something we’d take to, so decided we had a maximum budget of $500 just to test the waters. Microcenter ended up having a deal on a P1s for under budget when we swung by one day, so we snagged one.

3 1/2 months later, I’ve spent a bit on some hardened nozzles and a couple of plates for the P1s (to work with some of the harder to print filaments), while my wife has spent entirely too much money on Filament (mostly PLAs… but she occasionally buys some PETG ‘for me’) (we have over 50kg of filament ready to go, on top of all the filament we’ve used already), but it has allowed me to setup an actually functional workshop for in the garage without her complaining about that.

That time has given us a ton of useful 1st hand knowledge, and although we were considering upgrading to an H series, I’ve come to realize that what we need to do what I want to do with engineering grade filaments, while also letting my wife do the stuff she wants, is a tool changer. So far, the only machine that seems to fit our needs is from a different company. Although it’s going be more expensive than the H series machines available from Bambu, the fact that we spent so little on the P1s means we can probably just keep the P1s to use for the simpler stuff, because its very capable of printing with the basic PLA and PETG filaments.

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I did the same things, mulled it over for a few months, was about to push the button on a P1S, then the P2S came out… Then I thought I’d buy a P2S…. then I read all this crap about Bambu’s crappy cloud policies and pivoted to PRUSA…. Continued to mull it over for 3 months while waiting on my savings to catch up. Finally decided the PRUSA premium wasn’t worth it and if Bambu gets out of line I’ll just jail break it :slight_smile:. Ordered the X2D and couldn’t be happier as a 1 printer guy. But now I might need a large format :slight_smile: So we’ll see.

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Yes. H2D combo $1700. I would prefer that over the X2D, even with the $800 difference.

H2S combo is something like $1350.

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You have gotten some great advice already. I’ll offer only a few more thoughts:

If you expect to print only low-temperature materials such as PLA and PETG, then AMS 2 Pro is fine as a drier. I haven’t had any trouble with filaments I dried in mine.

If you want to use higher temperature materials such as ABS, ASA, nylon, polycarbonate, etc, though, you will want a dedicated drier that can run higher temperatures.

If you aren’t sure yet, then don’t buy it yet.

I did end up buying a Creality Space Pi 2 drier about a month after buying my printer. It’s just convenient to have an extra drier on hand in addition to the AMS, and it can run hotter which dries faster.

(Last week I replaced it with the Creality X4, which is :cook:'s :kiss_mark: and can run at still higher temperatures, good for engineering materials. And you can get it at a steep discount refurbished from Creality’s Ebay store.)

I’ll echo that 0.4 is a very good all-rounder. I bought 0.6 and 0.8 nozzles with my P1S and it was a waste for me: I’ve never used them! I would just wait to see if you are satisfied with the stock nozzles of the X2D before you buy more.

I thought so too and bought a spare build plate with my P1S. I have some 900 hours on the textured PEI plate that came with it. I love it.

Around the 800 hour mark, I started to have a lot of adhesion failures. I did some light sanding with #0 steel wool to re-scuff the surface and it’s working great. (That trick is not as good an idea for satin or smooth plates.)

I bought a textured+smooth PEI plate and have used it maybe… twice?

Buy it when you need it, unless you get an exceptional deal on it now. I’ve had no trouble printing ASA on my textured PEI build plate. (ASA: basically ABS, but with slightly less toxic fumes.)

Hope this helps. Enjoy your new printer!

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One year on a P1S with AMS combo, ~700 hours printing (not so much I guess).

I didn’t buy any extras with the combo.

  • Empty spools are piling up (as I can’t get refill always) never needed to buy or print one.
  • My P1S came with a spare .4 nozzle, which is collecting dust, as I didn’t need it yet.
  • still on my first structured PEI print plate, as it is all I need for my print.

Just start using and buy extra stuff as you need it.

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Thank you for this really helpful thread of advice. I am based in the UK so my experience of purchasing refills vs with-spool seems a little different from what’s described here so ended up printing a spool which is working really so I may print some more.

I purchased the P2S Combo and the AMS 2 Pro has done a great job of trying and keeping my active filaments dry, and the only adhesion issues I’ve had were quickly resolved by getting some isopropyl alcohol which I use between every print to remove oils from my hands during removal of the previous print.

I’ve not yet done anything other than PLA prints but have some PET on order so will see how that goes soon.

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Just one thing on top of all that has been mentioned already:

Not so much about the build plat but your intention to use ABS for car parts. I strongly recommend to use ASA instead of ABS.

ABS lacks UV resistance, causing discoloration, but worse, structural decay.

ASA is commonly used for car parts.