Is it worth it?

Bambu Lab P1 Series General Discussions
21

I can’t find anything negative about the X1 Carbon. Except perhaps the noise level. But that also goes hand in hand with the print speed. Yes, my CR20 Pro is not audible compared to the X1C since the upgrade to other motor drivers. But in the end, I’m interested in the result and the time I get it in. I find the X1C quite successful, it combines many things that I have previously found described in forums as modifications to Ender printers, for example.

Calibrate the printer, insert the filament (new or dried), switch on the automatic filament calibration and the print works. Even without filament calibration, the prints are quite good and reproducible (but parts may be less accurate without calibration). With my CR-20 it is no longer so easy. It’s had a few more hours of printing and the design is not so well thought out, so problems keep occurring. I always had to experiment a lot with filaments to get usable prints. The quality of the results of both printers (types) is obvious and that’s why the CR-20 is just sitting here for nothing.

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22

Just Yes to KanneKaffee - In the end it’s always a matter of taste and everyone has to know that for themselves :slight_smile:

The 5M are replasing my Creality Ender 3 S1 Pro`s In the end it was purely a decision of the time. Network compatible, active parts management with color display on the printer, autocalibration not only partially automated and the parts coming off the plate faster when urgent needed, Core XY - It’s worth the 1500 euros to me so I’ll swap the fleet… and a printer is no printer, everytihng fine until the troubleshooting starts :rofl:

23

I stand on the side where, if you have the money… buy the Bambu Lab printer. Nothing on the market is as plug and play. Prusas will have better support for troubleshooting, but even they aren’t as easy to use out of the box (mostly due to the immense prebuilt profile library). Although note, if you are good with searching, I’m sure you can find a similar number of usable profiles out there, but that will be at a significant cost of time. Also, that’s defeating the purpose of the main goal (ease of use). The K1 Series over with Creality have similar performance but nowhere near the ease of use. Their issues are mixed between hardware and a lack of good profiles. The Flashforge, Two Trees, and Qidi Tech are in the same category. All capable, and relatively easy to use, but all are in a different category of ease when you don’t understand everything going on with the printer.

Are Bambu’s printers appliances like they are trying to be… no. But they are the closest thing to that on the market. From your replies, you seem reasonably technical or at least able to grasp some of the theories, that puts you in a different category to many of the people complaining. I’m absolutely sure there are some lemons out there, after all, Bambu is not using top shelf hardware. However, the printers are well engineered and uses reasonable quality hardware. BTW, the only issues I’ve had with my P1P (converted to a P1S) are the occasional user error. Correct the user error and reprint, and everything just works.

IMO, if you have the money, and don’t mind the locked down and questionable security nature of the brand, there’s no easier to use printers out there.

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24

Yes, bambulab is the esayest printer to operate printer out of the box. The M5 needs a litel more expiriance. But since there is a Service center reachable in 5 minutes by car, as well as an 3 year “bring in” guarantee by the seller, Bambulab lost its “easiest printer to use” certificate at least for me.

As long as it runs, yes. Failures are rare, yes. But if… you get it back in operation with a very good wiki that is excellent, this is beyond all doubt and was done very, very well. But to get it back in operation takes longer than average and became much more complicated… so for sure there are now easier to use printers out there, it`s just dependet on the view you take.

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26

I somewhat disagree.
Prusa’s have by far the easiest to use instructions and trouble shooting articles. Their screen instructions are comprehensive, as are error messages. Even the Mk3s with its old dot matrix screen and 8 bit chip does better than the P1 in this regard. I don’t get what you mean by saying Prusa is not easy to use because they have many profiles?
By comparison, especially when we are talking P1 series, the screen is a joke, the error messages are cryptic at best, the process of changing hotends is difficult for a new user, and is still frustrating for advanced users. Nozzle clogs are reasonably commonplace. The camera is only slightly better than useless, WiFi dropouts, and LAN mode is still not ideal.
Flashforge has good performance, a better screen, wired ethernet or WiFi, the absolute easiest nozzle swapout system by far.
I’m not saying Bambu is bad, far from it. They do work out the box. But if things don’t work, they can be a pain to dial in or repair. And there’s enough talk about poor customer service to say that there are a decent amount of people with warranty concerns that can’t be fixed with help from the community. Just my opinion.

27

I’d be very interested to know what the comparison numbers between actual warranty claim tickets to tickets related to general 3d printing issues. I don’t feel that the forum posts are a good indication of what tickets are submited.

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28

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

I’m assuming you mean the process of changing nozzles are more difficult, because the changing of the hotends are the easiest in the business. I’d agree the nozzle swapping is a little more involved than other machines only requiring a new standard nozzle, but honestly, that not something I’ve ever done in 6 years of 3D printing. I have countless nozzles, but never had a need or a good reason to change them. YRMV, but I’d assume people who are looking for the “easy button” of 3D printing will follow suit with me on that.

Odd… in the year of printing with my P1, I’ve never had to clear a clog. The closest I come to a clog was simply printing too quickly for TPU. After stopping the print and re-slicing the file correctly, the issue was gone. I’m assuming this is more of a user centric problem. Defintiely something that someone new to 3D printing could experience, but I’d hardly classify the printer as clog prone.

True, on the P1 series, the camera isn’t top shelf, but most printers on the market don’t even have one… including Prusa. I hardly see that as a negative. This is definitely a case of “better than nothing”. Also, not sure I’d put this complaint in the “ease of printing” category.

As far as WiFi dropouts, since the first few firmware releases, mine has been rock solid reliable.

No argument on the LAN mode. Their halfhearted LAN mode is likely done on purpose to gather the print data on their servers. Print data is gold to them, they don’t even need the model data to benefit from it, but I’m sure they can get that too as it is being sent and stored on their servers. Just as Tesla got a massive head-start on the other auto makers by pooling tons of user data, this is no different.

Again, no complaint about service, that’s not their strong suit (from my personal experience). But note, of all the complaints you see on the forums, there are many, many, many more that are doing just fine. People don’t jump on forums to say everything is working as expected, they only do it to complain or compliment.

We are heavily biased by our own experiences, as such, I would guess your experience wasn’t great, however that’s not my reality. Aside from service issues, my experience has been great. Personally, I don’t like how they manipulate releases to squeeze every dollar they can from you, but that’s any modern company (Prusa included). In regard to the OP’s original question, I still stand by my initial assessment, but I do accept that others may disagree.

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29

Well the nozzle is part of the hotend and not removable, it’s one piece? Either way, I suggest you look at how easy an adventurer m5 is in comparison.

Ive only had one customer service ticket for a warped bed (another common issue). But then I’m likely more capable than a new user in diagnosing faults and fixing them myself so I’ve not had to submit any others.

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That’s pretty easy, kinda like the A1’s. However, just because that is easier, doesn’t make the P1’s hard or not easy. For Pete’s sake, its 2 screws and 2 wires.

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Well if you’ve never changed one in 6 years, how would you know?

Lots of your pros for the printer revolve around anecdotal evidence that you haven’t had the problem or issue with yours so it mustn’t exist.
e.g. right now, there’s 2 current posts in the forums concerning nozzle clogs and many more if you do a search, which will show you it’s not always a user caused issue.
Anyway, like you said. Agree to disagree. I’d rather point out for a new potential user the possible pitfalls and other options and not sugar coat it.

32

Hmmm, which printer doesn’t have a clogged nozzle? At least my X1C hasn’t had one in the last few months since I found the cause and built an extension. But that doesn’t speak in favour of the X1C, mods or extensions are also available for other printers. Clogged nozzles are a problem that occurs again and again with FDM 3D printing. Unfortunately, this is more common with closed printers than with open printers, where the heat can escape better.

Yes, I had a clogged nozzle, which is why I replaced it. But that was my mistake: PLA that was too wet. I didn’t quite want to believe it, even though I saw the signs early on, because there were some users here who were strongly of the opinion that drying filament was overrated. So I kept trying and trying until the dilemma materialised. For me, this confirmed the myth that filament drying is addressed too quickly in the event of printing problems and is therefore overrated. I will once again rely more on my experience.

33

I have yet to see any solid evidence of anything deliberately nefarious with Bambu cloud communications.

In Setting the Record Straight Bambu says:

  1. Our firmware is an in-house development, and we strictly comply with all licensing requirements for code usage.
  2. We can only access your log files when you, the customer, explicitly and manually upload them to us for troubleshooting, whether in LAN or cloud mode. Our process ensures that this action is entirely customer-initiated.
  3. The log files record machine commands and sensor readings, as they are meant to. They do not contain your 3MF or STL files.

Top secret engineering artefacts are probably better or more likely manufactured on a StrataSys, EOS, 3D Systems, VoxelJet, HP, Desktop Metal, MarkForged, Renishaw, SLM, GE Additive (nee Arcam and Concept Laser), Trumpf, Velo3D, DMG Mori, XJet, and loads of other industrial machines than a consumer 3D printer. And their remote diagnostics and license management are probably communicating more.

A far greater privacy and security concern is the way that some people post their entire life online on social media.

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34

LOL, sorry, I have changed the standard stainless steel nozzle for the hardened one. Point still stands… 2 screws and 2 wires… oh, and removal of a magnetic cover. Oh… if you don’t have an extra fan I’ll add 2 more screws.

Anecdotal… its actual FIRST HAND experience with hundreds (if not over 1000) prints. FAR more useful than cherry picking negative experiences. Which one is really “anecdotal”?

Also… this isn’t a Pro v Con argument, I think you are missing the point. This was specific to “is the printer an easy to use printer”. Somehow, people like you have the OP thinking its difficult to use. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Again… agree to disagree.

Privacy concerns aren’t limited to nefarious actions. A lot of the problem is the potential of those issues, and Bambu Lab’s requirements leave that as an option.

To set the record straight, I don’t think they really care about their customer’s trinkets and amateur engineering ideas. What they are doing is gathering information to improve their products on your dime. They are using your print jobs to figure out how often people screw things up, or in some cases figuring out that their product can do various things they didn’t know or intend for it to do. Don’t think for a second that they save your information on their servers and can’t see it. The suggestion that they only have access to what you manually send them seems like an outright lie (BTW, honesty is largely the only issue I have with Bambu). If you go on Handy, you can clearly see they are caching every print and storing it on a server. Whether the log files are stored like that, is irrelevant. They have tons of data that the customers have sent them and they are making the offline method of using their printers less appealing to encourage the cloud data gathering. Just like everything else, when an expensive feature is free, you are the product.

Personally, I don’t have security concerns with them, because I don’t give them anything I wouldn’t give away freely. Equally, I think its a fair trade. Use my data to improve the product. That said, its important to remember, its not always the Chinese company that is the bad actor (actually, I’d argue they rarely are), its the required tie to the government that is worrying. Again, I doubt the Chinese government is pouring over models to steal western defense or industrial secrets, but they have these policies for a reason. That unknown agenda is what I find a little alarming.

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35

That’s not how signal intelligence gathering works. Ever heard of AI?

It’s been an open secret in the Intelligence community that governments on both sides employ electronic screening systems going all the way back to the 60s. The AI’s can’t interpret the data but they can flag the data for inspection by a human. Then it’s all down to following the breadcrumbs.

My company recently employed Microsoft CoPilot which is case you haven’t been reading the news recently, it is the Microsoft Branded version of ChatGPT. I’ve been paying for ChatGPT on my personal account but having that AI unleashed inside my own company’s “Private” servers is unnerving in what I was able to dig up in the last couple of weeks.

The data that is being gathered by Bambu is without question being warehoused within the PRC’s own large language model AIs without Bambu’s consent.

It’s never one piece of information that compromises a system, it is the cumulative affect of gathering all the breadcrumbs to come up with a comprehensive profile of an individuals habits, lifestyles and compromising personal information. Since the Patriot act was passed I’ve always maintained that I am not afraid of the NSA having my phone bill, they have to follow the law. But what’s to stop Google or Amazon from using my data and selling it to people with nefarious purpose. Now add that scenario to the resources and hostile agenda of the PRC and even George Orwell would by nervous.

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36

THIS is something no one ever really considers when data is being harvested. Put enough public information/data together, you can come up with all kinds of confidential information. This used to be done by analysts pouring through data and trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but with AI taking over that task, they are going to have a whole lot easier time pulling out the juicy bits. AI is one of those things that keeps me up at night.

37

I’m not disputing that they are collecting it, and obviously they would use technology where ever it can help. I just don’t see the PRC spending millions of dollars to steal fidget spinners, whistles, and radio controlled airplanes.

Personally, I believe the government is only requiring every company to comply. But I doubt they are screening every company’s data. Maybe they are simply holding the information for that time when the computing power reaches that point where they can collate, decipher, and predict trends off seemingly innocuous data, but AI is not there yet. AI is still spouting out complete lies right now because those lies are popular. It is not at a stage where these Orwellian fears are fully justified. The scary part though… it could get there in no time.

I’m going pause the side banter from the OP’s thread, because this one has grown wings and is all over the place. If anyone would like, I can start a thread and we can continue the debate there.

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Yes, definitely start a thread.

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I don’t care how quickly someone change a nozzle. Slightly faster first and top surfaces and otherwise just more fillament consumption in between. Filament consumption that costs more than a new printer. I don’t even change a nozzle on the M5…

This is the replacement part I want to see. Mounted with 6 screws, 90% of all my problems solved in minutes with a complete redy to go spearpart and done:

And this is also the first replacement part that I look for every time a new printer is released… if they don’t have it, they can keep the printer because I don’t just test a printer for 3 months. And when the first component goes away in the direct extruder, the next problem with the part may doesn’t take long to appear… so i put the whole direct extruder in the trash can and back on the race track… and if that wasn’t the problem, at least I know that there are no more problems anymore. Otherwise you’ll be looking for a needle in a haystack.

41

WTF? Is it just me, or does that post sound machine generated?