Yeah, grandma would have a tough time with this, but grandma would have a tough time with the toner cartridge as well. I disagree with the thought that the hot end swap is not easy. But everyone is entitled to their opinion. I think people are skewed to the new super easy swaps like the Flashforge and A1 Series. But if you look back at the reviews from a year ago, the X1 and P1 were mostly seen as one of the easiest hot-end swaps in the industry.
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To put it in perspective, the X1C hotend swapout is a lot easier than it is on my Prusa MK3, which requires some major disassembly/reassembly to carry out. And if you have an unresolvable clog, thatâs your only option.
That said, I think the BBL people agree that itâs more complicated than it should be, and thatâs why they made it a lot easier on the A1. I expect going forward it will be similarly simplified on all new printer releases.
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My only issue with the hot end swap on the P1S is the connectors BL chose to use.
Not âkeyedâ correctly (or at all really), and no nice comforting click/lock once seated.
I recently changed my hot end over and it is a case of press and hope itâs in the right place. Iâve actually taken pics of it once correct so that I have a visual reference for next time.
I donât mind tinkering, and started 3D printing back on the CR10S, but the P1S connectors and ribbon are an incredibly poor choice IMHO.
That said, I absolutely love how it prints and the way it is mostly just click and go 
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I still wouldnt say itâs a difficult process that is intimidating or frustrates seasoned users. Compared to my Artillery X2 the bambu nozzle swap is a breeze. I would also say that if you donât have an extra $20 to spend on a spare hotend assembly then you probably shouldnât buy a $600+ printer. Having spare parts on hand just makes good sense imo, especially considering how long it takes to get spares shipped. Jmo
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The main questions are: Do you want to work on a 3d printer? Or Do you want to work on 3d printing?
I bought the E3v3pro on Black Friday last year. It was breakdown after breakdown. The Ender is a headache to fine tune. I gave up on it. I only use it for a background in photos.
I bought the P1S two months later, and it has been a joy to use. So easy. I even like Bambu slicer.
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I donât know. The ENDER 3D with tons of $$ upgrades made me give up 3D printing. I spent more time leveling and calibrating, tweaking than I did using it. I could never trust it for long prints. I was tired of fixing that damn thing constantly!
I bought the BL X1-Carbon and like they say âIt printed right out of the boxâ. Not every print has been perfect, but I would say over 90% of what I do has been.
I did buy a huge assortment of spare parts for the X1C, and so far have only used a single filament cutter blade in over a year! I am still on the original .4mm nozzle!
I did have to take the AMS apart several times because of a filament break. I no longer put the screws back in - lol. It is easy to do. If I had one complain about the AMS, it is that I wise the internal wiring was a little longer. That would help my big clunky hands to get the cables plugged back in easier after fixing. That may sound scary, but I am probably under 5-7 minutes of taking it apart, getting the broken filament out, and having it back together and back on-line.
I like the BL X1-C because I am NOT a PHD (I am an ET), and donât want to maintain a 3D printer constantly. I belive in this damn thing!!! lol
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Having spent 30 years in construction and construction engineering, a 3d printer is more difficult to learn than anything in those fields.
Imagine spending a month trying to get the kinks out of a drill press! Reloading the software over and over? Making sure it is perfectly level? Looking through forums hoping someone encountered the same problem you are experiencing?
As a noob, 3d printing field isnât easy. I almost quit prior to buying the P1S. With my Ender, all I ever did was work on my machine. Six months later, my Ender is a paperweight and a photo backdrop.
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I never got the popularity of the Ender printers. I guess other than they were dirt cheap? They always seemed like junk to me though, and anyone that has used them talks about all the work they had to do to make it functional. One simple example, every printer Iâve bought except for one (I put it on there though) in the past 10 years has had auto bed leveling. The one I bought that didnât was an early prusa clone kit, and still this was years before Creality even existed. By the time they came around, I felt like auto bed leveling was a mandatory feature.
I feel like a lot of people prevailed despite their Ender. Now in the post Bambu era weâve got two Post-Ender crowds. The ones that are thankful they never have to go through that again, and the ones that think that because they had to go through that everyone else should do; else they donât appreciate 3d printing and truly know it.
A 3d printer isnât a drill press, youâre right. Itâs more complex, for sure, but it doesnât have to be a pain in the butt, it doesnât have to be a fight, it doesnât have to be the project itself. For that matter, not all 3d printers have been that painful to use. Bambu isnât the first that is this close to plug and play. My Prusa Mk2 from back in the day, the test print I did on it was a bust of batman. The Anycubic Vypers I had before my Bambu were solid machines and the first ones I recommended fully to those that wanted to 3d print, not have a 3d printer project.
Enderâs brought a lot of people into this hobby, but I think their poor quality set a lot of bad expectations too. They helped and hurt the hobby at the same time.
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Ender wasnât bad, nor was my CR-20, which was basically a âsouped-upâ Ender printer. And to be honest, when it was new, I was amazed at the print quality and especially the automatic scanning of the print bed. That made things a lot easier once you had levelled the bed manually. It was a completely different story with the Anet printer.
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Best way to learn is to dive in once you do your best to sort options before purchase. The worst that happens is you manage to break the printer somehow or buy something you later discover might not be appropriate for what you want to do. But youâll still be learning.
For whatever itâs worth, I started with a little Makerbot that had very few options in the slicer/print software. Without those options I didnât learn how to use them and just postponed learning all the extra features until I got the X1C - and there are lots of options and Iâm learning a lot now. You can always just go with the defaults at first and change things as you need.
The more feature-rich models do get complex but I see them as options and not as mandatory things you have to know right off. The best way to learn, at least for me, is some up front research but the most headway comes when actually using the machine.
Good luck and have fun!
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Even if you see feedback about difficulties, this does not necessarily mean that you will face the same problems. Additionally, many problems that users encounter are often solvable and may be related to printer settings, media selection, or software.
The thing with forums like this is people donât go to them to say â6 months in, zero issues, love my printerâ, they go to them when they have issues
So to balance that out a bit - I had an Ender 3 for a year, constantly had to upgrade it, or swap parts, or fix something. I finally pulled the trigger and got a P1S, which a few months later I bought the P1P upgrade kit for
Iâve had the P1S/P1P for nearly a year now - I run a small ebay business - it has âjust workedâ every single day since I got it. Zero issues, no manual bed alignment, no failed parts, nothing. It is as close to a print and forget printer Iâve ever seen.
So quite the opposite of needing a PHD in 3d printing to use it - the bambu printers are close to dummy proof.
Yes the support is poor if you need it, but if youâre one of the vast majority of us that donât have issues, youâll love it.
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Iâm 3 months into joining the 3d printing world. I just purchased a p1s and its the first time EVER using a 3d printer . Between youtube and HERE, people have been very helpful and kind .
Take it from someone whos first printer was the p1s , IâM VERY happy i made the decision and love the whole bambu lab ecosystem!
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Hello ! Just to tll you that i purchased my first printer, a P1S, 6 months ago, and i really not regret it. After +2500hours of printing, itâs still working well and i learned how to do the slice, the maintenance, etc, and i always find help here or in youtube 
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Well, you have to do that first - getting a 3D printer on a Hydroponics YouTube channel.
Ok, actually I would never watch an X1C review in my life - but on a channel like this, i.e. an opinion that is so unrelated to the 3D Printing topic. I really had to incorporate it into my thoughts. And yes, this X1 review is only 6 days oldâŚ
Video Starts by 2086 seconds - with the statement what he would decide today.
Iâm always very happy when people come to the same conclusion - I can still understand the P1P, but everything else?
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You know itâs a sea change when seemingly âordinaryâ people pick up 3D printing and then evangelize it. It was like that with smart phones. Nobody thought âordinaryâ people would want them. And yet here we are, and everybody has one.
I notice that some of the woodshop channels are starting to become 3D printing channels. 
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Even the comparison with Mobile phones is very apt. At first they were very bulky things as heavy as a petrol car battery (or even bigger). And those who prevailed were always the most useful and never the cheapest ones. There were also high-end models at industry level for a few that could only do a fraction of what was available a few years later was able to do. So they only paid for high-end models at industry if they really urgently needed it. And now - everyone has even a smart phone and not even a normal mobil phone. And Iâm probably one of the very few who buy a smartphone for 200 USD and not for 1000 USDâŚ
I too stood for the choice of P1S or X1C - Once in a lifetime, fortunately, I made the right decision with the X1C for my situation. Iâm glad that many non-3D experts come to the same conclusion because practice use has proven itself. Even P1S or P1P was never up for discussion with me, but at least I could still understand way they build it. But I donât have to understand the other stuff. If I want to buy my nephew a toy because they were just that age, itâs more likely to be a remote-controlled toy car - they are not interested in 3D printers at all. And everyone else will quickly realize that 3D printing is also about money, will wake up and will grow into the topic. So quick that a even a single P1S is usless as long there are not 10 P1S are in line⌠Of course there will also be a few of other opinions, but they will become a minority do of time.
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It is interesting to note that the same VFAs can be recognised on both printers when printing.
VFA?
If, of course, you sell products for home users into the apartment, yes.
But for me itâs somehow absolutely insignificant. I usually only get statements like: Wow, thatâs 3D printed, you can hardly see anything anymore. 99.9% of people donât know where to look at - and if I wasnât at a visual inspection level as well, it certainly wouldnât always catch my eye neither. Or maybe thatâs why I always differentiate between insignificant deviations and errors. If I were to give weight to the former, insignificant deviations, you wouldnât be able to install anything anymore and we would sit in the darkâŚ
Ok, you can see it, but as long as itâs not an object for the showcase. How often do you look at everyday objects so closely? And if itâs still a problem solver, theyâre no longer interested on the Vertical fine Artifacts issue at all.
Of course, if you print models for display cases or for enthusiasts, then yes. But especially this Video shows very clearly that interests are changing massively. 3D printing gets a problem solver and a use case thrue the X1C
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I just meant that itâs interesting that you can see it in the video. That was my point. In many videos you donât see any of it or canât recognise it.
But when it comes to seeing: Iâve have been studying the perfect polishing of cars for several years. Guess what happens to me now: when I watch films like Fast & Furios, I immediately notice when a car is not perfectly polished. And thatâs for a car that supposedly cost several million.
Same thing earlier with a customer: one raved about the great job he had done himself on his fleet (he had employed someone to polish his hire cars); the sun was shining that day and I took a look, the moment he said to have a look at the great result; the customer was very convinced, what could I say; polishing defects such as holograms and scratches were clearly visible.
Back to the VFAs: Iâve just recently been looking into what this is all about. Of course with the consideration of eliminating the VFAs. If I now see in the video that two different printer models, which were randomly selected from a series production, have the same problems when printing because they use the same printing mechanism, I can draw conclusions from this regarding the VFAs in my prints. On the one hand, that my printer is OK and not defective or has other mechanical problems. Secondly, that it is probably really impossible to remove these VFAs completely. Finally, I can see how good my printer is in terms of its mechanical construction by looking more closely at the VFAs when they are generated (and how often they occur). So I was only concerned with these last things I listed. I didnât want to make a story out of it.
Best regards, Hank!
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