I know the decision is ultimately up to me; however, please listen to my situation, I would like to hear what you would do. I just finished up my first year of mechanical engineering and love it. I am fortunate enough to say that I currently intern at a local space design company. I started looking into 3D printers again shortly after I started working there. I have used multiple 3D printers in the past, owning one of them back home which is an original Flash Forge Creator Pro. I grew tired of tweaking this printer, which is why I am looking so heavily into a Bambu Lab printer. I have always wanted a quality 3D printer but now possess the means to purchase one. I am specifically looking for a printer that can print engineering-grade materials. I was going to pull the trigger on a Bambu Lab X1C at the beginning of this month. About a week before this preset date of purchase, the Reddit AMA occurred, where they said the new generation of printers will come out soon and definitely in 2024, teasing a revolutionary design. I currently have a budget of about 2000 dollars and would like a printer at least on pre-order before the next semester starts in late August. It is quite difficult to find a printer to use at the school and I need to print many parts for one of my upcoming classes. If you were in my shoes, Would you buy an X1C now? Would you wait for the New Printer to be announced and decide then? Is there another printer that you would buy? Please share any knowledge that may help and I thank you for taking the time to read this post!
How long is a piece of string?
At some point, you will have to jump in and buy something.
When you have, something new will come out and you will wonder if you should have waited for that instead of the one you purchased.
You could buy an entry-level A1 mini to start playing now and later buy the bigger, better, unknown entity.
You could buy the best now and benefit from actually 3D printing something now with that top-end model.
Thatās a really good point! I like the analogy and thatās a smart way to look at it. Buying an A1 mini for now wouldnāt be too bad of an ideaā¦ Iāll have to give that some serious thought.
Thank you so much for your input!
You are welcome.
I recommend getting the AMS lite as a combo with the A1 mini.
I havenāt heard of a single person who regretted it.
- You can use it for multiple colours
- You can use it for PETG support layers and vs versa
- You can use it to have more than one spool auto continue when another one runs out.
As with any technology, you can always wait for the next thing thatās coming. At some point, you just have to decide what your requirements are and if the current model fills those needs. Yeah, itās frustrating to buy something and have a new something come out shortly after, but in this case, an X1C is an amazing printer and if they do release an X2 line, Iām sure it will be amazing too but that doesnāt change the fact the X1C is still amazing.
@Jake_Mayer
Unpopular opinion:
Considering your focus - stay away from bambu. Instead of tinkering with the printer youāll find yourself tinkering with parts that are out of tolerance by random amounts depending on the geometry on the xy plane.
If up to +/- circa 3/10mm depending on shape sounds fun youāll be fine thoughā¦
As someone fortunate enough to work with a machine shop that is accurate down to the hundred thousandth inch, I think I forgot how difficult it can be to get a dimensionally accurate part. With your point, what printer would you recommend instead? Do the parts produced by Bambu vary that much no matter what or is there something I can change about it as I dial in the printer? Also how do other companies combat this and how does the calibrated Bambu Tolerance compare with a self-calibrated printers tolerance? Sorry for the onslaught of questions and thank you for your input!!!
Canāt give you a direct product recommendation without basing it on actual personal experience. So I wonāt.
I only know the P1s and X1c and older bed slingers that I modified in hard- and firmware to suit my needs for rapid prototyping.
What I can tell you, is that my bambus are not it when it comes to repeatability and controlability of the produced dimensions. They seem to apply a kind of tool path smoothing with an (from an engineering standpoint) extreme tolerance. And the user has no control over any parameters that would influence this behavior in a controlled and predictable manner.
FDM already has some process inherent āchallengesā when it comes to generating parts that are true to size. Add to that a machine that randomly adds significant tolerance to the programmed toolpath depending on the parts āshapeā and you are doomed.
Imperial units throw me off - a 1/100 of an 1/1000 fraction of an inch? That would be roughly a quarter of 1um or 254nm. I think either me or you got something wrong thereā¦ 
Like I said, you canāt ācalibrateā or predict the tolerance on the bambus - random deviations depending on shape.
Regarding my other manually dialed in and trued printers, with calibrated filament I get dimensions within 0.05mm of tolerance without even really trying.
But I guess out-of-the box most consumer printers suck in this regard. Itās just on bambu printers you canāt do anything about it
But much more important is what tolerance is acceptable to you. You said, you have printers available - measure parts you were happy with and check how true they really are.
Iāve bought a P1S for my house and made the company that I work for buy 2x P1S. I would recommend getting the AMS just for the simplicity of filament swap. For example, I have ASA and PLA in my AMS. I can test my design with PLA and when comfortable with the design I print with ASA. The AMS make this filament selection between printing soooooo much easier. The P1S I bought for my house was not with the AMS at first, but after seeing the AMS in action at work, I got the AMS for me. Also nice if you want to print overnight and are at the end of one spool of filament.
That precision thing Nebur is talking about, I just donāt see it, I always give some tolerance of .10mm to .25mm in my design depending on the situation and I always get good result (some caution with PETG and default settings, youāll need to bump the temperature to 270-280C to get good result at standard speed or reduce 50% speed, or get the E3D high flow nozzle).
I had an older printer bed slinger but always had to do tinkering to get one print, now Iām using the P1S like I use any other tool, it just works!
If I were you, I would get the P1S with AMS, if youāre in mechanical engineering, Iām sure at some point youāll think that 1 printer isnāt enough. I never liked buying the first batch of anything, thereās always something that they need to fix. The A1 series will limit you with some engineering material that requires enclosure and the X1 series has more feature but shares the same printing capabilities as the P1S. I think the 500$ USD difference is not justified for my need.
What I would do, get P1S w/AMS and wait 1-2 year to see if you want to get the next Bambu Lab generation.
Yeah sorry about that, the shop is accurate down to .0001 inch, I also got confused with the imperial units haha.
Your point with calibration has really opened my eyes, I have now opened my search to many printers rather than a select few, thank you so much for your input.
Well, I stated random variations up to 3/10mm (= 0.3mm) and you explain yourself up to 0.25mm of required tolerance to make things work. 
So we are experiencing the same thing. Great if it doesnāt affect the functionality of your particular parts but the āprecision thingā is still there.
Good Luck!
Problem seems to be that in the printer world reviewers are super superficial. Pretty much no one seems to pay attention to mechanical properties, accuracy, repeatability or precision. Basically everything relevant in the machine tool world is ignored.
Good luck!
Hey Jake I own multiple printers and have been printing for about 6 years. Going from Ender 3ās Voxelab Aquila, sovol sv04 idex. And thenā¦ā¦ Bambu was here. Purchasing an x1c was the single most important thing I ever did. I now have 3 of them and some A1 miniās the A1 mini print quality after proper filament calibration prints as good as my x1c. The only negative with the A1 is the temps are very low which is the only thing that has frustrated me. If they allowed for printing Asa abs and nylon it would be another game changer for them. I am assuming because of the massive drop in price on the A1ās there will be another printer coming out with this ability. To sum it up print quality and speed of the Bambu printers lives up to the hype and price.
So easy choice thenā¦
Waiting until half of August, lets say until the 15th of August.
And then you have 2 options:
- If thereās a new release/announcement by then, you can still decide for yourself which option is better for you and what fits better in your budget,
- If thereās no news bij the 15th, you can still place an order for the X1C, which will arrive within 3 working days. So by late August.
This is what Iām doing. Super pleased with the A1-mini for getting me started, but now wanting something full-sized.
the rumors are killing me lol, so I have enough giftcards for a second printer that Iāve been saving up for and jonesing forā¦ but these rumors and planned release by possibly THIS MONTHā¦ okay Iām waiting. I almost clicked the buy button tonight, even pasted all the giftcardsā¦ but I know I would have unconsolable FOMO if the new model came out and I could afford it even half as much with giftcards. cāmon Bambu, give us the deets!
The wind tells me September. It whispers sweet nothings in my ear of product releases, a soft and gentle hand of guidance towards my future. Do not take this as a given, as the powers that compel me are as knowledgeable as those that wield astrology as a given truth. Do the stars align? Maybe then you could give me such weight. Maybe in a monthās time someone will be back to proclaim my predictions to have come true. I hope so, not for my own fame or fortune, but because I want a new product from Bambu that hopefully fits the bill of my needs, simply.
Ah, pardon me. Iāve been saving back too for a potential new comer. It does seem like something is in the air. The X1 isnāt the investment it use to be, the P1 is aging, the A1/A1 Mini is awesome, but short of what you need if you need an X1, but the X1 lacks the innovation of the A1.
Iāve been wanting to upgrade my P1S to an X1C, but have been holding back to see what comes out, whenever that happens. So, since it isnāt a pressing need, itās been easier to hold back and wait. Although I did have to detour a little to grab some of the new PETG-HF filaments.
āThe wind cries Maryā 
NBRās most recent video says November. However, given recent current events, I wouldnāt be surprised if it were delayed.
I feel like the extra ā¬500/ā¬600 between the P1S and the X1C is totally not worth it at this pointā¦
The X1C stays on itās former pricepoint, where the P1S seems to be on a āpermanentā discount now.
For just ā¬100 extra you can upgrade an P1S almost to a X1C.
- Panda Touch
- Hardened steel extruder gears
- Hardened steel nozzle
Only staying the lidar, which just seems to be a gimmick and I wouldnāt be surprised when it will not be there anymore on a āX2Cā. If itās not capable of reading the calibration lines at the start, then it just falls vack on the standard flow rate values, which work pretty darn good on the P1S already.
And the AI feature, which might be interesting for detecting failures. But actually donāt have that many failures on my P1S, so really not worth the extra ā¬400.
Iām at the point of returning my P1S due to other problems. And Iām actually thinking about waiting a bit for a newer model now.
But it might still take a while considering the lawsuits at the moment.
But I also read somewhere that it possibly is going to be a multi head printer. Which should not need the use of a prime tower (itās one of the lawsuits as I believe). But a multihead printer will probably going to rise over the price of the X1C now, which already is pretty costly. But they could now, since they now have the entry levels A1/A1 mini.
But customer support isnāt great either on BL. So because of that Iām also thinking about going to look for an alternative.