Good [likely tunable] quality at 0.08 defaults - fine string but thats common untuned
Aux Nozzle Swaps work well and fast, AMS swap as good as its going to get
Indexing notches do well to let you just throw that plate in there and it lands perfect, I like that
Reprintable
So far the slicer defaults were pretty thoughtfully selected
650 for this capability is pretty good value based on the existing market. If elegoo can do a basic and very competent coreXY at 280 though, there’s still room for competitors to come in and steal this specific crown
Con:
PTFE came preinstalled incorrectly in AMS2, filament got caught at fittings
Had to factory reset in order to receive firmware updates. I started off LAN only, no account, no smartphone. In this configuration I would not get firmware updates.
Software is getting really bad from a UX perspective. Alert messages in slicer and firmware “crying wolf” over and over, there are now slicer interface tabs FOUR LEVELS deep, firmware typos: “Presure”, slicer non-tooltip screens being summoned on mouseover: “slice plate strategy”, Firmware update button grayed out while there is an OTA update, etc
Still can’t rename a printer until you join it to bambu’s cloud. I’m not going to use your cloud
Nitpick Con:
Aux spool rubs it’s own PTFE as it spins
Back is really messy and crowded
PTFE inside the machine slaps around on sides/top, needs a riser at least.
Every single PTFE line in the back seems about 10-20% too short to me, this may be a “me” problem
Wipe+Spiral Z hop at the listed accel/jerks makes quite a bit of noise above its normal operating noise floor, some people are going to go nutterbutters from this
I really dislike how fractured the config is. Specifically the filament screen now having FOUR full configuration tabs to save per filament: normal,HF,bowdennormal,bowdenHF. And above and beyond this, the pressure advance configuration is still stored in the most infuriating way - an attribute of the filament that isnt present on this filament screen! Arghhhh I really dislike how bambu hides PA
7.5/10 with bambustudio, 9/10 with rice. Its good so far, and won’t break the bank if you need to buy 20 of them.
Nice write up. I haven’t picked around that much on my unit. I was really hoping to plug it in a be able to print a well printed part on other Bambu Machines. But that has not been the case for me. I still can’t print a part without warping.
To the cons list you can add the absolutely nonsensical aux (and to lower extent exhaust) fan behaviour.
I thought the erratic going back to 80-90% aux fan speed all the time was due to closed loop chamber temp control, but Im not so sure. It should respect the cooling settings of the filament from the slicer with the highest priorty and use exhaust fan for chamber temp control. But hey what do I know..
Yeah, I’m running into “Fan Lyfe” now with some PETG. There really should be a middle setting in there for mild cool, as well as a little easier discrete control. The fans are like, mechanically very powerful, it hasnt blown a part off yet, but….
I’ve also found the aux nozzle to be a little messier in general while it’s in use, and it gives me ender 3 flashbacks of finetuning retraction and travel lol. pushing those memories down
I haven’t been able to run a single multi color print. i get extruder change failed. was to told to factory reset. the right nozzle is sticking somewhere and wont go into its fully home position. was told by bambu they are aware of the issue and a new firmware will be out. so do i just use it as a p2s lol
I removed and replaced the ptfe line beneath ams2 bay 1. I don’t know if replacement was necessary or if just replug would help, but yknow. It was getting caught in there before it could exit the ams2. This is the ams2 that was packed in with the combo.
I haven’t put a lot of miles on it yet but so far it resolved my stuck problem. If you could “help the filament thru by pushing down hard until it got past something” , try the ptfe.
Edit nvm not full solve, but reduced from like 1:2 to 1:8. IDK
I’m mildly disappointed to be honest. My first printer was a Sidewinder X1 - and when I stepped up to the Creality K1C, it was a big improvement in quality and user experience.
From the Youtube reviews, I was hoping for a similar improvement in both with the Bambu Labs printer and ecosystem - the main thing is do not want a hobby of tinkering with a 3D printer and constantly tweaking to get it to work - I wanted a great tool that produced reliable prints so that I could use those prints in my actual hobbies.
the first test (a bench, of course..) was a bit stringy, had a small layer shift and the top surfaces looked rougher than I would expect.
Now I am doing my first actual print. and the stringing is terrible. There seems to be some ringing and bulging on edges.
I’m using the primary extruder, so it’s not that…
The thing is, I now face exactly what I didn’t want - lots of tinkering and fettling to try to “dial it in” rather than good quality out of the box.
I think you’d be surprised. It’s a brand new printer with some very basic filament profiles because of it. It hasn’t had the thousands of hours of various brands / people fine tuning profiles for it for perfect prints.
I’d calibrate the filament to the machine and you’d probably be good to go. Mine prints beautifully afterwards and it takes hardly any time at all. Now that same profile I just throw across all the X2D’s and it scales nicely.
As an example, I use a couple brands of ABS simply because the 2nd brand has a color I need that the 1st doesn’t. The 2nd brand requires 20 more degrees on the bed or it’s a terrible quality print. Now imagine if I did both brands with the same generic settings the printer came with instead? Obviously it would be terrible results across the board.
As much as we all want 3d printers to be like appliances, a brand new model is going to very difficult to pull that feat off.
That’s a fair and valid point. I just threw whatever half roll of PLA I had sitting in the K1C’s heater box without any config. on reflection, hardly a fair test. I’ll put a few more prints into this and focus on calibration before making a judgement.
Which type of calibration did you perform? I have the printer performin automatic dynamic flow calibration as part of the print start but am curious what else you have done to improve printquality.
How I do it, and I’m sure others will do it differently, is determining what areas need improvement in the first place.
Is the surface quality crap?
Is it stringing everywhere?
Does the first layer look over / under extruded?
Bad VFAs?
Bulging walls?
Adhesion issues?
Overhang quality?
etc.etc.etc.. you get the idea.
Because if there are only a few things that needed improving then those are the only things you really need to calibrate / dial-in.
Unlike Orca, there aren’t very many calibrations built into the bambu studio slicer, but there are community made tests gallore on makerworld that you can calibrate with.
You can literally find tests to perform for anything and fine tune based on the results. That’s all I do. Generally speaking.., I’ll only have a couple issues to sort out then it seems rock solid with the same filament and same color etc.
Thanks so much for these - it’s amazing the difference a few hours make. I ran a nozzle flow calibration (or something like that) and am currently printing an external poop chute for the X2D…. and wow. just wow. walls are soooooo smooth, the multi-colour between primary and auz nozzles is slick… No longer dissapointed!!
I kinda had similar, my first time setting it up the first print was kinda blah too. Through trying to find the firmware update, i had factory reset it, and from then till now the quality was quite good. So maybe they just need a kickstart
Mine wouldn’t find the firmware update until I power cycled the machine. I only knew about the firmware update because someone posted it here. But if I remember, I think the H2Cs and Ds were the same way.., needing to power cycle. Maybe it’s supposed to work that way or not? No idea lol.
