If you don't care about business practices and general privacy concerns, Bambu.
If you want a large printer that's decent for tinkering, Sovol SV08.
If you want relatively good support and to support a company that has a history of giving back, Prusa.
If you want something cheap with a lot of features that tend to be more high end, Elegoo Centuri Carbon.
If you just want something cheap that's arguably incredible value with an active community, Creality Ender 3 V3 KE.
> If you don't care about business practices and general privacy concerns, Bambu.
While I agree, I think it's heavily underselling Bambulab printers in terms of UX and print quality, they are the absolute best in the market and by a mile.
Prusa generally has better print quality in terms of accuracy and better overhang performance.
Prusa drives the slicer development ecosystem (Bambu Studio is a fork), so new production-ready advances typically come from them first, which is lovely to support.
The Bambu products are fine. They print well. But the "it's on another level" stuff is mostly paid influencer narratives (a rampant thing in 3D printer YouTube, etc.) that don't really hold up to any professional scrutiny.
With advent of EasyPrint etc. arguably Prusa may have also one-upped them on ease of use? Though this isn't first-hand knowledge as I haven't tried it personally.
I haven’t tried the Prusa XL so I can’t say much about that and I’m a fan how Prusa supports OSHW. But let’s be real, Bambulabs printer are vastly superior. I don’t deny that a lot of “free” and open source work was used to make Bambulab printers today but their printers just work out of the box for less money. I’ve been 3D printing since the reprap days, had cheap printers like Enders, tried Prusa used upto the MKS2. The Bambulab printer feels like a product. All the previous printers I owned or used was more like a hobby. (Minus maybe the Ultimaker 3, that thing was amazing for its time).
Truly meant without offense, but I'd say if you haven't had a Prusa since the MK2S (which I think predates Bambulab entire existence?) your opinion is outdated and not really relevant anymore.
The out of the box experience between a Bambu printer and a modern Prusa is not noticably different. You'll be onto your first print in 10 minutes with either.
Prusa's product history simply goes back longer to when 3D printers were more hobbyist kit. But they've grown up just the same.
It's a bit like saying a 2025 Lexus is superior to a 2025 Maybach because Mercedes' first car in 1886 was a rickety afair.
I've been eyeing 3D printers and since a friend of mine is so happy with the A1 Mini, that's what I was leaning towards to. Is there a Prusa equivalent model of the Bambu A1 Mini?
The Prusa Mini+ is basically the same idea but a couple of generations behind. Mine's an absolute rock, just throw prints at it and forget. Had it for years.
I'd love for Prusa to do an updated Mini. I'd have a hard time justifying the price point on the original today, given the competition, but it's genuinely a great bit of kit.
You’re telling me that there was any meaningful update between the MK2 to MK4? Prusa printer goes back longer, sure. My first printer was actually a Prusa style i3 reprap kit from 2014 even before Prusa made his company. Are they decent printers for the time? Yes. But they got complacent and had no meaningful updates for almost a decade. They had interesting additions like PANDA leveling, cyloid drives and etc, but end of the day it was still a bed slinger. Their MMU was absolutely garbage. The fact that Bambulab ate so much of their market between the two years it took them to even to sell a core XY printer is a testament of that. The out of the box experience superior for less money and actually great multilateral support. I honestly don’t care too much h for the multimaterial part. Just being able to swap filaments without heating up the hot end is already a godsend.
Mind you, I used to promote Prusa the same way I do for bambulabs now for almost a decade. But once again, Prusa did too little too late. Their Core One response was not quite enough.
I'll counter: My Prusa mk2s I've upgraded to the point of Mk2.5s+. After ~10k hours, I'll call it as much of a 'product' as I need. I think the 'vastly superior' perception comes from people singularly want the print things without learning about 3dp. You know how Tesla fans and Soulcycle participants are like wildly enthusiastic about the things they enjoy despite some evidence that they should be a bit wary of supporting their favorite brands?
What does “without learning about 3DP” mean? Why should a user need to know the in and outs of a 3D printer to enjoy 3D printing? I never really understood that gate keeping. From a technical perspective, Bambulab printers are cheaper and better in my opinion. Prusa just did too little and too late sticking with their i3 bed slinger. Of course they have the Prusa XL and Prusa Core now but they were late by over two years. By then, a large chunk of the market was already lost and it’ll take a lot to get it back.
You are missing the subtext in discussions about 3D printing online. Many people who discuss 3D printing are doing it because they enjoy it as a hobby and skill. They value learning to tweak and upgrade the products, troubleshoot problems, and knowledge about brands and models. If you are just trying to make prototypes, enclosures, parts etc, you will get confused without this context.
This is the weird gate keeping I’m talking about. In another comment I mentioned about this, but I started 3D printing during the reprap ages. Chrome rods were cut yourself, LM8UU cost over $25 a pop from NSK, we use pololu A4988 (TMC wasn’t even a thing), and my hotend was a Jhead. I enjoy tinkering and sounds like you do too. But don’t get the factuation of 3D printers get confused with 3D printing . If new users can print right out of the box without needing to fix anything, that’s a net win for 3D printing and for them. The need for a user to know how to fix and tweak stuff to “truly” enjoy 3D printing is frankly full of shit.
Well, I'd love to be able to just download the atl, and literally _print_ it from my phone or laptop, the same way I print PDF.
I just don't have enough waking hours to tinker with everything hobbyists around expect me to tinker.
Yea same; switching from Crealty to Raise3D E2 was a game changer. "just works".
Same here. I got a Bambu X1C and have been very happy with it.
>Prusa generally has better print quality
Only if you compare Prusa printing at 50 mm/s with Bambu at 500 mm/s.
>and better overhang performance
What? No. Proof: https://youtu.be/HcSOz-Lsxgg?feature=shared&t=293
>Prusa drives the slicer development ecosystem (Bambu Studio is a fork)
Prusa slicer is also a fork ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> What? No. Proof: https://youtu.be/HcSOz-Lsxgg?feature=shared&t=293
So this video's claim, if I got it right while skimming in a subway, is that when Prusa redesigned the part cooling fan shroud to improve overhang performance they also went ahead and improved the slicer, and the benchmark results that have them generally win overhang comparisons around that time may be attributed more to the software fix than the new HW parts.
That's very interesting information, thanks for sharing.
It's also exactly the kind of thing where a Bambu fan would normally go "oh, so they just made the better integrated product that works better in the end without the customer having to care why".
But I totally agree they should document this transparently since Prusa Slicer can also be used with off-brand printers to good success.
> Prusa slicer is also a fork ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sure, which it very prominently displays on the splash screeen to this day instead of hiding it, giving credit where credit is due.
The difference is that it was forked off from Slic3r much longer ago, Slic3r isn't really actively developed anymore, and Prusa has largely rewritten it since.
So it's a false equivalence. This sort of disingenuous comment is the reason a lot of people don't like the Bambu user/influencer brigrading.
+1. Bambu is the difference between 'my hobby is 3d printers' vs 'my hobby is 3d printing'. The damn thing sits in the garage idle for months and then it just prints a whole spool of stuff perfectly without even a drop of oil (which it asked for in between plates, I'll grant it that).
> Bambu is the difference between 'my hobby is 3d printers' vs 'my hobby is 3d printing'.
My experience was the same. I can just run the thing without having to tweak, tune, calibrate it. It takes care of that itself. I also don't let it talk to my wifi though. I just use the microSD card.
But my purchase was a while ago. While it is possible the industry has caught up, the reputation Bambu built still leads the pack.
A Prusa is equally reliable.
Bambu's marketing (handing them out like candy to every YouTuber) has propagated a lie that there's "Easy and locked down Bambu" and "Yucky hard to use custom printers".
I have an Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro. It was like $220. I have put approximately $30 into it for the Raspberry Pi I installed Octoprint on, and even that's a stretch since I already owned the Pi. It prints just fine. Sits for months. Fires up every time. First layers perfect every time.
The "printer being the hobby" is only true if you let it. Even cheap no name open source printers are really good these days, and in the high end there are plenty that are competitive with Bambu on print quality, out of the box experience, and features, often exceeding them.
I dunno, I guess I just don't think having to let a printer talk to some fucking cloud service in China so I can start an STL print from my phone is all that important of a feature.
Yeah, I did the printer as a hobby thing when I built my first reprap. It was fun, and I learned a ton, but the state of the art in 2014 just wasn't there for low-end machines to be reliable. I replaced it with a prusa in 2019,and I have had zero issues at all with it. The only print failures I've had were either due to part design or bad filament (pla stored in a humid garage). I've been super impressed with the quality of the machine, and have printed some fairly challenging parts. Plus, the whole machine is open and hackable. I didn't really even consider other printers, since I wanted to support prusa and what they have done for the community. Although I have used a friend's ender 3, and I was pretty impressed with the quality for the price.
I think the biggest change has been auto bed leveling, and software to make the first layer good almost all the time, across a wide range of filaments.
Many people started with something like an Ender V3, then moved to Bambu... and that is absolutely life-altering in terms of 3D printing expectaitons. But a similar difference is present moving to a modern Ender, Elegoo, or Prusa. Just their marketing is far from as solid as Bambu.
Not that Bambu printers are bad; in fact I still like their AMS solution the best of any I've seen or tested.
Sadly, Prusa is not equally reliable.
The fact that the Bambu printers use linear slides means they have a huge accuracy advantage right out the chute. And the Bambu printers have a bunch of other quality of life improvements that really add up.
While you can certainly slag Bambu for their business practices, the other 3D printer companies are absolutely lagging on the engineering front. Companies like Prusa need to step up their game.
As for phoning home, we isolated the printer on its own network and it hasn't caused us any issues. Sure, some of the monitoring features won't work, but it seems to print just fine without network access.
So you claim Prusa isn't just as reliable because they're allegedly less accurate?
Get your claims straight. My Prusa Mini has been super reliable. Is it less accurate? Maybe, but that's not the claim you're replying to.
Go on, why are you shilling?
Increased accuracy decreases chances of failed prints (especially when you are trying to up the speed)
My Prusa has been very reliable over the years. However, it’s not as cheap as the Bambu.
It’s going to be hard to justify supporting open source hardware at these prices.
I had used a Prusa MK3 in the past and had a good experience with it. When I went looking at printers again Prusa was what I assumed I'd get but after looking at Bambulab, their A1 is about 1/4th of the price while being better than the Prusa MK4.
It's almost impossible to justify buying their printers today. The issues and concerns about Bambulab seem to be primarily driven by disappointment with how a new company that didn't open source their hardware was able to absolutely steamroll the entire market, rather than actual real issues you as a user will have.
It's the crab bucket mentality. Before Bambu Lab 99% of the 3D printer offerings were absolute garbage to the point of not being far from being a scam. You get a CoreXY printer with an enclosure and AMS for a really good price and if you buy their filament in bulk, it is not much more expensive than e.g. Sunlu where buying at least 3 spools per order is mandatory to begin with.
The only way to beat Bambu Lab is to be better than them at the 3D printer game, but most companies can't do that, so people have become resentful while grasping for straws to find things to criticize. Snapmaker got the message and decided to come out with the Snapmaker U1, the rest can wallow in their "open source" superiority complex to silence critics.
What kind of problems do people expect to have with lesser models? I have a second hand kit build that I didn't assemble and was cheap years ago and just threw in my car seat one day to bring home, and the worst that happened was the poorly run temp sensor wires drooped and snagged on a print and pulled out. I don't even know what could go wrong or need any "tweaking" other than a drive belt someday failing. I just don't understand how any 3d printer these days could be problematic, the hardware is not really that complicated or under that much stress.
The P1S was my first 3D FDM printer, mostly because what I saw in the scene, in Makerspaces, and on YouTube before was mostly people tinkering with their other machines ('use this hotend', 'this is my grandma's secret recipie for bed adhesion issues', 're-fasten this particular nut to exactly 1.32 newton, but only if that part has been printed from ABS, instead if PETG, use 1.29 newton' ...) ... and I didn't want to work the machine, I wanted to work with the machine.
Bambu were the first that gave me the feeling 3D FDM printing has become more appliance-like, less 'spend endless hours maintaining the machine'. Sure, the Bambu also needs maintenance. But it is not the main procedure with the machine.
I don't have a lot of time on my qidi pro4, but that's been my experience with that printer.
My Prusa Mk3 also does this?
The A1 is a tiny fraction of the cost of the MK3 while having a ton of extra features.
My A1 has lots of annoying issues. It did print great out of the box, but requires a fair bit of maintenance to keep that up.
My prusa has be far more reliable so far. admittedly it’s newer than the a1 so it’s too early to be super conclusive on that, but so far it’s been quite a bit better
Of course, it’s quite a bit more money too
My old work ran 6 FFF machines, the only one that seemed to have 100% uptime was the Prusa. Mind you this was several years ago, before Bambu hit it big. But we had several machines with autoswap beds etc, fancy stuff.
After that experience I got a Prusa, I'm only an occasional printer but I've put maybe 5 rolls of material through it over the course of a couple years and haven't had any stop+fix issues.
I got a Bambu A1 Mini a few weeks ago and it's practically easier than 2D printing. Printed a whole tabletop game that I played with friends, and replacement parts for a gun that held up at the range.
100%. Same feeling when we got our mini. It's neighbor on the desk is a cricut joy extra! (Or whatever) Which I'm always fighting with, to cut paper, in 2d.
Next door,3d items literally being built. No fight. No fuss.
Wow I’ve heard about these 3d printed guns mostly in the context of the gun control debate. I can’t wrap my head around “how does plastic stuff withstand the stresses of a bullet?”
Small caliber, lots of plastic, short lifespan, unreliable.
Most serious 3D printed guns have at least a metal barrel. Often, 3D printed guns are just a lower receiver, that is the part you hold in your hand, the parts that actually fire the bullets (barrel, pin, slide, etc...) are bought off the shelf from real gun manufacturers.
This is a workaround for some laws that considers gun parts to not be a gun. For example, outside of a gun, a barrel is just a metal pipe and can be traded freely. The part that makes a gun a gun is the lower receiver, and you can 3D print that in plastic and still get good performance. In fact, Glock makes this part in plastic and these are some of the most popular and proven guns in the world.
I think this is why 3D printed guns have not been an issue in Australia. Since you couldn't easily buy all the metal parts you still need.
They aren't really an issue anywhere because if someone really wants a legit gun they are not that hard to buy on the blackmarket or even produce yourself. There just isn't much actual demand for 3d printed guns, people do it because its fun and an engineering challenge. If someone can buy a tabletop mill or lathe, or if they are patient with a file, we have 100+ years of well documented and engineered gun designs anyone can copy. Like you are seriously only cutting a couple hundred bucks off the price between buying a 3d printer or a CNC mill and all the CAD files you need for either version are easily accessible online.
Yeah, and while 3D printing a gun is cool and all, you can’t print bullets, so the person who is interested in printing guns is at the intersection of two hobbies: 3D printing and gun ownership. It’s a niche.
Everybody else who needs a gun for lawful purposes (i.e. self defense) is simply going to purchase one from a reputable manufacturer.
It wasn't for the parts that go boom, it was custom ergonomic parts for a legally purchased, factory made firearm - the bits of the gun that you hold. Those are under less stress, so with the right filament and infill settings it holds up well enough. And when it starts to crack I can print another for $1 instead of buying one for $30-60. Plus I can change the shape and size to fit me better than an off the shelf part.
I had a buddy in high school who did competitive shooting, he did the same thing by carving these parts from wood, now it can be done for a fraction if the cost. Check out Olympic shooting pictures for an idea of the parts I'm talking about.
Most of a gun doesn't see that stress. put a barrel on a plastic gun and something metal behind and good enough for most needs.
Most "ghost guns" use factory made parts for pressure bearing components.
US is a rare country that treats only serialized parts as "guns" and don't regulate actual gun parts. This allow Americans to trivially "build guns at home", but easd of actually building guns is extremely exaggerated.
Also, there's little in 3D printers that actually makes it easy to build gun parts. It's all cosmetics. Real illegal ghost guns are always made with plumbing supplies.
> replacement parts for a gun
Perhaps the grip.
1000% this. I used to "lightly" follow 3D printing when it first started to become cool among hackers a decade or so ago, then I dropped off until 2023 much older and much less tolerant to BS in technology.
I went onto Reddit to get their recommendations. To someone completely new who hasn't followed any real developments occurring in the industry, it was confusing but it seemed like the Sovol SV06 was a good "starting point".
Well I didn't realize how far behind the industry still was. I thought surely at this point all printers much just be load file -> load filament -> click print. Just like regular printers no?
Nope, doing dumb things like using some third party slicer tool, transferring a file to a microsd card manually and then babying the printer for its super slow error prone prints feels like its still a toy not a professional device.
Imagine having to do that level of nonsense for your laser printer? Yeah maybe back in the days of "Office Space" but not today!
I was in a time crunch so out of desperation I took a gamble and dropped a wad of cash on a Bambu X1C. It is what I consider a professional product for normies in my eyes. Most everything else are just toys.
I was ready to say Bambu, Bambu and nothing but Bambu but then I read the user's last few sentences. Seems like he is not really looking for a end to end professional product and so hes got infinite options but for anyone else, its gotta be Bambu!
> UX and print quality
GUI and UX are not the same. Prusa has pretty good print quality too but not as good a GUI as the Bambu.
UX would include the ability to easily tear down a hot end, replace a nozzle, tighten any belts, and anything else that would affect your ability to print high quality prints.
For prusa, since that's the printer I have experience with the most. Replacing the nozzle and clearing filament jams are pretty easy. But tearing down the hot end to remove debris wrapped around the extruder gear was not.
I have and Ender 3 Pro I have done the :"Replacing the nozzle and clearing filament jams are pretty easy."
With my Bambu for 18 months, problem just doesn't exist. I have spare parts because previous experience said I'd need it. But not yet.
The most egregious operational issue is the occasional hairball, even then, the printer often catches the issue and pauses the print to let me check on it - automatic hairball detection.
I don't like the Bambu company and I wouldn't buy one now thanks to their lock in practices. My Bambu won't get the "fuck you" firmware update.
But as to their hardware reliability for "just printing stuff" - it's pretty awesome. If other companies have caught up to this, then the 3D printing world is in a much better place.
What bambulab printers that have the "A1" series nozzle, replacing one is a matter of 3 seconds, just by naked hands. 10x times faster than in the Prusa world (Nextruder included). Being this the single most important thing a printer need from the POV of servicing, this is a huge difference.
How often are you changing nozzles? I can't think I've ever done it except for swapping out the manufacturer supplied brass with a hardened steel after or arrives
For tabletop gaming I'm switching between nozzles pretty regularly, so I can have fine detail on small minatures and faster prints for bigger terrain, bases, scatter and grid pieces.
I'm not changing out nozzles daily, but I do sometimes make small parts that need the .2mm nozzle. Not for gaming or miniatures, but typically mechanical interfaces where the .2mm nozzle gives a better result.
But then for most stuff I use a .6mm high flow nozzle.
It's worth noting though that this part of the game is about to change majorly for both brands.
Prusa is widely known to launch their next-generation tool changer at Formnext in Nov, which is going to be a concept where you have a rack of nozzle+heatpipe+filament tube tools that the print head grabs and heats up inductively. And Bambu is more or less working on something similar they will probably launch some time next year.
This is totally changing the "nozzle swap" equation. It means purge-free and much faster multi-material printing without outright duplicating print heads like the XL does, and the ability to park and mix nozzle sizes as well.
It'll be cool to see which company pulls it off better. As someone who was never convinced by either Bambu's shoddy and wasteful AMS or Prusa's ridiculously humongous MMU+Buffer approach, this is the leap I've been waiting for for an upgrade.
Edit: Amazing move to downvote a comment that simply and neutrally adds new information to the thread.
Prusa is going to use Bondtech's upcoming INDX system, which swaps out the entire filament path.
Bambu Vortek seems to just be swapping nozzles so, while that should cut down on waste, it's going to be much slower (XL is already much faster than AMS based printers but comes at a substantial price increase).
INDX tool changes are expected to be around 8-12 seconds. Vortek would be probably be around 30+ seconds.
Interesting, yeah. I'm mainly interested in making multi-material faster without upping to the size of an XL, so it looks like the Prusa solution would be a better fit for my needs personally.
If Bambu are only swapping nozzles it also means they still need something AMS-like to swap the filament path, which somehow feels a bit clunky. I think having seperate filament paths is overall a cleaner and simpler design.
Someone's made an animation of how they think it'll look like: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YNSlx0GJ5Ig
No need to speculate, Bambu posted a video of their design:
https://youtu.be/rluJj3NEdQA
Maybe because you're incorrect about the AMS being the problem? The AMS merely feeds the correct filament. It's not the fault of the AMS that the printer doesn't have multiple nozzles.
The problem with the AMS is it feeds all the filaments into one nozzle so it requires a purge every time the color changes. There are other filament spool designs without this problem.
By UX I mean the overall experience, from assembly to Makerworld integration to the OS. I know because I'm a UX designer.
I looked at a bambu printer a friend owns and it is pretty high quality engineering.
It stands on soft rubber feet so the whole machine has a low natural frequency (similar to the drum of a washing machine). This has the advantage that the high frequency movements of the motors/axes never resonate with the casing.
In the beginning it does a lot of tests and seems to also shake the machine to analyse the frequency behaviour.
Watching the tests is fun. First run,.loud. second. Less loud. Third. At worst case 1/2 the original volume. Up through a large tonal range.
Your ears can immediately note that it is a nice feature for sure.
i have an x1c sitting next to an elegoo centauri carbon. i rarely use the AMS on the bambu.
potential print size is basically the same print quality is the same as far as i can tell..
i use the elegoo more often.
Also, if you aren't Internet-addicted none of the supposed business practices/privacy concerns amount to anything tangible.
-- if all you care about is yourself and your family.
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Your comment seems to rely on the premise that the only alternative to everybody's acting 100% selfish 100% of the time is everybody's (or at least my) giving up their property rights and privacy.
I wasn't suggesting anything like that or even trying to pressure anyone into not being selfish: I merely pointed out that a sentence on the internet[1] would be untrue if anyone cares about Bambu's policies and practices for non-selfish reasons.
[1] "none of the supposed business practices/privacy concerns amount to anything tangible"
The only thing I need the internet for to be disgusted by Bambulabs' practices is to learn about their practices in the first place.
I did read up on them when they and I feel like the Internet echo chamber inflated the issues and Bambu basically addressed all of them reasonably well.
Are you talking just about the "Authorization" thing? Or did you read about them abusing Printables to reverse engineer it for their own copy-cat platform?
Both.
Scraping a site isn’t illegal or immoral.
None of this impacts the customer negatively in any way.
Also given what you've said about privacy, that probably eliminates Bambu and possibly the Centuri Carbon (not sure). The SV08 can be ran offline, but it does try to phone home (3rd party) whenever it's online. Prusa might be your best bet of these when it comes to privacy.
Prusa is by far the most "open" probably with the SV08 second because it uses so much from the open source community (it's Voron inspired).
If you have a lot of time to spend, you could build a Voron, but I would not recommend that to anyone new to 3D printing.
It's incredibly frustrating that the majority of devices today report usage to the mothership without the user's consent. Does firewalling the device cause any issues? A printer (of any kind) should not reach the open Internet, period.
All of these printers can be run completely offline, although then you obviously lose any network-related features such as sending prints over the network. I know that at least the Bambu printers (and I assume most others) can also be run in LAN-only mode, where they only work with devices on the same network. In this mode you could definitely firewall them without causing issues. The main features you lose by being in LAN-only mode are the phone app and being able to access the printer from off your network.
I second this. I run an A1 on a separate IoT wifi network that doesn't have outbound connectivity and using nftables rules for forwarding can send prints from my normal network with minimal fuss.
I did have to play around and use orcaslicer to get the printer set up using the network printing and camera feed working.
The one issue I do have is that it seems I would need to connect the printer to a internet enabled Network to get firmware updates, because the firmware version I have is ironically the one before they enabled SD card updating lol.
Back to the original question, I've had this printer for about a month and have been printing virtually non-stop with very minimal complaints. Coming from an ender 3 it is absolutely night and day in terms of ease of setup and general usage.
If the printer is functional, doing what you got it for, what do you need firmware updates for?
Lan Only works by making you use the Bambu connect software. If the Bambu Connect software isn't running, Orca cannot start a print job or control the printer. It doesn't sound too onerous, but it should be mentioned that LAN only wasn't added till users gave 'feedback'. I suspect the original intent was Bambu Slicer only.
https://blog.bambulab.com/updates-and-third-party-integratio...
It's the other way around. You can only connect to orca slicer or other programs if you are in LAN only mode. Otherwise you need Bambu connect.
Or just stay on the previous firmware version and you never need Bambu connect.
That's not correct.
"Standard Mode (Default): By default, LAN mode will include an authorization process that ensures robust security. This option is ideal for the majority of users who prioritize security and ease of use. Despite claims to the contrary, LAN mode through Bambu Connect will require neither internet access nor a user account. This hasn't changed and won't change." With the firmware that implemented security in, third party only speaks through Bambu Connect. Reading the page I included that information and if you go to the original security update announcement, it is clear you can only use Bambu Connect for third party access. In addition you lose the ability to control the printer.
can't you use something like this? https://octoprint.org/
i have no idea if it works with modern ones but my "old" Ender 3 plays nice with it
Octoprint is still a great piece of software that works with most printers, but it's running into a dead end where streaming G Code over the USB Serial emulation isn't fast enough on the newest generation of printers to keep them printing at their full speed.
surely they can all be run lan only with a clever dhcp server that doesn’t give a default gateway to the device?
Its not much to replace the SV08's OS and fork of klipper with more open source and standard options.
I wouldn't recommend a Creality to someone new to 3D printing. They can be a pain to work with. They're CHEAP, and there's plenty of aftermarket support, but that ends up turning the printer into a product for someone who sees the printer itself being a hobby, rather than the printer being merely an appliance that produces things.
Buying a Creality printer is like buying a hobby-grade RC car (ie, Traxxas, Team Associated, etc.). Decent out of the box, but you're likely going to be reaching for buying upgraded parts and it eventually becomes a Ship of Theseus.
I have an Ender 3 Pro, my list of upgrades:
- Replace the crappy flexible mat with PEI-coated flexsteel
- Filament runout detector
- Motherboard replacement (made flashing custom firmware 100x easier, and uses quieter stepper motor drivers)
- Automatic bed leveler
- Dual-gear extruder
- Customized firmware that changes the 3x3 bed leveling matrix to 7x7
- OctoPi
A decent printer will have half of these features already built in.
I did a similar path to you (Ender 3 Pro, same updates as you except runout), and I was miserable. Yes, I learned a lot about 3d printing while doing it, but I basically never printed unless I REALLY needed something, because I knew I'd spend a bunch of time fiddling and failed prints to get it working. A friend with an unmodified Ender 3 Pro has much better experience.
I wanted a Prusa but didn't want to drop the money on it when I first got started, so I thought I'd just add a bed leveler to get less tweaking and more reliable prints, and it went downhill from there.
I ended up getting a Bambu P1S, and gave the Ender 3 Pro to my kids school. In a twist of fate, I basically had to undo all the upgrades I did (I was able to keep the new mobo and Sprite extruder though) because the school IT couldn't allow OctoPi on the network and they needed something they could just drop an SD card in.
The Bambu P1S has been a real workhorse. In the first couple months I printed more stuff than I had with the Ender 3 Pro in 5 years. And the multi-filament AMS has been a lot of fun for making multi-color prints. I'm kind of glad I learned everything I did with my Ender, but now I want to focus on creating models and printing.
Prusa apparently makes great printers, I like their ideals and almost got one, but in the end I decided to go with the Bambu because of the AMS and a Father's Day sale and have been extremely happy.
I agree. I have a Creality Ender 3 V2. I wanted something cheap that I wasn’t going to worry about if it became a paperweight (due to lack of use). As I worked more with it, I upgraded it a ton, putting about as much money into it as it cost (which wasn’t much). In the end, it’s a decent printer for what I want to do with it.
I added:
* Bed leveler
* Flexible build surface
* direct drive extruder
* second z axis screw drive
* octopi
Everything except for the octopi was a Creality kit. So it’s not like they don’t know their market is looking to tinker and do upgrades themselves.
If you want to make things because the end product is the goal, get something fancier. If you want to know how and why it works, spending a bit more time on the journey part (which might be frustrating), the Creality might be a good fit. It’s not going to have the same user-experience as a Bamboo or Prusa, but for me, that’s okay.
well this.
when I started tinkering there were none of those kits, and the Ender I have now has pretty much nothing in common with the Ender I bought back then except some parts of the frame and the drives. and still the whole journey cost was about the same as just buying Prusa and then learning nothing.
this is a bit philosophical, but when you do want to shape material, be it wood or plastic, you have to not only understand how it's done, but to feel it. or you will repeatedly end up with crap and then endlessly wonder what went wrong
this cannot be bought, it's experience. for 3d-printing the fastest way is to get something like Ender and then build your own perfect printer out of it over several years.
If you are going with Creality the K1 series is what you want. I am new to 3D printers and it absolutely was perfect for a beginner such as myself. I recommend just using their slicer to start, specifically the desktop one.
Concur. I had a grin on my face when I threw my ender into a dumpster. Then regret for not Office-Spacing it first. Replaced it with a Raise3D E2, which just works.
Of these options, I'd recommend the SV08, provided you are okay with some mods essentially being required for consistent, reliable use.
These being:
- Eddy sensor (for faster bed meshing, eddy-ng addon for Klipper adds auto z-offset)
- Mainline Klipper/Kalico (required for eddy functionality)
- Some motherboard fan replacement mod (the default is tiny, noisy, and always-on)
Of the others listed:
- Bambu printers and the Elegoo Centauri Carbon have locked-down firmware (possibly with hidden license violations).
- I think the only Prusa machine with that build volume is the XL, which is out of the price range
- The Creality Ender 3 V3 KE is okay, but the build volume is 220x220x240mm
This is if you like tinkering with printers. I gave away my Wanhao and bought a Bambu, and I haven't thought about the printer since. Now I just print.
These are upgrades, not tinkering. None of them are necessary, just QoL. The Eddy sensor is better than anything Bambu's "AI" cameras can do as far as leveling.
You can buy upgrades for your Bambu too.
Yes, but with Bambu I don't need to. Their 5x5 leveling works perfectly, though I will admit that eddy leveling is super cool. I bought a sensor but didn't use Kipper and couldn't use the sensor with Marlin, and I got a Bambu before I switched to Klipper, so I gave the sensor away.
Creality K1 SE is only $50 more over the Ender 3 SE right now. Much better deal.
> I would prefer something that doesn't phone home and can work offline. Opensource firmware/software and repairability are important.
Bambulabs is out.
Our makerspace at the office has a few prusa mk4's, and they're really great machines.
Bambu is very slow with starting up a print. Even if you just printed something less than a minute ago, it will take at least a few minutes before it can do the next print.
> If you want a large printer that's decent for tinkering, Sovol SV08.
I disagree about Sovol the company though. I have a Sovol SV07 in the garage gathering dust. Its printer head got all clogged up and when I complained to them, they just sent me a random part with no information on what to do with it. I guess I could get into the tinkering mode, but who has the time?
I'd just love to have a sub-$1000 printer which prints whenever I have something to print (which is not too often, I concede), and does a fantastic job of it.
If OP isn't in huge hurry I'd also add the impending Snapmaker U1 [0] to the list. It looks like it's going to be a better machine than Bambu has out in the long run for cheaper and much more in-line with one that you have full control of, unlike Bambu.
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snapmaker/snapmaker-u1-...
> If you don't care about business practices and general privacy concerns
What are the actual concerns here? What has Bambu done that other 3D printer companies haven't?
> If you want relatively good support and to support a company that has a history of giving back, Prusa.
Someone in a HN thread a couple of weeks ago said when you turn one of these on the companies CEO's face is used as the boot screen...
Can I use custom slicer or other firmware/software with a BL?
Big thumbs up for “ Creality Ender 3 V3 KE.”
Svo8 bed is warped on mine, unfortunately.