Getting a new 3D printer, my there are so many

[Simon]

My creality ender 3 v2 seems to have decided to quit and I have lost patience with it. I was hoping to get a dual nozzle self enclosed printer next but they seem to be quite pricy and I'd always want a little workhorse.

The Anker Make has made a lot of noise lately, bit pricier but allegedly fast, seems to get mixed reviews, as a printer it seems great but many are not keen on the slicer.

Anything I should look into?

[jc101]

I have been closely looking at the Bambu Lab X1 lately.  I have a project that requires custom enclosures, so I'm mulling over getting a 3D printer to do the prototypes.

What I don't want is anything that soaks up time to be able to use.  The Bambu also seems to be quite zippy, which would be of use too.

[Infraviolet]

Creality's CR20 Pro type works pretty well for me, can be maintained using all the same spares you already probably have around for your ender. Some issues with bed levelling though, inherent in the printer's design of using fully automatic bed levelling without any adjustment scrws, so not great for bigger prints. Works reasonably well as a printer, but wouldn't be an upgrade over what you already have.

[bonifacio]

I have a CR6-SE and somewhat content. Been a decent workhorse since it's Kickstarter campaign. Auto-leveling has been a lifechanging for me.

Now you have me considering a new printer.

The Ankermake M5 does seem like a more finished product. The comparable one would be a Bambu P1P. Everything else seems to be a price jump.
Main thing to consider is the M5 bed volume is almost an inch less.

[dobsonr741]

Sovol SV06 for $240. Has all the recent must haves.

[Simon]

Yes I did find the Bambu X1 having seen the P1P and I'm not even on the fence anymore, I want that one I think. No more need for dual nozel with the really cheap addon of the multi spool thing and the speed is a nice bonus. I know that if I got the P1P I would regret it.

[jc101]

My Bambu X1 Carbon Combo arrived this week. Pretty impressed so far working perfectly straight out of the box.  Naturally, the UK price was cut by £120 the day after it arrived 

[Simon]

I'm not impressed. Clearly the shills on youtube were paid so much they were willing to lie out of every orifice.

The prestored models don't print at all, that was when I finally got the damn thing. I had to pay twice and I am still waiting for a refund on the first one. The first one I addressed to work, they missed out the company name on the address and blamed the carrier, uttur assholes, they could not be bothered to set an auto responder when the went on holiday. Presumably they just have monkeys in the UK doing the shipping and the comms are done in china.

no it does not take 20 minutes to set up like people claim, it needs a really solid surface or prints will be rubbish, I managed to get their benchy to print after I modified their settings and even at slow speed it was awful. it's like these people don't get 3D printing, the build plate was set to 35C, I don't know what is special about their PLA but i never got anything to work in the past at under 50.

So, sure, I got it to work when "I" sliced a model, very nice too, so apparently it's just a case of actually understanding 3D printing. I struggled to get the printer to link up to my account, maybe their chinese servers went on holiday too. Frankly I feel lied too, this was not the dream setup it was meant to be. Maybe they listened to all those hardcore people that complained that it was being made too easy for the masses.

i suppose I would recommend it as a printer but I feel rather ripped off considering I was promised a fault free workflow and it feel like those fucking enders all over again for 6 times the price.

The software is bloody awful, makes no sense at all, I know I have only experience of cura but this thing is just shit! Basically bambu labs seem to have one ability and one ability only, to do the hi speed compensation crap, at everything else they are a failure. Unlike my ender every print ends up with a trail of filament from the nozzle. So the software that the youtube shills called a bit quirky and I'm sure they will sort it out - a year ago - is actually bad in my opinion and not snomething that you can just say, yea it's early days andh will get better, Bambu labs sure must pay well.

This is all on the X1 carbon combo, yes I see the X1 is not sold now and everyone is ravetting on about the price of that and now when you come to buy it's a case of bait and switch. So I have had all this trouble while using all of their stuff, not even tried putting my own filament in.

[Infraviolet]

" I struggled to get the printer to link up to my account"
I would, for one, never even consider buying any equipment which required linking to an account and dependence on online servers to use it.

I'd heard Bambu printers can be made to work with Cura ( https://www.printables.com/model/420771-bambu-lab-x1-carbon-cura-profile), might that get you out of the dire software problems you describe?

P.S. so your post is a good warning for others you might make the very top line of it a note of which exact printer model had all these problems

[jc101]

That is the polar opposite of my experience.  It took about 30 mins to get it out of the box and plonk it on the desk.  The desk/bench is fairly hefty, 1" ply top on top of a 2x4 frame, all stood on some newel posts.  Though it did make the monitors at the other end move a little when running.  Adding the anti-vibration feet has solved that.  Account linking was seamless.  It also offers a LAN-only mode that doesn't need the "cloud", but you need to turn it on occasionally to get firmware updates.  For anything sensitive, I can also just print from an SD card anyway. 

This is the first print from it with all the default settings, printed from the screen on the printer itself.

Edit to say ordered Friday the 23rd, and delivery was Tuesday the 27th.  Not having a 3d printer before, I can't compare the software to anything else.  It seems OK to me at the moment, once I understand all the various terms etc.

[Simon]

You can use an SD card, it's basically what I had to do on my ender 3, it's now working and yea that is cool, I am just so amazed at the awful shipping experience and the fact that I can slice models for printing better than they can, I mean i really want to know how some of those youtube shills got their benchy's to print, mine was just having none of it.

[Simon]

That is the polar opposite of my experience.  It took about 30 mins to get it out of the box and plonk it on the desk.  The desk/bench is fairly hefty, 1" ply top on top of a 2x4 frame, all stood on some newel posts.  Though it did make the monitors at the other end move a little when running.  Adding the anti-vibration feet has solved that.  Account linking was seamless.  It also offers a LAN-only mode that doesn't need the "cloud", but you need to turn it on occasionally to get firmware updates.  For anything sensitive, I can also just print from an SD card anyway. 

This is the first print from it with all the default settings, printed from the screen on the printer itself.

Edit to say ordered Friday the 23rd, and delivery was Tuesday the 27th.  Not having a 3d printer before, I can't compare the software to anything else.  It seems OK to me at the moment, once I understand all the various terms etc.

So yours is in green? mine just prints in white, apparently the white is support material. I don't know if this is to mean it is different or just that it's the cheapest stuff they could muster that may not be exactly white. I can't see how to change the colour though, the picture is in white so I assume it just auto pilots.

[jc101]

I got a green PLA, white support filament, and a black PLA-CF (I think, not opened that yet).  The inbuilt jobs want to load the filament from the first slot in the AMS, so that is where I put the green PLA.  I've seen videos where jobs have been printed with the support filament, and they are just blobs, basically. It's designed to break away easily from the main print, not to print the whole job.
 
The software has a button to sync the AMS load into the job, so it will pick the right spool when it comes to print.  The symbol to the right of the - sign.

I went through the wiki manual before the printer arrived.

Edit, the display shows white as it's read the RFID in the spool so it knows that is what you loaded.  But the internal jobs, I think, will take what is in slot 1 regardless.  Swap it to green PLA, and the AMS will change to a green block.

[jpanhalt]

@dobsonr741
Well, I bit on a flash sale at Amazon and got the Sovol SV06 Plus.  It's affordable, and with inflation, every $100 I spend today saves me $10+ next year (remember income taxes).  I should have it by the weekend and assume it has a starter roll of something.  PLA?  Any hints for setting it up?

Related to this, I dabbled in 3D CAD about 25 years ago, ended my updates to  SolidWorks 2007, but never really felt comfortable with it.  (I hated context sensitive icons.)   I haven't done any 3D in the past 10 years.  What is the most intuitive, free thing to use today?

John

[Simon]

I got a green PLA, white support filament, and a black PLA-CF (I think, not opened that yet).  The inbuilt jobs want to load the filament from the first slot in the AMS, so that is where I put the green PLA.  I've seen videos where jobs have been printed with the support filament, and they are just blobs, basically. It's designed to break away easily from the main print, not to print the whole job.
 
The software has a button to sync the AMS load into the job, so it will pick the right spool when it comes to print.  The symbol to the right of the - sign.

I went through the wiki manual before the printer arrived.

Edit, the display shows white as it's read the RFID in the spool so it knows that is what you loaded.  But the internal jobs, I think, will take what is in slot 1 regardless.  Swap it to green PLA, and the AMS will change to a green block.

Aha, makes more sense, I mean those RFID tags seem to be more useful for showing fancy pictures in the right colour rather than picking the right filament, another monumental cockup, they seem to have put more effort into the marketing than the machine, along with paying the shills off who don't really tell you anything useful. One shill showed off a nice white benchy, it's amazing, the most user friendly printer made unfriendly.

I mean the filaments that are oh so special actually stick together so that the reel rears up in the AMS, they claim this stuff is superior, never had such shit, the crap creality supplied never stuck together.

Just loaded the green in the first slot, pictures still show white and starting a new benchy print. Just noticed the self adhesive surface stickey is 90 degrees out on the magnetic plate. I mean it really is a case of having a bunch of perhaps good engineers that never saw daylight until they finished the job and a bunch of useless assholes screwing it up after them.

[Simon]

Oh yea, the rubber feet, I pulled mine off dragging it on the carpet, but wait! there are holes in the centre, now i wonder what they were for...... too bloody cheap to use a screw?

[jc101]

The colour of the PLA supplied is random, not everyone gets green from what I’ve seen.

I had to pull the original feet with needle nose pliers to get the anti vibration feet on. They had some double sided tape on and needed a good tug.

It’s a shame your having such a hard time with it, for me it has been effortless so far. As this is my first 3D printer I have no baseline. But so far it’s printed anything I’ve given it and results have been great as far as I’m concerned.

Maybe raise a ticket with them in case you have something iffy with yours?

[Simon]

Oh and the "power button" only turns the screen off, it's like they put it in and then realized that they did not have the hardware or software support for it so just have it turn the screen off. How much could I get paid to shill this?

[jc101]

Looks like you need to return it for a refund.

[Simon]

The colour of the PLA supplied is random, not everyone gets green from what I’ve seen.

I had to pull the original feet with needle nose pliers to get the anti vibration feet on. They had some double sided tape on and needed a good tug.

It’s a shame your having such a hard time with it, for me it has been effortless so far. As this is my first 3D printer I have no baseline. But so far it’s printed anything I’ve given it and results have been great as far as I’m concerned.

Maybe raise a ticket with them in case you have something iffy with yours?

Green benchy has come out fine, it's just that for all the hype, it feels like a bit of a lie.

Basically they engineered the shit out of the frame to make it fast and did all the calibration and then left the rest up to some work experience student. For all the work they apparently put into this they apparently could not put a power button on that actually turns it off, with green in my first slot I still get white pictures.

Like you I have black, green and support white.

[Simon]

Looks like you need to return it for a refund.

why? so that I stop moaning about it and devaluing the investment they put into the youtube shills? As a printer I do like it, it's just that I can also see all through the overhyped crap. I'm an engineer, evaluating solutions is my job so that I don't use the wrong solution myself.

[jc101]

Nope, just if it was causing you so much grief, then why suffer?

Do a video of the issues for all to see the downsides, or just post the full list here to warn people.

The power button is a "display sleep/wake" button, as shown as such in the manual. Reading it before buying that wasn't an issue for me.  There is a switch on the back if I need to physically turn it off, much like a load of other test gear.

I'm not a supporter, fan, or evangelist of Bambu.  Nor of any other 3D printer, as this is my first.  After much research and reading the manuals/wiki, I bought one.  It's early days, but so far, everything is pretty much as I expected it would be based on my research.  Except for my monitors shaking when it printed, the anti-vibration feet solved that.

Your experience in the 3D printing world is obviously way more than mine, so it may well be overhyped and expensive.  For me, I want something that just works out of the box so I don't have to waste time getting usable results.  It may come back to bite me later on, by so far so good.

[Simon]

well my experience has only been of an ender 3. It is much better it's just "interesting" to have one for real and compare to what the youtubers say which is careful in pointing out that there are problems but then just glossing over them like it's nothing.

The power button, is, a power button, that is what the symbol on it tells me. In my opinion it was meant to be one but they had, um, communication issues within the teams. so they came up with a face saving solution. the screen goes out on a timer anyway. This tells me that they messed up

anything that is the user interface just looks sloppy, or is it the smart phone way taking over.

[mikeselectricstuff]

+1 for the Bambu X1. It just works, software is easy to use, fast and produces decent quality with no faffing about.
Obviously needs to sit on a solid surface  - that's just physics. 

Cloud stuff is a convenience and optional - you can avoid it but I think there may be issues doing firmware updates if you do.

[Simon]

Mine has been OK as well although they seem to set their bed temperatures too low with PLA and it never sticks unless I set it up at least to 40C. I have had lots of problems with their matte PLA, it just keeps pulling away. I suspect they have the flow rate set too high and I have just been messing about with some PETG that was not theirs that will only work at 5mm^3/s but the manufacturer says 8-12. setting it to 5 after lots of other tests was the only way to get it to print.