The BambuLab A1 mini is the obvious choice here. Incredible value for the money and IMO quite beginner friendly.
The alternative choice would be the Prusa Mini, although the BambuLab has higher quality and more features than the Prusa.
The alternative choice would be the Prusa Mini, although the BambuLab has higher quality and more features than the Prusa.
They forked a slicer, which wasn't against the license but not terribly nice either.
The big thing now is the patent lawsuit with Stratasys
None of these things matter for the average user. For the average user the Bambu products are the ones to buy. Easy button for 3d printing.
Everything seems perfectly in order with both the Linux-based firmware on the X1C[0] and their slicer[1] which is a fork of Prusaslicer.
[0] https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/knowledge-sharing/open-source-s...
Maybe last year people were saying that Bambu intercepts your models, that it's not private.
As I google, they say that your camera feed also goes to the public internet.
I suppose they could bang a hole out thru your router & host something on the printer, then have your app sync your ip when on the wifi with the printer, but then if your ip changes when out & about you'll lose access unless you've set something up for it.
Gotta remember that Bambu is all about ease of use. It does have a LAN only mode, but I do agree that they should support some sort of plugin system for the printers and just refuse to support unless you're experiencing an issue while using 0 modifications/plugins.
But after looking into it all the bad stuff doesn't really apply - they forked Prusa slicer which Prusa fans got mad at (ofc) but Prusa forked from Slic3r, sooooo nothing wrong there at all.
Bambu use an nfc tag in their filaments, not to lock people in as I (and others) thought, but to auto select the right profile when it's in their AMS (multi colour) system; it's still completely possible to use other brands and their slicer provides a couple non-bambu brand-specific profiles already, along with "generic" profiles/material that work pretty damn well by default.
I picked up an A1 mini during their recent sale and unfortunately after using it...I don't think I'll ever use my Ender 5 Plus ever again (poor thing)...when I have enough space I'll just buy an X1C.
They've made it just so...effortless. You know what, it even takes even less effort than a fucking 2d printer these days (HP/Brother et al).
Although primarily I'd really like to be able to print full colour 3d busts, I understand that the point of hueforge is that it's 2d because it works like a picture box/shadow box with the layers.
Doing 3d is just a regular multi-colour print I suppose but the only annoying thing is that small regions of colour just require too much flushing. :/
There's just something about the bas relief output that's satisfying in a way that a 2d printer doesn't hit.
With the Mini, I was hesitant to try things because I was afraid the prints would fail and I’d spend forever calibrating things. With the X1C, I can crank out prototype iterations as fast as I can design them.