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My daughter is an architecture student and needed a 3d printer to help with making models for her studio class. She had no desire to learn the ends and outs of 3d printers. She wanted something easy to use and reliable. The Bambu Labs printer I bought her has been just that.

i tossed my ender 3 for this reason alone. it’s just not worth the headache. it’s like the physical manifestation of vim, endless ways to tweak it and you could get lost with the tool instead of getting anything done. and i don’t even have a replacement, i’d rather have nothing than have a headache inducer

I’m about to toss my ender 3 s1 pro. The damn print won’t adhere to the bed. Z-probe calibration, temp towers, bed leveling, wash the plate, use a glue stick, turn the fan down, increase flow rate. I’ve tried it all. Still get spaghetti when I try to print a catamaran toy for my kid.

Ironically I started using orcaslicer recently. It seems cool. But I really just want a working printer. Probably getting a bambu in spite of the angry noises online.

If you don’t print anything proprietary or private, sure go ahead. You can let them intercept your 3d files all day and not be worried when you encounter models they decide they don’t want you to print with your printer in the future. (And trust me, that is ABSOLUTELY what is coming; monitoring everything you print and blocking you from printing anything they — Bambu or Government — deem you shouldn’t be allowed to print.)

That is my issue. I’m not printing guns or anything unsafe. I also don’t know what could happen in the future; it’s not like we get to govern ourselves (unless you buy into that lie). So given that, I’d rather stick with something that won’t have the capacity to stop me from using it later, for any reason.

The developer mode everyone loves to point out only came after massive community backslash to the fact that they made you unable to print without the Cloud. It wasn’t something they planned to add, it was an afterthought added only to quell the complaints and negative press which they can easily take away later again with an OTA firmware update (and have already demonstrated they are willing to).

You might call that noise, I call that a legitimate concern on being able to use the product I bought and paid for in the future. It’s good to be informed of what the “noise” is really about, since people like to marginalize concerns they dismiss or don’t understand. Best of luck with your purchase!

I ended up getting that Bambu X2D right after I wrote that comment, and what do you know, the catamaran printed on its first try with the same filament that I was using before. I did set up developer/LAN mode and integrated it with Home Assistant and it's great (for now). If they stealth patch out LAN mode while my printer is in LAN mode I will eat my words, tolerate the cloud nonsense as long as I can, and replace it with another printer if it gets bad.

But for now I have a fantastic printer for the price. Prusa was my second choice but you can't get X2D-equivalent functionality even if you were willing to do everything possible to upgrade it.

Ok but if this is your argument, you could have pointed out that thanks to Bamboo labs the Chinese 3d printer companies had to radically change their product designs to the point where you can get good printers from other companies rather than lash out at Bamboo Labs. If you don't like them then it would be better for them to fade into irrelevance. I just don't get this obsession. I personally would rather buy a Snapmaker U1 because it is a better printer architecture than dual nozzles.

That you characterize it as obsession says more about your pre-established opinion that it is irrelevant, than what the facts are. Good for you, buy what you want? What were you hoping for there?

> She had no desire to learn the ends and outs of 3d printers. She wanted something easy to use and reliable. The Bambu Labs printer I bought her has been just that.

Where is this coming from? You absolutely need to know the ins and outs of a 3D printer. Nozzles wear out, build plates wear out, components need to be regularly cleaned properly and lubricated, you have to keep filaments dry, certain filaments can only be used with certain components, you constantly tweak slicer and temperature settings, ... The list goes on.

3D printers, including Bambu Lab printers, are definitely not easy to use nor are they reliable. They're maintenance heavy. Sometimes you have to do a print multiple times because it'll fail for a myriad of reasons. Maybe you oriented it wrong, maybe your slicer settings are off, maybe it didn't have proper supports, maybe the filament is messed up, ...

The maintenance needed is minimal, and Bambu make it easy to learn in their wiki. It even sends you reminders to lubricate the Z-axis (the others don't need it). I've never had a clogged nozzle on my bambu printers but that is also clearly documented.

I've been doing 3D printing for 15 years so I've been through all the heavy maintenance printers. But most of that knowledge I don't need anymore. First layers are always perfect as long as the bed is properly grease free. The only knowledge I still really need is the design for 3D printing, like overhang orientations, seams etc.

That hasn't been my experience. Bambu's documentation, including the guides and wiki, is disjointed and inconsistent. You'll often find contradictions between pages or information that isn't appropriately fleshed out. Sometimes bits and pieces on a topic are spread across several wiki pages and guides. You'll also find that there's now an increase in AI slop in some of the introductory guides (e.g., tons of emdashes and sentences that don't seem to make sense).

Having the printer give you reminders to do something doesn't mean that maintenance is minimal.

Outside of Prusa - how would you compare Bambu's documentation against it's competitors?

In my experience, having owned 2-other printers prior to an X1C - there is absolutely NO comparison - EVERYTHING was community, Reddit, forum or random YouTube guidance from non-manufacturers.

The most common failure in my printing experience is just plain old dirty bed, especially when human hands interact with it. That takes operational discipline especially if you're printing lot of models over time.

I honestly get that, architecture is such a time intensive degree. It is drilled into you to produce results more than to care about the process.. and to spend more time on exploration and resolution than on learning.

I do think though, that a little learning and understanding of your tools is such a useful thing practically and creatively speaking, but also ultimately time saving.

Slow, as they say, is fast.

Prusa does this perfectly fine. They're just more expensive.

The price is a huge factor in the commoditisation of 3D printing. The design quality too. A 3D printer looks the part, that is important if you have it on your desk.

> A 3D printer looks the part, that is important if you have it on your desk.

Good design is only very partially objective, it's often an acquired taste. I, for example, find Bambu printers with their "glossy Apple-inspired look" incredibly ugly, and strongly prefer the look of Prusa printers.

> Bambu totally delivers there. They really commoditised 3D printing and brought the price down.

Prusa's MK3S delivered consistently good, zero fuss, straight out of the box prints with auto bed leveling for $999 before Bambu labs even existed at all.

Bambu brought Core XY & multi-filament to the "mainstream" (for however mainstream 3D printing is at all), absolutely, but if you just wanted a 3D printer that consistently worked for an affordable price? Prusa beat them to that by years. They just didn't advertise the shit out of it on YouTube like Bambu did.

Prusa unfortunately then kinda just... relaxed? Not sure what happened, but MK3 -> MK4 was pretty meh, the XL was delayed, the Core One a good response but still lacking on the multi-material front, etc...

The MK3S still looks like a kid's science project. The Bambu A1 is much more polished and it costs 1/3 of the price. That price alone is a huge factor in commoditisation. I never considered a prusa for that reason alone.

Prusa is still doing silly things like having 3d printed component manufacturing. I get that they really want the aesthetic and they do make very good products but for a consumer a Bambu printer is just outright a better choice

> the Core One a good response but still lacking on the multi-material front, etc...

Luckily, INDX is just around the corner :)

Dude, the only reason you can be a maker is because of the many hours of work provided by the open source community. The very same one your support is trampling on since it's in favor of a company profiteering from them. All because you don't want to be inconvenienced.. Educate yourself on the issue and start having some respect.

I'm not being inconvenienced?

And the open source community is open source precisely to drive the state of the art further.

Having respect for other makers doesn't necessarily mean agreeing on everything.

I'm just giving the other side of the story. If you wish to choose another brand you're free to do so of course. Not all my printers are bambu, in fact my latest one isn't either.

No, dude, open source and more specifically GPL is intended to keep things open and accessible to everyone and out of control of monopoly actors, not to drive state of the art.

Can you agree on not stealing? That's the equivalent of what BL is doing.

What stealing? Their slicer code is in turn published back and made accessible, orcaslicer itself has merged a number of their changes and vice versa.

What you are complaining about is access to their proprietary, and optional cloud control functionality. I'd like for access to be open there too, but them trying to gate what apps can access to that isnt "stealing" from the open source community.

“Because some other people used an inferior open source product, you have to too”