Comment by jchw
3 days ago
I made the tragic mistake of getting a Bambu printer (an X1C, with AMS even...) right before they gave all of us the middle finger. I now have it offline, running out of date firmware, connected to a special WiFi network that is isolated from the Internet.
That upset me, but now I'm pissed. Now I don't even care about their stupid printers. Now I'd like to waste Bambu Lab's time and cause problems for them.
And also, while this X1C should be going strong for years, my eyes are on Prusa should I want another printer any time soon for any reason. Less polished or not, they seem like they're still better for consumers even though they are apparently less open than they used to be. But I'm of course interested in hearing what people recommend, too. (I got an X1C because I knew it would be simple, but I don't particularly mind getting my hands dirty or anything. I did build an Ender 3 kit before that.)
Once you have a reliable printer, the workflow is mostly to slice -> send to printer -> wait and check on it every couple of hours until it's done ime. Imo it no longer super matters how much better the on-screen ui or webcam are.
Mutli-color though is where Bambu has a good leg up.
(Diluted) Vision Miner Nano Polymer Adhesive and a good bed leveling probe has done a lot to make my printer set and forget, no matter which print sheets I use.
Wasn’t the main hassle in calibrarion and Bambu was good in that and is major reason for popularity? So ”once you have a reliable printer” is kinda big thing.
Prusa is on par with Bambu in that respect. Really, Prusa are the ones that pioneered hassle-free calibration.
4 replies →
> Mutli-color though is where Bambu has a good leg up.
I'm excited for INDX but going to wait a year or so.
I'm waiting for my Founders Edition. I'm confident it will work well, even if not perfectly at first.
Can anyone in the commentariat recommend a great, locally available adhesive in Japan? Vision Miner is import-only and pricey. I’ve been using glue-sticks but am ready to level up as I’m moving away from PLA.
Can you get 3DLAC in Japan? That's what I'm using with great success. Otherwise maybe try some hair sprays, that worked in 2011, too... :-D
2 replies →
Depending on your level of DIY-ness and willingness to handle powders, you could make some Super Goop. I've heard good things about it but haven't yet had enough bed adhesion issues to make it yet.
https://github.com/MakerBogans/docs/wiki/Printer-goop
I just have a layer of Cape hairspray, on a hardware store aluminium sheet, taped onto the moving down Z frame with Daiso acrylic foam tapes, on a RAMPS1.4 + SERVO42B modified i3-style Cartesian build, works for me.
High-hold hairspray will work wonders for you. I’ve been using it to print, including on glass, since 2014.
I've used thinned out real PVA glue (not polyurethane) for years.
It may not have been a feature then, but you can run updated firmware and still keep it offline by using Developer Mode.
https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/knowledge-sharing/enable-develo...
I don't trust it anymore. I'm using LAN mode today, I have little incentive to update. If I update to anything, it will certainly be third-party modified firmware.
I'm running my P2S in LAN mode. But I also blocked it on my router from connecting outward. Sure I can no longer use the mobile app. But BamBuddy solved that for me. It has a web UI that is mobile browser friendly.
The only one that I'm familiar with is https://github.com/X1Plus/X1Plus
1 reply →
I'm also in the same boat of regret, but for other reasons. Their support team is beyond awful. I purchased an H2S AMS combo just shy of two months ago (mostly because I saw it being praised by HNers a while back) and found out recently that the AMS they've sent me is defective. It's been truly a bizarre experience trying to deal with customer support. They told me to disassemble the AMS and swap a couple of modules that they mailed me. I did, provided them evidence that I did, and provided evidence that it didn't fix the problem. Their response was to claim that I didn't actually swap the modules and that because of that my warranty no longer applies, and then they said they'd give me a free roll of filament for my troubles (lol). At that point I began the process of invoking the consumer protections afforded to me. Called my credit card company and opened a dispute, invoked Massachusetts law M.G.L. c. 93A, and I'm about to contact my AG.
It's a shame they're going in such an anti-consumer direction, both with their gaslighting customer support and the lawfare against Orca.
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is your friend. Furthermore, the idea that you could be expected to perform technical labor to repair something is ridiculous: grandma is protected, too, and this type of service falls far outside the scope of what is reasonable.
Odd - I bought an H2C about a month ago - and the nozzle-swapping Vortek rack just wouldn't calibrate or operate - blocking even calibrating the left-nozzle from proceeeding.
However - yes, they did have me perform multiple disassembly/re-connect steps and document, and then of course every question/answer was at least a 24-hr turnaround (some delays were because I keep my printer at my office and chose to work from home a few times), eventually they sent me an entire new Vortek rack - which, once installed worked perfectly.
I was not looking forward to packing the entire thing up and shipping it back.
hmmm - they never asked for the old one back... (hmmm, harvest the servo motor? drag-chains and rods for other projects? Mount it on the wall and use it to store extra induction nozzles? Ideas?)
I have seen one YouTube video that seemed to indicate a problem with pulling filament was because of a little flap within the new 4-1 PTFE filament adapter. There is a little rubber valve/flap (apparently it is a consumable, because the printer came with extra) - which he found if left in-place would cause filament jams, so he removed it, and no more feed problems. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the exact video - I have seen/bookmarked too many)
Just wanna say, I appreciate you going through the effort. Please share your story as it progresses!
I had the same experience with their shitty customer service but for something much smaller. I had red filament from bambu that was constantly getting clogged and they had me go through so many hoops. they had me measure the filament thickness in 10 places WITH CALIPERS and also FILM IT. all this shit was a waste of my time. After they asked for even more steps, I just gave up. I felt it wasn’t worth it for a $16 exchange.
But it left a really bad taste in my mouth about the company.
Consumers are used to stuff like Amazon customer service. I wasn’t expecting to waste all that time to exchange 1kg of filament. I thought they’d send it out no hassle and take back the defective filament to research it themselves.
So now when I recommend Bambu, I say the printers are great but their customer service is horrible. So be very careful.
I have a friend in the exact same situation
I assume you have an ams 2 pro?
And it won’t pull filament when randomly ?
Her also same issue and she’s having to fight them.
Shit is wild.
I feel rather guilty I had an initially good experience with my p2s, but they’ve managed to mess up the firmware or something ….
Now I don’t think I would recommend it to anyone anymore.
So "right to repair" is "duty to repair" now? /s
I was offered to return it or try to fix it myself. In the end the fix was even easier than initially thought and it's working great since. No idea if that's because I am in the EU market and not US. They did take their time to respond but otherwise service was ok.
1 reply →
I was almost just like you I got some recommendations from HN, all of them were for Bambu.
I was lucky and they didn’t have any in stock when I wanted to buy…
Now I’m nervous about buying one from anyone.
> I was almost just like you I got some recommendations from HN, all of them were for Bambu.
Bambu has spent a ton of dough on paid advertising via YouTube shills (it is absolutely rampant in that scene - I like the channel Maker's Muse as a notable exception, who also has some funny videos up where he reads emails from various vendors trying to bribe or intimidate him in various ways), and many in the HN crows were happy to parrot their talking points to justify their purchases. A winning marketing strategy.
To this day you end up encountering a lot of people who are under the impression Bambu printers somehow made 3D printing accessible or are the only ticket to a problem-free experience. And you know, the product might do that, the problem is the message that they're the only game in town, which has never been true and which they largely achieved on the back of work already done by others for them in software, designs and ecosystem development.
To contrast this: You often hear this about Apple, that they didn't necessarily invent the stuff, but they did the last-mile integration really well. It's incomparable. Apple did far more work on their products than Bambu ever did.
You're rewriting history here because of something that you dislike that happened long after Bambu Labs became popular.
In the beginning Bambu Labs came up with the X1C which is essentially a really good Core XY printer with an enclosure for $1500 that included a revolutionary AMS that no other manufacturer had. If you wanted a printer of similar quality, you would have had to build your own Voron for $1000 with the obvious caveat that you have to order the parts yourself and then assemble it.
Then Bambu Lab releases the P1S, which is comparable to a Voron but cheaper and you don't have to assemble it.
At that point Bambu Labs was no longer just a high end printer company with Apple aesthetics. Regular consumers could afford their printers.
Then they came up with the A1 mini and the AMS Lite. They've started building a printer that is cheaper than an Ender 3, but has the same print quality as the higher end Bambu Lab printers and despite being a gantry design, much faster print speeds with low setup and maintenance. I personally got an A1 mini for $200.
Compared to other Chinese competitors, their printers were both good and affordable. Prusa had good printers that were relatively expensive.
Meanwhile if you bought an Ender 3, which was the community recommendation before Bambu Labs, you basically brought an unreliable low quality piece of garbage into your house that you constantly have to maintain when it breaks or upgrade features that should have been there out of the box. The abysmally bad Ender 3 gave outsiders the impression that most 3D printer enthusiasts treated the printer as the project rather than the things they make with the printer.
Basically, the entire 3D printing community centered itself around a terrible overpriced 3D printer from a company that still produces garbage to this day. Meanwhile if you bought a rather expensive Bambu Labs printer you never had any issues to begin with. If the 3d printer community had centered around e.g. Sovol printers, this disconnect from reality probably have never happened.
Then Bambu Labs came out with the A1 bed slinger and at that point they had a printer that was cheaper and better in every single aspect. The masks from the existing Chinese 3D printer companies peddling you garbage fell off. Suddenly they have X1C, P1S and A1 clones that are 90% as good as Bambu Labs printers. Like, every single manufacturer realized simultaneously that their printers were bad and that they could have sold you printers that weren't terrible.
>And you know, the product might do that, the problem is the message that they're the only game in town, which has never been true and which they largely achieved on the back of work already done by others for them in software, designs and ecosystem development.
You're assuming some marketing fantasy which isn't the case. Most Chinese printer manufacturers simply made terrible products before Bambu Labs. If you restrict yourself to Chinese manufacturers, then Prusa is out. Back in those days when you were buying a Chinese printer, they really were the only game in town.
The thing about doing it on the back of others sounds stupid. There were hundreds of niche 3D printer companies that sold you unsupported products that barely worked. Obviously they didn't write their own software from scratch. They used existing software from the open source printer ecosystem.
>To contrast this: You often hear this about Apple, that they didn't necessarily invent the stuff, but they did the last-mile integration really well. It's incomparable. Apple did far more work on their products than Bambu ever did
Now you're getting things backwards. Bambi Lab's is a lot like Apple here, with the difference that they don't charge Apple level premiums. I'm wondering how you can take it for granted that they are doing the equivalent of selling a MacBook Pro at the price of a regular MacBook. Bambi Lab also came up with two AMS types before everyone else adopted multi filament printing in a mass consumer basis. Not to mention quality of life features like quick change nozzles.
You shouldn't rewrite history just because you don't like a company. Without Bamboo Labs we would be stuck with Creality.
There’s no reason to be nervous.
You can use their slicer (which works well!). If you don’t want to, you can use one that sends through their Bambu Connect software, which Orca Slicer doesn’t want to support for…reasons. Or you can use it in LAN mode. Or you can just transfer the gcode via an SD card or flash drive like ye olde days.
Despite the tone of the other reply to your question, they are absolutely the easiest printers to work with. I don’t love their new multicolor solution for how slow it is compared to other options, but that would be the only real fault with their newest line.
Which options are faster?
1 reply →
After my initial Ender 3v2 (which was my entry point to 3D printing, but a terrible printer otherwise), we bought a Prusa even thought it was much more expensive than Bambu because we wanted to support a European company and because as a European company they are under the GDPR.
It has been absolutely great and low-effort. I haven't needed it yet, but their printers seem to be focused on easy maintenance by their owners.
Same, but the first printer was an Anet A8. Moving to a Prussa Mini was a breath of fresh air, going from 35% to 95% print success.
Meh. I use bambu and I am a maker but it's not a big thing in my opinion.
I bought a bambu precisely because I don't want to mod the thing with a gazillion custom upgrades like I needed to do with my previous printers to make them work reliably. I just want to press print and... print. Bambu totally delivers there. They really commoditised 3D printing and brought the price down. And if you do want to go off the beaten track they have options.
My hobby is not 3D printer tinkering. It's printing stuff to use. This is clearly what bambu market towards and they do the job really well. I know many people in the makerspace community that spend weeks tuning their perfect Klipper setup. Cool but I prefer spending those weeks perfecting my designs instead. It's hard to overstate the difference they made in out of the box capability especially for the price. And their spare parts are decently priced too.
Now if they start locking down the consumables like other evil companies like 3D Systems and Da Vinci XYZ did then yes. Then they deserve all the blame they can get.
The orcaslicer thing I don't know what to think about yet (I have to read up on it) but the discussion here was more about the local mode.
Ps Bambu isn't the only brand I have. But I do like what they've done. It was exactly what I needed.
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
4 replies →
> 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, ...
4 replies →
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.
1 reply →
> 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.
1 reply →
> 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.
2 replies →
“Because some other people used an inferior open source product, you have to too”
Speaking about Prusa, my experience has been that they’re very condescending to users.
Extremely basic features (like serial printing) are considered “nice to have”. Some tickets have remained open for over 6 years now and ignored by prusa:
- https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy/issues/189 (still open after 6+ years)
- https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy/issues/283 (took 3.5 years to acknowledge and fix)
It is well-known that Prusa is rather slow and hesitant to implement new features in their firmware because they really want new features also to work on their very old printers if possible. And Prusa really wants to avoid introducing regressions with new firmware versions (even though they are not perfect regarding this).
Thus, because of this basically promise by Prusa, the pace with which new features become available is much slower.
Prusa is for people who really want their 3D printers supported for a very long time.
Same experience. Wanted to get an X1C after I had saved enough, then I was lucky enough to be able to send it back within the 2 weeks time frame. I live in the EU so I was able to demand the refund.
Now I am rebuilding my old Ender 3 with Openbuilds parts into a CoreXY setup, all metal hotend, sturdier metal frame, and the newer RAMPS board with a raspberry pi and klipper setup. Don't know enough about the multi tool related things, but maybe I am gonna focus on that afterwards.
I am having tons of fun while doing so, it has been quite a while since I rebuilt my Anet A8 into an AM8 with a custom Marlin firmware back then.
> my eyes are on Prusa should I want another printer any time soon for any reason.
Have Prusa finally fixed their engineering? Prusa basically sitting inert on the engineering front is what allowed Bambu to leapfrog them.
Bambu made real engineering improvements: linear slides, servomotor for feed, accelerometer tuning, etc. Has Prusa finally decided to compete again? A lot of us are willing to give a company more money for being open source, but the basic product can't be too significantly inferior.
It looks like there is at least one linear slide on the Prusa Core One+ so that's a start...
Bambu won with relentless free giveaways to every YouTuber on the planet, cheap prices, and a consumer friendly looking design.
I don’t think they earned it.
I suspect there is a huge number of people out there who bought them who don’t even know what else exists. They saw a YouTuber advertise one on a video making something and decided to buy that.
> I don’t think they earned it.
1) The people around me who bought a Bambu P1S or P2S weren't swayed by marketing. Some of them even owned Prusa machines. They bought those Bambu printers because they had products they needed printed, and the Bambu got it done while the Prusa failed prints and made them dork around with things.
2) The A1 minis are cheap and look good to consumers; they also work remarkably reliably. Prusa doesn't have anything even remotely in the same class. That is squarely the fault of Prusa.
3) A lot of people who don't know any better can go to Best Buy and buy a Bambu in stock, off the shelf, with a return policy. Again, the fault lies squarely with Prusa.
4) The Bambu printers had fundamentally better components like linear slides and servo motors, for example. Again, fault to Prusa.
Prusa got caught with their pants down and refused to adjust for far too long. Bambu did genuine engineering while Prusa rested on its laurels.
4 replies →
Prusa is equally guilty there, I think. Every time I see a Youtuber receiving multiple free Prusa printers, while I continue to save and delay on the high price of getting one myself, I curse them a bit more.
1 reply →
I think you’re trying to rewrite history. The Bambu printers were really, really good for their price point when they came out. It wasn’t looks or giveaways. The printers were seriously much better hardware than what Prusa had at the time.
I was recommending Prusa to everyone who inquired about 3D printers for many years before Bambu launched, so I’m not unfamiliar with the market.
Trying to criticize Bambu for sending a lot of printers to YouTubers is ironic when Prusa has always done the same thing.
1 reply →
Before I bought my first 3D printer from Bambu Labs I spent years researching various printers and every year before Bambu Labs I thought 3D printing was a joke with the sole exception being the Voron 3D printer.
Are you sure you know what's out there? Do you know Mosaic's Pallete 3 Pro or their Array industrial 3D printer?
> Have Prusa finally fixed their engineering? Prusa basically sitting inert on the engineering front is what allowed Bambu to leapfrog them.
This was the time when Prusa produced the MK3... printers. The MK4S was already a huge step forward: in my opinion - privacy topics aside - already better than Bambu's offerings for some applications (even though these applications were possibly not the ones that the masses care(d) about).
The Core One+ and the Core One L that were released after that are really good printers. Also the Prusa XL is a great printer for what it has been designed for if you give it some maintenance love (note however that the Prusa XL was from a time when less people wanted to print filaments that strongly profit from a heated chamber, so the Prusa XL was - in opposite to the Core One and Core One L - not designed with a focus on this).
But.. the good news is that any future potential buyers ( like me ) know to avoid that particular vendor. The issue, as it appears to be common lately, is that the number of buyers gets smaller and smaller as regulatory frameworks get more and more onerous. Otoh, I am more than happy to lend a helping hand. This is probably as good of a fight as it gets.
I was lucky enough to have seen the initial controversy and install the X1Plus firmware on my X1C about 2-weeks before lockdown. It has worked flawlessly with OrcaSlicer ever since. For monitoring when I am away from my office, I setup VPN, HomeAssistant and could do it from my computer - but there was also a "Bambu Companion" app released pretty quickly in that timeframe (there are probably others now) which allowed my to replace the "Bambu Handy" functionality on my phone.
So - of course, I swore I would not buy another Bambu. But, when looking at the various pricing and other aspects of competitors - about a month ago I did end-up buying an H2C with double-AMS and an HT - mainly to reduce filament waste, have a larger build volume, be able to use multi-materials for support "quickly" and have active chamber heating for more "engineering" type filaments. Don't believe the hype about the chamber filter though - I have found with ABS, you still need external exhaust or air filtering as even though the chamber "closes" and recycles via the filter, you still have the "poop chute" venting fumes...
... and of course... even if I wanted to switch to LAN-mode, unfortunately OrcaSlicer does not yet support the H2C... perhaps it never will unfortunately...
If you’re eyeing Prusa, that’ll probably be ideal. ...but it does look like Sovol is teasing an INDX alternative (I have a Sovol SV08, it’s a “good value” tinkerer printer based on the Voron)
And if you really want “open”, there’s isn’t much better than a Voron in that aspect.