Comment by wolvoleo
3 days ago
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
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.
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> 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.
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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.
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“Because some other people used an inferior open source product, you have to too”