10 ms·

Bambu Lab A1 Mini

136 points by margor 3y ago

carterschonwald 3y ago
I honestly want to use the ams lite with my bambu x1c because it’ll be so much easier to use third party filament in a multi material setup. But I suspect that’s not gonna be an option
- Gelob 3y ago
  It won't be sadly
- pplante 3y ago
  I had the same exact thought. I have been using a lot of Overture PETG which comes on cardboard spools. I found some printable wheel attachments that help solve some issues. But occasionally I find that the spools get tangled when retracting.
  - carterschonwald 3y ago
    Have you looked into the hydra mod for the ams? It seems like a lot of folks use it. I’m debating printing it myself or ordering a print from matter hackers.
- Fomite 3y ago
  Me too.
dthakur 3y ago
The interview[1] between Bambu Lab's CEO and Stefan from the CNC Kitchen YouTube channel has some details about the company's background and strategy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pFtbybLlk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pFtbybLlk0
- postalrat 3y ago
  Their strategy seems to be make a profit by taking everything they can from the community while milking their users. Do everything they can to lock people into their cloud and ecosystem.
  - burritosnob 3y ago
    How are they "taking everything from the community"? You mean researching user feedback on other printers and building a better product? I have owned a dozen or so printers over the last decade going back to PrintrBot. As with a lot of users, the BambuLabs X1 was hands down the best out the box experience of any printer I own. It continues to be my go to printer while my other Prusa's + Creality's sit idle. As long as the cloud service never becomes a paid subscription I could care less that I am locked into their ecosystem. The additionally functionality that provides is a plus for me not a minus. The fact they have crammed a bunch of the same features of the X1/P1 into a smaller printer that is sub $500 is pretty amazing.
    - postalrat 3y ago
      I heard the same arguments for the Ender printers when they were popular. Best prints ever, incredible detail, etc, etc. At least Ender wasn't actively trying to trap people into their ecosystem. It won't work though. The clones are coming. Many companies have tried to get the cloud lock-in but it just doesn't make sense to buy in as a user.
      - dotnet00 3y ago
        As an example, Creality giving in and open sourcing the K1 (their clone of Bambu's tech) after initially going as far as violating the license on Klipper to push their own cloud system.
      - fnordpiglet 3y ago
        I don’t get how they can trap people into their ecosystem. Does it print STL files, or does it have some way of owning the asset life cycle? Whether I sneakernet an sdcard,m, load via octoprint, or something else, I’m not super locked in. Or does locking in mean “making it so user friendly and easy that you wouldn’t want to use a Marlin firmware printer?” Otherwise it’s just another UI for managing my STLs and slicing. That’s a lot different than an iCloud scenario where all of everything is end to end across the closed device ecosystem. Just the last mile of my STL files is nothing.
function_seven 3y ago
EDIT: After some more poking around, I’m finding out that the cloud features of this thing are pretty integral to the experience. This thing looks nice, but the enshittification scaffolding is too much. I knew the price was too good. ORIGINAL COMMENT: Wow, I've been out of the 3D printing world for a bit. I have a Monoprice Maker Ultimate (Wanhao D6, rebadged) that has a slightly larger build area, but otherwise it's bare bones on the firmware. I reflashed it with Klipper, and have an Octopi attached to it, but that still requires all sorts of futzing about to get it tuned right. With multi filaments, all the tuning wizardry, and the quick-change nozzle, I might consider this. The big thing that gives me pause is the closed nature of the platform. My current printer might be "just commodity parts" or whatever, but that can be huge plus! This feels very much like deciding whether to join the Apple Ecosystem™ or to stick with a beige box so I can run whatever OS I want. And that isn't an easy choice to make these days.
- bmurphy1976 3y ago
  I don't love the closed nature of their platform but I love that they are forcing everyone else to step up their game. If Bambu is Apple, who's going to be Android and who's going the way of WebOS/Blackberry/Windows Phone? The next six to twelve months are going to be rough for some companies but we're going to have some incredibly powerful, cost effective, and user friendly machines when it's done.
- userbinator 3y ago
  It's no surprise that what's been making 2D printing an increasingly horrible experience has also started showing up in 3D too.
- foxylad 3y ago
  My 3d printing journey seems to have ended with a Prusa Mini. Really solid and well engineered device, and it's delightful that Prusa acknowledge the open-source hardware and software they depended on to build their company. BambooLab... well it is a nice machine, and they have definitely advanced the the field with input shaping. But this machine is pretty much a Prusa Mini with linear rails, and I'd bet there is open-source in their firmware and slicer, but there's no way to find out because their business model is to give nothing back to the ecosystem they have leveraged. That leaves a bad taste for me, but I'm sure many people will be quite happy to ignore such esoteric concerns and happily lock themselves in. Until BambooLab have a bad financial quarter. Then the optional cloud integration will become mandatory with a subscription, and the spool detection system will start reject non-BambooLab filament. Doctorow has struck a chord with his distillation of enshittification, and you are right on the money raising it here. (Meanwhile Prusa has just released input shaping for the Mini.)
MBCook 3y ago
Has anyone figured out how to do multicolor printing without having to make massive waste blocks yet?
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Yes, you need multiple heads.
- AtheistOfFail 3y ago
  These poop instead of waste blocks... but generally, no.
  - Karliss 3y ago
    In the videos I have seen it does both in the same print - poop and a waste block. But that might have been slicer misconfiguration. Although from the amount of times I have seen that makes me wonder: is the default config in Bambu slicer not taking this into account or all of the reviewers don't know how to configure their own preferred slicer. Just checked and 8/8 reviews of BambuLab A1 mini from channels that specialize in 3d printing showed purge tower. Am I missing something? Doesn't the poop during change replace need to purge into a purge tower? Are there any additional purpose for the waste tower beside purging any remains of previous filament from hotend?
- theaiquestion 3y ago
  There's a ton of different methods of multicolor printing each with different pros and cons - simplified * nozzle that mixes from multiple inputs * multiple hotends on the carriage * swappable hotends * single hotend - retracts and switchs to a different filament, few methods here, this is what the AMS and pallete are ** You can do it with multiple heads, the problem is ooze. You'll need to either be able to retract the non-used printhead so that it doesnt ooze onto your print, or be able to swap it mid print. Either way here you'll still need a method to prime it. Some materials may break down in the heat of the hotend too while they sit there unused just baking. There's some methods that make the blocks smaller, like using the infill as the priming section.
- 3y ago
yumraj 3y ago
Priced close to Prusa Mini+, with same print dimensions (18cm x 18cm x 18cm) but multi color. What’s the general review of this company? Are these any good or are there more like Ender and other cheap Chinese printers?
- pplante 3y ago
  I have two Bambu X1C with AMS. These are solid reliable appliances rather than hackable machines. I had a Prusa MK3S+ that always required a lot of fiddling to keep it working well. I replaced it with an X1C and do not miss my Prsua.
- fasthands9 3y ago
  I truly love my two Bambu Printers (P1S). The rate of failure is extremely small when in the past printers it was probably close to 10% - which caused a lot of wasted time playing with settings to try to perfect things.
- jLaForest 3y ago
  A few weeks ago their mandatory cloud printing service had a bug and caused printers to spontaneously crash in the middle of the night, in many cases doing significant damage to the printer. Other than that Bambu had a pretty good reputation.
  - mmastrac 3y ago
    I hadn't heard of this company or that story but it was wild https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/15sfisq/bambulab_bug_causes_printers_to_start_printing_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/15sfisq/bambula...
    - userbinator 3y ago
      That was discussed here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37187138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37187138 They call it a "bug", and the explanation seems plausible, but consider that a hacker could easily do the same thing. Good thing these are only hobbyist-level machines, and AFAIK not used in any real production manufacturing. Imagine the same sort of bug (or hack) happening to CNC machines all over the world.
sottol 3y ago
This is a very interesting printer: * the toolhead/nozzle quick-change is pretty fantastic and quite ingenius, you change nozzle and heatsink thereby guaranteeing good heat dissipation but the thermistor and heater stay put, * the MMU seems to be able to handle many more types of spools due to center-mounting as opposed to edge-rolling and they reduced retraction distance substantially. The noise cancellation seems a bit gimicky just like the LIDAR on the X1C. The Makerworld integration goes a step further than most other 3D-printing-hub-websites by slicing the models and being to print immediately without having to fuss with a slicer. Should be a lot more beginner-friendly. It does look like they're taking a page or two from the DJI playbook (not surprising, CEO and others being ex-employees). DJI went from solid drones just a tad above what hoobyists could build, like the early Phantoms, to improving video+link-reliabilty with later phantoms to crazy integration of everything in the newer Mavic and especially Minis that are way beyond hobbyist's possibilities. I am somewhat doubtful that the exact strategy of tight integration of hardware components will work for 3D printers. After it probably won't matter if one printer is slightly smaller than another. But they do seem to do more software/hardware integration which could be very welcome for beginners and those not in it for the tinkering, as well as their focus on reliability. Their AMS MMU systems seem to be a step above all others in terms of reliability and ease-of-use.
jmspring 3y ago
I like the printer. The website UX needs to have the designer smacked. Scroll up, why is it going sideways.
- cwillu 3y ago
  When a company tells you they value the Experience™ over the experience of their users, trust them.
antirez 3y ago
This looks much better than it actually is for a couple of reasons: - Multicolor is not something you actually use often and is horribly slow. Slow like in a 2 hours print becomes 12 hours print if it's colored. And it wastes a lot of plastic (and doing so does a lot of noise, too). - The printer can't print things like ASA. Limited to PLA/PETG/TPU. - While the design of the hotend and swappable nozzle looks nice at a first glance, the printer is a closed design and is not clear how well you can service it when needed. I've a Prusa MK4 and owned different Prusa Minis in the past, to print for a shop 24h, and if you want to print for production and not just for a few weeks hobby, you need to be able to fix those printers. Also Bambulab has a bad track in providing parts, when needed. So yes, competitors like Prusa should do something to improve their printers and adjust the price point a bit (at this point the Mini is too costly, and its hot-end needs to be redesigned, and certain XL/MK4 improvements back-ported to the Mini, like the load cell and the all metal nozzle design). But after the first days of printing colored things, a Prusa Mini is likely a much better printer for somebody that really wants to do something nice with a 3D printer, and not just a few colored miniatures. Also Bambulab behavior in using open source software written by others, at least in the past was very questionable. Anyway: they are doing something good to the market by pushing other vendors to do better.
- alsodumb 3y ago
  I don't get it - why is Prusa mini a much better printer for somebody who actually wants to print than Bambu ones? The cheapest Prusa mini (self-assembled) is $459. You can buy a Bambu Lab P1P at $599 with a ton of more features than Prusa mini and much faster prints without any loss in quality/consistency. Bambu labs consistently provided parts for reasonable price in my experience. And I've been using their X1 and P1 printers for a while now.
  - antirez 3y ago
    Because the extra features of the A1 are not much useful in practice. The main thing that is required to print well is auto bed leveling, that works well with the Mini as well. The Mini is very quiet so the noise canceling feature is not useful. Input Shaping is now available on both. So what remains is that the Mini is a printer that provably was able to print in what are basically miniature factories. I printed with 4 minis for a couple of years 24H, and everything that breaks you can either print it yourself, if it's a plastic part, or get it for a reasonable price. If the A1 can do it, is to be seen, and we for sure know that the vendor itself discourages printing anything but PLA/PETG/TPU. Printing ASA is very useful for everything you want to put something inside your car under the sun or alike. Also Prusa has a long history in supporting the printer for a long time, so we can expect that the next Mini will ship with an upgrade kit. However don't get my wrong, I believe that the A1, especially without the multicolor gear, is a reasonable purchase, with some risk ahead because there is yet to see if it is a reliable printer. If you buy the multicolor gear you paid for more than the Mini, and I believe soon you'll no be using it anymore in most cases, and just be left with a printer that in practice can't be used so extensively as the Mini.
deng 3y ago
Good review by Maker's Muse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8sdrPgH9Fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8sdrPgH9Fk tldw; Printer has great build quality for the price. Print quality and speed obviously below the bigger Bambu machines, but excellent for a "bed slinger". Print volume quite small and requires diagonal placing for bigger parts. Pretty much PLA-only, but TPU also possible if fed directly into extruder. The multi-filament solution has serious drawbacks: filament change extremely slow and generates lots of "poop" plastic, which is simply discarded to the side of the printer. All in all: great printer for beginners, but the multi-filament is more of a gimmick.
serf 3y ago
nice hardware, crap controller and cloud tether. it'll be a nice machine to buy on the aftermarket and put a real controller into in a few months/years, much like the rest of BambuLab's offerings.
javawizard 3y ago
C'mon everyone, we can do better. As someone who owns an X1C, it's abundantly clear that many of the comments are armchair quarterbacking from folks who don't own a Bambu and have never tried one. Cheap Chinese clone? That's like calling SpaceX a cheap knockoff of Orbital ATK. Camera can only stream to Bambu's servers? Factually incorrect, you can stream locally via RTSP. I come here for insightful debate about a company and product that have plenty of interesting aspects, both good and bad, to discuss, not for the pedantic, ideological sniping that this discussion is full of. It really saddens me to see this on HN of all places.
- ThatPlayer 3y ago
  It looks like the RTSP stream is X1C exclusive, and not available on the P1 series. Not sure about the A1 as that's new https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/1536 https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/1536
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nebula8804 3y ago
  I think some fields are just chock full of really bitter people that treat their hobby like a religion: Definitely Gaming, 3D Printing, maybe superhero movies etc. I'm reminded when the whole Elon Twitter saga started, all the techies all threatened to go to mastodon and well they did but a lot of "normie" twitter didn't follow them (or couldn't follow them because mastodon was not user friendly). Shannon Morse of Hak5 made a great point about this. She suddenly realized that a lot of tech drama just went away and so she didn't really leave Twitter but didn't fully move to Mastodon either. Applying that logic to this field, maybe if some company like Bambu Labs (or maybe Bambu themselves) expand the market by bringing in normies, the "hardcore" people will huff and puff but eventually become a niche voice and just go away.
wtcactus 3y ago
I am wondering if there is any special hardware needed for the "silent printing" calibration on the A1 Mini, or if this is just a firmware update away from getting into the P1S and X1 Carbon.
sschueller 3y ago
Just remember if a device that is intended to operate stand-alone/offline requires you to make an account or connect it to the internet to active it. It isn't yours and will stop working one day. DJI and Insta360 for example require you to connect their cameras to the internet in order to "activate" them. What do you think will happen when those servers get turned off. Same goes for 3d printer and regular printers. I wouldn't put it past HP to add a feature that would prevent you from printing if the printer hasn't been able to call home for the last x days.
rcarmo 3y ago
I've been tracking the Bambu printers ever since the crowdfunding days, and the overall feature set is impressive. Like I wrote the other day* Prusa is in trouble here. As much as I appreciate them (being in the EU myself and owning an old Prusa clone), they are not competitive feature-wise (although the XL mostly holds its own against the X1 series as a workhorse printer if you buy it with multiple toolheads). The A1 Mini is a better deal than the Prusa Mini if you need to print with support materials (never mind color, that's just a gimmick) or if you want to make sure it will keep going as spools run out, although mechanically the AMS lite looks rather fragile and takes up a _lot_ of space. In a year's time smaller manufacturers like Kingroon are quite likely to be able to copy a lot of the quality of life improvements (and I would love to see some of those noise reduction features and improved auto-tuning come to Klipper, which I'm running on both my printers). Until then, though, Bambu is ahead--although I have a feeling my next printer will be a Voron because I really like the idea of not relying on a manufacturer for maintenance (but that's just me). * https://taoofmac.com/space/links/2023/09/20/2233 https://taoofmac.com/space/links/2023/09/20/2233
- antirez 3y ago
  Here you are assuming that the A1 will be able to print, like the Prusa Mini, for years no-stop without issues and with little servicing needed. That's, IMHO, to be seen.
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    I wasn't comparing them support-wise -- Prusa has a better track record by dint of being older, but regardless of support and maintenance I would pick the Prusa if it cost the same and had the same software feature set because there are more spare parts around and I can build one from a kit if needed. As much as I like the idea of the 3D printer market evolving towards appliances, I will always pick an appliance I can maintain myself - which is why I got a KP3S Pro last year: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/09/16/2000 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/09/16/2000
    - antirez 3y ago
iamsaitam 3y ago
I own a P1P and it just works™. If you are just interested in printing and not have a 3D printer itself part of your DIY activities, the P1P is a safe choice.
causality0 3y ago
Printers are getting cheaper and better all the time. As far as I'm concerned the $200 Ender 3 V3 SE and $230 Anycubic Kobra 2 render everything else in the sub-$1000 space irrelevant. At this point nothing else is an upgrade unless it does multifilament RGB printing.
kriro 3y ago
I own a Prusa and I'm happy I bought it even at a premium. The team is always cool at the 3D printing fairs I attend, the slicer is nice, they release a lot of cool and open stuff, designed printable face shields during Covid etc. It feels like a company well worth supporting. BambooLab on the other hand seems to be almost the exact opposite (OrcaSlicer etc.).
iancmceachern 3y ago
I'm a hardware product design engineer, have been using 3d printers for 20 years professionally to get my work done. Recently purchased an X1 Carbon with 2 AMSs and its incredible. It's a very high quality, enabling, wonderful piece if equipment. I have used dozens of professional machines that cost hundreds of thousands, built, bought and run many lower cost machines also. I can only count on one hand the number of times I've been this impressed by a 3d printer when it came out, and never by a printer even remotely in the X1s process range. I think this A1 mini is a great entry level printer, if you only have $500 to spend on a printer, get this one. If you have $1500 get the X1.

136 points by margor 3y ago

I honestly want to use the ams lite with my bambu x1c because it’ll be so much easier to use third party filament in a multi material setup. But I suspect that’s not gonna be an option

Gelob 3y ago
It won't be sadly
pplante 3y ago
I had the same exact thought. I have been using a lot of Overture PETG which comes on cardboard spools. I found some printable wheel attachments that help solve some issues. But occasionally I find that the spools get tangled when retracting.
- carterschonwald 3y ago
  Have you looked into the hydra mod for the ams? It seems like a lot of folks use it. I’m debating printing it myself or ordering a print from matter hackers.
Fomite 3y ago
Me too.

dthakur 3y ago

The interview[1] between Bambu Lab's CEO and Stefan from the CNC Kitchen YouTube channel has some details about the company's background and strategy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pFtbybLlk0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pFtbybLlk0

postalrat 3y ago
Their strategy seems to be make a profit by taking everything they can from the community while milking their users. Do everything they can to lock people into their cloud and ecosystem.
- burritosnob 3y ago
  How are they "taking everything from the community"? You mean researching user feedback on other printers and building a better product? I have owned a dozen or so printers over the last decade going back to PrintrBot. As with a lot of users, the BambuLabs X1 was hands down the best out the box experience of any printer I own. It continues to be my go to printer while my other Prusa's + Creality's sit idle. As long as the cloud service never becomes a paid subscription I could care less that I am locked into their ecosystem. The additionally functionality that provides is a plus for me not a minus. The fact they have crammed a bunch of the same features of the X1/P1 into a smaller printer that is sub $500 is pretty amazing.
  - postalrat 3y ago
    I heard the same arguments for the Ender printers when they were popular. Best prints ever, incredible detail, etc, etc. At least Ender wasn't actively trying to trap people into their ecosystem. It won't work though. The clones are coming. Many companies have tried to get the cloud lock-in but it just doesn't make sense to buy in as a user.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      As an example, Creality giving in and open sourcing the K1 (their clone of Bambu's tech) after initially going as far as violating the license on Klipper to push their own cloud system.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      I don’t get how they can trap people into their ecosystem. Does it print STL files, or does it have some way of owning the asset life cycle? Whether I sneakernet an sdcard,m, load via octoprint, or something else, I’m not super locked in. Or does locking in mean “making it so user friendly and easy that you wouldn’t want to use a Marlin firmware printer?” Otherwise it’s just another UI for managing my STLs and slicing. That’s a lot different than an iCloud scenario where all of everything is end to end across the closed device ecosystem. Just the last mile of my STL files is nothing.

function_seven 3y ago

EDIT: After some more poking around, I’m finding out that the cloud features of this thing are pretty integral to the experience. This thing looks nice, but the enshittification scaffolding is too much. I knew the price was too good. ORIGINAL COMMENT: Wow, I've been out of the 3D printing world for a bit. I have a Monoprice Maker Ultimate (Wanhao D6, rebadged) that has a slightly larger build area, but otherwise it's bare bones on the firmware. I reflashed it with Klipper, and have an Octopi attached to it, but that still requires all sorts of futzing about to get it tuned right. With multi filaments, all the tuning wizardry, and the quick-change nozzle, I might consider this. The big thing that gives me pause is the closed nature of the platform. My current printer might be "just commodity parts" or whatever, but that can be huge plus! This feels very much like deciding whether to join the Apple Ecosystem™ or to stick with a beige box so I can run whatever OS I want. And that isn't an easy choice to make these days.

bmurphy1976 3y ago
I don't love the closed nature of their platform but I love that they are forcing everyone else to step up their game. If Bambu is Apple, who's going to be Android and who's going the way of WebOS/Blackberry/Windows Phone? The next six to twelve months are going to be rough for some companies but we're going to have some incredibly powerful, cost effective, and user friendly machines when it's done.
userbinator 3y ago
It's no surprise that what's been making 2D printing an increasingly horrible experience has also started showing up in 3D too.
foxylad 3y ago
My 3d printing journey seems to have ended with a Prusa Mini. Really solid and well engineered device, and it's delightful that Prusa acknowledge the open-source hardware and software they depended on to build their company. BambooLab... well it is a nice machine, and they have definitely advanced the the field with input shaping. But this machine is pretty much a Prusa Mini with linear rails, and I'd bet there is open-source in their firmware and slicer, but there's no way to find out because their business model is to give nothing back to the ecosystem they have leveraged. That leaves a bad taste for me, but I'm sure many people will be quite happy to ignore such esoteric concerns and happily lock themselves in. Until BambooLab have a bad financial quarter. Then the optional cloud integration will become mandatory with a subscription, and the spool detection system will start reject non-BambooLab filament. Doctorow has struck a chord with his distillation of enshittification, and you are right on the money raising it here. (Meanwhile Prusa has just released input shaping for the Mini.)

MBCook 3y ago

Has anyone figured out how to do multicolor printing without having to make massive waste blocks yet?

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
Yes, you need multiple heads.
AtheistOfFail 3y ago
These poop instead of waste blocks... but generally, no.
- Karliss 3y ago
  In the videos I have seen it does both in the same print - poop and a waste block. But that might have been slicer misconfiguration. Although from the amount of times I have seen that makes me wonder: is the default config in Bambu slicer not taking this into account or all of the reviewers don't know how to configure their own preferred slicer. Just checked and 8/8 reviews of BambuLab A1 mini from channels that specialize in 3d printing showed purge tower. Am I missing something? Doesn't the poop during change replace need to purge into a purge tower? Are there any additional purpose for the waste tower beside purging any remains of previous filament from hotend?
theaiquestion 3y ago
There's a ton of different methods of multicolor printing each with different pros and cons - simplified * nozzle that mixes from multiple inputs * multiple hotends on the carriage * swappable hotends * single hotend - retracts and switchs to a different filament, few methods here, this is what the AMS and pallete are ** You can do it with multiple heads, the problem is ooze. You'll need to either be able to retract the non-used printhead so that it doesnt ooze onto your print, or be able to swap it mid print. Either way here you'll still need a method to prime it. Some materials may break down in the heat of the hotend too while they sit there unused just baking. There's some methods that make the blocks smaller, like using the infill as the priming section.
3y ago

yumraj 3y ago

Priced close to Prusa Mini+, with same print dimensions (18cm x 18cm x 18cm) but multi color. What’s the general review of this company? Are these any good or are there more like Ender and other cheap Chinese printers?

pplante 3y ago
I have two Bambu X1C with AMS. These are solid reliable appliances rather than hackable machines. I had a Prusa MK3S+ that always required a lot of fiddling to keep it working well. I replaced it with an X1C and do not miss my Prsua.
fasthands9 3y ago
I truly love my two Bambu Printers (P1S). The rate of failure is extremely small when in the past printers it was probably close to 10% - which caused a lot of wasted time playing with settings to try to perfect things.
jLaForest 3y ago
A few weeks ago their mandatory cloud printing service had a bug and caused printers to spontaneously crash in the middle of the night, in many cases doing significant damage to the printer. Other than that Bambu had a pretty good reputation.
- mmastrac 3y ago
  I hadn't heard of this company or that story but it was wild https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/15sfisq/bambulab_bug_causes_printers_to_start_printing_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/15sfisq/bambula...
  - userbinator 3y ago
    That was discussed here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37187138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37187138 They call it a "bug", and the explanation seems plausible, but consider that a hacker could easily do the same thing. Good thing these are only hobbyist-level machines, and AFAIK not used in any real production manufacturing. Imagine the same sort of bug (or hack) happening to CNC machines all over the world.

sottol 3y ago

This is a very interesting printer: * the toolhead/nozzle quick-change is pretty fantastic and quite ingenius, you change nozzle and heatsink thereby guaranteeing good heat dissipation but the thermistor and heater stay put, * the MMU seems to be able to handle many more types of spools due to center-mounting as opposed to edge-rolling and they reduced retraction distance substantially. The noise cancellation seems a bit gimicky just like the LIDAR on the X1C. The Makerworld integration goes a step further than most other 3D-printing-hub-websites by slicing the models and being to print immediately without having to fuss with a slicer. Should be a lot more beginner-friendly. It does look like they're taking a page or two from the DJI playbook (not surprising, CEO and others being ex-employees). DJI went from solid drones just a tad above what hoobyists could build, like the early Phantoms, to improving video+link-reliabilty with later phantoms to crazy integration of everything in the newer Mavic and especially Minis that are way beyond hobbyist's possibilities. I am somewhat doubtful that the exact strategy of tight integration of hardware components will work for 3D printers. After it probably won't matter if one printer is slightly smaller than another. But they do seem to do more software/hardware integration which could be very welcome for beginners and those not in it for the tinkering, as well as their focus on reliability. Their AMS MMU systems seem to be a step above all others in terms of reliability and ease-of-use.

jmspring 3y ago

I like the printer. The website UX needs to have the designer smacked. Scroll up, why is it going sideways.

cwillu 3y ago
When a company tells you they value the Experience™ over the experience of their users, trust them.

antirez 3y ago

This looks much better than it actually is for a couple of reasons: - Multicolor is not something you actually use often and is horribly slow. Slow like in a 2 hours print becomes 12 hours print if it's colored. And it wastes a lot of plastic (and doing so does a lot of noise, too). - The printer can't print things like ASA. Limited to PLA/PETG/TPU. - While the design of the hotend and swappable nozzle looks nice at a first glance, the printer is a closed design and is not clear how well you can service it when needed. I've a Prusa MK4 and owned different Prusa Minis in the past, to print for a shop 24h, and if you want to print for production and not just for a few weeks hobby, you need to be able to fix those printers. Also Bambulab has a bad track in providing parts, when needed. So yes, competitors like Prusa should do something to improve their printers and adjust the price point a bit (at this point the Mini is too costly, and its hot-end needs to be redesigned, and certain XL/MK4 improvements back-ported to the Mini, like the load cell and the all metal nozzle design). But after the first days of printing colored things, a Prusa Mini is likely a much better printer for somebody that really wants to do something nice with a 3D printer, and not just a few colored miniatures. Also Bambulab behavior in using open source software written by others, at least in the past was very questionable. Anyway: they are doing something good to the market by pushing other vendors to do better.

alsodumb 3y ago
I don't get it - why is Prusa mini a much better printer for somebody who actually wants to print than Bambu ones? The cheapest Prusa mini (self-assembled) is $459. You can buy a Bambu Lab P1P at $599 with a ton of more features than Prusa mini and much faster prints without any loss in quality/consistency. Bambu labs consistently provided parts for reasonable price in my experience. And I've been using their X1 and P1 printers for a while now.
- antirez 3y ago
  Because the extra features of the A1 are not much useful in practice. The main thing that is required to print well is auto bed leveling, that works well with the Mini as well. The Mini is very quiet so the noise canceling feature is not useful. Input Shaping is now available on both. So what remains is that the Mini is a printer that provably was able to print in what are basically miniature factories. I printed with 4 minis for a couple of years 24H, and everything that breaks you can either print it yourself, if it's a plastic part, or get it for a reasonable price. If the A1 can do it, is to be seen, and we for sure know that the vendor itself discourages printing anything but PLA/PETG/TPU. Printing ASA is very useful for everything you want to put something inside your car under the sun or alike. Also Prusa has a long history in supporting the printer for a long time, so we can expect that the next Mini will ship with an upgrade kit. However don't get my wrong, I believe that the A1, especially without the multicolor gear, is a reasonable purchase, with some risk ahead because there is yet to see if it is a reliable printer. If you buy the multicolor gear you paid for more than the Mini, and I believe soon you'll no be using it anymore in most cases, and just be left with a printer that in practice can't be used so extensively as the Mini.

deng 3y ago

Good review by Maker's Muse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8sdrPgH9Fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8sdrPgH9Fk tldw; Printer has great build quality for the price. Print quality and speed obviously below the bigger Bambu machines, but excellent for a "bed slinger". Print volume quite small and requires diagonal placing for bigger parts. Pretty much PLA-only, but TPU also possible if fed directly into extruder. The multi-filament solution has serious drawbacks: filament change extremely slow and generates lots of "poop" plastic, which is simply discarded to the side of the printer. All in all: great printer for beginners, but the multi-filament is more of a gimmick.

serf 3y ago

nice hardware, crap controller and cloud tether. it'll be a nice machine to buy on the aftermarket and put a real controller into in a few months/years, much like the rest of BambuLab's offerings.

javawizard 3y ago

C'mon everyone, we can do better. As someone who owns an X1C, it's abundantly clear that many of the comments are armchair quarterbacking from folks who don't own a Bambu and have never tried one. Cheap Chinese clone? That's like calling SpaceX a cheap knockoff of Orbital ATK. Camera can only stream to Bambu's servers? Factually incorrect, you can stream locally via RTSP. I come here for insightful debate about a company and product that have plenty of interesting aspects, both good and bad, to discuss, not for the pedantic, ideological sniping that this discussion is full of. It really saddens me to see this on HN of all places.

ThatPlayer 3y ago
It looks like the RTSP stream is X1C exclusive, and not available on the P1 series. Not sure about the A1 as that's new https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/1536 https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/issues/1536
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nebula8804 3y ago
I think some fields are just chock full of really bitter people that treat their hobby like a religion: Definitely Gaming, 3D Printing, maybe superhero movies etc. I'm reminded when the whole Elon Twitter saga started, all the techies all threatened to go to mastodon and well they did but a lot of "normie" twitter didn't follow them (or couldn't follow them because mastodon was not user friendly). Shannon Morse of Hak5 made a great point about this. She suddenly realized that a lot of tech drama just went away and so she didn't really leave Twitter but didn't fully move to Mastodon either. Applying that logic to this field, maybe if some company like Bambu Labs (or maybe Bambu themselves) expand the market by bringing in normies, the "hardcore" people will huff and puff but eventually become a niche voice and just go away.

wtcactus 3y ago

I am wondering if there is any special hardware needed for the "silent printing" calibration on the A1 Mini, or if this is just a firmware update away from getting into the P1S and X1 Carbon.

sschueller 3y ago

Just remember if a device that is intended to operate stand-alone/offline requires you to make an account or connect it to the internet to active it. It isn't yours and will stop working one day. DJI and Insta360 for example require you to connect their cameras to the internet in order to "activate" them. What do you think will happen when those servers get turned off. Same goes for 3d printer and regular printers. I wouldn't put it past HP to add a feature that would prevent you from printing if the printer hasn't been able to call home for the last x days.

rcarmo 3y ago

I've been tracking the Bambu printers ever since the crowdfunding days, and the overall feature set is impressive. Like I wrote the other day* Prusa is in trouble here. As much as I appreciate them (being in the EU myself and owning an old Prusa clone), they are not competitive feature-wise (although the XL mostly holds its own against the X1 series as a workhorse printer if you buy it with multiple toolheads). The A1 Mini is a better deal than the Prusa Mini if you need to print with support materials (never mind color, that's just a gimmick) or if you want to make sure it will keep going as spools run out, although mechanically the AMS lite looks rather fragile and takes up a _lot_ of space. In a year's time smaller manufacturers like Kingroon are quite likely to be able to copy a lot of the quality of life improvements (and I would love to see some of those noise reduction features and improved auto-tuning come to Klipper, which I'm running on both my printers). Until then, though, Bambu is ahead--although I have a feeling my next printer will be a Voron because I really like the idea of not relying on a manufacturer for maintenance (but that's just me). * https://taoofmac.com/space/links/2023/09/20/2233 https://taoofmac.com/space/links/2023/09/20/2233

antirez 3y ago
Here you are assuming that the A1 will be able to print, like the Prusa Mini, for years no-stop without issues and with little servicing needed. That's, IMHO, to be seen.
- rcarmo 3y ago
  I wasn't comparing them support-wise -- Prusa has a better track record by dint of being older, but regardless of support and maintenance I would pick the Prusa if it cost the same and had the same software feature set because there are more spare parts around and I can build one from a kit if needed. As much as I like the idea of the 3D printer market evolving towards appliances, I will always pick an appliance I can maintain myself - which is why I got a KP3S Pro last year: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/09/16/2000 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/09/16/2000
  - antirez 3y ago

iamsaitam 3y ago

I own a P1P and it just works™. If you are just interested in printing and not have a 3D printer itself part of your DIY activities, the P1P is a safe choice.

causality0 3y ago

Printers are getting cheaper and better all the time. As far as I'm concerned the $200 Ender 3 V3 SE and $230 Anycubic Kobra 2 render everything else in the sub-$1000 space irrelevant. At this point nothing else is an upgrade unless it does multifilament RGB printing.

kriro 3y ago

I own a Prusa and I'm happy I bought it even at a premium. The team is always cool at the 3D printing fairs I attend, the slicer is nice, they release a lot of cool and open stuff, designed printable face shields during Covid etc. It feels like a company well worth supporting. BambooLab on the other hand seems to be almost the exact opposite (OrcaSlicer etc.).

iancmceachern 3y ago

I'm a hardware product design engineer, have been using 3d printers for 20 years professionally to get my work done. Recently purchased an X1 Carbon with 2 AMSs and its incredible. It's a very high quality, enabling, wonderful piece if equipment. I have used dozens of professional machines that cost hundreds of thousands, built, bought and run many lower cost machines also. I can only count on one hand the number of times I've been this impressed by a 3d printer when it came out, and never by a printer even remotely in the X1s process range. I think this A1 mini is a great entry level printer, if you only have $500 to spend on a printer, get this one. If you have $1500 get the X1.