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Bambu Lab A1 Mini

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Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#51

Post by margor »

function_seven wrote: post #42
jdietrich wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bambu printers will accept G-code on a MicroSD card, like basically any 3D printer ever. The cloud stuff is optional, but very useful. I completely understand why people hate Bambu Lab, but I wish they'd understand why other people like them. If you want a new hobby, there are lots of excellent FDM printers on the market. If you just want to print good parts, you'd be a fool to buy anything other than a Bambu. There'…

A lot of responses to my comment keep mentioning the amazing technical details of this hardware. I believe it. I am not complaining about the hardware being subpar. That’s not my beef. If I have to schlep an SD card back-and-forth from my laptop to my printer, that’s a crap experience. And for them to block local network uploading—and force you to make an account for that feature—sorry, that is a classic dark pattern…

Sorry but that is just FUD.

I own BambuLab and make use of their LAN feature all the time. The camera stream works without account and cloud access (albeit, they recently added that!), so does uploading g-code through the LAN without any account. You _just_ install BambuStudio, connect to the printer with a code shown on it and assuming you're in the same network - it just works. No account or any cloud needed for that.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#52

Post by alsodumb »

antirez wrote: post #46

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…

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.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#53

Post by margor »

function_seven wrote: post #4

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…

The cloud features are NOT integral to the experience. You absolutely can use the printer without touching the cloud but it makes the experience a lot nicer if you're not an advanced user who is used to buying their own camera, setting up their own VPN and configuring their own OctoPrint to get similar feature set.

You actually have two different options aside from cloud - completely offline with SD-Card (which is what you get in ... almost all the other 3d printers?) and partially offline (I.e. via LAN) where you upload the g-code locally without passing it to the cloud.

Look, I'm not trying to be a shill for BambuLab, but it just feels like people are making their opinion based on what they read at a glance without actually getting into details or even being able to confirm it themselves.

Personally I believe they just enable less technical folks to actually make use of their printers and not be totally confused at variety different methods and learning about all the Linux stuff just to be able to get something basic as making it possible to see the print without standing next to it. I totally understand why The Cloud is perceived as an evil, but I think there is false dichotomy here where it's either everything or nothing. Looking at Bambu's team actions I truly believe they are at least _trying_ to provide to different kind of audiences (i.e. their LAN feature)

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#54

Post by nullc »

alsodumb wrote: post #37
function_seven wrote: post #4

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…

Ahh, classic hackernews upvoting the 'I hate cloud' comment to the top. I have a few Bambu lab printers (perks of being a grad student) and their offline mode is pretty good - there are printers in my lab that are pretty much never connected to internet and print 24/7. Sure, offline mode doesn't have all the features they mention on their website, but even without it, Bambu lab printers are better than their competit…

X1C works fine completely offline now[1], however it still has a stupid restriction where their slicer can't find the printer if its on a different subnet unless you generate the announcement packet yourself.

[1] it was much worse a few months ago, but an incident where a cloud outage resulted in a lot of damaged printers (when jobs were erroneously resent after they completed without a re-leveling) seems to have motivated fixing many of the remaining gaps with local operation.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#55

Post by userbinator »

justinclift wrote: post #35
userbinator wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was discussed here too: 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.

The statement that Bambu release about it seems ok from the technical side: https://blog.bambulab.com/cloud-temporary-outage-investigati... There's no real detail as to whether they're really trying to make whole anyone who's printer was damaged. Just the standard "contact us" type of thing: If you were affected by this cloud outage, and your printer has suffered any damage, please don't hesitate to contact our Suppo…

I found someone who did receive compensation for the damage:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/15rznpy/printer_s...

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#56

Post by nullc »

jdietrich wrote: post #39
function_seven wrote: post #4

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…

Bambu printers will accept G-code on a MicroSD card, like basically any 3D printer ever. The cloud stuff is optional, but very useful. I completely understand why people hate Bambu Lab, but I wish they'd understand why other people like them. If you want a new hobby, there are lots of excellent FDM printers on the market. If you just want to print good parts, you'd be a fool to buy anything other than a Bambu. There'…

> but very useful.

Useful in what respect?

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#57

Post by margor »

antirez wrote: post #46

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…

> Also Bambulab has a bad track in providing parts, when needed.

Sorry but do you have any sources for that? I'm just looking at their website[0] and I see all the common parts available - what exactly is missing with parts they provide?

[0] https://eu.store.bambulab.com/collections/accessories-for-x1...

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#58

Post by nullc »

margor wrote: post #51
function_seven wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of responses to my comment keep mentioning the amazing technical details of this hardware. I believe it. I am not complaining about the hardware being subpar. That’s not my beef. If I have to schlep an SD card back-and-forth from my laptop to my printer, that’s a crap experience. And for them to block local network uploading—and force you to make an account for that feature—sorry, that is a classic dark pattern…

Sorry but that is just FUD. I own BambuLab and make use of their LAN feature all the time. The camera stream works without account and cloud access (albeit, they recently added that!), so does uploading g-code through the LAN without any account. You _just_ install BambuStudio, connect to the printer with a code shown on it and assuming you're in the same network - it just works. No account or any cloud needed for th…

Yes but it's a fairly recent change.

> and assuming you're in the same network

to make it go across subnets you just need to send the announcement packet yourself. It's a pretty easy hack, but it's kind of embarrassing for the manufacturer that their own software won't let you type in an IP address.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#59

Post by antirez »

alsodumb wrote: post #52
antirez wrote: post #46

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…

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…

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.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#60

Post by nullc »

antirez wrote: post #46

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…

> 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.

on the X1C multi-color is less bad if you fill the bed with copies since the switch time gets amortized across many parts. So your print takes 13 hours but now you get six copies. Although with a smaller bed on the A1 mini that will help less.

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