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Bambu Lab A1 Mini

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Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#101

Post by D_Alex »

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…

>This looks much better than it actually is for a couple of reasons...

It looks absolutely brilliant just for its single color print speed, which is like three times faster than a much more expensive Prusa.

Everything else is a bonus.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#102

Post by benj111 »

nebula8804 wrote: post #73
foxylad wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 op…

You are letting your past experience color your objective opinions here. As someone who refused to even want to get into 3D printing.... last month in preparation for DEFCON, I was forced into entering this world in order to make a special project for the con. Knowing absolutely nothing, I first picked the Sovol SV06 because is was a strong recommendation from Reddit for the price I was willing to pay.....turns out i…

>You are letting your past experience color your objective opinions here

Surely an objective opinion should be informed by past experience at the very minimum? I'm not even sure if you can have an objective opinion without some comparator.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#103

Post by regularfry »

nebula8804 wrote: post #73
foxylad wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 op…

You are letting your past experience color your objective opinions here. As someone who refused to even want to get into 3D printing.... last month in preparation for DEFCON, I was forced into entering this world in order to make a special project for the con. Knowing absolutely nothing, I first picked the Sovol SV06 because is was a strong recommendation from Reddit for the price I was willing to pay.....turns out i…

The Sovol SV06 is what people get pointed to when a Prusa Mk4 is outside their budget. The Reddit community skews to enthusiasts who don't mind the maintenance and people with more time than cash (no shade - it's just a numbers game). The Mk4 is a remarkable bit of kit, and still firmly on the open source side of the fence. The Bambus do have an edge on the raw stats, but both my Prusa filament printers (a Mk4 and a mini) are set-and-forget appliances at this point. I've done nothing other than update firmware on the Mk4. As far as I'm concerned they've nailed the hardware, and it's (for now - Prusa have been making worrying noises here) open source. I wouldn't have any worries recommending the Mk4 for a newbie who's got the cash for it.

> One more note about open source: There is no "open source" desktop laser/inkjet printer and people get on with their lives regardless.

Closed source laser drivers are the precise reason why free software exists. RMS not just getting on with his life in the face of closed source tomfoolery is why we have the GPL at all.

> The 3D printing community embracing open source is an artifact of it still being stuck in the "computer kit building" era.

If your budget doesn't get you out of the "kit of parts" range, sure. Compare like with like, though: a new SV06 costs £200. A new X1C costs £1300. The SV06 isn't cheap because it's open source, open source is what lets it exist at all.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#104

Post by causality0 »

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.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#105

Post by regularfry »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #69
alsodumb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'You wanted the Chinese clone that took the ideas, lowered the price and added cloud shit' - two things: 1. Bambu has a lot of innovative hardware pieces that aren't in say Prusa - I wouldn't call it Chinese clone that took the ideas. Bambu is not one of those Prusa clones, let's get that straight. 2. Yup, I appreciate lower price and features that make it easy to use. Yup I appreciate minimal setup time and faster/c…

What can’t be found in an open source project? AI first layer inspection and lidar? I’m not an enthusiast either, I wanted to produce my own CAD designs. And I understand not wanting to tinker with the printer. I also don’t care about that shit. But I also appreciated that I could just order parts from where ever or even print my own upgrades. I also agree that any decent printer before the Bambuu was expensive. Bamb…

All that's happened is that the audience has changed. Ownership of your device does and did matter - just not to the wider market that's now being served by the Bambu devices. The market couldn't have grown to this point without the open source printers, I'm convinced of that. And I strongly suspect that there will always be open source printers out there, and they probably will have feature parity, and they probably will be a bit more expensive, and people will say they have "failed" because they only hold a small percentage of the market, but you know what? The market will be ten times the size. Not everyone has to like the thing for the thing to be viable.

In a sense Prusa are already proving this: they're not really competing on price, and they can't build printers fast enough to satisfy demand.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#106

Post by regularfry »

margor wrote: post #81
jrockway wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the cloud nature of Bambu is kind of something looming over the community's head. They have RFID readers in the filament holder. The software's not open source. They already had an incident where jobs sent to the printer got held for several hours (so the printer turned on when they cleared the queue, which might have been unexpected). It just doesn't seem worth the lock-in risk to me. I will continue to buy pr…

RFID reader is not a thing when you don't use AMS (for multi color printing). RFID is used to identify the filament, otherwise you just have to set it manually on what did you load to which holder.

That's one shitty CEO change away from "your AMS will only work with our filament" and they've already sold you the hardware to do it.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#107

Post by alanbernstein »

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 have a multi-filament printer, but I'm under the impression that two color printing is quite useful because you can print high-contrast text, e.g. for labels. When I need to iterate a tricky design, I hand-label them "1" "2" ... If I could print better text, It would be nicer to include a version number, dimensions, etc.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#108

Post by Philpax »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #69
alsodumb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'You wanted the Chinese clone that took the ideas, lowered the price and added cloud shit' - two things: 1. Bambu has a lot of innovative hardware pieces that aren't in say Prusa - I wouldn't call it Chinese clone that took the ideas. Bambu is not one of those Prusa clones, let's get that straight. 2. Yup, I appreciate lower price and features that make it easy to use. Yup I appreciate minimal setup time and faster/c…

What can’t be found in an open source project? AI first layer inspection and lidar? I’m not an enthusiast either, I wanted to produce my own CAD designs. And I understand not wanting to tinker with the printer. I also don’t care about that shit. But I also appreciated that I could just order parts from where ever or even print my own upgrades. I also agree that any decent printer before the Bambuu was expensive. Bamb…

> What can’t be found in an open source project? AI first layer inspection and lidar?

Not having to fuck around to assemble and use your printer.

I had the spare time and patience to maintain my printer during my university years - but now I really just want something that works out of the box, all the time, every time.

I love open-source hardware, but only in places where having to maintain it myself isn’t burdensome - and unfortunately, I’ve always treated my printer as more of a tool than as a hobby.

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#109

Post by kriro »

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.).

Re: Bambu Lab A1 Mini

#110

Post by justinclift »

userbinator wrote: post #55
justinclift wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Excellent, that's good info. Seems like they're handling things like this pretty well.
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