Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon  

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Posted by: @dimprov

Evidently the solution is routing filament from a dry box (or a whatever kind of filament holder)  to the X1C via a bowden tube.  Meh.

@dimprov There are several solutions out there including https://www.printables.com/model/350507-smooth-feeding-bambu-x1x1c-side-mounted-spool-hold

For an out of the box and print system, I am building up a long list of mods I want to print. One is a side spool holder. Another is an alternative mount for the AMS hub so my AMS units, which are on the left, have a shorter and more direct path. Finally, I want to print the feed tube holder which shapes the feed into the extruder to reduce the bend radius and hence reduce retraction issues. I am also waiting on Bambu Lab to have their 4m length PTFE tubing back in stock. The Capricorn I am using is sub 2mm ID while BL specifies 2.5mm. I only have trouble with certain filaments and I am hoping these changes will help. I also want to make a Y-splitter for easier changes to filament on the  spool holder when shifting from the AMS. That will make printing TPU easier. 

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

while Prusa adds more and more security features against thermal runaway to their firmware,
it looks like the Bambulab printer could easily set your house on fire ??

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

There is criticism that the protection kicks in after 3 minutes instead of 20 seconds, which is allegedly a common delay time amongst most 3D printers.

Seems like an issue that could be fixed in firmware.  Just not sure whether or not it has already been fixed yet or not.

RE:

Bambulab's response is:

"We double-checked everything

After we saw online comments concerning thermal runaways, we set up experiments to double-check all the protections, and we've confirmed that all the passive and active protections are functioning as expected.

We know a smoking hotend is scary and we should avoid it even if it does not lead to a fire. We will implement a more sophisticated thermal model to the software and work to shorten the delay before protection kicks in."

https://blog.bambulab.com/thermal-runaway/

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

I've stopped participating in this discussion because I believe its, lost the ability to discern between what is and what the users want it to be.  

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Would be good if we could start the poll over now that users have read a lot of useful information in this thread. I, for one, would change my vote from the Carbon back to Prusa - think I’ll stick with my Prusa for a good while longer until the X1C ‘matures’ a little……

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

I was hoping that SR22pilot might have more to say, as he is a veritable fount of interesting information.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Just an update on comparing Prusa to Bambu.  Bambu just announced a new Cartesian FDM Bambu P1P fully assembled  that's cheaper than the MK3S+ kit.  For me specs are a very small part of the story.  Reliability, cost of maintenance and support tell the whole story. They do seem to be making lots of innovations with each printer.  This printer has the nozzle, heater block and heat sink all in one piece, for about $10! This is a brilliant idea, no more having to heat up the hot end to change the nozzle, no more torquing, no more leaking. Then again just about everything in the Bambu is proprietary. Do they have the deep pockets to stay in for the long game?

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Glad to do my best. Ask away if you have questions. I promise to try to avoid any fanboy type posts. I have been thinking that it might help put my comments into context if I cover my 3D printing background. I have been printing going on 6 years as part of my job. I teach high school engineering. While I had looked at home printers for over a decade, I just never broke down and got one. At work, my first printer was a Stratasys uPrint SE Plus. It was easy to learn and bad prints were very rare. People say the Bambu Lab printers are automatic out of the box but they aren't Stratasys. The uPrint uses GradCAD which is very simplistic. I was printing in ABS only on disposable build plates. SR-30 soluble support can't be avoided. Filament is proprietary at about $100 for a sub 1KG roll.  Can you say expensive printing? This means that Bambu filament at $25 per KG seems cheap. About a year and a half ago I got a Makerbot Method X Carbon. This was to be used as a backup to the Stratasys and to also allow printing in a wider range of materials including 316L stainless. This printer uses Makerbot Cloud Print which has a few more features than GrabCAD but is also, I would later find out, limited. At least now I had better support selection or should I say deselection. However, Cloud Print has trouble with large plates in that the slicing function hangs. Also, the machine is SLOW at about half the speed of the uPrint and it has a smaller build area. Last year the uPrint started breaking. First I replaced the extruders. Later I replaced a cooling fan. Then I had to replace the optical sensors on the left side. Late last school year, I received an email saying County CTAE (Career Tech) had ordered me a Stratasys F370. The uPrint was used as a trade-in. The F370 is about twice as fast as the uPrint (guessing) and very big and very quiet. All three of these printers have excellent filters for the air. There is no smell. By comparison, the X1C is noisy and the filtering is minor by comparison. The entire top of the F370 and the Makerbot is a filter. There were several items I fell in love with on the F370. Build size is 14"x10"x14" and the system holds 2 rolls of model and 2 rolls of support filament with automatic changeover. What I don't like is that build plates are $166 for 16. 90 cubic inches of ASA is $235 per roll. A 60 cubic inch roll of QSR (like SR-30) support is $210.  This is expensive printing. I already have a roughly $3000 order in for supplies. Prints on the uPrint have been getting ragged. The F370 does great prints at  a default 0.1 layer height. I had asked to keep the uPrint till I ran out of material. It broke last Friday with 4 more rolls to go. I did a PLA print on the F370. It required changing out the heads. Going back to ABS/ASA required doing an alignment print and using a magnifying glass to find offset numbers to enter. Worse, the raft (unavoidable) ripped off the bottom of the print during removable. You can't use support material with PLA on the F370. The support head is replaced by a fan tube.

This summer I saw the Bambu Lab Kickstarter and decided to back it. I am very familiar with DJI drones and I own one. The DJI connection told me this company was different. I have played with cheap drones and can't fly them worth a darn. Humiliating for a person with over 1500 flight hours. DJI drones are trivial. The automation helps.

So what does all of this mean? It means that what many consider expensive seems inexpensive to me. It means what a lot of people consider just working, I see as having issues. It means I am not into the hobby aspect of building my own printer or spending weeks changing parts and tweaking. I enjoy printing and making cool things. It also means that when I look at Bambu Studio, I see an amazingly feature rich slicer that I am still learning. Here are some examples. I just enjoyed learning how to import a second object as a negative object. I used it to generate a cutout for a logo. When I printed the log it didn't fit in the cutout even though the size was the same. Hmm... I have to learn tolerances in Solidworks it seems. However, instead I learned XY offsets in Bambu Studio. I was surprised that it took a contour offset of -0.5 and a hole offset of 0.5 to make things fit but it worked. For the next print, I set the imported object to a model, sunk it into the base of the first item till only its top layer showed, and then changed the color. Now I have a nice coaster box with a logo in the bottom. Thank you X1C with AMS. Maybe this is common in Prusa slicer. I don't know. However, it sure as heck isn't in the slicers at work. The X1C has spaghetti detection. It seems to work although people post examples on Reddit where it doesn't. I have had it give false alerts and have had it work. This is all new to me since on the F370, I never run into spaghetti. 

Build plates have been an education. Stratasys build plates just work but they are a consumable. If you are careful you can use them several times but they are still expensive. The Makerbot has a very flexible build plate that you just clean. Much nicer. The X1C Cool Plate was a new experience. The Makerbot requires glues stick for carbon fiber nylon but not most other materials. The Cool Plate for the X1C requires glue stick all the time. Also, it is somewhat a consumable with a sticker that will wear out and begin to lift and need replacing. When the textured PEI sheet came out I got one. Easy removal but sometimes too easy with parts coming off during the print. I got the third party Energetic plate which works better. Lately, I found some information which has helped. I had been told to clean with IPA. Bambu recommends against that. Using dish soap and warm water has helped a LOT. Now I am having better luck. I'll know more tonight. Previously, I had to shift back to the Cool Plate and glue stick to get 4 coasters to all print cleanly with no lifting. I started a set of 4 coasters on the textured Energetic pate this morning. I took a look on my phone at the completed print and it looks good. However, the camera doesn't see the entire plate once it lowers at the end of a print. I like having an app on my phone for checking on my X1C.

Things I miss on the X1C include Ethernet, USB-A, a directly heated build chamber and dual extruders for support material. I have no desire for IDEX. However, being able to have a separate extruder optimized for support material is great. Right now I am printing PA-CF with PVA supports on the Makerbot. I doubt I can do that on the X1C. Maybe. However, it would involve constant wild temperature swings for the extruder. Additionally, the Makerbot has an 80C for 5 hours annealing cycle for PA-CF. The X1C chamber can't reach 80C. I have an Eibos filament dryer and might be able to use it. 

Here are some thoughts on the X1C. Currently, Bambu Studio will give an error on the video feed of the print chamber. Killing the program and restarting fixes the issue. I like that Bambu Studio shows the humidity status of each AMS, but the information needs to be bigger or show more detail in a window if clicked. I like that Bambu Lab filament automatically sets print information and color. It also shows filament remaining even if the spool is removed and put back in later. However, right now this is just graphical. I hope they add quantitative numbers like Makerbot and Stratasys. If my print need250g of material, I want to know whether I have 240 or 260g left. 

There have already been design changes. My aux cooling fan was attached with double sided tape which didn't hold. I have printed a stand that now holds the fan. New printers come with a stand and a fan that screws into the stand and the printer. The AMS has been changed twice to strengthen the mounts for the rollers. Bambu has published small pieces to print and glue in if the AMS breaks. I may place those in my older one as a precaution. I haven't had a problem so far. The AMS intakes are plastic and will wear if abrasive filaments like PA-CF are used a lot.  There are caps that you put a 7mm length of PTFE into that act to guide the filament straight down the intake. This avoids the wear on the intake "cones." I have these on all of my AMS units. I would have paid more for an AMS with hardened parts. 

I had a Z-axis homing error last night. This was at the start before anything actually printed. I did a full calibration and tried printing again with success. My print last night came out mostly OK, with a little rippling in one small area. Since smoothing was on, it did an overall nice job on the bottom of a coaster box. 

The printer has a lot of sensors. If you ump the printer during operation you will often get an error message. The print will continue and be fine but the message might say there was a movement detected and the build plate may have hit something when it was just me bumping the printer. 

The AMS is more restrictive on what filament can be used than I initially thought. Inland cardboard spools work with either tape or a plastic ring placed on the spool but I have to leave the AMS cover down but not latched. The spool can rub against the top cover. Matterhackers Pro series PVA doesn't fit. Their Quantum fits but almost always fails to retract and hence requires intervention. Some spools have the material so far out from the hub that it rubs the intake mechanism. 

OK, so long winded. That's me. I do want to give honest input. I don't find the X1C flawless or automatic. I do find it fun and I get a lot of prints done.

Posted by: @dimprov

I was hoping that SR22pilot might have more to say, as he is a veritable fount of interesting information.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

I thought I would post my experience with X1C speed. I run at standard speed. I have tried sport and ludicrous but the results were poor. Some of this is due to my lack of knowledge. It seems that if you speed up printing you run into a couple of issues. First, a number of non-Bambu filaments don't like the higher speeds. Secondly, you must increase the extruder temperature about 5 degrees for sport and 10 degrees for ludicrous. That's the advice I have gotten. It would be nice if the slicer had a simple overall speed selection that handled this. I don't like getting into the weeds and tuning the system. I guess this is my Stratasys background at play. I just want it to work. Once a print has started it is easy to change the speed and the extruder temperature but if you later change filaments then (I think) you lose those manual changes. The 17 minute 3DBenchy is real but that is hand tuned Gcode. I think 30 minutes is a more realistic number. 

In a different area, the usable bed size is smaller than stated. You can technically get 256x256x256 but it requires modification and eliminating some features. In other words, technically true but not true in practice. Filament cutting and Z-hop are the issues. Because of filament cutting there is an 18x28mm^2 exclusion zone in the front left of the build plate. The vertical decrease is due to Z-hop.

I see where Prusa Slicer now offers text on curved surfaces. I want!!! Bambu Studio presently only supports adding text on flat surfaces.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

I installed new firmware last night. The humidity information for each AMS unit was improved. The printer, Studio and Handy now show the layer count such as 128/270. There are now maintenance reminders. There were a number of other improvements including some based on user requests such as secondary confirmation when stopping a print job.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

So the AMS is completely sealed and protects the filament spools from moisture, meaning I can leave a couple of colors in place longer term?

Although I'm not really into multicolored prints (especially after the amount of filament it wastes between changes), I do like the idea of having different colors loaded for different print jobs and then just choosing which color to use in the slicer settings - saves having to load and unload spools.....

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

@Crab I'm a Canadian. Can you let me know who the Canadian supplier is for the Bambu?

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Sent a direct message. Check your messages. Dave

Posted by: @george

@Crab I'm a Canadian. Can you let me know who the Canadian supplier is for the Bambu?

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

I'm not sure how well the AMS seals in the back. If the front is latched, it seems to seal very well in front. There are two holders for desiccant packets. There are also plans on Printables for additional desiccant holders. I have three of those in each AMS. I am not sure how accurate the humidity reporting is. I suspect it is pretty general with less than 30% being considered low but don't hold me to that. Even if ballpark, I think it is nice that there is a warning for when to change desiccant. I tend to leave mine unlatched because I have rolls of Inland which (carboard spool versions) will sometimes scrape the top if latched, causing retraction failures. 

The penalty for multicolor prints varies a lot depending on the design. If the design is horizontally layered then the penalty is minimal. If there is a vertical stripe causing a change with every layer then it is high. Still, the end result is awesome. If you have parts of different colors you can change Bambu Studio to slice by object instead of by layer. I haven't tried that yet. 

Often overlooked when deciding whether to get an AMS, is the convenience of changing filament. The loading is very automatic and if you use Bambu filament then the RFID sets everything for you. You also see an indication of the amount of filament remaining in Bambu Studio. Furthermore, you can place a second roll of the same material in the AMS and have the system switch to the new roll when the first runs out. 

The AMS isn't perfect. You can't use soft filaments like TPU. Some filaments fail to retract. Inland Twinkling filaments (Gold and Pink) are my main culprits. I suspect it is because they are rough. They sometimes work and sometimes don't. The temporary fix is easy but annoying. Remove the PTFE tube at the back of the printer and pull the filament out of the machine. Hit RETRY. Everything works. Plug PTFE tube back in as soon as filament is pulled back past the end. I do have long tubes from my AMS units to the AMS Hub. Also, my tubes are Creality Capricorn with 2mm ID. Bambu Lab specifies 2.5mm. I should have long lengths of Bambu Lab 2.5mm ID tubing showing up this week. 

RE:

Found this video packed full of info - also includes a disassembly....:

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

A good look at the design. I’m disappointed that ABS/ASA is not well filtered.. looking for something for a home environment and would like this to be able to either vent fuses easily or absorb them. One thing I really like about the PRUSA MK3 is how easy it is to switch filaments. I’d never use the AMS for multi-color prints (because of wastage) but to serially print items and switch colors between the models would be really nice… also to do raised or inset lettering where you do a color change for only a few layers. 

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

I would love a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon but I'm not fond of the proprietary software. I wanted a Prusa before but the price of the XL and the slow speed of the MK3S+ just doesn't work for me. What is amazing is just how quickly every single youtube shorts videos about 3D printing is using a Bamboo printer now. It is a drastic shift that was mostly Prusa before and is almost entirely Bambu now. Having a faster printer that can handle most materials and give quality results allows you to make more videos it seems.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

I'm not sure what you mean by proprietary. Bambu Studio is based on Prusa Slicer and the source is on GitHub. There is already a fork of Bambu Studio. On the other hand, the printer itself is very proprietary although parts seem reasonably priced. 

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

There is a charcoal filter in the X1. However, it isn't like a Stratasys F series or the Makerbot Method where the entire top is a filter. Then again, those aren't really consumables where the charcoal filter in the X1 is meant to be easily replaced on a regular interval.