Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon  

RE:

@dimprov

Oh yes, you've almost answered your own question, you could do hinges print weather strip directly into the print add stiffeners create a covering of ASA in areas that needed protection from UV. The list is very long, if your nozzles could handle the various materials you would have what amounts to a mini factory not including metal printing since it requires sintering. Once you developed an understanding of how materials work together you could potentially see a $ cost savings by being able to substitute less of a stronger material in an area, not to mention weight savings if necessary. The technology exists, but is not what i consider affordable at the prosumer level.

Multiple extruders  capable of individual programing can do this, I would also think that a temperature controlled enclosure would be helpful. I'm hoping the XL will provide some of this functionality, I was not foolish enough to preorder one though, I'll wait and see how things go, and I'm still looking at the Bambu I want to see what people do with them as they begin to populate.

I like this thread, and I like hearing about your problem solving with the Bambu. I want to know.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

It seems to me that different material would need different temps of both bed and nozzle and so it would not be trivial to do multiple materials as you suggest above. I think the practicalities of that add much complexity at this time. As you said, multiple extruders are capable of this. But the Bambu is not going to compete with multiple extruders.

RE:

@crab

Unfortunately the Bambu does not have multiple extruders, so I would agree, however with the right software I would hope that a single extruder technology could overcome some of these issues. for example, I have found ways to use PrusaSlicer while requiring my direct input to be able to create multiple material projects. I know your new to this based on your previous posts, however very possible.  

I want to state this is not intended to be a slight in any way. I HAD TO WORK TOWARD THIS RESULT.

RE:

@dimprov

I disagree about that, having looked into the tool changer, it is just that, a tool changer , and I'm not feeling that the tool changer is right for the need mentioned. You can read about the tool changer and get that impression very easily. But I'm looking for a multi material changer. I have looked extensively at the E3D tool system, and its not what I'm looking for. Basically that system requires building, and is not deigned for multi material builds. you have to construct every part and decide what is physical and what is an exothermic plastic construction . this can be good, for sure. But is not user friendly. Relative to plastic construction, and really enters a whole new level of construction. Allowing for the placement of parts, in certain areas like ball bearings and such. 

This is not applicable in the same se as multi-material printing. At least can not be considered in the same category. 

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

This forum sucks, I can't believe that  I can't edit 30 seconds after I make  post. Whatever.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Ive been looking at the Carbon and watching a couple of review videos online - certainly does seem like the 'next-gen' of 3D printers..... however, can any owners confirm the following:

- Apparently the top few layers of rounded prints (such as a helmet for example) do not finish very nicely (as demonstrated by 'Uncle Jessy' videos on YT). Has this been improved at all with firmware updates or is it still the case?

- The load/unload filament procedure is very clunky. No way to unload filament when pausing the print. No 'Load Filament' option either - has this been rectified yet?

Thanks

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Also, I have lots of Prusament PLA - will these spools etc fit OK in the AMS on the Carbon X1?

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Voted for neither. Bambu and Prusa runs into the same unavailability of parts problem internationally. The shipping from Prusa is ridiculous for international customers and Bambu is just a giant question mark at this point, whether they will still be around in 5 years. Having both an Ender 3 and a Mk3S+, I'm definitely getting another Ender if I'm ever getting another printer. I could buy five Ender 3s for the price of one Prusa, and so far I would say they are roughly on par in terms of my preference of printing on which printer once they are dialled in. Prusa is slightly easier to dial in, but not by much. In fact, I've had more print failures than my Ender 3, which I've owned for longer. And the market is flooded with Ender parts, so I have zero worries if I have to repair my Ender.

If Bambu is around in 5 years with good parts availability, I may get one. The questions Bambu has now are QC and long term reliability, otherwise their printers beats Prusas hands down without a question in terms of printing.

RE:

@sg-newb-rider Are you saying Ender 3 is just fine as-is straight out-of-the-box?  Is that really how you use it?  Or, if not, just exactly how many upgrades does it take for it to be a first-class printer?  Just how much "dialing in" is required?

Tom Sanladerer said in a recent YT that Ender 3 is a great 3D printer.... after about 26 upgrades.  Well, I'm sorry, but by then it's no longer really an Ender 3 anymore, is it?

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

I have never used a Prusa printer but I do have an X1C and can hopefully answer some questions. First, I generally print at standard speed. Printing faster is great using the custom gcode on some of the Bambu Lab models. If doing it just using the slicer, you need to up the filament temp manually or build a custom filament profile. I just don't care for the hassle.

You can't mix materials with different extrusion temperature characteristics. That's why there are dual extruder machines. Yes, it might be possible but the issue is clearing the old material and loading the new without baking something and causing issues. I haven't used PVA yet. I hope it will work. However, as a word of warning, there are PVA materials with different printing temps. I had to return one when I found out it printed at 180C. You need one that prints at 220C. 

TPU isn't compatible with the AMS because it will gum up the works. You can use it manually. The manual system works OK but I hate the spool holder being on the back. There are solutions to that you can print. 

The AMS makes changing filament a lot easier. If one roll runs out, it will swap to another as long as they are the same as far as the AMS is concerned i.e. Bambu Basic Blue for each. Even when removing one filament and setting up another the AMS makes it easy. I find Bambu filament prints better than some others and I like the RFID on the spools. Just load and the profile and color are set. It also tracks how much has been used. That means you can see an estimate of filament remaining in the slicer. 

Besides having two desiccant trays, the AMS has a humidity sensor which shows on the screen, Bambu Studio (slicer) and Bambu Handy (phone app). 

There has been at least one iteration of the AMS. The issue is roller supports breaking. There is a wiki article on the Bambu support site with files for printing reinforcement supports. BL have been very proactive about this. AMS retraction isn't perfect. BL filaments generally work. Matterhackers Quantum constantly fails to retract. Just disconnect the PTFE tube from the back, pull out the filament and hit retry. Still, very annoying. BTW, I like the AMS so much, I have 4. That means 16 filaments available. Really 15 since one is breakaway support which I really like. It massively increases print times but it makes for clean and easy support removal.

The printer has also experienced at least one change. My fan fell off. I have a Kickstarter unit. New ones come with a fan support and the fan is screwed in rather than relying on double sided tape like mine does. I have printed a stand which keeps mine in place. 

The cloud printing has been reliable for me. I do sometimes have to restart the apps (Studio and Handy) to get the camera to show. 

The slicer actually supports other machines including a Voron. The slicer has been extended since I first got my machine to include coloring tools and a text tool for adding text to flat surfaces. You can also import objects and set them as a negative to do a cut. The last item may just be part of Prusa slicer. I don't know.  BL has more software engineers than hardware engineers and it shows. 

This may not mean much to this crowd but there are two annoying limitations as far as educational use is concerned. First, there is no ethernet port. This is a huge deal. The school system makes it very difficult to get printers on WiFi. Secondly, there is no USB-A port. There is a micro-SD slot and that is fine for home use. However, in a school environment, I want students handing me a standard USB stick. USB-A sticks are less likely to get broken or lost. 

I have a love/hate relationship with the textured PEI plate. Parts come off easily once it cools down. However, sometimes parts come off too easily as in while being printed. The cool plate and glue stick is the old reliable method but annoying. The Energetic plate off Alliexpress works better than the BL texture PEI plate and has a smooth PEI side which holds better than the textured side. 

I guess enough for now. I hope I answered some of the questions that have been posted. 

RE:

Posted by: @sr22pilot

I guess enough for now. I hope I answered some of the questions that have been posted. 

Awesome - thank you for the information. I’m very tempted!!

Can you advise if Prusament PLA spools will fit in the AMS? I have over 10 rolls of filament I would like to continue to use!

Also, I generally print with one or two colours most of the time. I understand the load/unload filament is rather clunky. However, on further thought I guess this is not an issue when using the AMS, as you would simply load your required colour in a slot that is not currently fed into the extruded, and the system would then switch across to the chosen filament slot and load it itself before printing (when set in the slicer). Is that correct?

Finally, has the layering on a curved or domed top been improved? I see from reviews the layers are not as nice on a top curved surface?

RE:

Very helpful. In fact it talked me out of placing an order that I was really getting close to. Doesn't sound like the AMS is going to give me what I want, plus inferior sheets. Speed matters little to me. My current systems are enough for my production needs, and to tinker I can wait another few months for the XL. 

But I can certainly see one in my future. One topic that's hasn't been touched on is farm support. Any tools to remotely manage say a handful of printers?

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Posted by: @iftibashir

 

Posted by: @sr22pilot

I guess enough for now. I hope I answered some of the questions that have been posted. 

Awesome - thank you for the information. I’m very tempted!!

Can you advise if Prusament PLA spools will fit in the AMS? I have over 10 rolls of filament I would like to continue to use!

Also, I generally print with one or two colours most of the time. I understand the load/unload filament is rather clunky. However, on further thought I guess this is not an issue when using the AMS, as you would simply load your required colour in a slot that is not currently fed into the extruded, and the system would then switch across to the chosen filament slot and load it itself before printing (when set in the slicer). Is that correct?

Finally, has the layering on a curved or domed top been improved? I see from reviews the layers are not as nice on a top curved surface?

I've got a few older spools (> 1 year) and they fit fine but I'm lead to believe newer spools of prusament are for some reason a bit wider, and those dont fit correctly. The AMS does come with 4 empty spools, so you could respool them but thats a lot of faff. 

RE:

Posted by: @fuchsr

Very helpful. In fact it talked me out of placing an order that I was really getting close to. Doesn't sound like the AMS is going to give me what I want, plus inferior sheets. Speed matters little to me. My current systems are enough for my production needs, and to tinker I can wait another few months for the XL. 

But I can certainly see one in my future. One topic that's hasn't been touched on is farm support. Any tools to remotely manage say a handful of printers?

No farm support yet. I suspect this will be something thats part of some sort of paid subscription on Bambu Cloud.

What I can say is that there are more than one private groups who are reverse engeneering the propriatary software and building an opensource way of working with the printer, one of which has even been testing out possible octoprint integration. I can't really share more than that without risking Bambu finding out the holes that have allowed this to be possible and fixing it on future hardware iterations (although one of the entry points is one they likely cant prevent). Needless to say once a rock solid and easy way of permanently decoupling a printer from Bambu Cloud is in place it'll be released. The biggest problem with their propriatary stuff is that it may actually be possible for them to brick individual printers which is a massive red flag right now.

Given under the hood its runing a minimal Linux based distro and hardware that supports reflashing the OS it should eventually be trivial to swap the whole OS out for something more opensource friendly.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Regarding prusa spools: as I mentioned before, I bought some filament rolls a few weeks ago. One spool is working (width=70mm), one is out of tolerance (width=72mm) and is not working...

I personally don't understand why you buy a system with proprietary SW to use it with an open source software. I did once flash an iphone years ago, but this was just not worth the effort. I mean you can expect many updates from Bambulab in the future. But you can only get those with the original software.

The Bambulab SW is currently very basic. You only have very few options to make changes. I hope that Bambulab will allow more in the future. I like having a printer which works out of the box, but I also like the possibility to tweak settings manually if needed. If I were bambulab, adding print farm compatibility would not be my priority. There are much more basic functions which currently are missing which should be implemented before.

Have you read the Bambu Lab Story and the 5 goals?

No more Bed-Slingers

No more bloodshed during support removal

Sleep soundly during over-night prints

Bring color back into the community

Stiff PA-CF parts for my Nerf blaster

The 3rd point is not fullfilled, they should rework on that one!

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

@ SR22pilot Yes.. a bit disappointing about no Ethernet ports.. especially for Educational use.. which is what I'm currently looking for. Hooking into Wifi might be difficult as organizations tend to disconnect users after periods of time. I would agree about the USB stick option. Again nice for students to deal with those, than very small SD cards that get lost. Ideally, I'd like to see a common area set up (maybe in a cloud) that can have areas for students to upload files to.. and then pick and choose any of the current local printers.. This is not a farm setup.. (although would have same functionality) but one that would make it much easier to manage for educational use. This would tip a huge amount of sales for educational users.. Now.. the Prusa is even lower down in the tech ladder than Prusa for connectivity for educational use, so likely the  Bambu still wins out pretty easily.

I'm also a bit concerned about the PEI sheet options for the lidar. I've heard that regular PEI sheets won't work.. so one might be limited to an inferior experience, if they want the lidar functionality.. 

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Education use: Network Connectivity
============================

So I might have one concern for connectivity. If there is wifi connection only and we are in an EDucation environment, likely we can connect to the wireless.. (maybe).. But if the students then need to connect the cloud to download files, I wonder if 'holes' have to be open in the firewall of the ED environment.. And if you ever know the IT rules of large organizations, often they would tarr & feather you before opening up firewall ports..   OR.. if it might work like TeamViewer, where the printer would open a 2-way HTTP connection to the cloud that would allow a student to send to that printer without being blocked by the network..

Would be so much easier, if there was an ethernet port that one could access locally.

Question #2, would be .. If I take a wireless AP and connect it to our ED network and have all the printers and client computers connect to the wireless... if it is easy to have each client computer still use all slicer software and send their output directly to the printers without going thru the cloud.. (don't need camera support there). ?

If cloud connectivity is forced.. it could be a deal-breaker for many ED organizations.. and they could get a boat-load of sales there.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

Reading through the questions, I now understand why Tom Sandladerer even today strongly recommends the MK3S+:  it's either all about risk avoidance or, in other cases, being able to know exactly what it is that you're getting before you pull the trigger.  i.e. getting all possible questions answered in advance.  I'm not saying that's wrong by any means, because I too attempt my due diligence in the same way, but it's interesting that this is what for many people overshadows everything, including whatever is already known or is otherwise answerable.  Longevity?  Yeah, that's a risk.  Maybe even a fatal flaw.  Wait 5 years and then you'll know.  What if the company goes bankrupt?  Undeniable risk.  Who knows what their cashflow situation is or whether their finances are soundly managed.  What if the company gets acquired and the new owners charge outrageous amounts to replace proprietary parts?  And on and on and on.  So, within that framework of doubt, the MK3S+ becomes the safe choice.  Well, heck, I get it.  That's why I bought an MK3 five years ago.  For the later adopters, which is most people, now must seem like the perfect time to buy one.  

RE:

I spent a couple hours last weekend installing klipper and input shaping onto my mk3 which has totally stock hardware. It has no problem running the bambulabs slicer profiles.

RE: Prusa MK3S+ vs Bambu Lab X1 carbon

I'm also a bit concerned about the PEI sheet options for the lidar.

I'm using the X1C with a PEI sheet and haven't had a single error reported by the Lidar. Maybe Bambu have addressed this in its latest Firmware...

What if the company goes bankrupt?  Undeniable risk. 

Any company can find themselves in financial difficulty if their products don't sell but its probably more likely that Prusa will see this if they don't up their game and deliver a truly competitive printer with the features expected in 2023. 

Hopefully someone in Prusa is reading these posts and taking note because if they aren't, they'll go the same was as Nokia, Blackberry, Motorola, HTC, MySpace, IBM Computers, and so many others that all thought they were too big to fail.