Bambu Lab 3D Printers

[Brian C. Smith]

Greetings! Hope you are all off to a stellar start this year.

I am looking for crowd knowledge regarding the quality, reliability, and ease of use for the Bambu Lab line of printers. Our school (The Spence School, NY, NY) currently has MakerBots (to be replaced) and UltiMaker S3s at our upper school. The cost difference between the UltiMaker and Bambu lines of printers are vast. From what is being peddled online, it seems the Bambu printers are remarkably faster and much, much cheaper. The AMS (Automatic Material System) seems like a plus too.

My biggest concern is that they are far different from the MakerBot and UltiMakers we have and currently use. Since we have several US3s at the upper level, we would like to replace the MakerBots at our lower and middle school levels. We would love to carry consistency in software (Cura) throughout the school.

Any insight or conversation around this would be very helpful. Thank you!

Brian

[Brian Bicknell]

We have 3 X1 Carbon (combos) and, while we aren't massively into 3D printing in our engineering space, they are astoundingly better than any makerbot or Flashforge we've used. Once you get them set up they run extremely fast and reliably. The Bambu software is nice, but like any self-contained ecosystem, you will find drawbacks if your other software is standardized. If we are printing in quantity, the higher cost is vastly outweighed by how fast and consistent they are. Good luck! 

Brian Bicknell | Director of Engineering and Design, 8th Grade Advisor  Pronouns: he/him/his Synapse School br...@synapseschool.org | 650.294.4570 Educating Change Makers | www.synapseschool.org

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[Chris Huebner]

Our school (SPA, St. Paul, MN) currently has Prusa MK3ses and we use Cura slicer. 

I have been using a Bambu X1C with AMS at home since January of this year. The print quality is fantastic- significantly better than the Prusas, allowing smaller tolerances. I have not had to do any bed leveling or tuning at all - zero. The speed is also fantastic - apparently 3x faster than the Prusas. The first layer lidar inspection & AI spaghetti detection have caught every issue but one.  

The AMS is also great - it's able to switch between 4 spools of filament.  It just works & I've had no issues. We had previously tried the Prusa MMUs, but we took them off because they were so unreliable. Bambu says you can't use cardboard spools in the AMS, but I've been using them without issue.  Bambu has re-useable spools for filament, which is nice for reducing material use. Their filament also comes with RFIDs so the AMS automatically knows what filament it is using and adjusts the settings in the slicer automatically.

The color touch screen looks nice and works fine, but not as good as a phone.

The only maintenance I've had to do is add lube to the z-screws and adjust the belts, once each. The machine told me when to do this and had links to tutorials on screen - it was very easy.

I'm a big fan of Cura for presenting a very simple interface and hiding the complicated bits from new users. Unfortunately, right now it's only possible to use the Bambu slicer with the Bambu printers.  However, Bambu has video monitoring of prints which is nice. 

Pros: Fast, great quality prints, AMS works really well, almost no maintenance, no calibration, no runaway catastrophic failure prints

Cons: must use Bambu Studio slicer, touch screen doesn't always notice button presses right away (or my fingers are too big).

I'm requesting Bambu X1Cs for our next printer purchase.

chris

[Brian C. Smith]

Thank you for the info, this has helped. We're going to get a X1C w/AMS and run it through it's paces. I am encouraged by what I'm reading though it's great to know others are here for questions or support if needed. Disappointed that we can't use Cura at this point. 

[Jonathan Schmid]

We have been using a X1C with AMS and the P1P this summer and echo what Chris and Brian shared. Both machines worked perfectly out of the box, the Bambu slicer is very nice to work with and neither machine has needed any maintenance other than lubricating the z-screws, which the machine detects the need for and walks you through. 

Between the X1C and the P1P (or the P1S they now have), I would go for the P1P/P1S unless printing in abrasive filament types. Other than a nicer touch screen, the differentiators between the X1C and the P1P/S are small and not worth the cost. I would definitely recommend getting the AMS - having the machine automatically switch to another roll of filament when the first roll runs out is extremely convenient, the multicolor printing is very reliable and being able to remotely start a job and pick between any of the filaments in the AMS is a time saver.

They also have a mobile app that offers full remote control of the printers and works really well in managing more than one printer. 

Also worth keeping in mind - when using wifi with the printers, by default they connect home to BambuLab's servers in China, which might raise some issues depending on how sensitive your network security/network admin might be.

I've been extremely impressed with Bambu and would definitely recommend.

Jonathan

[Brian C. Smith]

Thanks, Jonathan. Appreciate the positive and mindful information. The default connection back to China may cause some headaches in IT. If China servers are default, can it be set to something more secure? Is this true for both the desktop software and mobile app? 

[Jonathan Schmid]

There is a local only LAN option that doesn't connect to their cloud, but I believe you'll lose the ability to remotely monitor/control the printers when you aren't on the same network as the printer. I haven't explored the local only lan option. Here's a forum posting about local LAN - https://forum.bambulab.com/t/lan-only-mode/3123/20 and their support article about it https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/knowledge-sharing/enable-lan-mode

Our IT department was able to segment the printers off in a way that preserved full functionality with their cloud as well as meet security needs.

Jonathan

[Jesse D Robinson]

Hi Brian,

I just recently swapped out our three Ultimaker S3s with the Bambu X1C.   While the user interface is slightly more complicated, the speed and inexpensive repair/add-ons has been phenomenal.  My makerspace has a lot of traffic and it's primarily for the 3D printers.  We currently have four X1Cs and I plan on buying one more next month.   To put cost in perspective, in order to replace the nozzle on the Ultimaker it was around $129.   It's $24 to buy a new nozzle for the X1C.  I have had very minor issues with any of the four...and all were easily resolvable with maybe an hour of down time.  

Happy to chat offline more if you would like.

Jesse

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[K-12 Fab Labs and Makerspaces]

Jesse, this is also encouraging. Is there a concern that the nozzles for Bambu are of lesser quality? I am also curious to know how your workflow has changed with the Bambu software. What do you see as the biggest differences between Cura and Bambu? 

[Jesse D Robinson]

Hey Brian,

I haven't had any issues with the nozzles at all.   That being said, they are not hot-swappable like the Ultimakers.  But they are only connected by two or three pluggable wires.   I don't swap them out much and and haven't had to replace one yet......

As for software, Cura slicer kept it pretty simple with the four main settings:  resolution/speed/layer thickness, infill, brim and support.   It's a little more convoluted in the Bambu software but mainly...it's just slightly different.   My students had no problems really adapting though (high school).   In Bambu Studio the settings are kept in tabs and there are a LOT of options in each tab.  In my opinion you have a lot more control over your slicing settings than you do in Cura......which might be overwhelming if you are just a design and default slicer.

Hope that helps.

Jesse

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