So I’ve decided to get “back” into 3d printing. I was getting into it in 2012 and I started assembling a kit, but then life happened and I never had enough time or room to complete it.
However, now I’m in a much better place (both literally and figuratively), so I’ve decided to dive back in. However, last time around it seemed that almost everything was some variant of Prusa, and I think I want to go in a less DYI direction this time.
- Once calibrated, doesn’t need much fidgeting or maintenance.
- More or less prefabricated. Some assembly is fine, but I don’t want to sit there an dremmel a hobbled bolt again, or build a power supply.
- I prefer one of those enclosed printers, as it will be in a location with minimal climate control.
- Must not rely on any software that does not run on linux
- I’m not too worried about printing speed. Print quality matters more to me.
- Preferably one that is fixable if it breaks.
- Single filament is fine.
- Don’t need wifi
Any suggestions?
Oh, and I still have a spool of ABS around here somewhere… Is this still a reasonable material choice? Any other materials worth considering if I prefer the prints to be durable and not brittle?
This is where I could list a budget or preferred price range, but purchasing power parity and exchange rates probably complicates this, so let’s just say “reasonably priced”
UPDATE: I ordered a Prusa Core One. I went for the kit, as I will hopefully better understand how I can fix it later after assembly. I threw in a spool of PETG as well, as I’m curious about the material.
You must log in or register to comment.
Look at the Centauri Carbon, the artillery M1 Pro and the Qidis.
The Prusa is overpriced and tbh, despite what the fanboys claim, not worth it at the moment in terms of reliability, technology and quality. But…sadly you already ordered it. Well…
Anyway: Have a look at ASA material-wise. Less toxic than ABS and much better material properties than PLA.
Nice, the Prusa Core One is a very good printer. Happy printing :D
If you don’t mind the price, the Prusa Core One checks all these boxes. It is what I have and use happily, with PLA, PETG and TPU. I bought the assembly kit, and it was built within a weekend following the very good assembly manual. But you can also get it pre-assembled.
Material wise you can consider PETG, it gives me nice durable prints on my Core One.
Second this. We have a Core One at work which was upgraded from an MK4. Has almost 1 k hours print time, broke down once (mostly due to my negligence), otherwise very accurate and reliable. Not very happy with their customer support though, they diagnosed the problem incorrectly and suggested I change the wrong part. Others generally have a better opinion of their support, so maybe mine was an outlier.
My core one did fail once in the first week. I was on support chats for multiple all nighters like 12-15 breaks each. Finally someone said its probably bad parts and sent me a bunch of likely parts, I got preassembled so they guided me how to disassemble and replace the parts. Its been working ever sense, but it was killing me them going “well have you tried recalibrating?” And other basic tasks that they should have had notes on that were already done.
Really like my Bambu A1. I started with an ender. Unlike the Ender, Bambu just works. Some people don’t like that you can’t use other slicers with it, but the Bambu studio slicer is pretty great imo. Their makerworld.com website is a great place to get models. They have high incentives for creators so there is always new high quality stuff being posted.
Also their replacement parts are inexpensive from them directly. And they literally sell every single part. So you can replace any thing you need to. But you likely wont need to replace anything for a while.
They also have sensors on the printers for tons of features. Oh and their printers are designed to be ran through wifi. So no more packing cards back and forth between printer and computer.
Watch some YouTube reviews videos. You will be impressed.
Also when you print at 0.2 layer hight on a Bambu. The print quality looks better than 0.16 on other printers.
No lie.
I recommend Bambu to anyone.
I have a Bambu A1 too, and it prints great. However, in hindsight, I would not recommend Bambu’s printers. I don’t like that they’re locking down on their software ecosystem. It’s not just third-party slicers, but they also broke third-party accessories like the Panda Touch display which isn’t very nice at all. I use OrcaSlicer, so I have to set my printer in LAN only mode with the firmware still on v4.0.0.0. If you have the newer firmware, you have to toggle the “developer mode” which for some reason is different to the LAN only mode. I use Tailscale to access my LAN only A1 remotely. LAN only mode also means I can’t use their mobile app, which I think is a silly restriction for the sake of it.
Third-party slicers and accessories are only the beginning. I’m almost certain that in the future they will make it required that you use Bambu’s own filament, they already have the RFID tags in there so all it takes is a firmware update. Who knows, maybe they’ll implement more restrictions similar to Apple like pairing parts to the printer and blocking things like third-party nozzles. I really hope they don’t do that, but it looks increasingly more likely…hopefully Bambu doesn’t become the HP/Apple of 3D printers.
For now, I would stay away from Bambu and go with other options (see Elegoo’s Centauri Carbon/non-Carbon, the Creality K2 Plus, Qidi’s Q2 and 4 Plus, Sovol’s SV06 ACE, and of course Prusa…)
Qidi has some good value options with an enclosure. There’s also Creality’s printers that seem pretty good, and of course Bambu (but unfortunately, they are taking the Apple route of locking down their ecosystem…)
I print with the Bambu A1 (not the Mini, the bigger one) which has great print quality and the only downside is that I have to use the LAN only mode and keep it at firmware v4.0.0.0 since they blocked using third-party software with the newer firmware updates (such as OrcaSlicer). I have set up tailscale so I can access my local network remotely though, so it’s not all bad.
Sounds like Bambu is a brand I will avoid, then
Depends on how comfortable youd be with voiding the warranty. There’s a replacement firmware available for the X1C line, and there’s a board replacement for the P1 series that allows you to run klipper instead of the Bambu firmware. Fwiw, I couldn’t care less (at least for now) about having to run their slicer, its good enough, for Arch based distros you can install from the AUR and for others, at least Debian/ variants there are flatpacks
Can’t you turn on Developer Mode to enable third party slicers?
Yeah, and that makes it LAN only. I have my printer on the older firmware and don’t need to use this toggle, but in the newer firmware the regular LAN only mode doesn’t work and you HAVE to use developer mode.
I’ve got a Bambu A1 mini that I’m quite happy with. Bambu studio works perfectly fine on Linux, and I can import lots of different kinds of designs from anywhere, but I think you do really need Bambu Studio to prepare the print for this specific printer. I have no idea if there’s any way around that, but is that necessary?
The a1 mini is very good at small details. The main downside is of course that it’s not very big, so not suitable for large prints. It calibrates automatically and is very low maintenance.
They blocked third-party slicers for printers with a firmware update. I personally use OrcaSlicer (a fork of Bambu Studio with additional features, and Bambu Studio is itself a fork of PrusaSlicer…), so I had to set mine to LAN only mode to continue using it. That also means I can’t use their mobile app (it doesn’t work with LAN only mode, almost certainly to push people into their ecosystem of software) but I wasn’t really using it anyways.
I don’t like that Bambu are locking down on their ecosystem like this. Hopefully they don’t get any ideas from the 2D printer industry and make it required that you use their own brand of filament…
That’s indeed a bad development I wasn’t aware of. Even more so if they base their own software on others, and then block others from their platform.
One other thing i forgot to mention, the firmware update also meant that third-party accessories/upgrades like the Panda Touch display no longer worked. So that sucks.
I would love to see a competitor for the A1 mini, the prize while being hassle free makes it to me the perfect entry point choice, which I would use to figure out if that’s a hobby I can stick to.
The Elegoo Centauri Carbon was recently released with a price of $299 I think, and it has an enclosure too. The Centauri non-Carbon is $50 cheaper with no enclosure. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. And of course, there’s the Ender 3 V3. I think Sovol also has their SV06 Ace around the same price.
I had an XYZ back then. It worked overall but was frustrating to use. I also got “back” into it and bought a second hand creality ender 3 V2 in a tent. It works effortlessly every time and I was pleased. Can’t do tpu because bodum can’t do tpu but it is reliable. Then my friend bought a Bambu and another friend bought an anycubic and I was mind blown about how far they’ve come. Speed and reliability and colour change reliability. Crazy. I think the modern machines are worth the extra money.
W.r.t your spool question, ABS is still a great material choice for a lot of applications since it has pretty well rounded properties. Reasonably strong, reasonably rigid (but not brittle), reasonably creep resistant, and fairly temperature resistant (probably the cheapest filament that can withstand a hot car). It’s generally a bit tricky to print though. You need an enclosed printer for good results (much better layer adhesion and less risk of warping and cracking) and it’ll emit styrene fumes which you don’t want to be breathing. I always put my printer outdoors if I’m printing ABS or its replacement in ASA.
If you don’t care about that high temperature resistance and just want decent impact strength, then PETG is an acceptable alternative. It’s pretty cheap, easy to print, but is a little more flexible than ABS. It has decent creep resistance as well, unlike PLA.
How do the physical properties of PETG compare to ABS?
And the fumes and such from ABS was something I was aware of, but one thing that always irked me was that I needed to use rafts floating on abs-juice to make a print.
PETG is tougher and in certain situations stronger than ABS. PETG also has better chemical and UV resistance. But PETG has a lower glass transition temperature, about 80C vs 100C.
Both PETG and ABS/ASA benefit from enclosed and heated chamber printers but PETG is a lot easier to print with an open bed. Both of my printers are open bed and PETG is very easy to print.
PETG is somewhat hygroscopic and will absorb moisture from the environment. Making the filament a pain to print and prone to nasty stringing. So it should be stored sealed in a dry bag/box. Having a way to dry filament is a good idea. You can do so with a cheap food dehydrator or a dedicated filament dry for the purpose.
PETG has pretty much supplanted ABS in FDM printing. It’s often cheaper than ABS these days too. Between PLA, PETG, and TPU, those 3 filaments should cover 90%+ of all your printing needs.
Having a way to dry filament is a good idea. You can do so with a cheap food dehydrator or a dedicated filament dry for the purpose.
My favorite way is an air fryer, as it can actually hit the temperatures needed for certain engineering filaments (ASA-CF, PET-CF, PPS-CF) and the forced air combined with the fact that they aren’t sealed tends to be more effective than the spoolholding dryers. I then print from a dry box made from cereal boxes with molecular sieves. This is overkill if you are just printing standard filaments though (PLA, PETG, TPU, etc.)
I’ll add that there are still fairly common situations when you’ll want ABS/ASA: If you’re building something with stepper motors (say parts for a printer), ABS/ASA’s higher temperature resistance means you can push more current through your motors without deforming the print where the motor is mounted. This is of course especially helpful if you’re putting parts into a heated chamber, where PETG will likely start to deform under prolonged use at 60C+ temperatures. ABS/ASA are also more rigid, so they’re better for high speed printer parts. Finally, if you’re putting something in a car in a hot environment, PETG will not really hold up, but ASA will.
For your PETG trials, few things to know: it likes to bond with glass buildsheets permanently, so if you use one, always use a layer of gluestick. Also good in general with PETG, it often has trouble sticking to the buildplate.
And it absorbs moisture - though really slowly compared to actually moisture critical materials like nylon or tpu - and prints really stringy when wet, so getting a food dehydrator or a filament dryer is probably a good idea.And the “replacement” for ABS is ASA - similar material properties (actually superior UV resistance) while being easier to print.
Each material has specific strengths and weaknesses, but a good start is to have PLA, PETG, ASA and TPU. That way you can print most of anything reasonable, except living hinges (nylon) or really strong parts (PLA+, and filaments with carbon fibre).
I can’t recommend a specific brand or model for the printer (I’d go with some popular open source solution, to help with eventual problems), but as material ABS seems complicated, eventually toxic and PLA is both super strong (it’s amazing actually) and non toxic…
Gotta get my old printer up and running after being in the shed for some years 😅
Good luck!
I recently got a creality printer for free and as someone who had little interest in 3D printing before, it’s been great. Completely maintenance free so far and I’ve gone through two entire spools of filament so it’s getting a ton of use!
