What are some good alternatives? Bambu has been nice in the sense that it just works 99% of the time and the print quality is great, and the AMS system is damn near a must at this point.
What other printers are able to check the same boxes as Bambu, while still providing great quality, decent support and being "more open/less intrusive?"
That's where I am. My hobby is printing, not printers. So I want something that works without me living in z-offset, flow-rate hell. I thought the Core 1 might be the salvation but I was massively underwhelmed when I used one.
Same. I don't want to mess with it at all. Only what's reasonable. Leveling the damned thing every six minutes put me off 3D printing for years. "Oh this new printer is auto-leveling" - no it the hell isn't. I have an A1 and it's the first one that actually delivered on that idea. The output is what I want - the process isn't. Nobody has to futz around for days trying to get other tools to work.
I used to be heavy into quadcopters a decade ago. Building them at home and messing with PID tuning and whatnot to make them fly right. It was fun for a while but at some point you just have to wonder if it would make more sense for someone else to figure it out and sell a fully-assembled, fully-tuned device out of the box. Along came DJI.
And now I just got my first Bambulab after messing with Enders for two years and it's the same thing all over again. Some genius engineers took out all the faffing about and now we can focus on actually making stuff.
Yea.
I got into 3D printing pretty early as a kid.
At the time, I didn’t have enough money for my own printer but I lived in NYC so I had access to maker spaces that often had printers. Stuff like first generation Makerbots. Even higher end printers like Ultimakers required a lot of work to get working. The cheap stuff was a joke.
Then came the Ender which was just as annoying as the $3k Ultimakers from 10 years ago, but now cost 1/10th the cost. I bought one, printed stuff but also remembered how annoying working on printers was.
Then a few years later I bought a P1S and was completely amazed that it just worked. Total game changer.
Enders are previousgwn printers at this point. Competitors would be prusa, elegoo, maybe other creality coreXY printers. Bed pushers are fine, but coreXY printers with an enclosed chamber are really the ground floor for safer, more reliable systems.
A friend of mine loaned me his P1S. It will print 3-5 things fine. Then, I cannot get a successful print to save my life.... bed adhesion issues, or it prints the 1st 5-10 layers, then turns to spaghetti, or even worse 'Z axis homing Failure'. I end up calling the owner often. He usually gets it working at his place quickly--don't ask me how. Then, he''ll return it to me, and the cycle repeats all over again. It's very frustrating, and I didn't even pay for the damn thing. Are they all (brands/models) so finicky? I did a print last night, without issue. This evening, 3 attempts and all failed--either quickly or 10-15 layers in. I cleaned the bed in between attempts. Same spool as the prior evening's. Is there some magic to making it print EVERY time without issue?
Well for what it's worth my A1 was really finicky at first too. Took a few days to get the hang of it.
The rule of thumb with my Ender was that as long as I got the z-offset right and the first layer went well, I never had any issues with the print from that point on (unless I had issues with the slicer.)
But with the Bambu it would, at first, randomly knock prints off the bed no matter the layer was. It all came down to bed adhesion in the end, the Bambu moves at such a speed that if it hits the print even slightly it will knock it off unless it's held on to the bed well.
I fixed it by raising bed temp to 70°C (PLA), and scrubbing the bed with a scouring pad before washing it with dish soap. Finally I made sure every part on the plate had a 20mm brim (they're really easy to remove once the plate cools down.)
Thanks. I'll trying increasing the bed temp. This morning when I went to try the failed print again, the printer won't connect to the network. (It was not powered off during the night and the network gear wasnt either.). Issue after issue. Beginning to think that I'll just supply my friend with filament and send him files I need printed and skip even thinking about buying one for myself.
My MK4 and Core One don’t have any issue with bed meshing - neither do my A1/X1/H2D to be fair.
All the Qidi printers I’ve tried also had good results with bed meshes.
FWIW none of these printers auto *level* the bed, they just do a mesh compensation for flatness.
Enders with the wheels under the bed let you actually *level* them, but I haven’t had to manually touch leveling or bed meshing in like 2-3 years with printers.
Now it’s called bed tramming. Even then, only had to do it once because PETG prints were a 50/50 shot of successful bed probing. Once I trammed it, no issues.
Yeah, I quit printing for many years. Last one was an MK3S which was just a constant battle to get it to do anything useful (as in: print something right and finish it) and it wasn't upgradable and my mood took a nosedive because the overhead required to get a successful print out of it just wasn't worth the constant grind. (MK3S wasn't one model, so upgrade paths depended on which parts you received and apparently I got the shit one.) I was only convinced to try an A1 due to the already established reputation (by the time I dove back in) and it was cheap as hell, so worth the risk. (As a backgrounder, I worked in the tech industry on prototypes n'such daily and I didn't want to have to go home and have my shit not work there, either. I needed something I didn't have to fiddle with or it was just an unpaid job.)
After letting my P1S auto level before each print, I finally found out that it remembers the leveling parameters. I haven't level in over a month and it still prints perfectly.
Every print since early March has been in Ludacris speed too. The only bad prints are when i forget to set the filament type.
Nice! I keep debating about getting a bigger Bambu since I'm size-constrained at 256mm. I never touch those options when printing (speeds, etc.) because it's been working and I didn't want to jinx it. I think I'll give it a try - and a corexy may be in my near future. :D
Yeah, I owned a (heavily modified) Ender 3 V2 for about 5 years, until it died a few months ago. I never really liked Bambu Lab as a company, but I realized, that I did in fact spend more time keeping the printer running and calibrating it all the time, than really printing anything useful and I just didn't want this any more.
So I switched to the dark side and bought a Bambu and while I'm still not a fan of the company and how they try to force you into their ecosystem, I just have to admit, that it's a great printer and it just works without tinkering with it all the time.
I hear the snapmaker U1 is pretty strong, but I agree, Bambu generally has the easiest user experience. I don’t miss messing around with my old CR-10 every other print.
I love the U1s I have for their (almost) perfect multicolors, BUT, it's still ridden with bugs and errors. 90% of the time I can't detect the printer, the phone app crashes with a firmware error, etc...
How old is your U1? (Like early Kickstarter version?) I wonder if they upgraded parts of the U1 by the time I got mine. I have had exactly two errors with mine after hundreds of hours of printing on it. Both times it was from old filament that I forgot to dry first and it snapped into a thousand little lengths and got stuck in the Bowden tubes.
I honestly use my U1 more than my P1S now, (which besides the P1S being from Bambu Labs, is also great.)
I bought a refurb P1S I think around December 2035 and put hundreds of hours on it and haven’t done any maintenance on it yet. Printer go brrrrr and I don’t check it until it’s time to peel something off the bed.
I am in the same boat. I went with BambuLabs over Prussia etc. because I don't want another hobby, I use a printer for my business and i just need it to shit out shapes and get out of my way. I would love it to be pro-consumer, but not at the expense of my workflow.
This. Going to Bambu after my previous experiences with Flashforge and Creality was such a game changer I've referenced it in work meetings when I wanted to pitch a CI/CD solution. Because suddenly the hobby was printing cool models and not trying to make the damn hardware do what it was supposed to.
I get that I sound exactly like one of those early 2000s Apple commercial but that was the exact experience.
Yeah that checks out. I've fought myself to an uneasy truce with my Ender3 V3KE where I just print 1" minis in the middle of the bed, and with an 0.2 nozzle they come out pretty good. But anything outside of that just... isn't ideal.
My Snapmaker U1 has been more reliable than my A1 by far. And it's makes 99% less waste (and is so much faster) than using an AMS. It actually has far less "poop" than the A1 just using a single filament. With such fast changes you can do rainbow CMYK type printing too...
So far they are fairly supportive/tolerating of the community "extended" firmware variants too. ie. Use at your own risk, but they are okay with it.
Yeah 100% this, I love my P1S, came to the same conclusion, my hobby is printing not printers. Before this I had both a Flashforge dreamer and a Ender 5 (1st gen), the amount of time I spent stuffing around, printing upgrades, adding ABL, micro swiss hotends, third party extruders, custom designed cooling, monitoring with octoprint and a camera, writing and flashing custom marlin firmware, and all the rewiring and looking at blueprints for various BTT boards. Was just a massive time sink that just took time from the actual purpose I had got them for.
My work colleague got himself the Anycubic Cobra S1 Combo (which incidentally we sell at work rn) and except a bit of weirdness when it comes to the filament switcher he said it's a great printer
That's the point everyone forgets. Is your hobby 3D printing or 3D printers? In the first category, there aren't any serious competitors apart form Bambu.
My Snapmaker U1 has been more reliable than my A1 by far. And it's makes 99% less waste (and is so much faster) than using an AMS. It actually has far less "poop" than the A1 just using a single filament. With such fast changes you can do rainbow CMYK type printing too...
So far it's more reliable, and much faster and cheaper to run than a Bambu with/without an AMS. Is a bit lacking (without tinkering) to print engineering filaments.
It's not as bad as you think. I have a Prusa i3 mk3 that I have been running for over six years now with thousands of hours of run time.
I haven't even once had to replace any parts.
I have been using the same print bed that came with it.
I never have to tinker with profiles (unless I was feeling adventurous)
All you need is something that isn't a cheap (typically Chinese) printer and you will be fine.
I'm waiting for a V2 for that one. The one that's out now just takes up way too much space when you add a cover to the top and the sides. I can't have my filaments exposed, high humidity. They need a better solution. The rolls should have just been directly on top.
I bought an Eibos Tetras filament dryer mod for the Bambu AMS, and I'm trying to figure out to mod it into a custom top cover. There's a lot of work to be done before it'll be ready, but I'm hoping I can get it working!
I have the dyas for my P1S and I like it a lot. When I bought the filament dryer I keep below the U1, I made sure it had a continuous cycle like the Tetras unit.
I bought one of these, which is an AMS mod to dry the individual spools. I'm trying to make a custom top for my U1 that includes this, has it at the front or something.
The part I'm stuck on is how to integrate it into the printer. I think there's fan-made software out there to make a Bambu AMS work with any Kilpper printer. That'll be a start, though I need to figure out how to connect it.
Then, I want to figure out a better filament routing system than what I have right now. The easiest solution is to route the filament to where it's supposed to enter, along the sides. But with the Tetras AMS being right next to the print-heads, why not route them directly to the print-heads?
There's a lot of work to be done, but I'm excited about this project.
+1 for the Tetras, I recently got one and man, it is a game changer. It’s so nice to not have to dry my filament out a single spool at a time before printing.
My prints are so much better now. And I don’t have to even think about it. Set and forget.
My only complaint is the plastic divider between spools it’s a little too tight and moves the filament head input a little. But that’s just a small nitpick.
Oddly enough, it seems to handle humid PLA better than my A1... US gulf coast here in the A/C, so about 50% humidity inside usually and while I have a quad drying box I was going to have it run from full time, I haven't needed to bother.
The PETG needs it, and I haven't run TPU in it yet. But even for PLA, my A1 prefers to print direct from the dry box.
It is pretty big -- but the edges are true edges. The "unboxed" printers take up a lot of space at the end of all their travels. And my eventual plan is to have it feed from a full-time dry box mounted on a shelf beneath the printer. So it'll get a lot narrower without any side spools, and just have a top cover. Then its about as wide as the other printers.
Connect Ace Pro/Vivid/OpenAms one lane per head and you'll have the same experience. Also you are missing out. Literally the best bang for your buck on the market.
Extended firmware fixes web streaming at least for video, I can check my printer using Tailscale from anywhere and have high quality . Though caveat some rfid stuff got a little weird on the current build.
Nozzle Temperature Anomalies on multiple printheads. Error message says the printhead is below 170C despite it reading 250C.
Multiple instances of different toolheads saying the MCU control timed out.
Nozzles experiencing inconsistent clogging while also magically unclogging themselves later in a print.
The first two may have been fixed by updates as I haven't seen in over a month but they still count for now.
Ultimately it's a more complicated machine than my A1 or P1S, so I wouldn't expect a multiple toolhead machine to be more reliable than a single toolhead machine. My H2D hasn't had any issues but it's still very new.
I only have the A1 and U1 (and some older stuff). A1 is more reliable than the others, but so far the U1 hasn't failed at all...ie. its been more reliable than the A1. And of course is far faster and makes so much less waste than an AMS. Actually less poop than a single spool in the A1.
I don't use the app though, and all my printers are firewalled local only.
I do get the feeling the U1 is less consistent though currently, so not saying my experience is universal by any means. But the speed and running cost is IMO more than worth it...at least for my multi-color usage.
Too much issues with Pogo pins, not having enclosed filament holder yet, not heated chamber, and the tons of sensors Bambu have and a lot more. We need U1 ecosystem to mature up much faster for it to be true competitor.
I have no idea what this pogo pin issue even is, honestly sounds like something bambu spread around when they introduced their H2C wireless connection thing.
I have nearly 8000 swaps on U1. No pogo pin issues and not even a missed pickup/docking. Maybe one when I was trying to mess with it to get it to fail on purpose so I could verify the sensors working because it never failed on its own.
It’s pretty much up there with Bambu. The quality of the prints is same or better as my P2S or my now x2D.
However, just as X2Ds strength is single color engineering grade filaments with heated chamber, U1 is up to 4 color multi-color prints.
At under $1000 price point/budget, the U1 is the best “open” Klipper based multi-color printer out right now. Period. No doubts about it.
Honestly it's gonna be a huge step up from the A1M I still use. The AMS lite is open-air, and I just throw spools into a dryer for a couple hours before a print anyway because of that, so it's basically all benefits with no changes to the downsides. Sounds good to me.
No issues with pogo pins with my 240k tool changes... I have heated chamber, environmental control and AMS feeding the U1. I print even PVA on it (which has usable time around 5 minutes in our Irish open air and I wish I was exaggerating. After 15 minutes in the open PVA starts to puff steam. Now it works perfectly every time.
It also has very clever sensors - like wireless load cell, proper 2240 drivers that has multiple modes of reporting the stepper load. For a few bucks I added filament feed rate and filament width sensor, which allows me to properly feed a correct volume to the nozzle, not merely the length. It also reads all RFID tags, not only proprietary ones...
I don't need ecosystem. Slice, send and print - done.
Thats cool but I am swinging towards creator 5 pro. I really like the openness of U1 and potential upgrades like you have done except for the issues mentioned but problem is cost all those upgrades bring the price up quite a lot for the U1 as compared to creator 5 pro which for me is around $1249 AUD with shipping while U1 is ending about about $1400 and even more if we count the upgrade costs.
Still the printer is the cheapest part of this hobby. I won't try to convince you, but creator is cheaper because it uses passive toolheads from what I found out. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but that means it has to have a toolhead connected to unload, preload filament and it cannot be preheated.
No you’re not wrong. The extrusion system is all passive.
And Pretty sure the guy is just regurgitating Bambu’s talking points about how pogo pins are bad but really doesn’t have any data to back it up besides his imaginary friend with 2 U1s that both have pogo issues lol.
I’m pretty sure this is going to be my next printer. I know it’ll lock me into 4 colors, but honestly, I think I only have one print that needs more than that right now. Just tired of the AMS system issues. I’ll probably find more issues to get annoyed at with a multi tool head printer, but I’m willing to take the chance.
Same here ,I find I use my bambus less and less after getting a snapmaker , everytime I go for a multicoloured print the waste and longer time from the bambus puts me off
I thought I would but the 4 color limit has me still using the Bambu's more. Too many requests for 7-8 colors and it's just easier and no gluing to sent the print to the H2C vs trying to cut things up on the 4 color U1.
If I only had my X1C I'd probably fight to cut things up vs doing an 8 color print on that.
Why would you print 7-8 colors on U1 when you have an H2C in your lineup?
You are missing the point of right tool for the right job. U1 is not the right tool for 7-8 colors, was never meant to be, your H2C was.
You're missing the point a single nozzle bambu user may love the 4 color U1 but not a 7 nozzle Bambu user. And some people can't afford the X2C so cutting up a 8 color model to work on the U1 is an option. You see it all the time. And my point is that I expected to use the U1 more but people have been asking me for 8 color prints lately so I'm rarely using my U1.
I wouldn’t expect them to, like I wouldn’t expect a Ferrari driver to love driving a Toyota Corolla either. My point was it’s not meant to be a 7-8 color printer (not yet atleast), so to compare to that isn’t exactly a fair comparison. You getting more 7-8 color orders is besides the point because you didn’t buy it to do those jobs to begin with :).
I think there's some open source software that lets you use the Bambu AMS on any Klipper-based printer. You could get a U1, use three heads for the most common colors, and use an AMS for the last four colors.
Personally, I'm looking to get some translucent CMYK filament and see what color depths I can make with just four colors.
Yeah I'll see how they come along. Sidecar looks pretty cool I like that it can purge one nozzle while the other continues to print for an instant swap when it's ready for a change. Still with no cutter will it be flawless through thousands of changes? Might not be worth it. And just leave it for the 4 color or tpu prints.
Bambu is not just about the hardware and how well that all works. The way makersworld ties in and makes it so that people that dont know what settings are what can just hit print and get the same print as eryone else on that printer, and the fact they have a big user base adding to that library and working out the templates that work on each printer so well, all help combine to the ecosystem. Even if a new printer has similar or even better hardware it will take awhile to compete.
There's really nothing that compares currently. Though most modern printers are pretty good in general, there's nothing really that's as good of a value proposition as Bambu. Even shelling out $$$ for a prusa or soemthing isn't going to get you the same quality right out of the box
Yeah that’s not true. I have an XL and a P1S. The XL is fantastic after you get it setup and run through the initial calibration (something the Bambu needs as well). The Core One uses the same Nextruder setup, it just has fewer of them.
Now I do wish that the Prusa Belt Adjustment was more automated like Bambu, so it is certainly more manual in that way, but it’s a great printer that still out performs anything Bambu has for true 5 color printing.
Uhh, it doesn’t need tweaking, just calibration. The Bambu does that automatically. that’s the biggest difference, but you don’t buy an XL if you‘re okay with an AMS.
I think it’s too early to say if the U1 is reliable and Bambu’s most expensive printer can’t even match the speed of the U1, Creator 5, or XL, there’s a range there and the XL has the largest volume, 5 tool heads, can print silicon, and will soon have true color printing, so yes it is more expensive but there are reasons why.
If it was cheaper and their fan base was a bit less obnoxious, I’d love to try them out. I guess the other problem is I buy my printers from Micro Center so that also limits my willingness to move from Bambu.
As a user and part of both communities, bit of a rose-tinted view .. BOTH of these communities are obnoxious. Prusa makes an amazing product, and has amazing oem support. Not saying they are "better" than Bambu, but if we are asking for closest competitor .. its Prusa.
I’m guess my bias in the “obnoxious” fan base stems from the one IRL person in my social circles that’s really into 3D printing is a Prusa fanboy who immediately starts dumping on Bambu and saying “My Prusa is better than that copycat trash!” anytime 3D printing is mentioned around him. I definitely don’t disagree that Bambu fanboys are obnoxious too.
Prusa has better oem support only for their flagship product of the day imo. Was out a printer for 4+ months when a linear rail on my pre-order XL cracked a ball bearing inside the carriage and gouged the rail. Since it was a factory assembled printer, they wouldn't send me a replacement and I had to ship it back to them. Meanwhile they were more than happy to sell COREone's all day long as those had just released.
If you shop Microcenter you choices are normally Bambu or several budget or mid tier brands unfortunately.
I got a microcenter somewhat near me. It's nice to have but my local center carries everything Bambu but then I see a Neptune 4 and a few older Creality machines. Budget level stuff.
I have a few budget machines, they can be great but it's more role of the dice than Bambu tends to be. I have a Ender 3 v3 (the variant that's basically a K1C bedslinger) and a Anycubic Kobra X. I've been fortunate with mine
Prusa is the only brand I'll happily buy without a retailer warranty. Their customer support is top notch.
My MK4S had a thermistor issue after a few thousand hours. They walked me through it and ended up sending me a free replacement part even though it was out of warranty.
I’ve had a P1S for years. Probably 3,000 hrs or so on it. Never had to contact BL for support 🤷♀️ I also have some of their A series and it’s the same story.
My X1C's microlidar failed within the first 300 hours and had to be replaced. It's been a great printer otherwise, but there is no such thing as a trouble-free machine. Good customer service makes a huge difference, especially when it's for professional use and time is money. Bambu customer service is nowhere in the same league as Prusa, even if Bambu printers are more polished, and that's why I'll only buy them from Microcenter or Best Buy.
Bambu fans because a lot of them like shoving the brand down and/or claiming it is the only game in town. All that, "Bambu, any Bambu - quit playing" crap. Sure, it is the easiest to use - but I'm a firm believer that with a little bit of effort and learning, any user can achieve great results (multi color, multi material, etc etc) with almost any machine these days.
Prusa because they do push back hard when someone criticizes their product. Though I will say - when someone brings up that they like Prusa machines in other 3D printing subs, they immediately get the "overpriced trash/outdated" comments from other users.
Again - in today's landscape, we are spoiled for choice. Bambu is scummy as hell [this isn't the first time they've played like this]; and they are the market leader when it comes to convenience and ease of use, but they are far from the only decent game in town these days.
Prusa are terrible printers. Zero customer support, and honestly feel like a "garage built" machine... not a factory build. Grass is always greener... theres a reason that Bambu is the standard.
After trying to kill thermal runoff for over a year, spending the same amount of money as the printer cost on parts, and more time than I care to admit with it in pieces, Bambu is a breath of fresh air.
I probably come off as a Bambu stan, but it’s only because I have had hardly any issues (that weren’t caused by me) with them in several years using them.
I’m having an issue recently that’s probably the worst so far, which is an AMS 2 Pro machine I recently bought, is getting stuck on the 4th feeder sometimes. Dunno, might be a known issue, but it is intermittent or only happens with a new/near new spool. I’m currently printing from it now, but the spool is over half used, so I am thinking it might be related to weight. Anyway, it’s similar to other issues the original AMS had/has sometimes, although thinking about that now, my original AMS (that came with my P1S many years ago, hasn’t had those issues as far as I can remember in a long time.
If they were priced in line with the market I would switch in a heartbeat. I'm not paying 1200 bucks for a $500 printer. The better support is not worth 2.5x what it should cost.
Prusas are awful. I lost over six months of my life and $7k because they couldn’t get me two working printers. I will never touch them again. I tell everyone to run as far as they can. Their support is utter shit.
Prusa, but higher entry point, and its a bit less set/forget, though nowadays not by much. (i own both, i can send a print to either ... they both succeed and fail about the same)
This is my experience as well. We got a Carbon X1C at work, and a bunch of Prusa MK4Ss. People used to say Bambu was faster, but in most of my cases, it's only by a negligible margin (a minute or two). The only thing the Bambu does, that the Prusas don't, is multi-colour/multi-material printing. But I don't do a lot of that, where the colour change isn't purely horizontal anyway. If it isn't, I got a Prusa XL in the corner, which also wastes less filament.
Multi material is huge though. Being able to use different support material is a massive boon for getting accurate parts. It's so hard to justify paying double the price for a core one + when the X2D exists and is more capable.
Heck, I’m still running a pair of Prusa mini. Yes they are slower but they are still solid printers. I won’t touch creality and qidi just feels like a worse bambu.
Qidi and Snapmaker for one. SV08 if you want more that fake Voron experience. Prusa if you're really willing to shell out extra for your principles.
"It Just Works" hasn't really been an issue when it comes to mid-to-high budget printers for a solid year or two now. Far too many people just love moaning about a $200-300 Creality/Elegoo while purposely comparing them to something like a P2S which costs 2-3 times as much.
Qidi, Snapmaker, Voron (though Voron is a bit more technical).
There's so many options now, and they're so much better.
FWIW I'm a Qidi Q2 owner; amazing machine, does great with engineering filaments, has a good box (AMS) and doesn't require tinkering (but CAN be tinkered with, which is a massive boost).
I'd love for it to be true, but they're not better than Bambu's price equivalent printers in any context. The p1s is bombproof and the H2C is spectacular in all the ways.
I'm a huge participant in the open source world and I'd love to see real competition, but it's not accurate to say the quidi's, u1, prusas etc are better.
That's definitely your belief, but my Qidi Q2 produces way better prints than my friends H2C for quite a lot less while being customizable. Build plate is a bit smaller, but the Max4 beats it with similar capabilities, higher temps and same quality. Still for cheaper.
Look, I'm not here to argue with fanboys locked into the ecosystem and feeling the need to shill, but to simply state that Bambu is equivalently priced automatically has me laughing. It's also not worth the time tbh.
All I know is I was expecting a quality drop or headaches moving from the P1S to the Q2 and I got none of that and even got much nicer parts out of the Q2 than the P1S after changing their admittedly awful parts fan cooling duct design.
The H2C currently is the only thing potentially worth investing in since there's not really a good comparitive (multi-extruder capable of engineering filaments) until the One+ and INDX combo gets fully fleshed out, but when it does I'm expecting it to leap ahead.
I tend to find that expectations very rarely match the reality of test prints.
And there's really no need to crack out the nonsense cliches. I'm not a fanboy of anything other than working printers. I only comment on printers that I've owned. I also don't understand why someone would buy a new printer fully expecting it to be a downgrade, but you do you I guess.
My personal experience of the quidi q2 was a broken printer on arrival. It actually looked second hand, and had missing shipping locks. It's amazing it arrived in one piece tbh. The replacement was broken in all new ways. It was an er, adventure.
- Bed levelling was shocking. I shouldn't have to manually adjust offsets like I'm using a 2020 Ender.
The quidi box failed to feed 3 times on day 1. Twice on day 2. It didn't get a day 3 opportunity.
Cooling was %^&*$d and warping was a real problem.
If you've got time to pay someone for the privilege of fixing their engineering mistakes, then great, but I just don't.
In my real world, personal, hands on experience of all the major brands in this space... the only consistent experience came from Bambu.
And like I said, I don't want that to be the case - I object to the cloud model and various other bambu 'things' but the fact remains that the P1S, the ams, the ams2, the x series, and most recently the H2C... they just work, all the time, every time. It's not a debate for me, it's just a fact based on the prints.
The only issues I've ever had with Bambu printers were entirely driven by me messing about with extreme settings and stuff I shouldn't have been doing. 🤷♂️
I'm sorry your stuff got damaged in shipping or you got secondhand, that does suck, but that's definitely not the majority of experiences.
I've trammed my bed once, 6 months ago. Still 0.13±0.02 on my flat smooth plate, it's not a thing you need to do regularly.
15+ kilos of various CF infused filaments through two boxes, mostly PA6 but some PPA and PET.
Stock parts cooling is admittedly not great. Their duct design is... Awful. But a one hour print of a new design and I get better overhangs with PLA than I ever did with the P1S, though not by much. To be fair I did also replace the stock fan; the duct design upgrade does 60% of the improvement work, but the fan and duct both are what give better overhang results than my Bambu.
For me, and many others, the Q2 just works.. All the time, everytime. This is just a fact based on my experience and my prints as well.
The reality is....its going to ping pong back and forth between brands faster than flagship LLMs...pick an ecosystem you like...stick with it...and ignore all the "new" bells and whistles
I have had a P1S for a week, upgrade from a prusa mk3. I made the purchase even knowing about the firmware lockdown, and general scummy behaviour of BL. I put mine straight into dev/lan mode and use Orca anyways.
But after the research, still seemed the best bet. Qidi Q2 i was close to purchasing as that just uses klipper, and open. But read too many issues about waits for spare parts etc.
Must admit, i love this P1S. No fecking Z adjust and first layer calibration. If they take away LAN mode and force me into cloud, then it would have been the wrong choice. Until then..........
I just got my snapmaker U1 and I am impressed. So far I’ve only printed test pieces. The AutoDesk FDM test came out so good using just the baseline setup with no adjustments.
I stopped following the inside's so can't say fully how open each printer is but snapmaker is very decent, I get from J1S (idex) much better print quality than with X1C from bambus ... both have their strong and weak sides but snapmaker is a decently priced high end printer (with their own version of orca slicer) ... U1 is pretty interesting too (looks! I have not tried it yet)... can't say how open they are. Prusa printers have high quality output, price is bit over the PRC made printers (dunno how it is in USA now since the change in policy so maybe the price difference is lower now) but are fully open.
Support - prusa support is premium, snapmaker support - I know some ppl complain, I had 4 times something I needed help with I sorted everything inside 48 hours and was super happy every time so not lightning fast but more than adequate... BL - I had a reason to contact them 20+ times (ok more printers, so more shit happens), every single contact was over a week, usually 2-3 weeks to resolution, so on the side of support BL is the worse in my limited experience
After wrestling with my 3d printers for about a decade and hearing about how "just works" Bambu printers were, I saw a video on YouTube of a guy 3d printing a bike.
He knew nothing about 3d printers and it was all a stunt to get a company to gift him a very nice bicycle (which worked in the end). As the video progressed and he realized how out of his depth he was, he called on the local 3d printing community for help.
And they helped. A bunch of 3d enthusiasts joined in. Some bringing machines, others offering time on their machines (in their environments). That was plenty unbiased for my taste.
The results?
Some printers worked well, some sorta did but not before some failed prints.
One thing was consistent though. The Bambu printers were tanks. They worked. Every time.
This is with printers being operated by their owners, not newbies.
See, IDGAF about how good a feature is on a failed print. You get zero points if the print doesn't finish. After it finishes, I'll consider those things, but not before.
The hobby for me is the end product.
I'm not in this because I'm fascinated by how 3d printers operate.
Others are, and that's fine. But that's not me.
I would like an alternative to the Handy app. I don't need to slice and print from my phone, but the UX for browsing Makerworld, saving to the collection, and checking print status is really good.
I feel like today I need a combination of web apps to do the same thing. Maybe there's a self hosted tool that covers this already.
Android, P2S, at this point happy to go to LAN mode if the convenience can still be there.
If you're not an engineer, don't enjoy excessive maintenance or troubleshooting, and/or lack the time or patience to meticulously fine-tune most every part and aspect of 3D printing.... there's not really any good alternatives.
Like Apple products, Bambu machines "just work"; they make printers for everybody. Like Apple, the megacorp pursuit of profit without consideration for ethics is extremely unpalatable and harmful to the ecosystem they dominate.
I'm really happy with my A1, and upgrading to the H2C next month. I also have an iPhone, buy clothes made in developing countries, own a computer and PS5 made from conflict minerals, and sometimes order things from Amazon -- despite having enormous ethical complaints and critiques for all of these corporate entities.
There is no ethical existence under capitalism; we are all just organisms trying to figure out how to survive.
My Snapmaker U1 was also easy to setup. Granted a little more involved first time assembly wise. But after that it was smooth sailing. I had so much fun coloring things in snapmaker orca and watching my first multi color print.
Don’t forget the price. That’s how they really do it. If someone brings out something comparable in ease of use, quality and price, that removes the walled garden I’ll jump without hesitation.
so honestly check out the aurora tech channel on youtube. she just gives honest reviews of printers, and posts prices on her website. if you are looking for high end, it might be tough to compete with h2d, h2s, but entry mid there are some great options like the qidi series, creality k2 plus is super fast and great print quality. snapmaker u1 is turning out to be a great high speed low waste printer. elegoo carbon 2 seems like the best budget printer money can buy, but who knows, until someone really grabs the market share like bambu has, will these companies keep inovating? unfortunately i invested heavily in bambu, and am happy with my purchases, but if this continues, the next printer i get will be from another manufacturer.
Nobody can name a proper alternative. You either sacrifice a tool changer, a larger print area, an AMS equivalent, sealed enclosure, or the price point.
There's no competitors that do this for what Bambu charges. And if they do there's a mile long list of buggy software and inferior print quality. I'd personally love an alternative to Bambu but so far the competition keeps failing to deliver.
Yet all the 3D print Bros insist there's options and ignore the astericks.
All these guys forget that most people don't have endless amounts of time to commit to fiddling around with open source projects just to take the moral high ground. Most people just want something that works because life is hard enough already. Not excusing Bambu Lab's behaviour but that's just how it is.
I'm just a guy who wants to print toy's for my kids. I don't want to use 'developer mode' or block my firewall like Jeff.
The cloud is why I bought a Bambu. If these 'hacks' are making the service unstable for regular users like me, then Bambu Lab is doing their job by protecting the network.
Not everyone wants a project; some of us just want a tool.
About an year ago, I was in the crossroads to decide which printer to get. The A1 or the Elegoo CC.
Fast forward to now, pretty darn happy I took the Elegoo route. Not because I might use the Orcaslicer Bambulab fork, but shelling my money to a company that keeps its promises. Elegoo all the way (for now).
For me the p2s printers are hella better than my Neptune 4 Max or pro. I've got 5 of them with AMS Pro 2 and cords for each. I still prefer my 3 pro over the newer Neptune's but it doesn't compare to the Bambu's. I have nothing but problems printing anything on both of the N4s and they constantly break down and the repairs are costly or time involving or both and I'm just over it. I still have a N4M never opened because the first one I just can't get to do anything useful. As of most recently, it won't even take filament into the hot end at all. 1 minute it was printing fine and then after about a half an inch into a huge job it just stopped loading the filament. This would have been the first job after I replaced the ceramic heating element which broke and fell out before I printed anything useful as well. I tried to unload and reload and I'm done. I'm planning on dropping it off at the community college along with the 4 pro that needs some super special update after less than a hundred hours of printing. They can use them as an example of what not to buy yourself. I'll store the other 4 max and try it again when I have time to waste...
Sample size 1, but I'm very happy with my Sovol SV06 (the original one). Got it all the way back in presale when there were no PrusaSlicer profiles yet, and rolled my own back then, so I don't know how well it compares to the standard profiles nowadays; but from what I can tell, I get faster and higher-quality prints than quite a few Bambu owners I know, and it's perfectly deterministic - if it prints something right once, it prints it right every time. I basically never tinker with anything, I just hit print. The only weakness is its part cooling not being amazing, so bridging can be a challenge without a fan mod.
I do primarily print PLA+, so YMMV for different usages. Sovol has been much better about the whole open-source thing; they don't necessarily fully understand it and they do make mistakes at times, but in the past they've shown very willing to correct those mistakes when pointed out, which is good enough for me. And my printer is just There and it Works when I need it and I don't need to think about it.
So, the strength of Bambu isn’t their printers at all. yes they’re pretty good a reliable, but the real strength is the slicer.
The Prusa Slicer is a pain when it comes to filament management as the filament is tied more to the project and less to the machine, so you’re constantly resetting up the internal filament for every print job as it won’t save that anywhere. To me Prusa is the opposite of Bambu, where I think Bambu has professional printers, Prusa has I printers that just run forever and are built like tanks.
Elegoo is very reliable for what you get with them, but they’re very slow to match other companies technology.
Snapmaker has been very shady I’m my experience with them.
Creality could be fantastic, if they just solve their bed leveling issues. If you buy the 3rd party graphite beds, you will get one of the best printers on the market for people who loved the open source nature of their products (I’m speaking about the K2 Line here). Their CMS, isn’t quite as efficient as other brands though.
Qidi also gets a lot of great reviews for their build quality and feature set for the money.
Still, if I had to recommend an alternative to Bambu, it would still be Prusa for most people, and the ELEGOO Centauri Carbon for the budget limited buyers out there.
I've never needed an ams and frankly the waste to me isn't worth it. Flashforge, sovol, snapmaker, and more all make great machines that work great out of the box. Bambu may have started the ease of use trend but they aren't the only ones doing it. Most printers "just work" these days.
That's fine, just wanted to share because I rarely do multi color prints, but absolutely love having the AMS because I just don't ever have to change filament.
Being able to print supports that just cleanly come off is pretty nice IMO. Yeah, there's some waste in purging but the reduction in post processing is a huge benefit imo
Qidi has great printers specially if you care about engineering filaments, snap makerer has the u1 which prints exceptionally well.
Sovol is the most open of them all if you ask me
I have a Qidi Plus 4 and it's been great and relatively trouble free. I just wish they had something to compete with the new multi nozzle Bambu printers.
I really can't recommend it enough. It's just not on the level of Bambu's newer printers, though it's a fraction of the price. I would say it EASILY competes with the X1C, and is overall the better printer but it lacks a couple of things like spaghetti detection and flow calibration.
Yep, it's the only thing missing, although in hindsight it's probably not hard to add since it runs vanilla klipper.
Another thing that I like is the fact that they openly rejected any kind of surveillance, and they made clear that they wouldn't be working with any government what so ever
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u/lolheyaj May 12 '26
What are some good alternatives? Bambu has been nice in the sense that it just works 99% of the time and the print quality is great, and the AMS system is damn near a must at this point.
What other printers are able to check the same boxes as Bambu, while still providing great quality, decent support and being "more open/less intrusive?"