Looking to get another printer that shall be printfarm compatible. What do I mean?
- reliable
- easy to service
- excellent replacement part availability
- affordable
- affordable replacement parts
- AMS (switching spools once it runs out & multi-color within a flat layer [not vertical/between layers])
Normally I would just buy another A1 mini (180€ without AMS) or P1S (650€ with AMS) but with recent issues with the printer & support quality & them banking hard on proprietary with Support staff who don’t know what their error messages mean make me question if those are still the best option or if some other company meanwhile took the crown.
other spec:
- approx. 256x256mm
- exclusively used with PETG-filament
- enclosed (keeping dust out)
- network connected. ideally with a web service to use it remotely
- in stock (this sadly disqualifies the Elegoo Centauri Carbon which seems to be the goto at the moment).
Bad comparison: It is like a car delivered with a without a tachometer scale but the manufacturer includes a pen and guide on how to open the dashboard. You have to draw your own scale to get it going.
Just look at the slicer: With Bambu there is a working profile for different presets, different nozzle sizes and different filaments. Everything is already done for you.
Bought the P1S combo (AMS 1) for 636€. Anycubic S1 combo is 549€ (Germany).
Regular pricing on the P1 combo is 800€ which is noticeably more than the 549€ for the S1.
I couldn’t care less. Drying is done in an oven. From there on it is stored in a dry environment. No need to dry it on the printer. I also didn’t buy the AMS 2. While all the improvements are nice they aren’t 150€ price premium worth of nice on top of the already 200€ AMS 1 price.
If you want to go after Bambu:
3-month warranty for the entire AMS or microSD card. That’s crazy considering that the AMS 2 has an asking price of 350€.
Another example Bambu could improve: Bambu charges shipping for the printer AND separately for the accessories. Meanwhile, their official distributor offers free shipping on both paired with 2% discount. No idea what their business plan/reasoning is but the result is that there is now the middleman distributor taking their cut instead of all the money going to Bambu. To make this even sweeter there is better consumer rights since those distributors are established German companies likely honing European consumer rights meaning the SD-card has more than 3 months of warranty (spoiler: Just buying a new SD-card is cheaper than digging up the invoice, writing the message, following up and so on due to labor cost but you hopefully get the point).
The Anycubic has presets for .4 and .6 in brass or hardened steel. It’s only missing .2.
You can’t claim the S1 is incomplete for not having a .2 nozzle presets and then turn around and say that a built in filament dryer doesn’t matter when Bambu made it a pro feature. Especially when .4 is what you get out of the box from Bambu and .2 requires modifying your printer by swapping the hot end.
Where? I see 800€ everywhere.
And where I “go after” Bambu is what you didn’t mention: locked down firmware and no alternative slicer.
https://www.3dmensionals.de/bambu-lab-p1s-3d-drucker-combo-3d-drucker-inkl-ams-3092?search=p1s+combo&order=website_sequence+asc
A typical project printer would be a RatRig, Voron: Open source, you tinker with it, modify it, try new stuff on it and so on.
A workhorse is: take my money and shut up. They work out of the box and you don’t have to touch anything, making the proprietary firmware an none issue.
For the slicer? Again. It works. Also, you can use Orcaslicer or PrusaSlicer on BambuLab machines if you like. Business and hobbies are pretty different.
If Bambu goes downhill 2 years from now, who cares? Sucks but by than the printer will already have paid for themself and assuming you run them at 70% utalization they will likley be close to reaching the end of their lifespan (12’000 hours after 2 years). Printfarm/production ticks differently.
Wow! That’s a fantastic price!
It doesn’t have to be one or the other! It can and does work out of the box without being a proprietary ecosystem. It’s not just Anycubic. You can use a Prusa, Flashforge, Qidi, etc as a workhorse without a proprietary ecosystem.
It just doesn’t matter at all for this use case. While personal preference does play a role, at the end of the day it’s numbers that dictate feasibility:
For cost, just run with these numbers for your spreadsheet and see for yourself the difference it makes on production cost/parts cost:
Let’s take a look at the P1S combo: 650€, approx. 15-minute setup time.
Prusa Core One + AMS + camera: 1780€. Time? Don’t know, maybe 3 hours or so and who knows how much for additional material to get the MMU into a functional package like the AMS. With labour cost and everything else, I would estimate 2000€ for the Core one “combo”.
Qidi?
previous gen: exposed mains voltage on the chamber heater => can’t deploy that (also QIDI not recognizing this as a safety hazard, refusing to fix it)
current gen: SSR catches fire => can’t deploy that either
Potential next gen? Bad track record. Wait and see.
Prusa? launching half backed product at a premium that might be fixed after release. Once fixed, they are still too expensive to be the most economical solution.
XL => pathetic. Countless design fails and that’s after significant delays
MK4 => swiftly fixed with the MK4s
AMS => DIY solution at a crazy price. Like no nice box, not entirely sure if they have a first-party filament buffer or that is also another DIY part. Has been like this for years.
Flashforge?
Flashforge 5M pro and the AD5X was on my short list. In the end the 5m pro has no AMS and the AD5X is missing the enclosure.