TL;DR: Very happy with my purchase, impressed so far. Will update when the print finishes.
I was using and Ender 3 v3 KE before and I see now the difference, and understand people saying if you just want plug n play - go Bambu.
I can’t speak to the print quality yet, (although the progress looks good) but the smarts built into this thing are really impressive. First setup it goes through a 15minute calibration mode - it checks and compensates for its location by performing speed travel changes and vibration testing to adjust its settings - the aim being to minimise the effects of its travel and bed direction changes based on what its sitting on.
It even has a little wiper blade thing (that’s actually very aggressive) which catches and removes extrusion waste during heating and filament changes etc. I suspect I’ll be buying an AMS for it when the sales come around. The filament changes seem like they might be a bit more time consuming than the ender, it took a lot of “retries” telling it to feed more filament in, for the filament to reach extrusion. The ender doesn’t have a PTFE feed tube so I am accustomed to just forcing more filament through the print head manually - which is the source of my impatience but that is trivial at most. Once the extrusion was working - it then did a flow calibration on its own. Checking temps and extrusion force I presume. One more thing built in that you don’t have to think about
I didn’t realise it came with a lil camera built in. I wasn’t too fussed but it’s a nice touch.
The machine beep sound is obnoxious so i turned that off straight away, but handy for getting attention over a noisy workshop I can imagine.
I was a bit dubious about moving away from Orca as I had become familiar with the settings etc, but this UI is almost the same and seems as intuitive as the rest. Haven’t tried any significant modifications to the model in Bambu but it looks like it’s going to be just about the same.
Overall I’m blown away by the polish and functionality it offers, and the ease I’ve had setting it up. Bambu Product Managers must be good at their jobs and if they’re not experienced enthusiasts, they must actually go out and speak to a lot of their customers as this is a great product.
Appreciate everyone who’s posted before me, and shared their thoughts on printers when others have asked for advice - reading through that content has led me to this purchase which I’m very pleased with already.
Happy printing team!
Not trying to start another flame war, but I was just talking with someone who runs a small print farm and had a similar misconception about Creality setup. Contrary to what people often think, Creality printers are plug-and-play these days too. Nothing against Bambu (at least on that front ^^), but they’re way more pushed by influencers, which makes it seem like Creality hasn’t evolved. Honestly, both are very close in terms of hardware, performance, and ease of use.
Enjoy your new printer!
Hey friend! I was genuinely surprised when there was a seemingly prevailing preference between the two stables. I had never used 3D printers before and I was blown away by how easy the ender was to use. No shade at all.
I was really gobsmacked to experience the marked increase in built in “nice to have”/“QA features that I hadn’t experienced the first time round. I had no reason to upgrade from the ender based on my experience. It was no longer available to me and I had to buy my own and as a result of said research - the A1 has really impressed me.
Horses for courses. If I hadn’t now used the A1, I’d have no reason to be discontent.
I’m sure another model will come along at some point that makes me want to jump up another level.
In all honesty, the ender was great, made sense, I was learning it and it did what I expected and wanted… the difference is I’ve learned there is more available.
No complaints about the ender at all - I just realised, through a transition that wasn’t by choice, that there was something (on initial impression) that outclasses it.
If I hadn’t lost the ender, I may never have looked at something else.
3D printing is one of those rabbit holes where you never stop learning, and that usually means upgrading or switching machines at some point :) People buy what makes sense for their needs, their values, and their budget. It’s definitely night and day between an old Ender 3 and newer printers from any brand. I want to make it clear again before someone doesn’t read the entire post and turns it into a sterile debate: I’m not saying one brand is better than another, but I think it’s fair to push back on misconceptions (“people saying if you just want plug n play - go Bambu”) - especially when influencers are paid to promote products. Feature-wise and setup-wise, comparable models from both manufacturers are extremely close.
I’m genuinely glad you’ve found your new toy :) Have a lot of fun with it ! Make sure to follow some very good advice posted by others in here Re: upgrades and filaments.
Oh you sweet summer child. I understand how great it looks compared to your old Ender.
Bambu, Pretty good hardware Less than good software/firmware Dubious business practices.
My recommendations are to ditch Studio and Handi app that runs on your phone. Switch to to Orca Slicer. And run all the calibrations in Orca. Run LAN mode and if your firmware is stable, don’t upgrade it unless you really need to. Don’t buy Bambu filaments. The RFID tags ain’t worth $5 to $10 more per kilo. They are made by Sunlu and eSun. Buy those direct for less money. A standalone AMS never goes on sale. And they cost nearly as much as your printer did.
Oh crikey - I def didn’t drink the flavor-aid. I bought the printer, I’m using it stock with BS to start with and so far it seems acceptable to me. I loved orca and am very willing to make environment changes the moment this setup doesn’t meet my needs. I’m just pleasantly surprised that it’s not the all-but-guaranteed shit show the transition was made out to be.
For a philistine member of the proletariat like me - just wanting to fix shit that’s broken or bust out practical shit - it fits the bill for me. It’s not a McLaren, I bought the Hyundai.
Same page with local LAN mode and non-Bambu filaments. I want the outcome not the process.
As a knuckle dragging Philistine also, I own one too, so I speak from personal experience. I like mine as a printer that currently works well also.
But, forewarned is forearmed as they say.
But they are locking down on their ecosystem. After blocking third-party hardware (like Panda Touch displays) and third-party software (like OrcaSlicer if you don’t have the LAN only “Developer Mode” hidden deep in the settings), what is stopping them from going further? What if they go do an HP and make it so that non-Bambu filaments don’t work oj Bambu printers with just a firmware update?? They already have the RFID tags in place so it’s quite literally just a software switch they could do. Or what if they blocked third-party replacement parts, like how Apple did once they became a market leader?
I am speaking as a person who owns a Bambu A1 myself. It prints okay, but I do not like the locking down of the ecosystem and have currently set my printer to LAN only mode on the v4.0.0.0 firmware to continue using OrcaSlicer. I personally wouldn’t recommend a Bambu anymore (see Sovol’s SV line, Prusa’s high-quality offerings, Qidi Q1 Pro, Creality’s lineup that even has their own version of AMS, and now even Elegoo with their Centauri Carbon), but if it’s what you got, I would recommend setting it to LAN only mode to be able to continue using third-party slicers (like OrcaSlicer) and to stop additional Bambu firmware updates from possibly blocking even more functionality for profits.
You can use orca with your bambu.
I had a handful of cases, where the bambu slicer couldn’t do what needed to be done for my model and orca had some extra setting/feature for that. So I permanently switched to orca.
Thanks! I understand that by introducing the AMS (which I may like to do) I take the hardware’s necessary firmware to a point of excluding Orca. On a stock standard print with a few basic edits I was pleasantly surprised by Bambu. If the use case arises I’ll downgrade the firmware and run orca but for my current purposes I think this lego-style ui will fit most of my use-cases.
I have an AMS with stock firmware. Seems to just work for me
I’d recommend setting your printer into LAN only mode and continue using OrcaSlicer
What is the licence for the Bambu network driver? It’s not FOSS so it cannot be under the gnu licence
