3D Printing Review - Bambu Lab X1 Carbon 3d printer

[cwbullet]

from the comments, the switching reels when one is empty does not work

I usually do the same.

 

[Joshua Smith]

I have had some security concerns. I have noticed a few communications from the Bambu being blocked by my PiHole. I am not sure how much that might be tied to a few of the issues I might be having.

In *theory* your pihole is only blocking ad & tracking sites, depending on ur exact config. Chances are, their web interface has some stuff embedded that comes from sites that PiHole considers grey due to tracking. Many sites embed some Google code for page statistics etc. Hard to say w/o seeing the domains/urls that got blocked

 

[Joshua Smith]

In *theory* your pihole is only blocking ad & tracking sites, depending on ur exact config. Chances are, their web interface has some stuff embedded that comes from sites that PiHole considers grey due to tracking. Many sites embed some Google code for page statistics etc. Hard to say w/o seeing the domains/urls that got blocked

You can see a lot of interesting info by opening the "developer tools" in ur browser (not really doable on a phone tho). For most browsers, it can be opened with CMD-Opt-i (i for inspect) or CTL-ALT-i. On Safari and Chromium based browsers (most browsers except Firefox and Safari), the "sources" tab would show you from where various elements are retrieved and the "console" would show in red anything it failed to load. I think Firefox is also like this, but haven't looked recently.

 

[Joshua Smith]

Niiiiice. I was going to pipe it all through Charles to look at the traffic, but I haven't gotten that far yet. I'd love to hear what you find (you know, when you get one!).

I need a new research project, so this could be it I wonder if my boss would let me expense one?

 

[alexzogh]

from the comments, the switching reels when one is empty does not work

Works perfectly for me. Has to be enabled in the ama options AND the filaments have to be labeled exactly the same in the AMS. Most complaints in saw were missing one or the other

 

[alexzogh]

tl;dr: I bought a P1P, then bought a second one.

All my printers until now have been Prusas or Prusa clones. I haven't built a Voron or other CoreXY, so I've only been a bedslinger. I ordered a P1P a couple weeks ago & have been printing with it for about a week. I printed the included Benchy gcode in PLA, but everything else has been in PETG. It took a few test prints to tweak things (slow it down & adjust retraction settings mostly), but I have PETG printing great now on it. It's loads faster than any of my other printers - roughly 2.5-3x as fast as my Prusa Mini printing PETG.

My biggest concerns with Bambu was what it does on my network. It doesn't have a USB port (like every other printer ever!?), so wifi is all you get to talk to it. There was one guy who posted about problems they have with network security, but I couldn't find anyone who did a deep dive into what their network traffic looked like. I'm that weirdo super paranoid IT security nerd in the room - I basically don't trust anything. Before I ordered, I asked around & found out I could completely isolate it on a guest network and things would still work through their Bambu Studio slicer & iOS app. Loading files directly to the included microSD card also works. So, I pulled the trigger (and canceled my Prusa XL order).

This was about the same time we decided to start a little 3d printing Etsy biz to teach the kids about designing/making/selling stuff. That demanded quite a bit more printer time than we estimated. My Prusa Mini & Prusa clone were going 24/7 and both had small things break on them that took them offline. Thankfully the P1P showed up & didn't take long to get going.

It's only been about a week, but the P1P has been great. It's been printing non-stop. The only failed print was when I had a tangled spool of filament. It's been so great that I ordered a second one.

As best I've figured, the P1P and X1-Carbon aren't terribly different. The P1P doesn't have the camera, aux cooling fan, LEDs, enclosure or LIDAR. That said, the current deal is they include a camera, fan & LEDs as an early bird gift. I haven't used a printer with an integrated LIDAR, so I don't miss that. It did take about 3 test print iterations to be happy with PETG, but PLA printed perfectly out of the box. I don't care to print ABS, so I don't miss the enclosure. I haven't bothered to add any of the "free gift" accessories yet.

For now, I'm printing stuff straight from the SD card & not using Studio or the iOS app to control the printer or send jobs to it. That SD card shuffling is slightly painful, but not a giant deal. I have tried Bambu Studio & it works mostly fine to send jobs to the printer with the guest network setup I'm using - although our home internet is horrible (yay for rural internet), so the "through the cloud" connection to the printer isn't always perfect. I do wish it had a USB port that I could just use OctoPrint to control the thing. For those less securitycrazy than me, it sounds like the direct wifi connection works really well.

I would love to compare this to a 250x250 Voron 2.4. For my use cases though, the P1P seems like a big win.

All that said, the core team from Bambu are previous DJI folks. My expectation is that they're aiming to conquer the 3d printing industry like DJI did to the multirotor/drone industry. My further expectation is that they have backing from their government to pursue that goal, just like DJI. So, buying their stuff probably makes me an evil guy helping someone take over the world. Dangit.

Do you have it set up for local lan only? Once I enabled this, the traffic through my pfsense almost went to zero. Almost.... Still seems to check the mothership periodically, and you loose a lot of functionality.

I have no idea why you would loose camera functionality when severing the cloud capabilities. This is either lazyness or intentional - ie they want data from the printer and will make you suffer if you opt out

These are ex DJI executives, where the same attitude toward.forced connectivity existed. The good news with DJI is they at least moved the cloud requirements into regional cloud providers to appease US and European law makers.

 

[GrouchoDuke]

Do you have it set up for local lan only? Once I enabled this, the traffic through my pfsense almost went to zero. Almost.... Still seems to check the mothership periodically, and you loose a lot of functionality.

I have no idea why you would loose camera functionality when severing the cloud capabilities. This is either lazyness or intentional - ie they want data from the printer and will make you suffer if you opt out

These are ex DJI executives, where the same attitude toward.forced connectivity existed. The good news with DJI is they at least moved the cloud requirements into regional cloud providers to appease US and European law makers.

It definitely feels like they want you fully in their world. It's great that people called them on their improper license use of Slic3r/PrusaSlicer & made them release their source code. I plan to try out the SoftFever fork of BambuStudio fairly soon. Honestly, my first question when I started looking at the P1P was "can I put Klipper on it?"

I'm not using local lan mode. Since I have it on a guest network that's set up to only allow devices to see the internet, but not anything locally My only non-sneaker-net access to the printer is through BambuStudio through their cloud server. I can't see the printer directly from any of my devices & it can't see anything except the outside world. Since I'm mostly printing the same few products with it, I loaded those files on the SD card & just print straight from it using the printer's LCD screen to start jobs.

All that said, my first P1P is printing really well. It's been going nearly 24/7 since I got it a couple weeks ago. It's been really solid.

 

[ozzy76]

I have two X1 Carbons. They are awesome printers. I mostly print ASA-CF and they print great. The Bambu slicer profiles produce fantastic quality prints at incredible speed. If the printers cost $4k each I would say they are still worth every penny. However after reading some of these instructions I would much prefer to use S3D. I know it is a big ask but it would be awesome if S3D supported the Bambu X1 Carbon printers and their advanced features.

Bambu Lab X1-Carbon does a lot of techno stuff like the bed levelling and the vibration checks that take a long time. First layer check… seems to take forever. Do we need this? Want this? On all my printers (and I have big ones) I level the bed once and then I print for weeks on end without bed mesh or bed-level stuff and I get beautiful first layers.

 

[alexzogh]

I have two X1 Carbons. They are awesome printers. I mostly print ASA-CF and they print great. The Bambu slicer profiles produce fantastic quality prints at incredible speed. If the printers cost $4k each I would say they are still worth every penny. However after reading some of these instructions I would much prefer to use S3D. I know it is a big ask but it would be awesome if S3D supported the Bambu X1 Carbon printers and their advanced features.

Bambu Lab X1-Carbon does a lot of techno stuff like the bed levelling and the vibration checks that take a long time. First layer check… seems to take forever. Do we need this? Want this? On all my printers (and I have big ones) I level the bed once and then I print for weeks on end without bed mesh or bed-level stuff and I get beautiful first layers.

I have been successful at getting S3D gcode to print on the X1C, but you are correct - you lose functionality. I'm happy to upload my profile if you would like. There are a few things S3D does that have never been in prusaslicer or cura that keeps me coming back like the ability to change parameter based upon Z height.

You can turn off most of the initial checks the X1C does (flow control, bed leveling, first layer inspection, timelapse etc...) its under print options. For short prints, I always keep it off.

 

[rAUM]

I've owned a LOT of 3d printers over the years.

This is the first time I'm "reviewing" a printer. I'm reviewing it because it is so different, and after a couple of weeks of testing, contains a number of new capabilities that we are likely to see in the next few generations of printers.

I backed this on Kickstarter; you can see the original Kickstarter here:

I own a few multi-headed 3d printers which can print with two different filaments in a single print. I also own a mosaic palette which allows 4 color printing from a single nozzle. I found both processes had severe limitations (prime tower, inexact filament placement, etc...) and gave up on multi-color, or multi-material printing in a single object a while ago.

So, this printer intrigued me. Instead of multi-color or multi-material being additional nozzles or an addon, it's integrated into the machine, albeit as a separate unit. No calibration is required. No prime tower is required, and up to 16 separate spools (color or material) can be used in a single print.

Actually, the entire printer comes ready to print - after taking out all of the shipping pieces.

I decided to take the claims at face value. I downloaded a color STL from thingiverse (mushroom birdfeeder - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3489758)

loaded into the slicer, defined the 'colors', and hit print. I didn't calibrate the machine, no bed leveling, no test print, no extrusion optimization. I came back in about an hour to what might be the cleanest first print I've ever had, with almost perfect placement of the two different filament colors

View attachment 542648

To say I was impressed is an understament. I'm used to getting this clean of a print after a minimum of 3 or 4 test prints. Did you catch that this only took an hour to print? The printer has a number of tricks up its sleeve to speed up the printing. First, and most important, its DEFAULT speed, which is 250 mm/s, or about 5x that of a traditional hobbyist 3d printer. It's capable of going up to 500 mm/s, but I you will see a degredation in quality. Next, instead of using a prime tower, or other traditional method of changing filaments, it creates a little ooze pile (which I call a poop), and when the AI camera see's the proper color has changed, it purges the little poop out the back of the printer, cleans the nozzle and starts printing again - FAST. All of those little poops add up to wasted filament, and a mess on your floor, but it has drastically increased the speed and accuracy.

View attachment 542658

the pile of "poop" from creating the mushroom bird feeder.


The last few tricks are probably the most important. It uses multiple sensors (lidar, camera, force sensors, IMU) to optimize the print while it's printing.

Starts with a flow optimization line, which helps it determine the right 'flow' for the filament, which is often the cause of many problems (over extrusion, under extrusion, etc...). It then uses the lidar to ensure it's perfectly level against the bed at all times. The Lidar and some software trickery is also used to make a qualitative assessment about the first layer, and will make adjustments as necessary. The camera takes timelapse videos, and watchs for other common problems like spaghetti which will pause the print and send you a notification.

It also has the 'best' of most other printers including a heated enclosed chamber, all metal hotend (X1 carbon edition anyway) carbon filter, integrated wifi / app / monitoring, etc...

Here are a few time-lapses of multicolor prints. I've been making a next-generation 2x mars lander.



its so fast, you almost miss it.

Here is a little longer print



I have to admit, its kind of nice having a rocket come out of the printer already colored properly and ready to go.

View attachment 542664

All the color you see in the lander is filament. No paint, no vinyl, nothing.


The downside?

There are a few.

If you are going to go multi-filament, you need to use decent filament. I've become accustomed to purchasing very, very cheap filament (like https://fremover.net/ which can be had for less than $10 per kg). If the spool is cheap, or the filament dimensions are not consistent, it might have a problem loading. I've found I've had to use Amazon "overture" or better filament to get good results.

There are certain instances when a particular multi-color part can make printing times explode. When I first modified the body of the lander (adding the Spacex logo, Nasa logo, etc...) if you have multiple color changes on every layer, and you are doing fine layers (below .2) your print times will be very long, even with the tricks this printer can do. Since it can handle most 'issues' that would ruin a print, the long print times are fine since it's on autopilot, except for the fact you can't print anything else until it's done.

The software which comes with the printer is still a work in progress. The slicer is based on Cura, with a few customizations to be able to add color to a print. Will also let you monitor the print, etc... I spend a lot of time with Cura, and they are a bit behind.

I've been successful in sending gcode created by both Cura and simplify3d to the printer directly, albeit single, and not taking advantage of some of the features of the printer like 'smooth timelapse' which parks the head before each photo as seen in the video's above.

The flow optimization routines are on a per-print basis, not a per-spool basis. So if you have 4 different spools of filament that are from different manufacturers, you might see typical flow issues because each spool won't be optimized on its own.

The print bed is small. Of course, that's coming from someone that owns 3d printers that can print a whole car at once. Still, it's small


Bottom line - I'm really happy I have the printer. It's the only "send to the printer and forget it until it's done" I've ever had that actually works. At its retail price, it's expensive. Not crazy expensive, but 'brand name' expensive. You have to really appreciate the features of the printer.

"The print bed is small. Of course, that's coming from someone that owns 3d printers that can print a whole car at once." Which one do you mean, I am interested in printing bigger things. So far my biggest is 35x35x40(cm).

 

[cwbullet]

After nearly months of print, the P1P and X1 are good printers. I will buy 1-2 AMS units. I am very happy with the purchase now. I will still be glad to own a XL from Prusa and will continue to use my Anycubic Predator and Chiron. They each have their strengths and uses.

 

[Joshua Smith]

After nearly months of print, the P1P and X1 are good printers. I will buy 1-2 AMS units. I am very happy with the purchase now. I will still be glad to own a XL from Prusa and will continue to use my Anycubic Predator and Chiron. They each have their strengths and uses.

Dang Chuck, retirement is treating you well

 

[cwbullet]

Dang Chuck, retirement is treating you well

Yes. I not have 3 resin printers, a CNC, 15 filament printers, and one Prusa XL coming soon. I have them running nearly 24-7.

 

[Joshua Smith]

Yes. I not have 3 resin printers, a CNC, 15 filament printers, and one Prusa XL coming soon. I have them running nearly 24-7.

Holy shnikies! What r they usually printing?

 

[cwbullet]

Holy shnikies! What r they usually printing?

I print a few kits for a local club members and just about anything some one want. I often do it for a nominal fee for the experience and to pay for the printer.

 

[alexzogh]

"The print bed is small. Of course, that's coming from someone that owns 3d printers that can print a whole car at once." Which one do you mean, I am interested in printing bigger things. So far my biggest is 35x35x40(cm).

Really, I can print a car...

3D Printing - Monster 3d printer build

Every year, Alibaba holds a "Global Shopping Festival" on 11/11. It's basically a copy of Amazon prime day, but given Alibaba's size, it's turned into a much bigger sale. Last year Alibaba did over $84 BILLION during their 11/11 sale, vs. Amazon doing just shy of $12 Billion for prime days...

www.rocketryforum.com

 

[alexzogh]

Yes. I not have 3 resin printers, a CNC, 15 filament printers, and one Prusa XL coming soon. I have them running nearly 24-7.

Chuck, I would be really interested in your review of the Prusa XL when it arrives. The whole concept of a tool-changer vs. a filament changer is very intriguing, and a step in the right direction.

 

[John Beans]

I got the Bambu X1 Carbon with AMS and it's been great.
So nice to just hit print and not worry!

 

[GrouchoDuke]

As an update, my 2 P1Ps have been awesome over the last month. My network security concerns were solved by putting them on an isolated guest network - printing via SD card or Bambu Studio has worked well. So far, I've waaay more than paid for them with our little Etsy store.

In fact, they've made me seriously reconsider selling rocketry electronics because the pain level of selling 3d prints of products I've designed is really low compared to what I imagine electronics selling/support to be. So, hmm. I still want to share my rocketry gadgets with the world...

 

[cwbullet]

The one thing missing is Octoprint and Astroprint support.

 

[GrouchoDuke]

The one thing missing is Octoprint and Astroprint support.

Yep, I'd love to have mine driven with Octoprint.

 

[cwbullet]

Yep, I'd love to have mine driven with Octoprint.

I guess that is a part of accepting a proprietary printer.

 

[GrouchoDuke]

Yep, I knew that going into it.

 

[jbr]

so many issues on the bambu forums
and I really need at least 350 or 400mm

 

[cwbullet]

so many issues on the bambu forums
and I really need at least 350 or 400mm

I have and Anycubic Chiron. Very reliable this far.

 

[rAUM]

Really, I can print a car...

3D Printing - Monster 3d printer build

Every year, Alibaba holds a "Global Shopping Festival" on 11/11. It's basically a copy of Amazon prime day, but given Alibaba's size, it's turned into a much bigger sale. Last year Alibaba did over $84 BILLION during their 11/11 sale, vs. Amazon doing just shy of $12 Billion for prime days...

www.rocketryforum.com

Great, what where the transportation costs? How much Watt does it draw per hour.

 

[karaRobert]

The printer i use as daily driver is the Flashforge Dreamer. The best part of these printer is that it is enclosed. It keeps the dust out when not in use. The scraper scrapes off the grit on the build plate, so we need to use painters tape to protect it. The build plate surface wore out after 15 prints. It would have been a good idea to have ordered extra plates/covers. It would also be good to have this in a well-ventilated area.

 

[GrouchoDuke]

The printer i use as daily driver is the Flashforge Dreamer. The best part of these printer is that it is enclosed. It keeps the dust out when not in use. The scraper scrapes off the grit on the build plate, so we need to use painters tape to protect it. The build plate surface wore out after 15 prints. It would have been a good idea to have ordered extra plates/covers. It would also be good to have this in a well-ventilated area.

The answer to all build plate woes is: magnetic, textured PEI coated build plates. I print everything with PETG and prints stick every time and pop off by themselves after the plate cools. My oldest one is 2 years old and it's working as good as when it was new. It was as much of a game changer as auto bed leveling.

 

[cwbullet]

The answer to all build plate woes is: magnetic, textured PEI coated build plates. I print everything with PETG and prints stick every time and pop off by themselves after the plate cools. My oldest one is 2 years old and it's working as good as when it was new. It was as much of a game changer as auto bed leveling.

In my book, a flexible textured plate is next to essential for some printing. PETG is close, but PC and PC blend nearly require it also.

 

[John Beans]

I just got the textured PEI plate a few days ago, and with both PLA and Tough PLA from Bambu (a pretty great material if you believe YouTuber strength testers) it does NOT require glue. Sticks great, pops right off with no residue.

It does put a texture on the bottom of the parts, but it actually is smoother to the touch than it looks and is quite attractive, IMHO.

Nice to be able to just crank out a print without laying down glue first.

Haven't tried anything else on it yet, but it's marked for PLA, PC, ABS, TPU.