Hey everyone My sister wants to get into 3D printing. She has her birthday soon and we are thinking of gifting here a printer. What models wold you recommend?
What do you think of Bambu Lab X2D. What would you get for a beginer?
Edit: thank you all for the responses. I certainly did not expect so much engagement and such high quality answers. Will have a look at all the options you recommended. Hopefully our budget has enough room for a comparable morally righ choice.
No one here is going to like this, but just get the Bambu. I would get the P2S not the X2D, but that’s me.
Yes they are very Apple like, there’s all sorts of community hate, but blah blah blah, it’s still been the only plug and forget printer I’ve ever owned. Thing just sits on my workbench, no fuss no muss, it just belts out flawless prints print after print. I’ve been in this hobby for quite a while now, and I’m done screwing around with these things. If you enjoy that, great please continue, but especially for someone like a family member!? Bambu unless you want to be constantly hand holding the entire time. They really are the McDonalds of 3d printers, for better or worse.
Don’t get a Bambu lab, they’ve been screwing over open source creators with BS license claims. Go with Prusa.
Despite their hefty price tag, Prusa still seems to be predominantly a “tinker printer” more than a “press-play” printer, so not necessarily the best option for a beginner if they want the printer as a tool and not a hobby in itself
I’ve been incredibly impressed and pleased with my Prusa Core One+, as a beginner, over the past several months. Assembled myself (I’m a beginner to 3d printing and modeling but not to technical topics) both for cost savings and to have a deeper understanding of how to take it apart if something goes wrong, but it’s been rock solid so far. I was happy to pay the cost premium over Bambu to be on the moral high ground with ethical corporate behavior and production.
YMMV, but I was blown away by how good it was out of the box. I pressed play and it just worked, even with what I thought were ridiculous overhang angles without supports.
They’re selling pro-sumer priced printers, but both the MK4S and the Core One had issues that simply should not happen. Things that let customers paying a premium price be beta testers for the next properly made versions of the printer. They do make good printers worth the price…eventually…but only after they’ve released and sold a half-baked version. And this is my gripe with Prusa.
Sounds like your advice to OP should be to avoid the bleeding edge Prusa stuff (like INDX), but that it’s reasonable to expect to be pleased with well-baked revisions. Another way to look at that is that they’re more than happy to support hardware for a while after release, with additional improvements. My take is that’s extremely positive, but you’re entitled to your opinion.
I haven’t gotten the Gen 2 upgrade kit yet for my Core One+ but I’m excited about the idea that they’ve reduced bed warping and therefore eliminated the vast majority of the Absorbing Heat step before the flatness check at the start of prints. A gen 2 out of the box sounds delightful.
I find it strange that people pit so much effort in to mental gymnastics to try and justify to themselves why it’s OK that their potentially almost €3000 machine (Core One+ L INDX) doesn’t work 100% out of the box without upgrades down the line to fix design issues. It’s not OK to sell products that don’t work properly right away (regardless of the company), especially so in that price range. Don’t sell it until it actually works 100%, it’s a really simple concept.
The issue is that this is the pattern they have. They rush things (while somehow still delaying them) to market, charge customers a premium for their “quality” and ship them products that needs fixing to do what was promised. People shit on game makers for making unfinished buggy games with day one patches and instability for months, but somehow when Prusa does it with their printers is OK and a sign they support their products for a while…like WTF!?
It sounds like you’re new to consumer products. I have issues with my clothes washer, my dishwasher, my car, and many more expensive and supposedly durable goods that are supposed to Just Work but don’t. And the manufacturer never comes back with an upgrade kit.
Ubiquiti is a great example of a company that sells supposedly prosumer gear with the possibility of firmware updates but actually delivers half-baked garbage and leaves people in the lurch, ignoring longstanding bugs and missing features for years. But their fanboys abound and they continue to sell lots of equipment. It boggles the mind.
I remain thrilled that Prusa is committed to continuous improvement.
This hasn’t really been true since the MK3. Even then, I have a MK3 and besides recalibration between filament changes, I have not had to tinker with it almost at all.
The Core One line seems to require a lot of fiddling and the auto calibration features are far from consistent it seems.
Personally I would say that is preferable to my house burning down like with Bambus 😉
Mine has just worked perfectly from day one. Just one anecdote, but I’ve been super impressed with it.
That is a filament problem from voxel labs filament basically, and because Thomas is doing a sponsored bit for them, the Prusa is getting the blame.
look for anything from Canuck creator recently, he mixes different filaments on Indx equipped prusas and has no issues.
So maybe in future Prusa will make filament profiles that work for INDX.
I’ve got a core one L that I will upgrade in the near future and out of the box it was super easy to get started, first thing I did was some brackets in overture PETG, faultless.
That’s bullshit. Its not properly engineered if you can’t use whatever filament you want. If it’s a temp thing for that specific filament, it’s a Prusa issue because they’re not using filament specs you’ve entered in the slicer in their calibration process. Hard coding temps for anything is lazy and bad practice these days since it’s variables that are ready straight from the slicer.
Nero (Canuck Creator) called it out in tonight’s livestream - Tom’s filament was wet, he’s convinced of that. Say what you like about him, or me being Prusa shill or some equally stupid bullshit, but due to Tom’s stream a bunch of people now think Prusa&Bondtech’s INDX solution is bad due to that filament only, so don’t use Voxel filaments - so what?
Watch the video: Prusa Core One INDX by Made with Layers
(sorry can’t link cause I have kbit internet right now and yt refuses to load on that speed)
Nonsense.
No go check the billion issues people are having with the auto-calibration features on their printers, especially on the Core ONE printers. They require a lot of fiddling.
New INDX system has issues.
Now go check Bambu ignoring their printers catching fire.
Any 3D printer can (or rather will) eventually require manual intervention and maintenance, companies trying to sell you otherwise are liars or design garbage not meant to work longer than 2-3 years at all. Sure some people get lucky and don’t have to do anything in the first two years, meanwhile others run into something immediately. That’s just how it is.
But other than with a bloody Bambu, on a Prusa you CAN fix basically everything and there are actual manuals how to do so. Bambus meanwhile are not built to be taken apart and full of proprietary parts, aside from specific things that’d fail way too often.
To say Prusas require “a lot” of fiddling compared to Bambu is just a load of bullshit. They’re just not marketing the printers as aggressively and are open about how to do stuff, making it look differently.
this deflection derailed the conversation.
But at least they cost a fraction. You can’t (or at least shouldn’t) sell a premium priced product with underwhelming performance.
They cost a fraction due to Bambu being propped up by Venture Capitalists and the usual bad-faith attempts at dominating the market, trying to undercut competitors. Look at how Uber did it for cabs in the US, nobody wants that shit happening. The moment you let them they’d jack up the prices, introduce subscription nonsense and whatnot. They already fuck over customers for christ sake, buying something you know will fuck you over just to save a few bucks is madness.
I genuinely don’t know what the hell you’re talking about regarding underwhelming performance either. We got Prusa’s in our hackspace, they’re great reliable pieces of hardware that you can trust and last for many years even with upgrade paths available. Other than Bambu.
My god, I sound like a Prusa chill… but I’m pissed how people can seriously still recommend Bambu. How much shit does a company have to do so the majority finally stops looking only on the price tag?
I’m not talking specifically about bambu labs here, there’s a boatload of other manufacturers that are less nefarious and still deliver printers with feature and performance parity to prusa at less than half. I bought a Qidi Xmax3 brand spanking new for €470, it does the same as the Core One+ L (without the INDX) which costs more than €1900 (I add filtration because the Qidi has that).
I’m aware mine is not as easily repaired (although the full CAD of the gantry is released) but at almost €1500 savings that’s kind of OK.
Prusas are for people who like to fuck around with printers and beta testing as part of a “community”. We’re past that point, thankfully.
No Bambu or Creality, seriously - get a Centuri Carbon from Elegoo. It’s the absolute best option for a newb, the price is incredible for what you get, and they just work. Bambu and Creality are both very hostile toward their users for no reason.
Bought a centauri carbon 2 and it is an absolute beast also moddable with stock klipper now, it is still in alpha but it works for me.
I’ll throw my hat in with the Centauri Carbon. Good price point, good capabilities, won’t give you a headache every 5 minutes.
I’ve got a Centauri Carbon 2 since early september, was a complete noob with 3d printing. Printed lots of stuff, only did the installation (with help of youtube videos) and automatic bed levelling before starting to print. Last week I had to clean the bed plate for the first time with some soap (I should probably do that more often), other than that it’s hassle free.
Why lump Creality in? Did I miss some issues with them?
In my experience they’re just difficult to work with. I never had a problem with customer service because I never engaged with them, but the printers themselves are always a project instead of the project. Not a good choice for beginners who aren’t serious about learning everything, imho
I’ve posted about my experience with Creality, if you want to go back and look. They’re just total garbage.
Under no circumstance should you buy a Bambu Lab, that company is god damn awful. They literally refused to admit one of their printer series’ (A1) being a fire hazard. Also actively locking people into their ecosystem, breaking workflows in the process.
Snapmaker U1 (cheap but good) or a modern Prusa (high quality and longevity) are good picks.
See recent reviews of the INDX Prusa… typical design issues.
I just bought a U1. I print protein models, which are the most difficult things to print and the very first print on the U1 in two colors with a third plastic interface for supports was perfect.
They fumbled the INDX release, that’s true. Probably betted on it, ran short on time and released it too early.
The U1 is great indeed, got one myself. :)
I personally avoid Bambu like the plage
If you are looking for the same performance and feature set (but not a PR nightmare, and locked eco system) look at Snapmaker U1.
If you wish to not break the bank as much, and just want something more simple and cheaper. I believe Creality still makes decent options.
Prusa is the best, no questions. But they are also the most expensive
Bambu is a double edged sword.
On one hand, their printers are really plug and play. Or, their most recent printers are plug, plug and play (talking about the “security key” they added to the X2/H2 series because of laser). You plug it in, and it works. And it works well. Fast, indeed Apple-style handholding, and generally very few issues when it comes to the higher end models.
The downside is, they’re a Chinese company, with the usual Chinese business mindset: anything they take from others is fair game (copyright be damned), anything they do must be super secretive (to the point of breaking A/GPL licensing). They’re also not too keen on admitting mistakes.
If you’re in the EU or Europe in general, consumer protection laws will protect you from their shittery, most of the time. Otherwise you’re SOL.
There’s also the moral side of things. Bambu did rip off multiple companies, and recently lost lawsuits against Stratasys (honestly, this lawsuit was 💩 against 💩). They also went after open source devs with fraudulent DMCA takedown requests and C&D’s, and have been pretty much Apple level anti-consumer-freedom.
But then again their printers are probably the most beginner-friendly, and the cheapest when it comes to multi-material handling. I mean the H2C, a 330x320x300 volume printer with 7 toolheads is £1900, whereas the closest to this (without AMS, without smart track switching for filaments, etc.) from other manufacturers will set you back 50-70% more (Prusa XL+ with 5 toolheads and no enclosure is £3600, for comparison).
But that’s about it, if you want to go off the beaten path, do funky things and hope for open source integration… That won’t happen with Bambu that easily. I’ve made my own changes to e.g. Bambuddy and OrcaSlicer to host the entire print stack “in the cloud” (on my own homelab I have remote access to, so I don’t need a computer for full slicer support), but it’s a hacky solution that’s prone to break any time. Their entire stack is closed source (Bambu Srudio is FOSS because the base, Prusa Slicer and Slic3r, are GPL licensed, but their network plugin that allows direct comms to the printer, isn’t), and you’re at their mercy for firmware updates, features, bugfixes and whatnot. The X1 series had some custom firmware progress but it’s mostly stalled nowadays.
My other main issue with going non-Bambu is that there aren’t other companies really that are better AND aren’t overpriced AF. Prusa constantly prices their machines 30-50% higher than their real market value, aiming at semi-professionals/businesses instead of consumers (plus they’ve been going non-FOSS for a while now). Creality, Elegoo, and all the other Chinese brands will have the same issues as Bambu - often even worse because they don’t have the capacity for fully custom software thus end up violating GPL even more - so if your main qualm with Bambu is their non-openness, these are out the window too.
Anycubic might be the best choice, but they had their fair share of hardware troubles too - on the other hand, installing open software on their hardware is generally quite straightforward (at least compared to other brands).
And beyond these, you only have the big industrial players that focus on B2B sales and products… which isn’t the best choice for home printers.
Ultimately you have the fully open printer options, like Voron. They aren’t ready-made, at best you get all the parts in a kit and have to assemble it yourself, at worst you need to buy the individual parts yourself and have the printed parts printed by someone else. Much more work, but you’re getting the most flexible printer out of it. If you check some of the hardcore 3D printing demos on Instagram/TikTok, you’ll find that most use a Voron base with some heavy modifications to achieve some super funky results. I’ve seen some of these plastic-punks print things in 6-10 minutes that would take 2-3 hours on a Bambu printer! Plus if you want exotic material support (PEEK for example), you’d need a custom build anyway as Bambu’s hotends/chambers only go to a certain temperature.
Balanced take, but Prusa is very transparent about why their pricing is the way it is, and basically the answer there is that they try to keep an EU centric and ethical supply chain.
Which would be perfectly acceptable if they didn’t market features that are half-working, half-assed, and will be delivered over 1-2 years of the product’s lifetime.
It’s a bit like ST:Generations - every key component won’t be delivered until Tuesday.
Like others said, I would avoid Bambu like the plague. It’s asking for trouble in the future.
I would also avoid Creality printers as I have had reliability issues with them in the past. I had an Ender 5 that went through mainboards like filament.
I’m currently running a pair of Flashforge Creator 5, one Pro, one not. Both have proven solid and have been running nonstop since I got them in late July.
Of the two I like the Pro a bit better due to it being enclosed. Prints have been more stable with the wide temperature shifts we have right now. Damned easy to use and while setup wasn’t quite “plug and print” it wasn’t far off. Flashforge as a company isn’t really Linux friendly (Statically, probably not an issue for your sister but worth mentioning), but the printers are solid and work with OrcaSlicer without much trouble.
Other than that, Prusa has a solid reputation (except for the INDX varients right now. It has been a rough release. ) and so does Snapmaker.
Flashforge is starting to show similar issues to bambu iirc
At the $900 price point, which is the price of the X2D, I’d get a Snapmaker U1. You will need to set it up for her (print heads and tubing need to be installed) but once running it is easy to use, reliable, and 4 seperate heads means it’s far faster and less waste than an X2D.
Alternate would be an Anycubic Kobra X for $300. It’s multicolor with low purge waste and might be a good starter printer instead of jumping right to high end and then having it sit.
I was very happy with bambu lab as a beginner. It’s a good price and it’s super easy to use.
As I became an enthusiast, I noticed that bambu is kinda like apple. They hold your hand and don’t let go, they want you to use their printer in a way they tell you to and any other way is met with constant friction. I feel like I want something as good, but more open and flexible and diy nowadays.
A friend of mine got some other printer at the same time (i don’t remember the company, something new and chinese) and he had way more trouble with it and then bounced off.
But again - for a beginner the Bambu experience is perfect.
For reference, just to show the ‘apple’ factor.
Bambu had “accedently force pushed” an updated to all printers before, that locked them to only able to print with confirmed Bambu Lab filament.
That this is even an option they invested research time into boggles my mind.
source? i have a bambu and this did not happen.
When was this? I’ve had Bambu printers for around 2-3 years now and never ran into this issue.
same. my x1c was from the original kickstarter and it has never given me any problems with third party filaments. that printer has lasted me ages and is still going strong with occasional maintenance, and no firmware has ever stopped me from placing non-rfid plastic in a slot and telling bambu what it is.
I’ve been 3D printing since about 2014, real early on with early Prusa stuff and the Reprap. I did a few years of resin printing when I was playing 40k during COVID.
I highly recommend the Centauri Carbon/Carbon 2 by Elegoo. As said elsewhere in here, it’s just about as easy as 3d printing can get. They send you a video to follow for set up and you can start printing within an hour reasonably with no experience.
Bambu is similarly easy, but Elegoo isn’t hostile towards its users in the same way. The Centauri Carbon/2 is best price to performance combined with ease of use that I think is currently for sale.
I got a kit that was not complicated to assemble but it took a fair bit of time so I would say the price for this machine is pretty fair.
No idea about how well that one works, but I guess it comes with guarantee?
Better make sure to have a list of projects first, because while cool to have, you can just order 3d prints, you don’t need the machine yourself. Or you can visit hack spaces and ask for a turn on their machine. And it’s like… an actual waste of living space if you’re not using it. It’s actually in the way. Same thing as useless kitchen devices that sit on the counter and collect dust.
Then again, if you want to be nice and give your sister a nice gift, go for it.
Also idk how relevant money is to you, 800€ can buy a nice dinner, nice clothes and a weekend trip to a nearby city. Or like… think about an actually high quality bag or purse that gets used daily. Definitely the price range to discuss it with her and not just show up at her door with a huge box. 😅
OP:
My sister wants to get into 3D printing.
Your suggestion: Tell her to order prints from a print farm vendor or makerspace and buy her a nice purse instead.
What?
No.
Your suggestion: discuss it, have a plan, make sure this is the right gift by talking to her, otherwise, the machine is fine.
What?
Male models?
I think that depends on you budget. If the Sky is the limit a Bamboo X2D or a Prusa Core 1 are good options.
But if you are going for a lower budget, look for a printer with auto bed leveling and availability of spare parts. Printer nozzle and print bed and considered consumables.
If you find one with a direct drive extruder it’s a winner.
What a wonderful brother!
I guess my answer is yeah, the bambu labs x2d would be excellent for a beginner. What I would say is that most mid-range printers these days are very user-friendly.
I’m sure some people will complain about bamboo labs’ behaviour. Especially around the open source licensing business. Which for the record is aggravating. Honestly for someone just entering the space, I don’t think it should be a dealer breaker.
I recently purchased a new machine after running my old one for the best part of 10 years. It was crazy how far the technology has come. I went for the snapmaker U1. It offers multicolor printing with a fraction of the waisted material.
To be honest. Until your sister has started doing some printing, it’s difficult to separate a lot of printers. She will get a feel for things like,:
what materials she generally prints What size prints she’s aiming for The speeds she needs
