6mo ago

Since Bambu Lab just shit the Heatbed, what Printers should I get for a Print Farm-esc Setup?

I've been using my Bambu P1S Combo for roughly 2 Months now and have been loving it. I liked its User Friendliness, Speed, Quality and Reliability so much, that I wanted to get a second P1S Combo for all Multi colour stuff and then go on to try the A1 Series for Mono Colour Prints in a planned small Size Print Farm...

Needless to say, Bambu shit the heatbed so hard with its recent changes that I can no longer support them, leaving me to wonder what printers hit the same Notes that I liked and mentioned above.

One Printer I've been curious about since I joined this hobby was the Ankermake M5. If what I heard is true, then it would make for the perfect Monocolour printer as it would allegedly hit all above mentioned points... especially considering I could go for Refurbished models for half the price, only 260€ which seems endlessly enticing...

Thoughts? What are some other options? I especially could need a reccomendation for an enclosed Multi Colour Printer with P1S quality... as for price wise I am very open and flexible honestly. I'm kinda just curious what options there are in general nowadays!

33 comments

Prusa
- So pricey, and their core xy just came out. Prusa doesn't have the best track record with their initial releases.
  I love my mk3 but I wouldn't buy a prusa right now.
  I'm In a similar boat to op, I don't feel there's a good solution right now. The creality k2+ and qidi plus 4 are worth looking at, but they're also fairly new and not well proven yet.
  I'm tempted to take the plunge and finally build a voron 2.4
  
  Forget Creality, Prusa is worth the price for a print farm. OP is looking for workhorses, not poorly supported jank. Have you ever tried to get support from them? It's a fucking dumpster fire.
  
  OP mentioned a print farm situation. Repairability and uptime is a much bigger deal in that sort of situation. Having a quick, available fix is more important than hoping that your 24/7 printer never wears out or breaks.
  
  I'm curious what you're referring to when you say Prusa doesn't have the best track record on initial release. I started with two MK3s at work, upgraded them to MK3S+s, and now to MK4s. I didn't have any trouble along that upgrade path and I was always an early adopter. We also have a Prusa XL. If you are still on the MK3 model, perhaps you haven't had much experience with their newer models. However, the MK3S is six years old now.
  Regarding cost, Prusa seems very comparable to Bambu for similarly speced printers. Specifically, looking at printers with an enclosed print bed and metal frame, the Bambu X1C is more expensive at $1100, vs the Prusa Core kit at $950 (assuming your comfortable assembling it yourself).
  At home, I'd sure love to have a Voron to tinker with. However, for a print farm, I wouldn't consider anything but a Prusa these days.
  
  didn't they also say they are going closed source for future models some time ago?
  
  Prusa doesn't have the best track record with their initial releases.
  Outside of the XL and the MMUs their releases have been solid so far.
  and their core xy just came out
  The Core One doesn't have any reviews yet, not sure if they even shipped any so far. Might want to wait a few more weeks until the reviews come out.
  I'm tempted to take the plunge and finally build a voron 2.4
  I have a Voron 2.4, definitely a lot of fun to build. Altough unless you think the floating gantry is cool, the Trident is probably the better printer.
  
  Voron is fun, I built my Trident not too long ago.
I'm out of the loop on Bambu shitting the bed?
I kinda always dismissed them outright for my own use because they seemed like the kind of company to go always online DRM or some other bullshit.
- I love how on point this comment is from someone who's not been following the bed shitting lol
  Avoid Bambu 3D Printers!
- That's... Basically what they've done
  
  I had kinda assumed they always were?
  I guess the cloud stuff was "optional" before.
  In a way, I'm kinda lucky I misunderstood at the time.
For a farm, Prusa will be the most reliable imo.
I got the Creality K2 with CFS and I love it.
It did arrive with a broken door, which seems to be a common issue, but Creality shipped a new one with no hassle and I got it in under a week. Other than that I've had no issues.
It's large and crazy fast compared to my older Ender 3. It does multi color, although I find the purge waste seems excessive, so I avoid most multi color prints except ones that change at layer height, which it handles automatically. The CFS is still useful for swapping automatically if a roll runs out. I've got over 200 hours on it now and it hasn't skipped a beat. I love being able to print anything anytime without spending all the time tinkering to keep it running like I did with the Ender.
I specifically avoided Bambu and waited for this printer to release because of Bambu's closed ecosystem. They remind me too much of Apple. Creality has a decent track record with open software, maybe not the best with support, but it's worked for me.
Prusa!
Prusa
Qidi Q1 Pro looks interesting
I've been looking at Qidi now.
For the kind of setup you are wanting I'd look at Creality. Low cost, reasonably fast, multi color options. Yes they take a little tuning at the start but in terms of a bulk farm machine it's a solid option.
Unless it's ideological, you can still use the Bambu, they'll be releasing a "developer mode" which is LAN only and enables direct communication with the printer.
- And means you no longer get support
Unrelated to the question, but the capitalization of the seemingly random words in the title is interesting. I am going to guess you are a programmer and typically capitalize class or variable names out of habbit and that leaked slightly into the title of your post.
- Nope! I am German and we Capitalise loads of Words. Combine that with me feeling better seeing some words just be big (Think of how Youtuber Capitalize every Word in thier Video Titles)! So Overall, really I just go off Vibes~
I'm a fan of flsun

33 comments