Is a Bambu P1S the printer for me?

[Mike R]

OK, wrong group to ask to talk me out of it but I'm very close to pulling the trigger on a Bambu Labs P1S w/AMS combo (seems to be permanently "on sale" for $999 + $65 shipping + tax). I'll use it for fixtures, gridfinity storage, other shop stuff and hopefully some model locomotive stuff (Gauge 1) where I can mix metal parts made on my other machines with plastic ones from a printer.

I see a X1 Carbon w/AMS in use daily at my work, and I'm coming at this from the perspective of having already played in the open source sandbox of 3D printing previously. I sold all my 3d printing stuff in 2020 as I realized I was spending all my hobby time on my printer and not actually making anything (kind of like how I spent all my time fixing my homebrew cnc mill and not making anything!). Anyways, all that to say I'm done playing with printers and just want to hit print and get the result.

Any competitive options to the P1S with AMS out there that give the same out of the box print experience and quality they do? Obviously not the printer that is the subject of this thread. So far, not really seeing any. The whole firmware update / restriction thing seems to have been overblown, and its not scaring me away. I'm no fan of sending my stuff over the cloud, but then again I'm not making ITAR stuff on it either so if they (or someone / government) wants to steal my 3D print data they are more than welcome to it. Nowadays I'm more worried about the need to use the cloud and what happens if the company at the other end goes away or start to charge to use their services. Seems like Bambu still has a USB key print option so the printer won't become a total brick.

The Sovol sv08 is interesting, but at $738 USD for one with an enclosure and no AMS, the extra size does not warrant the higher cost for me, nor the additional play time required for setup.

 

[David]

I ordered a P1S and cancelled when Anycubic launched the Kobra S1 combo. I got in on the early bird for $599USD

 

[Mike R]

So have you received the Kobra S1 and what are your thoughts on it so far? Looks like I can get it for maybe $100 less than the Bambu P1S combo. Mostly that is down to free shipping.

I ordered a P1S and cancelled when Anycubic launched the Kobra S1 combo. I got in on the early bird for $599USD

 

[David]

So have you received the Kobra S1 and what are your thoughts on it so far? Looks like I can get it for maybe $100 less than the Bambu P1S combo. Mostly that is down to free shipping.

Mine hasn't shipped yet.
Folks in the US who have received theirs report excellent out of the box performance. Plug it in, run the calibration, load filament and print. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Aarknoid]

I love my P1S, no AMS but it will do 90% of what the carbon can without some of the frills (Fancy screen, AI print failure recognition ). Same bed size and have printed in PLA, PETG and TPU

 

[Dabbler]

I just reserved an eligoo centaurs carbon with all the nozzle sizes for 549 + 50 shipping. Amsterdam is 3Q, and is slated to be 249 car. no money yet, so I'm still keeping my eye open for David's and other experiences...

 

[jcdammeyer]

I just reserved an eligoo centaurs carbon with all the nozzle sizes for 549 + 50 shipping. Amsterdam is 3Q, and is slated to be 249 car. no money yet, so I'm still keeping my eye open for David's and other experiences...

I bought the Bambu X1C and just before that the SOVOL-06.
The SOVOL because it had a bigger bed and the original 10+ year old printer finally failed.

But I also wanted to do ABS and some of the other filaments that require a closed in cabinet and I liked the idea of the AMS and automatic filament changing. Hence the Bambu X1C.

I have been buying some Elegoo filament but it's on cardboard reels that don't work really well in the AMS.

BTW, the down side of the closed in cabinet and AMS is that it's much harder to unclog a filament breakage somewhere inside the filament path. The upside of the open ones is that they are much easier to service.

There's been a lot of negativity about Bambu and their cloud approach. All that happened after I had bought my Bambu and it wasn't a cheap purchase. But so far, other than the occasional clog due to me using old and not really dry filament I'm happy with the print quality. And I like the ability it has to detect when something goes wrong and a rats nest of filament shows up. Pretty well most of the time it stops printing.

Same with running out of filament. Real easy to deal with inserting a new reel and continuing.

 

[PeterT]

I have been buying some Elegoo filament but it's on cardboard reels that don't work really well in the AMS.

You probably know all this & not sure if my A1 is comparable to your situation. My A1 is not AMS but I was wanting to try Bambu brand PLA just for reference, which predominantly seems to be on cardboard refills (for less cost than identical color/kg spooled when available). This place offers a good selection & also refill spools. I'm not sure if different printers have different allowable dimensions. No vested interest, just a happy one time customer. I know they can be printed too but for the cost & included in order, figured I'd try

Reusable Spool - Convoy-Westcan

Empty reusable spool, fits all Bambu Lab Filament Refills Made from PLA, please use caution when drying Simply align the one keyway 'knotch' to fully seat the refill before trying to assemble the spool. Each empty spool comes with a locking shim, please be sure to re-insert shim before using the...

convoywestcan.ca

These guys sell Bambu brand re-use spools, but for some reason don't show them on website

Bambu Lab Filament | CAZ 3Designs

Shop a large selection of Bambu Labs filament

www.caz3d.com

 

[jcdammeyer]

You probably know all this & not sure if my A1 is comparable to your situation. My A1 is not AMS but I was wanting to try Bambu brand PLA just for reference, which predominantly seems to be on cardboard refills (for less cost than identical color/kg spooled when available). This place offers a good selection & also refill spools. I'm not sure if different printers have different allowable dimensions. No vested interest, just a happy one time customer. I know they can be printed too but for the cost & included in order, figured I'd try

Reusable Spool - Convoy-Westcan

Empty reusable spool, fits all Bambu Lab Filament Refills Made from PLA, please use caution when drying Simply align the one keyway 'knotch' to fully seat the refill before trying to assemble the spool. Each empty spool comes with a locking shim, please be sure to re-insert shim before using the...

convoywestcan.ca

These guys sell Bambu brand re-use spools, but for some reason don't show them on website

Bambu Lab Filament | CAZ 3Designs

Shop a large selection of Bambu Labs filament

www.caz3d.com

The biggest reason to use the Bambu labs reels is to be able to use the RFID tag on them to tell the printer what is loaded in the AMS. I transferred the tag to a black plastic spool with Matter3D filament wound from a cardboard spool. Now true, the printer thinks the colour of the filament is green, but otherwise I don't have to tell it anything about the filament and it prints just as nicely as the more expensive Bambu.

 

[PeterT]

Ah good point. I'm not at that level yet. Mono-color, for mono-brain. That might change one day when my 100g of remaining filament runs short on a 120g print & I wasn't smart enough to have the same color in stock. I guess that's called ICS (Inadvertent Color Selection).

 

[Dabbler]

The biggest reason to use the Bambu labs reels is to be able to use the RFID tag on them to tell the printer what is loaded in the AMS.

I'm not *yet* on the filament changer mindset - most of the things I want are prototypes (colour doesn't matter) or fixtures/tools, and I'm not picky about esthetics...

If I need to, an AMS equivalent will be available 3Q or a little later.

Bambu got a lot of things right. Clogging seems to happen to quite a few, eventually. I think QIDI almost got it right - but their chamber heater wasn't fully thought out, and there have been other minor, annoying problems, along the lines of Bambu clogs.

The reviewers I trust have all had good experiences with Eligoo Centauri carbon, almost like they learned from the K1/K2 (creality), the Sovol SV08, the QIDI, and Bambu; and seemed to get it even more mostly right. For the price, it is hard to pass up, even if it is a stepping stone.

 

[jcdammeyer]

I'm not *yet* on the filament changer mindset - most of the things I want are prototypes (colour doesn't matter) or fixtures/tools, and I'm not picky about esthetics...

If I need to, an AMS equivalent will be available 3Q or a little later.

Bambu got a lot of things right. Clogging seems to happen to quite a few, eventually. I think QIDI almost got it right - but their chamber heater wasn't fully thought out, and there have been other minor, annoying problems, along the lines of Bambu clogs.

The reviewers I trust have all had good experiences with Eligoo Centauri carbon, almost like they learned from the K1/K2 (creality), the Sovol SV08, the QIDI, and Bambu; and seemed to get it even more mostly right. For the price, it is hard to pass up, even if it is a stepping stone.

I'll be honest. I've had two jams with the Bambu+AMS that were much harder to clean up compared to the SOVOL-06 (w/o Klipper controller).
OTOH, the key to and one reason why I bought the Bambu is that the XY motion doesn't involve the build plate and that results in smoother walls on the print.

So my 'advice' (cum grano salas) is to only buy a printer where the bed moves up and down and XY is done on the gantry. Those machines shake far less since the tall print isn't being whipped back and forth.